ireland in the new century by the right hon. sir horace plunkett, k.c.v.o., f.r.s. london john murray, albemarle street, w. _printed by_ browne and nolan, ltd., _dublin_ to the memory of w.e.h. lecky, i dedicate all in this book that is worthy of the friendship with which he honoured me, and of the counsel which he gave me for my guidance in irish public life. preface those who have known ireland for the last dozen years cannot have failed to notice the advent of a wholly new spirit, clearly based upon constructive thought, and expressing itself in a wide range of fresh practical activities. the movement for the organisation of agriculture and rural credit on co-operative lines, efforts of various kinds to revive old or initiate new industries, and, lastly, the creation of a department of government to foster all that was healthy in the voluntary effort of the people to build up the economic side of their life, are each interesting in themselves. when taken together, and in conjunction with the literary and artistic movements, and viewed in their relation to history, politics, religion, education, and the other past and present influences operating upon the irish mind and character, these movements appear to me to be worthy of the most thoughtful consideration by all who are responsible for, or desire the well-being of the irish people. i should not, however, in days when my whole time and energies belong to the public service, have undertaken the task of writing a book on a subject so complex and apparently so inseparable from heated controversy, were i not convinced that the expression of certain thoughts which have come to me from practical contact with irish problems, was the best contribution i could make to the work on which i was engaged. i wished, if i could, to bring into clearer light the essential unity of the various progressive movements in ireland, and to do something towards promoting a greater definiteness of aim and method, and a better understanding of each other's work, among those who are in various ways striving for the upbuilding of a worthy national life in ireland. so far the task, if difficult, was congenial and free from embarrassment. unhappily, it had been borne in upon me, in the course of a long study of irish life, that our failure to rise to our opportunities and to give practical evidence of the intellectual qualities with which the race is admittedly gifted, was due to certain defects of character, not ethically grave, but economically paralysing. i need hardly say i refer to the lack of moral courage, initiative, independence and self-reliance--defects which, however they may be accounted for, it is the first duty of modern ireland to recognise and overcome. i believe in the new movements in ireland, principally because they seem to me to exert a stimulating influence upon our moral fibre. holding such an opinion, i had to decide between preserving a discreet silence and speaking my full mind. the former course would, it appeared to me, be a poor example of the moral courage which i hold to be ireland's sorest need. moreover, while i am full of hope for the future of my country, its present condition does not, in my view, admit of any delay in arriving at the truth as to the essential principles which should guide all who wish to take a part, however humble, in the work of national regeneration. i desire to state definitely that i have not written in any representative capacity except where i say so explicitly. i write on my own responsibility, with the full knowledge that there is much in the book with which many of those with whom i work do not agree. _december_, . contents part i. _theoretical._ chapter i the english misunderstanding. fidelity of the irish to the national ideal disregard of material advantage in its pursuit home rule movement under gladstone the anti-climax under lord rosebery the logic of events and the dawn of the practical the mutual misunderstanding of england and ireland the dunraven conference produces a revolution in english thought about ireland the actual change examined future misunderstanding best averted by considering nature of anti-english feeling illustration from irish-american life importance of sentiment in ireland--english habit of ignoring historical grievances still operative the commercial restrictions--remaining effects of irish land tenure--lord dufferin on defects of land laws--their effect on agriculture right attitude towards historic grievances plea for broader and more philosophic view of irish question simple explanations and panaceas deprecated a many-sided human problem chapter ii. the irish question in ireland. misunderstanding of the irish people by the english and by themselves anomalies of irish life the new movement--position of nationalists and unionists in it north and south the question of rural life economic side of the question grazing versus tillage peasant organisation to be supplemented by state-aid uneconomic holdings too prevalent remedies proposed salvation not by agriculture alone rural industries and the irish home reasons for arrested development of home life inter-dependence of the sentimental and practical in ireland outlines of succeeding chapters chapter iii. the influence of politics upon the irish mind. legislation as a substitute for work political shortcomings of unionism and nationalism compared action of the unionist party reviewed two main causes of its lack of success the contribution of ulster the nationalist party are irishmen good politicians? the irish and the scotch-irish in america america's interest in the problem part played by english government in producing modern irish disabilities causes of the growth of national feeling retardation of political education by the one-man system and by politicians of to-day defence of nationalist policy on ground of tactics considered the forces opposed to home rule--how dealt with local government--how it might have been utilised after home rule? beginnings of political education the irish parliamentary party chapter iv. the influence of religion upon secular life in ireland. influences of religion in ireland what is toleration? protestantism in irish life roman catholicism and economics power of the roman catholic clergy has it been abused? church building and monastic establishments clerical education responsibility of the clergy for irish character the church and temperance the inculcation of chastity the priest in politics new movement among the roman catholic clergy duty and interest of protestantism what each creed has to learn from the other chapter v. a practical view of irish education. english government and education the kildare street society scheme of thomas wyse early attempts at practical education recent reports on irish systems the policy of the department of agriculture the example of denmark university education for roman catholics maynooth and its limitations trinity college its lack of influence on the irish mind a democratic university called for national and economic in its aims views of roman catholic ecclesiastics the two irelands lord chesterfield on education and character chapter vi. through thought to action. a word to my critics the gaelic league compared with the irish agricultural organisation society objects and constitution of the league filling the gap in irish education patriotism and industry nationality and nationalism a possible danger extravagances in the movement the gaelic league and the rural home meeting with harold frederic his pessimistic views on the celt a new solution of the problem--organised self-help english and irish industrial qualities special value of the associative qualities conclusion of part i. * * * * * part ii. _practical._ chapter vii. the new movement; its foundation on self-help. distrust of novel schemes often well justified the story of the new movement necessitated by foreign competition production and distribution causes of continental superiority objects for which combination is desirable how to organise the industrial army help from england doubts and difficulties some favouring conditions the beginning of the work--co-operative creameries the social problem early efforts and experiences foundation of the i.a.o.s. its present position agricultural banks the brightening of home life staff of the society philanthropy and business enquiries from abroad moral and social effects of the new movement unknown leaders chapter viii. the recess committee. after six years opportunity for state-aid combination of political and industrial leadership a letter to the press mr. justin mccarthy's reply mr. redmond's reply formation of the committee investigations on the continent recommendations of the committee position of the nationalist members of the committee chief reliance on local effort public opinion on the new proposals adoption of the bill to give effect to them mr. gerald balfour's policy industrial home rule chapter ix. a new departure in irish administration. functions and constitution of the new department how it is financed the representative element in its constitution the right to vote supplies consultative committee on education the department linked with the local government system successful co-operation with local government bodies and with voluntary societies the new department and the congested districts board the reception of the department by the country some typical callers a wrong impression anticipated chapter x. government with the consent of the governed. summary of previous chapter the attitude of the people towards the department method of co-operation with local bodies state-aid, direct and indirect the department and the large towns the department's plans for developing agriculture the industrial problem and education the difficulty of finding trained teachers how surmounted difficulties of agricultural education decision to adopt itinerant instruction double purpose of this instruction relation of the department with secondary schools importance of domestic economy teaching provision of teachers in domestic economy miscellaneous industries competition of the factory the department's fabian policy justified its support by the country improvement of live-stock best method of giving object lessons in agriculture sea fisheries continental tours for irish teachers cork exhibition of things and ideas concluding words index part i. _theoretical_. "it is hard to say where history ends, and where religion and politics begin; for history, religion and politics grow on one stem in ireland, an eternal trefoil."--_lady gregory_. chapter i. the english misunderstanding. whatever may be the ultimate verdict of history upon the long struggle of the majority of the irish people for self-government, the picture of a small country with large aspirations giving of its best unstintingly to the world, while gaining for itself little beyond sympathy, will appeal to the imagination of future ages long after the irish question, as we know it, has been buried. it may then, perhaps, be seen that the aspirations came to nought because they were opposed to the manifest destiny of the race, and that it should never have been expected or desired that the dark rosaleen should 'reign and reign alone.' nevertheless, the fidelity and fortitude with which the national ideal had been pursued would command admiration, even if the ideal itself were to be altogether abandoned, or if it were to be ultimately realised in a manner which showed that the methods by which its attainment had been sought were the cause of its long postponement. whatever the future may have in store for the remnant of the irish people at home, the continued pursuit of a separate national existence by a nation which is rapidly disappearing from the land of all its hopes, and the cherishing of these hopes, not only by those who stay but also by those who go, will stand as a monument to human constancy. the picture will be all the more remarkable when emphasised by a contrast which the historian will not fail to draw. across a narrow streak of sea another people, during the same period, increased and multiplied and prospered mightily, spread their laws and institutions, and achieved in every portion of the globe material success which they can call their own. yet, although irishmen have done much to win that success for the english people to enjoy, and are to-day foremost in maintaining the great empire which their brain and muscle were ever ready to augment, ireland makes no claim for herself in respect of the achievement. it is to her but a proof of what her sons will do for her in the coming time; it does not bring her nearer to her heart's desire. although the nineteenth century, with all its marvellous contributions to human progress, left ireland with her hopes unfulfilled; although its sun went down upon the british people with their greatest failure still staring them in the face, its last decade witnessed at first a change in the attitude of england towards ireland, and afterwards a profound revolution in the thoughts of ireland about herself. the strangest and most interesting feature of these developments was that in practical england the irish question became the great political issue, while in sentimental ireland there set in a reaction from politics and an inclination to the practical. the twentieth century has already brought to birth the new ireland upon whose problems i shall write. if the human interest of these problems is to be realized, if their significance is not to be as wholly misunderstood as that of every other irish movement which has perplexed the statesmen who have managed our affairs, they must be studied in their relation to the english and irish events of the period in which the new ireland was conceived. in gladstone, appealing to an electorate with a large accession of newly enfranchised voters, transferred the struggle over the irish question from ireland to great britain. the position taken up by the average english home ruler was, it will be remembered, simple and intelligible. the irish had stated in the proper constitutional way what they wanted, and that, in the first flush of a victorious democracy, when counting heads irrespective of contents was the popular method of arriving at political truth, was assumed to be precisely what they ought to have. a long but inconclusive contest ensued. at times it looked as if the liberal-irish alliance might snatch a victory for their policy. but when gladstone was forced to break with the irish leader, and parnellism without parnell became obviously impossible, the english realised that the working of representative institutions in ireland had produced not a democracy but a dictatorship, and they began to attach a lesser significance to the verdict of the irish polls. their faith in democracy was unimpaired, but, in their opinion, the irish had not yet risen to its dignity. so most english radicals came round to a view which they had always reprobated when advanced by the english conservatives, and political inferiority was added to the other moral and intellectual defects which made the irish an inferior race! the anti-climax to the gladstone crusade was reached when lord rosebery in took over the premiership from the greatest english advocate of the irish cause. the position of the new leader was very simple. in effect, he told the irish nationalists that the english party he was about to lead had done its best for them. they must now regard themselves as partners in the united kingdom, with the british as the predominant partner. until the predominant partner could be brought to take the irish view of the partnership, the relations between them must remain substantially as they were. and not only must the concession of home rule await the conversion of the british electorate, but before the demand could be effectively preferred, another leader must rise up among the irish; and he, for all lord rosebery knew, was at the moment being wheeled in a perambulator. this apparently cynical avowal of the new premier's own attitude towards home rule accurately stated the facts of the situation, and fairly reflected the mind of the british electorate, after irish obstruction had given them an opportunity of studying the bearing of the irish question on english politics. if the logic of events was thus making for the removal of home rule from the region of practical politics in england, an even more momentous change was taking place in ireland. whilst the home rule controversy was at its height in the 'eighties and early 'nineties, some irish grievances were incidentally dealt with--not always under the best impulses or in the best way. the concentration of all the available thought and energy of irish public men upon an appeal to the passions and prejudices of english parties had led to the further postponement of all irish endeavour to deal rationally and practically with her own problems at home. but during the welter of contention which prevailed after the fall of parnell, there grew up in ireland a wholly new spirit, born of the bitter lesson which was at last being learned. the irish still clung undaunted to their political ideal, but its pursuit to the exclusion of all other national aims had received a wholesome check. thought upon the problems of national progress broadened and deepened, in a manner little understood by those who knew ireland from without, and, indeed, by many of those accounted wise among the observers from within. was the realisation of a distinctive national existence, many began to ask themselves, to be for ever dependent upon the fortunes of a political campaign? in any scheme of a reconstructed national life to which the irish would give of their best, there must be distinctiveness--that much every man who is in touch with irish life is fully aware of--but the question of existence must not be altogether ignored. at the rate the people were leaving the sinking ship, the irish question would be settled in the not distant future by the disappearance of the irish. had we not better look around and see how other countries with more or less analogous conditions fared? could we not--unionists and nationalists alike--do something towards material progress without abandoning our ideals? could we not learn something from a study of what our people were doing abroad? one seemed to hear the voice of bishop berkeley, the biting pertinence of whose _queries_ is ever fresh, asking from the grave in which he had been laid to rest nearly a century and a half ago 'whether it would not be more reasonable to mend our state than complain of it; and how far this may be in our own power?' these questionings, though not generally heard on the platform or even in the street, were none the less working in the depths of the irish mind, and found expression not so much in words as in deeds. yet though the downfall of parnell released many minds from the obsession of politics, the influence of that event was of a negative character, and it took time to produce a beneficial effect. that fruitful last decade of the nineteenth century saw the foundation of what will some day be recognised as a new philosophy of irish progress. certain new principles were then promulgated in ireland, and gradually found acceptance; and upon those principles a new movement was built. it is partly, indeed, to expound and justify some, at any rate, of the principles and to give an intelligible account of the practical achievement and future possibilities of this movement that i write these pages. for english readers, to whom this introductory chapter is chiefly addressed, i may here reiterate the opinion, which i have always held and often expressed, that there is no real conflict of interest between the two peoples and the two countries, and that the mutual misunderstanding which we may now hope to see removed is due to a wide difference of temperament and mental outlook. the english mind has never understood the irish mind--least of all during the period of the 'union of hearts.' it is equally true that the irish have largely misunderstood both the english character and their own responsibility. the result has been that their leaders, despite the brilliant capacity they have shown in presenting the unhappy case of their country to the rest of the world, have rarely presented it in the right way to the english people. there have been many occasions during the last quarter of a century when a calm, well-reasoned statement of the economic disadvantages under which ireland labours would, i am convinced, have successfully appealed to british public opinion. it could have been shown that the development of ireland--the development not only of the resources of her soil but of the far greater wealth which lies in the latent capacities of her people--was demanded quite as much in the interest of one country as in that of the other. here, indeed, is an untilled field for those to whom the irish question is yet a living one. if i could think that each country fully realised its own responsibility in the matter, if i could think that the long-continued misunderstanding was at an end, nothing would induce me to trouble the waters at this auspicious hour, when a better feeling towards ireland prevails in great britain, and when the irish people are fully appreciative of the obviously sincere desire of england to be generous to ireland. but an examination of the events upon which the prevailing optimism is based will show that, unhappily, misunderstanding, though of another sort, still exists, and that ireland is as much as ever a riddle to the english mind. now this new optimism in the english view of ireland seems to be based, not upon a recognition of the development of what i have ventured to dignify with the title of a new philosophy of irish progress, but upon a belief that the spirit of moderation and conciliation displayed by so many irishmen in connection with the land act is due to the fact that my incomprehensible countrymen have, under a sudden emotion, put away childish things and learned to behave like grown-up englishmen. throughout the press comments upon the dunraven conference and in public speeches both inside and outside parliament there has run a sense that a sort of portent, a transformation scene, a sudden and magical alteration in the whole spirit and outlook of the irish people, has come to pass. i feel some hesitation in asking the reader to believe that a great and lasting revolution in irish thought has been brought about in such a moment in the life of a people as twelve short years. but a lesser number of months seemed to the english mind adequate for the accomplishment of the change. and what a change it was that they conceived! to them, less than a year ago, the irish question was not merely unsolved, but in its essential features appeared unaltered. after seven centuries of experimental statecraft--so varied that the english could not believe any expedient had yet to be tried--the vast majority of the irish people regarded the government as alien, disputed the validity of its laws, and felt no responsibility for administration, no respect for the legislature, or for those who executed its decrees. and this in a country forming an integral part of the united kingdom, where the fundamental basis of government is assumed to be the consent of the governed! nor were any hopes entertained that the cloud would quickly pass. during the boer war the prophets of evil, in predicting the calamity which was to fall upon the british empire, took as their text the failure of english government in ireland. when they wanted to paint in the darkest colours the coming heritage of woe, they wrote upon the wall, 'another ireland in south africa'; and if any exception was taken to the appropriateness of the phrase, it was certainly not on the ground that ireland had ceased to be a warning to british statesmen. i believe, quite as strongly as the most optimistic englishman, that there has been a great change from this state of things in irish sentiment, and my explanation of that change, if less dramatic than the transformation theory, affords more solid ground for optimism. this change in the sentiment of irishmen towards england is due, not to a sudden emotion of the incomprehensible celt, but really to the opinion--rapidly growing for the last dozen years--that great as is the responsibility of england for the state of ireland, still greater is the responsibility of irishmen. the conviction has been more and more borne in upon the irish mind that the most important part of the work of regenerating ireland must necessarily be done by irishmen in ireland. the result has been that many irishmen, both unionists and nationalists, without in any way abandoning their opposition to, or support of, the attempt to solve the political problem from without, have been trying--not without success--to solve some part of the irish question from within. the report of the recess committee, on which i shall dwell later, was the first great fruit of this movement, and the dunraven treaty, which paved the way for mr. wyndham's land act, was a further fruit, and not the result of an inexplicable transformation scene. the reason why i dwell on the true nature of the undoubted change in the irish situation is not in order to exaggerate the importance of the part played by the new movement in bringing it about, nor to detract from the importance of parliamentary action, but because a mistaken view of the change would inevitably postpone the firm establishment of an improved mutual understanding between the two countries, which i regard as an essential of irish progress. i confess that my apprehension of a new misunderstanding was aroused by the debates on the land bill in the house of commons. as regards the spirit of conciliation and moderation displayed by the irish, and the sincere desire exhibited by the british to heal the chief irish economic sore, the speeches were, if not epoch-making, at any rate epoch-marking; but they showed little sense of perspective or proportion in viewing the irish question, and little grasp or appreciation of the large social and economic problems which the land act will bring to the front. temporary phenomena and legislative machinery have been endowed with an importance they do not possess, and miracles, it is supposed, are about to be worked in ireland by processes which, whatever rich good may be in them, have never worked miracles, though they have not seldom excited very similar enthusiasms in the economic history of other european lands. i agree, then, with most englishmen in thinking, though for a different reason, that the passing of the land act marked a new era in ireland. they regard it as productive of, or co-incident in time with, the dawn of the practical in ireland. i antedate that event by some dozen years, and regard the land act rather as marking a new era, because it removes the great obstacle which obscured the dawn of the practical for so many, and hindered it for all. whatever may have been the expectations upon which this great measure was based, i, in common with most irish observers, watched its progress with unfeigned delight. the vast majority regarded the hundred millions of credit and the twelve millions of 'bonus' as a generous concession to ireland; and i sympathised with those who deprecated the mischievous suggestion, not infrequently heard in english political circles, that this munificence was the 'price of peace.' on one point all were agreed: the bill could never have become law had not mr. wyndham handled the parliamentary situation with masterly tact, temper, and ability. to him is chiefly due the credit for the fact that the land question, in its old form at any rate, no longer blocks the way, and that the large problems which remain to be solved, and, above all, the spirit in which they will have to be approached by those who wish the existing peace to be the forerunner of material and social progress, can be freely and frankly discussed. it is true, as i have said, that ireland is becoming more and more practical, and that england is becoming more anxious than ever to do her substantial justice. but still the manner of the doing will continue to be as important as the thing which is done. of the irish qualities none is stronger than the craving to be understood. if the english had only known this secret we should have been the most easily governed people in the world. for it is characteristic of the conduct of our most important affairs that we care too little about the substance and too much about the shadow. it is for this reason that i have discussed the real nature of one phase of irish sentiment which has been largely misunderstood, and it is for the same reason that i propose to preface my examination of the irish question with some reference to the cause and nature of the anti-english sentiment, for the long continuance of which i can find no other explanation than the failure of the english to see into the irish mind. i am well acquainted with this sentiment because, in my practical work in ireland, it has ever been the main current of the stream against which i have had to swim. years spent in the united states had made me familiar with its full and true significance, for there it can be studied in an atmosphere not dominated by any present irish controversies or struggles. i have found this sentiment of hatred deeply rooted in the minds of irishmen who had themselves never known ireland, who had no connection, other than a sentimental one, with that country, who were living quiet business lives in the united states, but who were ever ready to testify with their dollars, and genuinely believed that they only lacked opportunity to demonstrate in a more enterprising way, their "undying hatred of the english name."[ ] with such men i have reasoned, and sometimes not in vain, upon the injustice and unreason of their attitude. i have not attempted to controvert the main facts of ireland's grievances, which they frequently told me they had gleaned from froude and lecky. i used to deprecate the unqualified application of modern standards to the policies of other days, and to protest against the injustice of punishing one set of persons for the misdoings of another set of persons, who have long since passed beyond the reach of any earthly tribunal. i have given them my reasons for believing that, even if such a course were morally admissible, the wit of man could not devise any means of inflicting a blow upon england which would not react injuriously with tenfold force upon ireland. i have gone on to show that the sentiment itself, largely the accident of untoward circumstances, is alien to the character and temperament of the irish people. in short, i have urged that the policy of revenge is un-christian and unintelligent, and, that, as the irish people are neither irreligious nor stupid, it is un-irish. i well remember taking up this position in conversation with some very advanced irish-americans in the far west and the reply which one of them made. "wal," said my half-persuaded friend, "mebbe you're right. i have two sons, whom i have raised in the expectation that they will one day strike a blow for old ireland. mebbe they won't. i'm too old to change." i have chosen this incident from a long series of similar reminiscences of my study of irish life, to illustrate an attitude of mind, the historical explanation of which would seem to the practical englishman as academic as a psychological exposition of the effect of a red rag upon a bull. the english are not much to be blamed for resenting the survival of the feeling, but it appears to me to argue a singular lack of political imagination that they should still fail to appreciate the reality, the significance, and the abiding force of a sentiment which has so far successfully resisted the influence of those governing qualities which have played a foremost part in the civilisation of the modern world. the _spectator_ some time ago came out bluntly with a truth which an irishman may, i presume, quote without offence from so high an english authority:--"the one blunder of average englishmen in considering foreign questions is that with white men they make too little allowance for sentiment, and with coloured men they make none at all."[ ] i am afraid it must be added that 'average englishmen' make exactly the same blunder in under-estimating the force of sentiment when considering irish questions, with the not unnatural consequence that the irish regard them as foreigners, and that, as those foreigners happen to govern them, the sentiment of nationality becomes political and anti-english. there is one reason why this sentiment is not allowed to die which should always be remembered by those who wish to grasp the inner workings of the irish mind. briefly stated, the view prevails in ireland that in dealing with questions affecting our material well-being, the government of our country by the english was, in the past, characterised by an unenlightened self-interest. thoughtful englishmen admit this charge, but they say that the past referred to is beyond living memory and should now be buried. the irish mind replies that the life of a nation is not to be measured by the life of individuals, and that a wrong inflicted by a government upon a community entitles those who inherit the consequences of the injury to claim reparation at the hands of those who inherit the government. with this attitude on the part of the irish mind i am not only most heartily in sympathy, but i find every englishman who understands the situation equally so. in the later portions of this book it will be shown that practical recognition, in no small measure, has been given by england to the righteousness of this part of the irish case, and that if the effect thus produced has not found as full an outward expression as might have been expected, the irish people have at any rate responded to the new treatment in a manner which must, in no distant future, bring about a better understanding. the only historical causes of our present discontents to which i need now particularly refer, are the commercial restrictions and the land system of the past, which stand out from the long list of irish grievances as those for which their victims were the least responsible. no one can be more anxious than i am that we should cease to be for ever seeking in the past excuses for our present failures. but it is essential to a correct estimation of irish agricultural and industrial possibilities that we should notice the true bearings of these historical grievances upon existing conditions. in this connection there arises a question which is very pertinent to the present inquiry and which must therefore be considered. i have seen it argued by english economists that the industrial revolution which took place at the end of the eighteenth and commencement of the nineteenth century would in any case have destroyed, by force of open competition, industries which, it is admitted, were previously legislated away. they point out that the change from the order of small scattered home industries to the factory system would have suited neither the temperament nor the industrial habits of the irish. they tell us that with the industrial revolution the juxtaposition of coal and iron became an all-important factor in the problem, and they recall how the north and west of england captured the industrial supremacy from the south and east. incidentally they point out that the people of the english counties which suffered by these economic causes braced themselves to meet the changes, and it is suggested that if the people of ireland had shown the same resourcefulness, they, too, might have weathered the storm. and, finally, we are reminded that england, by her stupid irish policy, punished her own supporters, and even herself, quite as much as the 'mere irish.' much of this may be true, but this line of argument only shows that these english economists do not thoroughly understand the real grievance which the irish people still harbour against the english for past misgovernment. the commercial restraints sapped the industrial instinct of the people--an evil which was intensified in the case of the catholics by the working of the penal laws. when these legislative restrictions upon industry had been removed, the irish, not being trained in industrial habits, were unable to adapt themselves to the altered conditions produced by the industrial revolution, as did the people in england. and as for commerce, the restrictions, which had as little moral sanction as the penal laws, and which invested smuggling with a halo of patriotism, had prevented the development of commercial morality, without which there can be no commercial success. it is not, therefore, the destruction of specific industries, or even the sweeping of our commerce from the seas, about which most complaint is now made. the real grievance lies in the fact that something had been taken from our industrial character which could not be remedied by the mere removal of the restrictions. not only had the tree been stripped, but the roots had been destroyed. if ever there was a case where president kruger's 'moral and intellectual damages' might fairly be claimed by an injured nation, it is to be found in the industrial and commercial history of ireland during the period of the building up of england's commercial supremacy. the english mind quite failed, until the very end of the nineteenth century, to grasp the real needs of the situation which had thus been created in ireland the industrial revolution, as i have indicated, found the irish people fettered by an industrial past for which they themselves were not chiefly responsible. they needed exceptional treatment of a kind which was not conceded. they were, instead, still further handicapped, towards the middle of the century, by the adoption of free trade, which was imposed upon them when they were not only unable to take advantage of its benefits, but were so situated as to suffer to the utmost from its inconveniences. i am convinced that the long-continued misunderstanding of the conditions and needs of this country, the withholding, for so long, of necessary concessions, was due not to heartlessness or contempt so much as to a lack of imagination, a defect for which the english cannot be blamed. they had, to use a modern term, 'standardised' their qualities, and it was impossible to get out of their minds the belief that a divergence, in another race, from their standard of character was synonymous with inferiority. this attitude is not yet a thing of the past, but it is fast disappearing; and thoughtful englishmen now recognise the righteousness of the claim for reparation, and are willing liberally to apply any stimulus to our industrial life which may place us, so far as this is possible, on the level we might have occupied had we been left to work out our own economic salvation. unfortunately, all englishmen are not thoughtful, and hence i emphasise the fact that england is largely responsible for our industrial defects, and must not hesitate to face the financial results of that responsibility. when we pass from the domain of commerce, where we have seen that circumstances reduced to the minimum ireland's participation in the industrial supremacy of england, and come to examine the historical development of irish agrarian life, we find a situation closely related to, and indeed, largely created by, that which we have been discussing. 'debarred from every other trade and industry,' wrote the late lord dufferin, 'the entire nation flung itself back upon the land, with as fatal an impulse as when a river, whose current is suddenly impeded, rolls back and drowns the valley which it once fertilised.' the energies, the hopes, nay, the very existence of the race, became thus intimately bound up with agriculture. this industry, their last resort and sole dependence, had to be conducted by a people who in every other avocation had been unfitted for material success. and this industry, too, was crippled from without, for a system of land tenure had been imposed upon ireland that was probably the most effective that could have been devised for the purpose of perpetuating and accentuating every disability to which other causes had given rise. the irish land system suffered from the same ills as we all know the political institutions to have suffered from--a partial and intermittent conquest. land holding in ireland remained largely based on the tribal system of open fields and common tillage for nearly eight hundred years after collective ownership had begun to pass away in england. the sudden imposition upon the irish, early in the seventeenth century, of a land system which was no part of the natural development of the country, ignored, though it could not destroy, the old feeling of communistic ownership, and, when this vanished, it did not vanish as it did in countries where more normal conditions prevailed. it did not perish like a piece of outworn tissue pushed off by a new growth from within: on the contrary, it was arbitrarily cut away while yet fresh and vital, with the result that where a bud should have been there was a scar. this sudden change in the system of land-holding was followed by a century of reprisals and confiscations, and what war began the law continued. the celtic race, for the most part impoverished in mind and estate by the penal laws, became rooted to the soil, for, as we have seen, they had, on account of the repression of industries, no alternative occupation, and so became, in fact, if not in law, _adscripti glebae_. upon the productiveness of their labour the landlord depended for his revenues, but he did little to develop that productiveness, and the system which was introduced did everything to lessen it.[ ] the wound produced by the original confiscation of the land was kept from healing by the way in which the tenants' improvements were somewhat similarly treated. i do not mean that they were systematically confiscated--the devon and bessborough commissions, as well as gladstone, bore witness to the contrary--but the right and the occasional exercise of the right to confiscate operated in the same way. in the irish tenant's mind dispossession was nine-tenths of the law. an enlightened system of land tenure might have made prosperity and contentment the lot of the native race, and, perhaps, have rendered possible such a solution of the irish problem as was effected between england and scotland two centuries ago. what was chiefly required for agrarian peace was a recognition of that sense of partnership in the land--a relic of the tribal days--to which the irish mind tenaciously adhered. but, like most english concessions, it was not granted until too late, and then granted in the wrong way. the natural result was that, when at last the recognition of partnership was enacted, it became a lever for a demand for complete ownership. but this was the aftermath, for in the meantime, from the seed sown by english blundering, ireland--native population and english garrison alike--had reaped the awful harvest of the irish famine, which was followed by a long dark winter of discontent. upon the england that sowed the wind there was visited a whirlwind of hostility from the irish race scattered throughout the globe. it would be altogether outside the scope or purpose of this chapter to present a complete history of the remedial legislation applied to irish land tenure. that history, however, illustrates so vividly the english misunderstanding, that a short survey of one phase of it may help to point the moral. the english intellect at long last began to grasp the agrarian, though not the industrial side of the wrong that had been done to ireland, and the english conscience was moved; there came the era of concessions to which i have alluded, and for over a quarter of a century attempts, often generous, if not very discriminating, were made to deal with the situation. in , dispossession was made very costly to the landlord. in , it became impossible, except on the tenant's default, and the partnership was fully recognised, the tenant's share being made his own to sell, and being preserved for his profitable use by a right to have the rent payable to his sleeping partner, the landlord, fixed by a judicial tribunal. these rights were the famous three f's--fixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rent--of the magna charta of the irish peasant. if these concessions had only been made in time, they would probably have led to a strengthening of the economic position and character of the irish tenantry, which would have enabled them to take full advantage of their new status, and meet any condition which might arise; and it is just possible that the system might have worked well, even at the eleventh hour, had it been launched on a rising market. unhappily, it fell upon evil days. the prosperous times of irish agriculture, which culminated a few years before the passing of the 'tenants' charter,' were followed by a serious reaction, the result of causes which, though long operative, were only then beginning to make themselves felt, and some of which, though the fact was not then generally recognised, were destined to be of no temporary character. the agricultural depression which has continued ever since was due, as is now well known, to foreign competition, or, in other words, to the opening up of vast areas in the far west to the plough and herd, and the bringing of the products of distant countries into the home markets in ever-increasing quantity, in ever fresher condition, and at an ever-decreasing cost of transportation. great changes were taking place in the market which the irish farmer supplied, and no two men could agree as to the relative influence of the new factors of the problem, or as to their probable duration. whatever may be said in disparagement of the great experiment commenced in , there can be no doubt that it enormously improved the legal position of the irish tenantry, and i, for one, regard it as a necessary contribution to the events whose logic was finally to bring about the abolition of dual ownership. but what a curious instance of the irony of fate is afforded by this genuine attempt to heal an irish sore, what a commentary it is upon the english misunderstanding of the irish mind! mr. gladstone found the land system intolerable to one party; he made it intolerable to the other also. for half a century _laissez-faire_ was pedantically applied to irish agriculture, then suddenly the other extreme was adopted; nothing was left alone, and political economy was sent on its famous planetary excursion. when mr. gladstone was attempting to settle the land question on the basis of dual ownership, the seed of a new kind of single ownership--peasant proprietorship--was sown through the influence of john bright. the operations of the land purchase clauses in the church disestablishment act of , and the land acts of and , were enormously extended by the land purchase acts introduced by the conservative party in and in , and the success which attended these acts accentuated the defects and sealed the fate of dual ownership, which all parties recently united to destroy. in other words, parliament has been undoing a generation's legislative work upon the irish land question. this is all i need say about that stage of the irish agrarian situation at which we have now arrived. what i wish my readers to bear in mind is that the effect of a bad system of land tenure upon the other aspects of the irish question reaches much further back than the struggles, agitations, and reforms in connection with irish land which this generation has witnessed. the same may be said with regard to the other economic grievances. no one can be more anxious than i am to fasten the mind of my countrymen upon the practical things of to-day, and to wean their sad souls from idle regrets over the sorrows of the past. if i revive these dead issues, it is because i have learned that no man can move the irish mind to action unless he can see its point of view, which is largely retrospective. i cannot ignore the fact that the attitude of mind which causes the irish people to put too much faith in legislative cures for economic ills is mainly due to the belief that their ancestors were the victims of a long series of laws by which every industry that might have made the country prosperous was jealously repressed or ruthlessly destroyed. those who are not too much appalled by the quantity to examine into the quality of popular oratory in ireland are familiar with the subordination of present economic issues to the dreary reiteration of this old tale of woe. personally i have always held that to foster resentment in respect of these old wrongs is as stupid as was the policy which gave them birth; and, even if it were possible to distribute the blame among our ancestors, i am sure we should do ourselves much harm, and no living soul any good, in the reckoning. in my view, anglo-irish history is for englishmen to remember, for irishmen to forget. i may now conclude my appeal to outside observers for a broader and more philosophic view of my country and my countrymen with a suggestion born of my own early mistakes, and with a word of warning which is called for by my later observation of the mistakes of others. the difficulty of the outside observer in understanding the irish question is, no doubt, largely due to the fact that those in intimate touch with the actual conditions are so dominated by vehement and passionate conviction that reason is not only at a discount but is fatal to the acquisition of popular influence. of course the power of knowledge and thought, though kept in the background, is not really eliminated. but it is in the circumstances not unnatural that most of us should fall into the error of attributing to the influence of prominent individuals or organisations the events and conditions which the superficial observer regards as the creation of the hour, but which are in reality the outcome of a slow and continuous process of evolution. i remember as a boy being captivated by that charming corrective to this view of historical development, buckle's _history of civilization_, which in recent years has often recurred to my mind, despite the fact that many of his theories are now somewhat discredited. buckle, if i remember right, almost eliminates the personal factor in the life of nations. according to his theory, it would not have made much difference to modern civilisation if napoleon had happened, as was so near being the case, to be born a british instead of a french subject. it would also have followed that if o'connell had limited his activities to his professional work, or if parnell had chanced to hate ireland as bitterly as he hated england, we should have been, politically, very much where we are to-day. the student of irish affairs should, of course, avoid the extreme views of historical causation; but in the search for the truth he will, i think, be well advised to attach less significance to the influence of prominent personality than is the practice of the ordinary observer in ireland. the warning i have to offer, i think, will be justified by a reflection upon the history of the panaceas which we have been offered, and upon our present state. to those of my british readers who honestly desire to understand the irish question, i would say, let them eschew the sweeping generalisations by which irish intelligence is commonly outraged. i may pass by the explanation which rests upon the cheap attribution of racial inferiority with the simple reply that our inferior race has much of the superior blood in its veins; yet the irish problem is just as acute in districts where the english blood predominates as where the people are 'mere irish.' if this view be disputed, the matter is not worth arguing about, because we cannot be born again. but there are three other common explanations of the irish difficulty, any one of which taken by itself only leads away from the truth. i refer, i need hardly say, to the familiar assertions that the origin of the evil is political, that it is religious, or that it is neither one nor the other, but economic. in irish history, no doubt, we may find, under any of these heads, cause enough for much of our present wrong-goings. but i am profoundly convinced that each of the simple explanations to which i have just alluded--the racial, the political, the religious, the economic--is based upon reasoning from imperfect knowledge of the facts of irish life. the cause and cure of irish ills are not chiefly political, broaden or narrow our conception of politics as we will; they are not chiefly religious, whatever be the effect of roman catholic influence upon the practical side of the people's life; they are not chiefly economic, be the actual poverty of the people and the potential wealth of the country what they may. the irish question is a broad and deeply interesting human problem which has baffled generation after generation of a great and virile race, who complacently attribute their incapacity to master it to irish perversity, and pass on, leaving it unsolved by anglo-saxons, and therefore insoluble! footnotes: [ ] my own experience confirms mr. lecky's view of the chief cause of this extraordinary feeling. "it is probable," he writes, "that the true source of the savage hatred of england that animates great bodies of irishmen on either side of the atlantic has very little real connection with the penal laws, or the rebellion, or the union. it is far more due to the great clearances and the vast unaided emigrations that followed the famine."--_leaders of public opinion in ireland_, vol. ii., p, . [ ] _spectator_, th september, . [ ] the title to the greater part of irish land is based on confiscation. this is true of many other countries, but what was exceptional in the irish confiscations was that the grantees for the most part did not settle on the lands themselves, drive away the dispossessed, or come to any rational working agreement with them. chapter ii. the irish question in ireland. whilst attributing the long continued failure of english rule in ireland largely to a misunderstanding of the irish mind, i have given england--at least modern england--credit for good intentions towards us. i now come to the case of the misunderstood, and shall from henceforth be concerned with the immeasurably greater responsibility of the irish people themselves for their own welfare. the most characteristic, and by far the most hopeful feature of the change in the anglo-irish situation which took place in the last decade of the nineteenth century, and upon the meaning of which i dwelt in the preceding chapter, is the growing sense amongst us that the english misunderstanding of ireland is of far less importance, and perhaps less inexcusable, than our own misunderstanding of ourselves. when i first came into practical touch with the extraordinarily complex problems of irish life, nothing impressed me so much as the universal belief among my countrymen that providence had endowed them with capacities of a high order, and their country with resources of unbounded richness, but that both the capacities and the resources remained undeveloped owing to the stupidity--or worse--of british rule. it was asserted, and generally taken for granted, that the exiles of erin sprang to the front in every walk of life throughout the world, in every country but their own--though i notice that in quite recent times endeavours have been made to cool the emigration fever by painting the fortunes of the irish in america in the darkest colours. to suggest that there was any use in trying at home to make the best of things as they were was indicative of a leaning towards british rule; and to attempt to give practical effect to such a heresy was to draw a red herring across the path of true nationalism. it is not easy to account for the long continuance of this attitude of the irish mind towards irish problems, which seems unworthy of the native intelligence of the people. the truth probably is that while we have not allowed our intellectual gifts to decay, they have been of little use to us because we have neglected the second part of the old scholastic rule of life, and have failed to develop the moral qualities in which we are deficient. hence we have developed our critical faculties, not, unhappily, along constructive lines. we have been throughout alive to the muddling of our affairs by the english, and have accurately gauged the incapacity of our governors to appreciate our needs and possibilities. but we recognised their incapacity more readily than our own deficiencies, and we estimated the failure of the english far more justly than we apportioned the responsibility between our rulers and ourselves. the sense of the duty and dignity of labour has been lost in the contemplation of circumstances over which it was assumed that we have no control. it is a peculiarity of destructive criticism that, unlike charity, it generally begins and ends abroad; and those who cultivate the gentle art are seldom given to morbid introspection. our prodigious ignorance about ourselves has not been blissful. mistaking self-assertion for self-knowledge, we have presented the pathetic spectacle of a people casting the blame for their shortcomings on another people, yet bearing the consequences themselves. the national habit of living in the past seems to give us a present without achievement, a future without hope. the conclusion was long ago forced upon me that whatever may have been true of the past, the chief responsibility for the remoulding of our national life rests now with ourselves, and that in the last analysis the problem of irish ineffectiveness at home is in the main a problem of character--and of irish character. i am quite aware that such a diagnosis of our mind disease--from which ireland is, in my belief, slowly but surely recovering--will not pass unchallenged, but i would ask any reader who dissents from this view to take a glance at the picture of our national life as it might unfold itself to an unprejudiced but sympathetic outsider who came to ireland not on a political tour but with a sincere desire to get at the truth of the irish question, and to inquire into the conditions about which all the controversy continues to rage. this hypothetical traveller would discover that our resources are but half developed, and yet hundreds of thousands of our workers have gone, and are still going, to produce wealth where it is less urgently needed. the remnant of the race who still cling to the old country are not only numerically weak, but in many other ways they show the physical and moral effects of the drain which emigration has made on the youth, strength, and energy of the community. our four and a quarter millions of people, mainly agricultural, have, speaking generally, a very low standard of comfort, which they like to attribute to some five or six millions sterling paid as agricultural rent, and three millions of alleged over-taxation. they face the situation bravely--and, incidentally, swell the over-taxation--with the help of the thirteen or fourteen millions worth of alcoholic stimulants which they annually consume. the still larger consumption in great britain may seem to lend at least a respectability to this apparent over-indulgence, but it looks odd. the people are endowed with intellectual capacities of a high order. they have literary gifts and an artistic sense. yet, with a few brilliant exceptions, they contribute nothing to invention and create nothing in literature or in art. one would say that there must be something wrong with the education of the country; and most people declare that it is too literary, though the census returns show that there are still large numbers who escape the tyranny of books. the people have an extraordinary belief in political remedies for economic ills; and their political leaders, who are not as a rule themselves actively engaged in business life, tell the people, pointing to ruined mills and unused water power, that the country once had diversified industries, and that if they were allowed to apply their panacea, ireland would quickly rebuild her industrial life. if our hypothetical traveller were to ask whether there are no other leaders in the country besides the eloquent gentlemen who proclaim her helplessness, he would be told that among the professional classes, the landlords, and the captains of industry, are to be found as competent popular advisers as are possessed by any other country of similar economic standing. but these men take only a dilettante part in politics, and no value is set on industrial, commercial or professional success in the choice of public men. can it be that to the irish mind politics are, what bulwer lytton declared love to be, "the business of the idle, and the idleness of the busy"? these, though only a few of the strange ironies of irish life, are so paradoxical and so anomalous that they are not unnaturally attributed to the intrusion of an alien and unfriendly power; and this furnishes the reason why everything which goes wrong is used to nourish the anti-english sentiment. at the same time they give emphasis to the growing doubt as to the wisdom of those to whom the irish question presents itself only as a single and simple issue--namely, whether the laws which are to put all these things right shall be made at st. stephen's by the collective wisdom of the united kingdom, aided by the voice of ireland--which is adequately represented--or whether these laws shall be made by irishmen alone in a parliament in college green. it is obviously necessary that, in presenting a comprehensive scheme for dealing with the conditions i have roughly indicated. i should make some reference to the attitude towards home rule of both the nationalists and the unionists who have joined in work which, whatever be its irregularity from the standpoint of party discipline as enforced in ireland, has succeeded in some degree in directing the energies of our countrymen to the development of the resources of our country. many of my fellow-workers were nationalists who, while stoutly adhering to the prime necessity for constitutional changes, took the broad view, which was unpopular among the irish party, that much could be done, even under present conditions, to build up our national life on its social, intellectual, and economic sides. the well-known constitutional changes which were advocated in the political party to which they belonged would then, they believed, be more effectively demanded by ireland, and more readily conceded by england. unionists who worked with me were similarly affected by the changing mental outlook of the country. they, too, had to break loose from the traditions of an irish party, for they felt that the exclusively political opposition to home rule was not less demoralising than the exclusively political pursuit of home rule. just as the nationalists who joined the movement believed that all progress must make for self-government, so my unionist fellow-workers believed it would ultimately strengthen the union. each view was thoroughly sound from the standpoint of those who held it, and could be regarded with respect by those who did not. we were all convinced that the way to achieve what is best for ireland was to develop what is best in irishmen. and it was the conviction that this can be done by irishmen in ireland that brought together those whose thought and work supplies whatever there may be of interest in this book. if i have fairly stated the attitude towards each other of the workers to whose coming together must be attributed as much of the change in the irish situation as is due to irish initiation, it will be seen that what had so long kept them apart in public affairs, outside politics, was a difference of opinion, not so much as to the conditions to be dealt with, nor, indeed, as to the end to be sought, but rather as to the means most effective for the attainment of that end. i naturally regard the view which i am putting forward as being broader than that which has hitherto prevailed. some nationalists may, however, contend that it is essential to progress that the thoughts and energies of the nation should be focussed upon a single movement, and not dissipated in the pursuit of a multiplicity of ideals. i quite admit the importance of concentration. but i strongly hold that any movement which is closely related to the main currents of the people's life and subservient to their urgent economic necessities, and which gives free play to the intellectual qualities, while strengthening the moral or industrial character, cannot be held to conflict with any national programme of work, without raising a strong presumption that there is something wrong with the programme. the exclusively political remedy i shall discuss in the next chapter, but here i propose to consider some of the problems which the new movement seeks to solve without waiting for the political millenium. it is a commonplace that there are two irelands, differing in race, in creed, in political aspiration, and in what i regard as a more potent factor than all the others put together--economic interest and industrial pursuit. in the mutual misunderstanding of these two irelands, still more than in the misunderstanding of ireland by england, is to be found the chief cause of the still unsettled state of the irish question. i shall not seek to apportion the blame between the two sections of the population; but as the mists clear away and we can begin to construct a united and contented ireland, it is not only legitimate, but helpful in the extreme, to assign to the two sections of our wealth-producers their respective parts in repairing the fortunes of their country. in such a discussion of future developments chief prominence must necessarily be given to the problems affecting the life of the majority of the people, who depend directly on the land, and conduct the industry which produces by far the greater portion of the wealth of the country. it is, of course, essential to the prosperity of the whole community that the north should pursue and further develop its own industrial and commercial life. that section of the community has also, no doubt, economic and educational problems to face, but these are much the same problems as those of industrial communities in other parts of the united kingdom[ ]; and if they do not receive, vitally important as is their solution to the welfare of ireland, any large share of attention in this book, it is because they are no part of what is ordinarily understood by the irish question. nevertheless, the interest of the manufacturing population of ulster in the welfare of the roman catholic agricultural majority is not merely that of an onlooker, nor even that of the other parts of the united kingdom, but something more. it is obvious that the internal trade of the country depends mainly upon the demand of the rural population for the output of the manufacturing towns, and that this demand must depend on the volume of agricultural production. i think the importance of developing the home market has not been sufficiently appreciated, even by belfast. the best contribution the ulster protestant population can make to the solution of this question is to do what they can to bring about cordial co-operation between the two great sections of the wealth-producers of ireland. they should, i would suggest, learn to take a broader and more patriotic view of the problems of the roman catholic and agricultural majority, upon the true nature of which i hope to be able to throw some new light. my purpose will be doubly served if i have, to some extent, brought home to the minds of my northern friends that there is in ireland an unsettled question in which they are largely concerned, a rightly unsatisfied people by helping whom they can best help themselves. the irish question is, then, in that aspect which must be to irishmen of paramount importance, the problem of a national existence, chiefly an agricultural existence, in ireland. to outside observers it is the question of rural life, a question which is assuming a social and economic importance and interest of the most intense character, not only for ireland north and south, but for almost the whole civilised world. it is becoming increasingly difficult in many parts of the world to keep the people on the land, owing to the enormously improved industrial opportunities and enhanced social and intellectual advantages of urban life. the problem can be better examined in ireland than elsewhere, for with us it can, to a large extent, be isolated, since we have little highly developed town life. our rural exodus takes our people, for the most part, not into irish or even into british towns, but into those of the united states. what is migration in other countries is emigration with us, and the mind of the country, brooding over the dreary statistics of this perennial drain, naturally and longingly turns to schemes for the rehabilitation of rural life--the only life it knows. we cannot exercise much direct influence upon the desire to emigrate beyond spreading knowledge as to the real conditions of life in america, for which home life in ireland is often ignorantly bartered.[ ] we cannot isolate the phenomenon of emigration and find a cure for it apart from the rest of the irish question. we must recognise that emigration is but the chief symptom of a low national vitality, and that the first result of our efforts to stay the tide may increase the outflow. we cannot fit the people to stay without fitting them to go. before we can keep the people at home we have got to construct a national life with, in the first place, a secure basis of physical comfort and decency. this life must have a character, a dignity, an outlook of its own. a comfortable boeotia will never develop into a real hibernia pacata. the standard of living may in some ways be lower than the english standard: in some ways it may be higher. but even if statesmanship and all the forces of philanthropy and patriotism combined can construct a contented rural ireland for the people, it can only be maintained by the people. it will have to accord with the national sentiment and be distinctively irish. it is this national aspiration, and the remarkable promise of the movements making for its fruition, which give to the work of irish social and economic reform the fascination which those who do not know the ireland of to-day cannot understand. this work of reform must, of course, be primarily economic, but economic remedies cannot be applied to irish ills without the spiritual aids which are required to move to action the latent forces of irish reason and emotion. * * * * * the task which we have to face is, then, a two-sided one, but its economic and its purely practical aspects first demand consideration. many even of the agrarian aspects of the question have, so far, been somewhat neglected in ireland owing to a cause which is not far to seek. it has often been asserted that the irish question is, at bottom, the land question. there is a great deal of truth in this view, but almost all those who hold it have fallen into the grave error of tacitly identifying the land question with the tenure question--an error which vitiates a great deal of current theorising about ireland. it was, indeed, inevitable that irish agriculturists, with such an economic history behind them as i have outlined in the previous chapter, should have concentrated their attention during the latter half of the nineteenth century upon obtaining a legislative cure for the ills produced by legislation, to the comparative neglect of those equally difficult, if less obvious economic questions, which have been brought into special prominence by the agricultural depression of the last quarter of a century. now, however, that the land act of has been passed and the solution of the tenure question is in sight, we in ireland are more free to direct our attention to what is at present the most important aspect of the agrarian situation--the necessity for determining the social and economic conditions essential to the well-being of the peasant proprietary, which, though it is to be started with as bright an outlook as the law can give, must stand or fall by its own inherent merits or defects. not only are we now free to give adequate consideration to this question, but it is also imperative that we should do so, for whilst i am hopeful that the land act will settle the question of tenure, it will obviously not merely leave the other problems of agricultural existence--problems some of which are not unknown in other parts of the united kingdom--still unsolved, but will also increase the necessity for their solution, and will, moreover, bring in its train complex difficulties of its own. the main features of the depressing outlook of rural life in the united kingdom are well known. the land steadily passes from under the plough and is given over to stock raising. as the kine increase the men decay. in ireland the rural exodus takes, as i have already said, the shape, mainly, not of migration to irish urban centres, but rather the uglier form of an emigration which not only depletes our population but drains it of the very elements which can least be spared. the reason generally given for the widespread resort to the lotus-eating occupation of opening and shutting gates, in preference to tilling the soil, is that in the existing state of agricultural organisation, and while urban life is ever drawing away labour from the fields, the substitution of pasturage for tillage is the readiest way to meet the ruinous competition of eastern europe, the western hemisphere, and australasia. yet upon the economic merits of this process i have heard the most diverse opinions stated with equal conviction by men thoroughly well informed as to the conditions. one of the largest graziers in ireland recently gave me a picture of what he considered to be an ideal economic state for the country. if two more belfasts could be established on the east coast, and the rest of the country divided into five hundred acre farms, grazing being adopted wherever permanent grass would grow, the limits of irish productivity would be reached. on the other hand, dr. o'donnell, the roman catholic bishop of raphoe, who may be taken as an authoritative exponent of the trend of popular thought in the country, not long ago advocated ploughing the grazing lands of leinster right up to the slopes of tara.[ ] moreover, many theories have been advanced to show that the decline of tillage, whatever be its cause, involves an enormous waste of national resources. but of practical suggestion, making for a remedy, there is very little forthcoming. the solution of all such problems largely depends upon certain developments which, for many reasons, i regard as absolutely essential to the success of the new agrarian order. one of these developments is the spread of agricultural co-operation through voluntary associations. without this agency of social and economic progress, small landholders in ireland will be but a body of isolated units, having all the drawbacks of individualism, and none of its virtues, unorganised and singularly ill-equipped for that great international struggle of our time, which we know as agricultural competition. moreover, there is another equally important, if less obvious, consideration which renders urgent the organisation of our rural communities. from russia, with its half-communistic mir to france with its modern village commune, there is no country in europe except the united kingdom where the peasant land-holders have not some form of corporate existence. in ireland the transition from landlordism to a peasant proprietary not only does not create any corporate existence among the occupying peasantry but rather deprives them of the slight social coherence which they formerly possessed as tenants of the same landlord. the estate office has its uses as well as its disadvantages, and the landlord or agent is by no means without his value as a business adviser to those from whom he collects the rent. the organisation of the peasantry by an extension of voluntary associations, which is a condition precedent of social and economic progress, will not, however, suffice to enable them to face and solve the problems with which they are confronted, and whose solution has now become a matter of very serious concern to the british taxpayer. the condition of our agrarian life clearly indicates the necessity for supplementing voluntary effort with a sound system of state aid to agriculture and industry--a necessity fully recognised by the governments of every progressive continental country and of our own colonies. an altogether hopeful beginning of combined self-help and state assistance has been already made. those who have been studying these problems, and practically preparing the way for the proper care of a peasant proprietary, have overcome the chief obstacles which lay in their path. they have gained popular acceptance for the principle that state aid should not be resorted to until organised voluntary effort has first been set in motion, and that any departure from this principle would be an unwarrantable interference with the business of the people, a fatal blow to private enterprise.[ ] the task before the people, and before the state, of placing the new agrarian order upon a permanent basis of decency and comfort is no light one. indeed, i doubt whether parliament realises one-tenth of the problems which the latest land legislation--by far the best we have yet had--leaves unsolved. this becomes only too clear the moment we consider seriously the fundamental question of the relation of population to area in rural ireland, or, in other words, when we inquire how many people the agricultural land will support under existing circumstances, or under any attainable improvement of the conditions in our rural life. roughly speaking, the surface area of the island is , , acres, of which , , are described in the official returns as 'barren mountain, bog and waste.' this leaves us with some , , acres available for agriculture and grazing, which area is now divided into some , holdings. thus we have an average of thirty acres in extent for the irish agricultural holding. but, unhappily, the returns show that some , of these holdings are from one to fifteen acres in extent. nor do the mere figures show the case at its worst. for it happens that the small holdings in ireland, unlike those on the continent, are generally on the poorest land, and the majority of them cannot come within any of the definitions of an 'economic holding.' these , holdings, the homes of nearly a million persons, threaten to prove the greatest danger to the future of agricultural ireland. as the majority of them, as at present constituted, do not provide the physical basis of a decent standard of living, the question arises, how are they to be improved? putting aside emigration, which at one period was necessary and ought to have been aided and controlled by the state, but which is now no longer a statesman's remedy, there is obviously no solution except by the migration of a portion of the occupiers, and the utilisation of the vacated holdings in order to enable the peasants who remain to prosper--much as a forest is thinned to promote the growth of trees. in typical congested districts this operation will have to be carried out on a much larger scale than is generally realised, for a considerable majority of families will have to be removed, in order to allow a sufficient margin for the provision of adequate holdings for those who remain. in some cases, there are large grazing tracts in close proximity to the congested area which might be utilised for the re-settlement, but where this is not so and the occupiers of the vacated holdings have to migrate a considerable distance, the problem becomes far more difficult. i need not dwell upon the administrative difficulties of the operation, which are not light. i may assume, also, that there will be no difficulty in obtaining suitable land somewhere. i do not myself attach much weight to the unwillingness of the people to leave their old holdings for better ones, or to the alleged objection of the clergy to allow their parishioners to go to another parish. more serious is the possible opposition of those who live in the vicinity of the unoccupied land about to be distributed, and who feel that they have the first claim upon the state in any scheme for its redistribution with the help of public credit. mr. parnell promoted a company with the sole object of practically demonstrating how this problem could be solved. a large capital was raised, and a large estate purchased; but the company did not effect the migration of a single family. still these are minor considerations compared with the larger one, to which i must briefly refer. under the land act of much has been done to facilitate the transfer of peasants to new farms, but it is obvious that land cannot be handed over as a gift from the state to the families which migrate. they will become debtors for the value of the land itself, less perhaps a small sum which may be credited to them in respect of the tenant's interest in the holdings they have abandoned. this deduction will, however, be lost in the expenditure required upon houses, buildings, fences, and other improvements which would have to be effected before the land could be profitably occupied. speaking generally they will have no money or agricultural implements, and their live stock will in many cases be mortgaged to the local shopkeeper who has always financed them. it will be necessary for the future welfare of the country to give them land which admits of cultivation upon the ordinary principles of modern agriculture; but without working capital, and bringing with them neither the skill nor the habits necessary for the successful conduct of their industry under the new conditions, it will be no easy task to place them in a position to discharge their obligations to the state. it is all very easy to talk about the obvious necessity of giving more land to cultivators who have not enough to live upon; and there is, no doubt, a poetic justice in the utopian agrarianism which dangles before the eyes of the connaught peasantry the alternative of heaven or leinster. but when we come down to practical economics, and face the task of giving to a certain number of human beings, in an extremely backward industrial condition, the opportunity of placing themselves and their families on a basis of permanent well-being, it will be evident that, so far, at any rate, as this particular community is concerned, the mere provision of an economic holding is after all but a part of an economic existence. i have touched upon this question of migration from uneconomic to economic holdings because it signally illustrates the importance of the human, in contradistinction to the merely material considerations involved in the solution of the many-sided irish question. i must now return to the wider question of the relation of population to area in rural ireland, as it affects the general scheme of agricultural and industrial development. it is obvious that there must be a limit to the number of individuals that the land can support. allowing an average of five members for each family, and allowing for a considerable number of landless labourers, it seems that the land at present directly supports about , , persons--a view which, i may add, is fully borne out by the figures of the recent census; and it is hard to see how a population living by agriculture can be much increased beyond this number. even if all the land in ireland were available for re-distribution in equal shares, the higher standard of comfort to which it is essential that the condition of our people should be raised would forbid the existence of much more than half a million peasant proprietors.[ ] hence the evergreen query, 'what shall we do with our boys?' remains to be answered; for while the abolition of dual ownership will enable the present generation to bring up their children according to a higher standard of living, the change will not of itself provide a career for the children when they have been brought up. the next generation will have to face this problem:--the average farm can support only one of the children and his family, what is to become of the others? the law forbids sub-division for two generations, and after that, _ex hypothesi_, the then prevailing conditions of life will also prevent such partition. a few of the next generation may become agricultural labourers, but this involves descending to the lowest standard of living of to-day, and in any case the demand for agricultural labourers is not capable of much extension in a country of small peasant proprietors. against this view i know it is pointed out that in the earlier part of the nineteenth century the agricultural population of ireland was as large as is the total population of to-day; but we know the sequel. instances are also cited of peasant proprietaries in foreign countries which maintain a high standard of living upon small, sometimes diminutive, and highly-rented holdings. we must remember, however, that in these foreign countries state intervention has undoubtedly done much to render possible a prosperous peasant proprietary by, for example, the dissemination of useful information, admirable systems of technical education in agriculture, cheap and expeditious transport, and even state attention to the distribution of agricultural produce in distant markets. again, in many of these countries rural life is balanced by a highly industrial town life, as, for instance, in the case of belgium; or is itself highly industrialised by the existence of rural industries, as in the case of switzerland; while in one notable instance--that of württemberg--both these conditions prevail. the true lesson to be drawn from these foreign analogies is that not by agriculture alone is ireland to be saved. the solution of the rural problem embraces many spheres of national activity. it involves, as i have already said, the further development of manufactures in irish towns. one of the best ways to stimulate our industries is to develop the home market by means of an increased agricultural production, and a higher standard of comfort among the peasant producers. we shall thus be, so to speak, operating on consumption as well as on production, and so increasing the home demand for irish manufactures. perhaps more urgent than the creation or extension of manufactures on a larger scale is the development of industries subsidiary to agriculture in the country. this is generally admitted, and most people have a fair knowledge of the wide and varied range of peasant industries in all european countries where a prosperous peasantry exists. nor is there much difficulty in agreeing upon the main conditions to be satisfied in the selection of the industries to meet the requirements of our case. the men and boys require employment in the winter months, or they will not stay, and the rural industries promoted should, as far as possible, be those which allow of intermittent attention. the female members of the family must have profitable and congenial employment. the handicrafts to be promoted must be those which will give scope to the native genius and aesthetic sense. but unless we can thus supply the demand of the peasant-industry market with products of merit or distinctiveness, we shall fail in competition with the hereditary skill and old established trade of peasant proprietors which have solved this part of the problem generations ago. this involves the vigorous application of a class of instruction of which something will be said in the proper place. so far the rural industry problem, and the direction in which its solution is to be found, are fairly clear. but there is one disadvantage with which we have to reckon, and which for many other reasons besides the one i am now immediately concerned with, we must seek to remove. a community does not naturally or easily produce for export that for which it has itself no use, taste, or desire. whatever latent capacity for artistic handicrafts the irish peasant may possess, it is very rarely that one finds any spontaneous attempt to give outward expression to the inward aesthetic sense. and this brings me to a strange aspect of irish life to which i have often wished, on the proper occasion, to draw public attention. the matter arises now in the form of a peculiar difficulty which lies in the path of those who endeavour to solve the problem of rural life in ireland, and which, in my belief, has profoundly affected the fortunes of the race both at home and abroad. to a sympathetic insight there is a singular and significant void in the irish conception of a home--i mean the lack of appreciation for the comforts of a home, which might never have been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.[ ] in the irish love of home, as in the larger national aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being essentially to the social and intellectual instincts. it is not the physical environment and comfort of an orderly home that enchain and attract minds still dominated, more or less unconsciously, by the associations and common interests of the primitive clan, but rather the sense of human neighbourhood and kinship which the individual finds in the community. indeed the irish peasant scarcely seems to have a home in the sense in which an englishman understands the word. if he love the place of his habitation he does not endeavour to improve or to adorn it, or indeed to make it in any sense a reflection of his own mind and taste. he treats life as if he were a mere sojourner upon earth whose true home is somewhere else, a fact often attributed to his intense faith in the unseen, but which i regard as not merely due to this cause, but also, and in a large measure, as the natural outcome of historical conditions, to which i shall presently refer. what the irishman is really attached to in ireland is not a home but a social order. the pleasant amenities, the courtesies, the leisureliness, the associations of religion, and the familiar faces of the neighbours, whose ways and minds are like his and very unlike those of any other people; these are the things to which he clings in ireland and which he remembers in exile. and the rawness and eagerness of america, the lust of the eye and the pride of life that meet him, though with no welcoming aspect, at every turn, the sense of being harshly appraised by new standards of the nature of which he has but the dimmest conception, his helplessness in the fierce current of industrial life in which he is plunged, the climatic extremes of heat and cold, the early hours and few holidays: all these experiences act as a rude shock upon the ill-balanced refinement of the irish immigrant. not seldom, he or she loses heart and hope and returns to ireland mentally and physically a wreck, a sad disillusionment to those who had been comforted in the agony of the leave-taking by the assurance that to emigrate was to succeed. the peculiar irish conception of a home has probably a good deal to do with the history of the irish in the united states. it is well known that whatever measure of success the irish emigrant has there achieved is pre-eminently in the american city, and not where, according to all the usual commonplaces about the irish race, they ought to have succeeded, in american rural life. there they were afforded, and there they missed, the greatest opportunity which ever fell to the lot of a people agriculturally inclined. during the days of the great emigrations from ireland, a veritable promised land, rich beyond the dreams of agricultural avarice, was gradually opened up between the alleghanies and the rocky mountains, which the irish had only to occupy in order to possess. making all allowances for the depressing influences which had been brought to bear upon the spirit of enterprise, and for their impoverished condition, i am convinced that a prime cause of the failure of almost every effort to settle them upon the land was the fact that the tenement house, with all its domestic abominations, provided the social order which they brought with them from ireland, and the lack of which on the western prairie no immediate or prospective physical comfort could make good. recently a daughter of a small farmer in county galway with a family too 'long' for the means of subsistence available, was offered a comfortable home on a farm owned by some better-off relatives, only thirty miles away, though probably twenty miles beyond the limits of her utmost peregrinations. she elected in preference to go to new york, and being asked her reason by a friend of mine, replied in so many words, 'because it is nearer.' she felt she would be less of a stranger in a new york tenement house, among her relatives and friends who had already emigrated, than in another part of county galway. educational science in ireland has always ignored the life history of the subject with which it dealt. in no respect has this neglect been so unconsciously cruel as in its failure to implant in the irish mind that appreciation of the material aspects of the home which the people so badly need both in ireland and in america if the irishman abroad became 'a rootless colonist of alien earth,' the lot of the irishman in ireland has been not less melancholy. sadness there is, indeed, in the story of 'the sea-divided gael,' but, to me, it is incomparably less pathetic than their homelessness at home. there are, as i have said, historic reasons for the celtic view of home to which my personal observation and experience has induced me to devote so much space. the irish people have never had the opportunity of developing that strong and salutary individualism which, amongst other things, imperiously demands, as a condition of its growth, a home that shall be a man's castle as well as his abiding place. in this, as in so much else, a healthy evolution was constantly thwarted by the clash of two peoples and two civilisations. the irish had hardly emerged from the nomad pastoral stage, when the first of that series of invasions, which had all the ferocity, without the finality of conquest, made settled life impossible over the greater part of the island. an old chronicle throws some vivid light upon the way in which the idea of home life presented itself to the mind of the clan chiefs as late as the days of the tudors. "con o'neal," we are told, "was so right irish that he cursed all his posterity in case they either learnt english, sowed wheat or built them houses; lest the first should breed conversation, the second commerce, and with the last they should speed as the crow that buildeth her nest to be beaten out by the hawk."[ ] the penal laws, again, acted as a disintegrant of the home and the family; and, finally, the paralysing effect of the abuses of a system of land tenure, under which evidences of thrift and comfort might at any time become determining factors in the calculation of rent, completed a series of causes which, in unison or isolation, were calculated to destroy at its source the growth of a wholesome domesticity. these causes happily, no longer exist, and powerful forces are arising to overcome the defects and disadvantages which they have bequeathed to us; and i have little doubt that it will be possible to deal successfully with this obstacle which adds so peculiar a feature to the problem of rural life in ireland. if i have dwelt at what may appear to be a disproportionate length upon the irishman's peculiar conception of a home, it is because this difficulty, which irish social and economic reformers still encounter, and with which they must deal sympathetically if they are to succeed in the work of national regeneration, strikingly illustrates the two-sided character of the irish question and the never-to-be-forgotten inter-dependence of the sentimental and the practical in ireland. i admit that this condition which adds to the interest of the problem, and perhaps makes it more amenable to rapid solution, is an indication of a weakness of moral fibre to which must be largely attributed our failure to be master of our circumstances. indeed, as i come into closer touch with the efforts which are now being made to raise the material condition of the people, the more convinced i become, much as my practical training has made me resist the conviction, that the irish question is, in its most difficult and most important aspects, the problem of the irish mind, and that the solution of this problem is to be found in the strengthening of irish character. with this enunciation of the main proposition of my book, i may now indicate the order in which i shall endeavour to establish its truth. i have said enough to show that i do not ignore the historical causes of our present state; but with so many facts with which we can deal confronting us, i propose to review the chief living influences to which the irish mind and character are still subjected. these influences fall naturally into three distinct categories and will be treated in the three succeeding chapters. the first will show the effect upon the irish mind of its obsession by politics. the next will deal with the influence of religious systems upon the secular life of the people. i shall then show how education, which should not only have been the most potent of all the three influences in bringing our national life into line with the progress of the age, but should also have modified the operation of the other two causes, has aggravated rather than cured the malady. whatever impression i may succeed in making upon others, i may here state that, as the result of observation and reflection, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the irish mind is suffering from considerable functional derangement, but not, so far as i can discern, from any organic disease. this is the basis of my optimism. i shall submit in another chapter, which will conclude the first, the critical part of my book, certain new principles of treatment which are indicated by the diagnosis; and i would ask the reader, before he rejects the opinions which are there expressed, to persevere through the narrative contained in the second part of the book. there he will find in process of solution some of the problems which i have indicated, and the principles for which a theoretical approval has been asked, in practical operation, and already passing out of the experimental stage. the story of the self-help movement will strike the note of ireland's economic hopes. the action of the recess committee will be explained, and the concession of their demand by the establishment of a 'department of agriculture and other rural industries and for technical instruction for ireland,' will be described. this will complete the story of a quiet, unostentatious movement which will some day be seen to have made the last decade of the nineteenth century a fit prelude to a future commensurate with the potentialities of the irish people. footnotes: [ ] i speak from personal knowledge when i say that the leaders of irish industry and commerce are fully alive to the practical consideration which they have now to devote to the new conditions by which they are surrounded. they recognise that the intensified foreign competition which harasses them is due chiefly to german education and american enterprise. they are deep in the consideration of the form which technical education should take to meet their peculiar needs; and i am confident that ulster will make a sound and useful contribution to the solution of the commercial and industrial problems which confront the manufacturers of the united kingdom. [ ] that such a knowledge is still required, though the need is becoming less urgent, is shown by an incident which illustrates the pathos of the irish exodus. a poor woman once asked me to help her son to emigrate to america, and i agreed to pay his passage. early in the negotiations, finding that she was somewhat vague as to her boy's prospects, i asked her whether he wanted to go to north or south america. this detail she seemed to consider immaterial. "ach, glory be to god, i lave that to yer honner. why wouldn't i?" had i shipped him to peru she would have been quite satisfied. why wouldn't she? [ ] yet another view which seems to uproot most agrarian ideas in ireland has been put forward by dr. o'gara in _the green republic_ (fisher unwin, ). his main conclusion is that the present disastrous state of our rural economy is due to our treating land as an object of property and not of industry. he advocates the cultivation of the land by syndicates holding farms of , acres and tilling them by the lavish application of modern machinery as the only way to meet american competition. his book is able and suggestive, but it is perhaps, a work of supererogation to discuss a theory the whole moral of which is the expediency of absolutely divorcing the functions of the proprietor and the manager of land at a time when the consensus of opinion in ireland is in favour of uniting them, and in view of the fact that under the new land act the future of the country seems inevitably to lie for a long time in the hands of a peasant proprietary. [ ] the reader may wonder why i touch so lightly upon a fact of such profound significance as the irishman's acceptance of self-help as a condition precedent of state aid in the development of agriculture and industry. but such a cursory treatment, in the early chapters, of this and of other equally important aspects of the irish situation is necessitated by the plan i have adopted. i am attempting to give in the first part of the book a philosophic insight into the chief irish problems, and then, in the second part of the book, to present the facts which appear to me to illustrate these problems in process of solution. [ ] the best expert agricultural opinion tells me that under present conditions a family cannot live in any decent standard of comfort--such as i hope to see prevail in ireland--on less than acres of irish land, taking the bad land with the good. [ ] it is, of course, unnecessary for me to dwell upon the part played by the home in the standard of living, especially amongst a rural community. but it may not be irrelevant to note that m. desmolins, who, in his remarkable book, _a quoi tient la superiorité des anglo-saxons_? hands over the future of civilisation to the anglo-saxons, ascribes to the english rural home much of the success of the race. [ ] speed's chronicle, quoted in _calendar of state papers, ireland,_ - , p. xix. chapter iii. the influence of politics upon the irish mind. among the humours of the home rule struggle, the story was current in england that a peasant in connemara ceased planting his potatoes when the news of the introduction of the home rule bill in seemed to bring the millenium into the region of practical politics. those who used the story were not slow to suggest that, had the bill become law, the failure of spontaneous generation in the connemara potato patch might have been typical of much analogous disillusionment elsewhere. even to those who are familiar with our history, the faith of the irish people in the potentialities of government, which this little tale illustrates by caricature, will give cause for reflection of another and more serious kind. the moral to be drawn by irish politicians is that we in ireland have yet to free ourselves from one of the worst legacies of past misgovernment, the belief that any legislation or any legislature can provide an escape from the physical and mental toil imposed through our first parents upon all nations for all time. 'the more business in politics, and the less politics in business, the better for both,' is a maxim which i brought home from the far west and ventured to advocate publicly some years ago. being still of the same mind, i regret that i am compelled to introduce a whole chapter of politics into this book, which is a study of irish affairs mainly from a social and economic point of view. but to ignore, either in the diagnosis or in the treatment of the 'mind diseased,' the political obsession of our national life would be about as wise as to discuss and plan a polar expedition without taking account of the climatic conditions to be encountered. in such an examination of irish politics as thus becomes necessary i shall have to devote the greater part of my criticism to the influence of the nationalist party upon the irish mind. but it will be seen that this course is not taken with a view to making party capital for my own side. as i read irish history, neither party need expect very much credit for more than good intentions. whichever proves to be right in its main contention, each will have to bear its share of the responsibility for the long continuance of the barren controversy. each has neglected to concern itself with the settlement of vitally important questions the consideration of which need not have been postponed because the constitutional question still remained in dispute. therefore, though i seem to throw upon the nationalist party the chief blame for our present political backwardness, and, so far as politics affect other spheres of national activity, for our industrial depression, candour compels me to admit that irish unionism has failed to recognise its obligation--an obligation recognised by the unionist party in great britain--to supplement opposition to home rule with a positive and progressive policy which could have been expected to commend itself to the majority of the irish people--the irish of the irish question. to my own party in ireland then, i would first direct the reader's attention. i have already referred to the deplorable effects produced upon national life by the exclusion of representatives of the landlord and the industrial classes from positions of leadership and trust over four-fifths of the country. i cannot conceive of a prosperous ireland in which the influence of these leaders is restricted within its present bounds. it has been so restricted because the irish unionist party has failed to produce a policy which could attract, at any rate, moderate men from the other side, and we have, therefore, to consider why we have so failed. until this is done, we shall continue to share the blame for the miserable state of our political life which, at the end of the nineteenth century, appeared to have made but little advance from the time when bishop berkeley asked 'whether our parties are not a burlesque upon politics.' the irish unionist party is supposed to unite all who, like the author, are opposed to the plunge into what is called home rule. but its propagandist activities in ireland are confined to preaching the doctrine of the _status quo_, and preaching it only to its own side. from the beginning the party has been intimately connected with the landlord class; yet even upon the land question it has thrown but few gleams of the constructive thought which that question so urgently demanded, and which it might have been expected to apply to it. now and again an individual tries to broaden the basis of irish unionism and to bring himself into touch with the life of the people. but the nearer he gets to the people the farther he gets from the irish unionist leaders. the lot of such an individual is not a happy one: he is regarded as a mere intruder who does not know the rules of the game, and he is treated by the leading players on both sides like a dog in a tennis court. two main causes appear to me to account for the failure of the irish unionist party to make itself an effective force in irish national life. the great misunderstanding to which i have attributed the unhappy state of anglo-irish relations kept the country in a condition of turmoil which enabled the unionist party to declare itself the party of law and order. adopting lord salisbury's famous prescription, 'twenty years of resolute government,' they made it what its author would have been the last man to consider it, a sufficient justification for a purely negative and repressive policy. such an attitude was open to somewhat obvious objections. no one will dispute the proposition that the government of ireland, or of any other country, should be resolute, but twenty years of resolute government, in the narrow sense in which it came to be interpreted, needed for its success, what cannot be had under party government, twenty years of consistency. it may be better to be feared than to be loved, but machiavelli would have been the first to admit that his principle did not apply where the government which sought to establish fear had to reckon with an opposition which was making capital out of love. moreover, the suggestion that the irish question is not a matter of policy but of police, while by no means without influential adherents, is altogether vicious. you cannot physically intimidate irishmen, and the last thing you want to do is morally to intimidate a people whose greatest need at the moment is moral courage. the second cause which determined the character of irish unionism was the linking of the agrarian with the political question; the one being, in effect, a practical, the other a sentimental issue. the same thing happened in the nationalist party; but on their side it was intentional and led to an immense accession of strength, while on the unionist side it made for weakness. if the influence of irish unionists was to be even maintained, it was of vital importance that the interest of a class should not be allowed to dominate the policy of the party. but the organisation which ought to have rallied every force that ireland could contribute to the cause of imperial unity came to be too closely identified with the landlord class. that class is admittedly essential to the construction of any real national life. but there is another element equally essential, to which the political leaders of irish unionism have not given the prominence which is its due. the irish question has been so successfully narrowed down to two simple policies, one positive but vague, the other negative but definite, that to suggest that there are three distinct forces--three distinct interests--to be taken into account seems like confusing the issue. it is a fact, nevertheless, that a very important element on the unionist side, the industrial element, has been practically left out of the calculation by both sides. yet the only expression of real political thought which i have observed in ireland, since i have been in touch with irish life, has emanated from the ulster liberal-unionist association, whose weighty pronouncements, published from time to time, are worthy of deep consideration by all interested in the welfare of ireland. it will be remembered that when the home rule controversy was at its height, the chief strength of the irish opposition to mr. gladstone's policy, and the consideration which most weighed with the british electorate, lay in the business objection of the industrial population of ulster; though on the platform religious and political arguments were more often heard. the intensely practical nature of the objection which came from the commercial and industrial classes of the north who opposed home rule was never properly recognised in ireland. it was, and is still unanswered. briefly stated, the position taken up by their spokesmen was as follows:--'we have come,' they said in effect, 'into ireland, and not the richest portion of the island, and have gradually built up an industry and commerce with which we are able to hold our own in competition with the most progressive nations in the world. our success has been achieved under a system and a polity in which we believe. its non-interference with the business of the people gave play to that self-reliance with which we strove to emulate the industrial qualities of the people of great britain. it is now proposed to place the manufactures and commerce of the country at the mercy of a majority which will have no real concern in the interests vitally affected, and who have no knowledge of the science of government. the mere shadow of these changes has so depressed the stocks which represent the accumulations of our past enterprise and labour that we are already commercially poorer than we were.'[ ] my sole criticism of those leaders of commerce and industry in belfast, who, whenever they turn their attention from their various pre-occupations, import into irish politics the valuable qualities which they display in the conduct of their private affairs, is that they do not go further and take the necessary steps to give practical effect to their views outside the ranks of their immediate associates and followers. had the industrial section made its voice heard in the councils of the irish unionist party, the government which that party supports might have had less advice and assistance in the maintenance of law and order, but it would have had invaluable aid in its constructive policy. for the lack of the wise guidance which our captains of industry should have provided, irish unionism has, by too close adherence to the traditions of the landlord section, been the creed of a social caste rather than a policy in ireland. the result has been injurious alike for the landlords, the leaders of industry, and the people. the policy of the unionist party in ireland has been to uphold the union by force rather than by a reconciliation of the people to it. it has held aloof from the masses, who, bereft of the guidance of their natural leaders, have clung the more closely to the chiefs of the nationalist party; and these in their turn have not, as i shall show presently, risen to their responsibility, but have retarded rather than advanced the march of democracy in ireland. if there is to be any future for unionism in ireland, there must be a combination of the best thought of the country aristocracy and that of the captains of industry. then, and not till then, shall we unionists as a party exercise a healthful and stimulating influence on the thought and action of the people. i cannot, therefore, escape from the conclusion that whilst the irish section of the party to which i belong is, in my opinion, right on the main political question, its influence is now for the most part negative. hence i direct attention mainly to the home rule party, as the more forceful element in irish political life; and if it receives the more criticism it is because it is more closely in touch with the people, and because any reform in its principles or methods would more generally and more rapidly prove beneficial to the country than would any change in unionist policy. in examining the policy of the nationalist party my chief concern will be to arrive at a correct estimate of the effect which is produced upon the thought and action of the irish people by the methods employed for the attainment of home rule. i propose to show that these methods have been in the past, and must, so long as they are employed, continue to be injurious to the political and industrial character of the people, and consequently a barrier to progress. i know that most of the nationalist leaders justify the employment of these methods on the ground that, in their opinion, the constitutional reforms they advocate are a condition precedent to industrial progress. i believe, on the contrary, and i shall give my reasons for believing, that their tactics have been not only a hindrance to industrial progress, but destructive even to the ulterior purpose they were intended to fulfil. it is commonly believed--a belief very naturally fostered by their leaders--that, if there is one thing the irish do understand, it is politics. politics is a term obviously capable of wide interpretation, and i fear that those who say that my countrymen are pre-eminently politicians use the term in a sense more applicable to the conceptions of mr. richard croker than of aristotle. in intellectual capacity for discrimination upon political issues the average irish elector is, i believe, far superior to the average english elector. but there is as yet something wanting in the character of our people which seems to prohibit the exercise by them of any independent political thought and, consequently, of any effective or permanent political influence. the assumption that irishmen are singularly good politicians seems to stand seriously in the way of their becoming so; and yet it is a matter of the greatest importance that they should become good politicians in a real sense, for in no country would sound political thought exercise a more beneficial influence upon the life of the people than in ireland. indeed i would go further and give it as my strong conviction that, properly developed and freed from the narrowing influences of the party squabbles by which it has been warped and sterilised, the political thought of the irish people would contribute a factor of vital importance to the life of the british empire. but at the moment i am dealing only with the influence of politics on irish social and economic life. i am aware that any political deficiencies which the irish may display at home, are commonly attributed to the political system which has been imposed upon ireland from without. if you want to see irish genius in its highest political manifestation, it must be studied, we are told, in the united states, the widest and freest arena which has ever been offered to the race. this view is not in accordance with the facts as i have observed them. these facts are somewhat obscured by the natural, but misleading habit of reckoning to the account of ireland at large achievements really due to the scotch-irish, who helped to colonise pennsylvania, and who undoubtedly played a dominant part in developing the characteristic features of the american political system. the scotch-irish, however, do not belong to the ireland of the irish question descended, largely, as their names so often testify, from the early irish colonists of western scotland, they came back as a distinct race, dissociating themselves from the irish celts by refusing to adopt their national traditions, or intermarry with them, and both here and in america disclaiming the appellation of irish.[ ] leaving, then, out of consideration the political achievements of the scotch-irish, it appears to me that the part played in politics by the irish in america does not testify to any high political genius. they have shown there an extraordinary aptitude for political organisation, which, if it had been guided by anything approaching to political thought, would have placed them in a far higher position in american public life than that which they now occupy. but the fact is that it would be much easier to find evidence of high political capacity and success in the history of the irish in british colonies; and the reason for this fact is not only very germane to the purpose of this book, but has a strong practical interest for americans as well. irishmen when they go to america find themselves united by a bond which does not and could not exist in the colonies--though it does exist in ireland--the bond of anti-english feeling, and by the hope of giving practical effect to this feeling through the policy of their adopted country. imbued with this common sentiment, and influenced by their inherited clannishness, the irish in america readily lend themselves to the system of political groups, a system which the 'boss' for his own ends seeks to perpetuate. the result is a sort of political paradox--it has made the irish in america both stronger and weaker than they ought to be. they suffer politically from the defects of their political qualities: they are strong as a voting machine, but the secret of their collective strength is also the secret of their individual weakness. this organisation into groups is much commoner among the irish than among other american immigrants, for the anti-english feeling with which so many of the irish land in america is carefully kept alive by the 'boss,' whose sedulous fostering of the instinctive clannishness and inherited leader-following habits of the irish saps their independence of thought and prevents them from ceasing to be mere political agents and developing a citizenship which would furnish its due quota of statesmen to the service of the republic. they lack in the united states just what they lack at home, the capacity, or at any rate the inclination, to use their undoubted abilities in a large and foreseeing manner, and so are becoming less and less powerful as a force in american politics. the fallacious views about the nature and sphere of politics, which the irish bring with them from ireland, and which are perpetuated in america, have the effect not only of debarring the irish from real political progress, but also, as at home, from gaining success in industrial pursuits which their talents would otherwise win for them. they succeed as journalists owing to their quick intelligence and versatility, and as contractors mainly owing to their capacity for organising gangs of workmen--a faculty which seems to be the only good thing resulting from their political education. they are as brilliant soldiers in the service of the united states as they are in that of britain--more it would be impossible to say--and they have produced types of daring, endurance, and shrewdness like the 'silver kings' of nevada which testify to the exceptional powers always developed by the irish in exceptional circumstances. but in the humdrum business of everyday life in the united states they suffer from defects which are the outcome of their devotion to mistaken political ideals and of their subordination of industry to politics, which are not always purely american, but are often influenced by considerations of the country of their birth. on the whole, a quarter of a century of not unsympathetic observation of the irish in the united states has convinced me that the position they occupy there is not one which either they or the american people can look on with entire satisfaction. the irish immigrants are felt to belong to a kind of _imperium in imperio_, and to carry into american politics ideas which are not american, and which might easily become an embarrassment if not a danger to america. hence the powerful interest which america shares with england, though of course in a less degree, in understanding and helping to settle the complex difficulty called the irish question. the irish remember ireland long after they have left it. they are not in the same position as the german or english immigrants who have no cause at home which they wish to forward. every echo in the states of political or social disturbance in ireland rouses the immigrant and he becomes an irishman once more, and not a citizen of the country of his adoption. his views and votes on international questions, in so far as they affect these islands, are thus often dictated more by a passionate sympathy for and remembrance of the land he no longer lives in, than by any right understanding of the interests of the new country in which he and his children must live. the only reason why i have examined the assumption that irishmen display marked political capacity in the united states is to make it clear that the political deficiencies they manifest at home are to be attributed mainly to defects of character, and to a conception of politics for which modern english government is very slightly responsible. i admit that english government in the past had no small share in producing the results we deplore to-day, but the motives and manner of its action have, it seems to me, been very imperfectly understood. the fact is that the difficulties of english government in ireland, until a complete military conquest had been effected, were of a peculiarly complex character. before the english could impose upon ireland their own political organisation--and the idea that any other system could work better among the irish never entered the english mind--it was obviously necessary that the very antithesis of that organisation, the clan system, should be abolished. but there were military and financial objections to carrying out this policy. irish campaigns were very costly, and england was in those days by no means wealthy. english armies in ireland, after a short period spent in desultory warfare with light armed kernes in the fever-stricken munster forests, began to melt away. for many generations, therefore, england, adopting a policy of _divide et impera_, set clan against clan. later on, statecraft may be said to have supervened upon military tactics. it consisted of attempts made by alternate threats and bribes to induce the chiefs to transform the clan organisation by the acceptance of english institutions. but any systematic endeavours to complete the transformation were soon rendered abortive by being coupled with huge confiscations of land. the policy of converting the members of the clans into freeholders was subordinated to the policy of planting british colonists. after this there was no question of fusion of races or institutions. plantations on a large scale, self-supporting, self-protecting, became the policy alike of the soldier and the statesman. the inevitable result of these methods was that it was not until a comparatively late date that a political conception of an irish nation first began to emerge out of the congeries of clans. in the state papers of the sixteenth century the clans are frequently spoken of as 'nations.' even as late as the eighteenth century a gaelic poet, in a typical lament, thus identifies his country with the fortunes of her great families:-- the o'doherty is not holding sway, nor his noble race; the o'moores are not strong, that once were brave-- o'flaherty is not in power, nor his kinsfolk; and sooth to say, the o'briens have long since become english. of o'rourke there is no mention--my sharp wounding! nor yet of o'donnell in erin; the geraldines they are without vigour--without a nod, and the burkes, the barrys, the walshes of the slender ships.[ ] the modern political idea of irish nationality at length asserted itself as the result of three main causes. the bond of a common grievance against the english foe was created by the gradual abandonment of the policy of setting clan against clan in favour of impartial confiscation of land from friendly as well as from hostile chiefs. secondly, when the english had destroyed the natural leaders, the clan chiefs, and attempted to proselytise their adherents, the political leadership largely passed to the roman catholic church, which very naturally defended the religion common to the members of all the clans, by trying to unite them against the english enemy. nationality, in this sense, of course applied only to celtic roman catholic ireland. the first real idea of a united ireland arose out of the third cause, the religious grievances of the protestant dissenters and the commercial grievances of the protestant manufacturers and artisans in the eighteenth century, who suffered under a common disability with the roman catholics, and many of whom came in the end to make common cause with them. but even long after this conception had become firmly established, the local representative institutions corresponding to those which formed the political training of the english in law and administration either did not exist in ireland or were altogether in the hands of a small aristocracy, mostly of non-irish origin, and wholly non-catholic. o'connell's great work in freeing roman catholic ireland from the domination of the protestant oligarchy showed the people the power of combination, but his methods can hardly be said to have fostered political thought. the efforts in this direction of men like gavan duffy, davis, and lucas were neutralised by the famine, the after effects of which also did much to thwart butt's attempts to develop serious public opinion amongst a people whose political education had been so long delayed. the prospect of any early fruition of such efforts vanished with the revolutionary agrarian propaganda, and independent thinking--so necessary in the modern democratic state--never replaced the old leader-following habit which continued until the climax was reached under parnell. the political backwardness of the irish people revealed itself characteristically when, in , the english and irish democracies were simultaneously endowed with a greatly extended franchise. in theory this concession should have developed political thought in the people and should have enhanced their sense of political responsibility. in england no doubt this theory was proved by the event to be based on fact; but in ireland it was otherwise. parnell was at the zenith of his power. the irish had the man, what mattered the principles? the new suffrages simply became the figures upon the cheques handed over to the chief by each constituency, with the request that he would fill in the name of the payee. on one or two occasions a constituency did protest against the payee, but all that was required to settle the matter was a personal visit from the chief. generally speaking, the electorate were quite docile, and instances were not wanting of men discovering that they had found favour with electors to whom their faces and even their names were previously unknown. no doubt, the one-man system had a tactical value, of which the english themselves were ever ready to make use. "if all ireland cannot rule this man, then let this man rule all ireland," said henry vii. of the earl of kildare; and the echo of these words was heard when the kilmainham treaty was negotiated with the last man who wore the mantle of the chief. but whatever may be said for the one-man system as a means of political organisation, it lacked every element of political education. it left the people weaker, if possible, and less capable than it found them; and assuredly it was no fit training for home rule. while parnell's genius was in the ascendant, all was well--outwardly. when a tragic and painful disclosure brought about a crisis in his fate, it will hardly be contended by the most devoted admirer of the irish people that the situation was met with even moderate ability and foresight. but the logic of events began to take effect. the decade of dissension which followed the fall of parnell will, perhaps, some day be recognised as a most fruitful epoch in modern irish history. the reaction from the one-man system set in as soon as the one man had passed away. the independence which parnell's former lieutenants began to assert when the laurels faded upon the brow of the uncrowned king communicated itself to some extent to the rank and file. the mere weighing of the merits of several possible successors led to some wholesome questioning as to the merits of the policies, such as they were, which they respectively represented the critical spirit which was now called forth, did not, at first, go very far; but it was at least constructive and marked a distinct advance towards real political thought. i believe the day will come, and come soon, when nationalist leaders themselves will recognise that while bemoaning faction and dissension and preaching the cause of 'unity' they often mistook the wheat for the tares. they will, i feel sure, come to realise that the passing of the dictatorship, which to outward appearances left the people as "sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky," in fact turned the thoughts of ireland in some measure away from england into her own bosom, and gave birth there to the idea of a national life to which the irish people of all classes, creeds, and politics could contribute of their best. i sometimes wonder whether the leaders of the nationalist party really understand the full effect of their tactics upon the political character of the irish people, and whether their vision is not as much obscured by a too near, as is the vision of the unionist leaders by a too distant, view of the people's life. everyone who seeks to provide practical opportunities for irish intellect to express-itself worthily in active life--and this, i take it, is part of what the nationalist leaders wish to achieve--meets with the same difficulty. the lack of initiative and shrinking from responsibility, the moral timidity in glaring contrast with the physical courage--which has its worst manifestation in the intense dread of public opinion, especially when the unknown terrors of editorial power lurk behind an unfavourable mention 'on the paper,' are, no doubt, qualities inherited from a primitive social state in which the individual was nothing and the community everything. these defects were intensified in past generations by british statecraft, which seemed unable to appreciate or use the higher instincts of the race; they remain to-day a prominent factor in the great human problem known as the irish question--a factor to which, in my belief, may be attributed the greatest of its difficulties. it is quite clear that education should have been the remedy for the defects of character upon which i am forced to dwell so much; and i cannot absolve any body of irishmen, possessed of actual or potential influence, of failure to recognise this truth. but here i am dealing only with the political leaders, and trying to bring home to them the responsibility which their power imposes upon them, not only for the political development but also for the industrial progress of their followers. they ought to have known that the weakness of character which renders the task of political leadership in ireland comparatively easy is in reality the quicksand of irish life, and that neither self-government nor any other institution can be enduringly built upon it. the leaders of the nationalist party are, of course, entitled to hold that, in existing political conditions, any non-political movement towards national advancement, which in its nature cannot be linked, as the land question was linked, to the home rule movement constitutes an unwarrantable sacrifice of ends to means. and so holding, they are further entitled to subject any proposal to elevate popular thought, or to direct popular activities, to a strict censorship as to its remote as well as to its immediate effect upon the electorate. i know, too, that it is held by some thinking nationalists who take no active part in politics that the politicians are justified on tactical grounds in this exclusive pursuit of their political aims, and in the methods by which they pursue them. they consider the present system of government too radically wrong to mend, and they can undoubtedly point to agrarian legislation as evidence of the effectiveness of the means they employ to gain their end. this view of things has sunk very deep into the irish mind. the policy of 'giving trouble' to the government is looked upon as the one road to reform and is believed in so fervently that, except for religion, which sometimes conflicts with it, there is scarcely any capacity left for belief in anything else. i am far from denying that the past offers much justification for the belief that nothing can be gained by ireland from england except through violent agitation. until recently, i admit, ireland's opportunity had to wait for england's difficulty. but, as practised in the present day, i believe this doctrine to be mischievous and false. for one thing, there is a new england to deal with. the england which, certainly not in deference to violent agitation, established the congested districts board, gave local government to ireland, and accepted the recommendations of the recess committee for far-reaching administrative changes, as well as those of the land conference which involved great financial concessions, is not the england of fifty years ago, still less the england of the eighteenth century. moreover, in riveting the mind of the country on what is to be obtained from england, this doctrine of 'giving trouble,' the whole gospel of the agitator, has blinded the irish people to the many things which ireland can do for herself. whatever may be said of what is called 'agitation' in ireland as an engine for extorting legislation from the imperial parliament, it is unquestionably bad for the much greater end of building up irish character and developing irish industry and commerce. 'agitation,' as thomas davis said, 'is one means of redress, but it leads to much disorganisation, great unhappiness, wounds upon the soul of a country which sometimes are worse than the thinning of a people by war.'[ ] if irish politicians had at all realised this truth, it is difficult to believe that the popular movement of the last quarter of a century would not have been conducted in a manner far less injurious to the soul of ireland and equally or more effective for legislative reform as well as all other material interests. now, modern nationalism in ireland is open to damaging criticism not only from my unionist point of view, which was also, in many respects, the view of so strong a nationalist as thomas davis; it is also open to grave objection from the point of view of the effectiveness of the tactics employed for the attainment of its end--the winning of home rule. before examining the effect of these tactics i may point out that this conception of nationalist policy, even if justifiable from a practical point of view, does not relieve the leaders from the obligation of giving some assurance that they are ready with a consistent scheme of re-construction, and are prepared to build when the ground has been cleared. in this connection i might make a good deal of unionist capital, and some points in support of my condemnation of the political absorption of the irish mind, out of the total failure of the nationalist party to solve certain all-important constitutional and financial problems which months of parliamentary debate in tended rather to obscure than to elucidate. i am, however, willing for argument's sake to postpone all such questions, vital as they are, to the time when they can be practically dealt with. i am ready to assume that the wit of man can devise a settlement of many points which seemed insoluble in mr. gladstone's day. but even granting all this, i think it can easily be shown that the means which the political thought available on the nationalist side has evolved for the attainment of their end, and which _ex hypothesi_ are only to be justified on tactical grounds, are the least likely to succeed; and that, consequently, they should be abandoned in favour of a constructive policy which, to say the least, would not be less effective towards advancing the home rule cause, if that cause be sound, and which would at the same time help the advancement of ireland in other than political directions. tactics form but a part of generalship, and half the success of generalship lies in making a correct estimate of the opposing forces. this is as true of political as it is of military operations. now, of what do the forces opposed to home rule consist? the unionists, it may be admitted, are numerically but a small minority of the population of ireland--probably not more than one-fourth. but what do they represent? first, there are the landed gentry. let us again make a concession for the sake of argument and accept the view that this class so wantonly kept itself aloof from the life of the majority of the people that the nationalists could not be expected to count them among the elements of a home rule ireland. i note, in passing, with extreme gratification that at the recent land conference it was declared by the tenants' representatives that it was desirable, in the interests of ireland, that the present owners of land should not be expatriated, and that inducements should be afforded to selling owners to continue to reside in the country. but i may ignore this as i wish here to recall attention to that other element, which was, as i have already said, the real force which turned the british democracy against home rule--i mean the commercial and industrial community in belfast and other hives of industry in the north-east corner of the country, and in scattered localities elsewhere. i have already admitted that the political importance of the industrial element was not appreciated in irish unionist circles. no less remarkable is the way in which it has been ignored by the nationalists. the question which the nationalists had to answer in and , and which they have to answer to-day, is this:--in the ireland of their conception is the unionist part of ulster to be coerced or persuaded to come under the new regime? to those who adopt the former alternative my reply is simply that, if england is to do the coercion, the idea is politically absurd. if we were left to fight it out among ourselves, it is physically absurd. the task of the empire in south africa was light compared with that which the nationalists would have on hands. i am aware that, at the time when we were all talking at concert pitch on the irish question, a good deal was said about dying in the last ditch by men who at the threat of any real trouble would be found more discreetly perched upon the first fence. but those who know the temper and fighting qualities of the working-men opponents of home rule in the north are under no illusion as to the account they would give of themselves if called upon to defend the cause of protestantism, liberty, and imperial unity as they understand it. let us, however, dismiss this alternative and give nationalists credit for the desire to persuade the industrial north to come in by showing it that it will be to its advantage to join cordially in the building up of a united ireland under a separate legislature. the difficulties in the way of producing this conviction are very obvious. the north has prospered under the act of union--why should it be ready to enter upon a new 'variety of untried being'? what that state of being will be like, it naturally gauges from the forces which are working for home rule at present. looking at these simply from the industrial standpoint and leaving out of account all the powerful elements of religious and race prejudice, the man of the north sees two salient facts which have dominated all the political activity of the nationalist campaign. one is a voluble and aggressive disloyalty, not merely to 'england' and to the present system of government, but to the crown which represents the unity of the three kingdoms, and the other is the introduction of politics into business in the very virulent and destructive form known as boycotting. now, hostility to the crown, if it means anything, means a struggle for separation as soon as home rule has given to the irish people the power to organise and arm. and (still keeping to the sternly practical point of view) that would, for the time being at least, spell absolute ruin to the industrial north. the practice of boycotting, again, is the very antithesis of industry--it creates an atmosphere in which industry and enterprise simply cannot live. the north has seen this practice condoned as a desperate remedy for a desperate ill, but it has seen it continued long after the ill had passed away, used as a weapon by one nationalist section against another, and revived when anything like a really oppressive or arbitrary eviction had become impossible. there seems to have been in nationalist circles, since the time of o'connell, but little appreciation of the deadly character of this social curse; and the prospect of a government which would tolerate it naturally fills the mind of the northern commercial man with alarm and aversion. again, the democratisation of local government which gave the nationalist leaders a unique opportunity of showing the value, has but served to demonstrate the ineffectiveness, of their political tactics. north of ireland opinion was deeply interested in this reform, and appreciated its far-reaching importance. elsewhere, i think it will be safe to say, people generally were indifferent to it until it came, and the leaders seemed to see in it only a weapon to be used for political purposes. to the great vista of useful and patriotic work opened out by the act of , to the impression that a proper use of that act might make on northern opinion, they were blind. it is true that the councils when left to themselves did admirably, and fully justified the trust reposed in them. but at the inauguration of local government it was naturally not the work of the councils but the attitude of the party leaders which appeared to stamp the reception of the act by the irish people. it is true, of course, that many thoughtful men among the nationalist party repudiate the idea that the methods of to-day would be continued in a self-governed ireland. i fail to see any reason why they should not. under any system of limited home rule questions would arise which would afford much the same sort of justification for the employment of such methods, and they could hardly be worse for the welfare of the country then than they are now. there is abundant need and abundant work in the present day for thoughtful and far-seeing men in a party constitutionally so strong as that of the irish nationalists. if those among them who possess, or at any rate can make effective use of qualities of constructive statesmanship are as few as the history of recent years would lead us to suppose, what assurance can ulster unionists feel that such men would spring up spontaneously in an ireland under home rule? i admit, indeed, that a considerable measure of such assurance might be derived from the attitude of the leaders of the party at and since the land conference. but this adoption of statesmanlike methods which cannot be too widely understood or too warmly commended is a matter of very recent history; and though we may hope that the success attending it will help materially in the political education of the irish people, that will not, by itself, undo the effect of a quarter of a century of political agitation governed by ideas the very reverse of those which are now happily beginning to find favour. i have thought it necessary to examine at some length the defence on the ground of tactics which is often made for nationalist politics, because it is the only defence ever made by those apologists who admit the disturbing influence upon our economic and social life of nationalist methods. a broader and saner view of political tactics than prevailed ten years ago is now possible, for circumstances are becoming friendly and helpful to the development of political thought. though the united irish league apparently restored 'unity' to the ranks of the nationalists, the country is, i believe, getting restless under the political bondage, and is seething with a wholesome discontent. in this very matter of political education, the stir of corporate life, the sense of corporate responsibility which in every parish of ireland are now being fostered by the reformed system of local government, must make their influence felt in wider spheres. even now i believe that the field is ready for the work of those who would bid the old leader-following habit, the product partly of the dead clan system, partly of dying national animosities, depart as a thing that has had its day, and who would endeavour to train up a race of free, self-reliant, and independent citizens in a free state. in this work the very men whose mistaken conception of a united ireland i have criticised will, i doubt not, take a leading part. in many respects, and these not the least important, no one could desire a better instrument for the achievement of great reforms than the irish party. they are far beyond any similar group of english members in rhetorical skill and quickness of intelligence and decision, qualities which no doubt belong to the mechanism rather than the soul of politics, but which the practical worker in public life will not despise. but even when tried by a higher standard the irish members need not fear the judgment of history. they have often, in my opinion, misconceived the true interests of their country, but they have been faithful to those interests as they understood them, and have proved themselves notably superior to sordid personal aims. these gifts and virtues are not common, but still rarer is it to see such gifts and virtues cursed with the doom of futility. the influence of the irish political leaders has neither advanced the nation's march through the wilderness nor taught the people how they are to dispense with manna from above when they reach the promised land. with all their brilliancy, they have thrown but little helpful light on any irish problem. in this want of political and economic foresight irish nationalist politicians, with some exceptions whom it would be invidious to name, have fallen lamentably short of what might be expected of irish intellect. for the eight years during which i represented an irish constituency i always felt that an irish night in the house of commons was one of the strangest and most pathetic of spectacles. there were the veterans of the irish party hardened by a hundred fights, ranging from venezuela to the soudan in search of battlefields, making allies of every kind of foreign potentate, from president cleveland to the mahdi, from mr. kruger to the akhoom of swat, but looking with suspicion on every symptom of an independent national movement in ireland; masters of the language of hate and scorn, yet mocked by inevitable and eternal failure; winners of victories that turn to dust and ashes; devoted to their country, yet, from ignorance of the real source of its malady, ever widening the gaping wound through which its life-blood flows. while i recall these scenes, there rises before my mind the picture vividly drawn by miss lawless of their prototypes, the 'wild geese,' who carried their swords into foreign service after the final defeat of the stuarts:-- war-battered dogs are we, fighters in every clime, fillers of trench and of grave, mockers, bemocked by time; war-dogs, hungry and grey, gnawing a naked bone, fighting in every clime every cause but our own.[ ] irishmen have been long in realising that the days of the 'wild geese' are over, and that there are battles for ireland to be fought and won in ireland--battles in which england is not the enemy she was in the days of fontenoy, but a friend and helper. but there will be little gain in replacing the traditional conception of england as the inexorable foe by the more modern conception, which threatened to become traditional in its turn, of england as the source of all prosperity and her favour as the condition of all progress in ireland. in the recent land conference i recognise something more valuable even than the financial and legislative results which flowed from it, for it showed that the conception of reliance upon irishmen in ireland, not under some future and problematical conditions, but here and now, for the solution of irish questions, is gaining ground among us. if this conception once takes firm hold, as i think it is beginning to do, of the nationalist party in ireland, much of the criticism of this chapter will lose its meaning. the mere substitution of a positive irish policy for a negative anti-english policy will elevate the whole range of nationalist political activity in and out of ireland. and i am certain that if the ultimate goal of nationalist politics be desirable, and continue to be desired, it will not be rendered more difficult, but on the contrary very much easier of attainment if those who seek it take possession of the great field of work which, without waiting for any concessions from westminster, is offered by the ireland of to-day. footnotes: [ ] this view of the case was powerfully stated by the deputation from the belfast chamber of commerce which waited on mr. gladstone in the spring of . they pointed out _inter alia_ that the members of the deputation were poorer by thousands of pounds owing to the fall in irish stocks consequent upon the introduction of the home rule bill in that year. [ ] the term 'scotch-irish' does not mean an amalgam of scotch and irish, but a race of scottish immigrants who settled in north-east ireland. i may point out that in these criticisms of irish-american politics i refer, of course, mainly to the irish-born immigrants and not to the irish, scotch-irish or other, who are american-born. nobody can have a higher appreciation than i of the great part played by the american-irish once they have assimilated the full spirit of american institutions. [ ] _poems of egan o'rahilly._ edited, with translation, by the rev. p.s. dinneen, m.a., for the irish texts society, p. . o'rahilly's charge against cromwell is that he "gave plenty to the man with the flail," but beggared the great lords, p. . [ ] _prose writings of thomas davis_, p. . 'the writers of _the nation_,' wrote davis in another place, 'have never concealed the defects or flattered the good qualities of their countrymen. they have told them in good faith that they wanted many an attribute of a free people, _and that the true way to command happiness and liberty was by learning the arts and practising the culture that fitted men for their enjoyment'_ (p. ). the thing that especially distinguished davis among nationalist politicians was the essentially constructive mind which he brought to bear on irish questions, as illustrated in the passage i have italicised. it is, i am afraid, the part of his legacy of thought which has been least regarded by his admirers. [ ] _with the wild geese_. poems by the hon. emily lawless. i have never read a better portrayal of the historic irish sentiment than is set forth in this little volume. by the way, there is a preface by mr. stopford brooke, which is singularly interesting and informing. chapter iv. the influence of religion upon secular life in ireland. in the preceding chapter i attempted to estimate the influence of our political leaders as a potential and as an actual force. i come now to the second great influence upon the thought and action of the irish people, the influence of religion, especially the power exercised by the priests and by the unrivalled organisation of the roman catholic church. i do not share the pessimism which sees in this potent influence nothing but the shackles of mediævalism restraining its adherents from falling into line with the progress of the age. i shall, indeed, have to admit much of what is charged against the clerical leaders of popular thought in ireland, but i shall be able to show, i hope, that these leaders are largely the product of a situation which they themselves did not create, and that not only are they as susceptible as are the political leaders to the influences of progressive movements, but that they can be more readily induced to take part in their promotion. in no other country in the world, probably, is religion so dominant an element in the daily life of the people as in ireland, and certainly nowhere else has the minister of religion so wide and undisputed an authority. it is obvious, therefore, that, however foreign such a theme may _prima facie_ appear to the scope and aim of the present volume, i have no choice but to analyse frankly and as fully as my personal experience justifies, what i conceive to be the true nature, the salutary limits, and the actual scope of clerical influence in this country. but before i can discuss what i may call the religious situation, there is one fundamental question--a question which will appear somewhat strange to anyone not in touch with irish life--which i must, with a view to a general agreement on essentials, submit to some of my co-religionists. in all seriousness i would ask, whether in their opinion the roman catholic church in ireland is to be tolerated. if the answer be in the negative, i can only reply that any efforts to stamp out the roman catholic faith would fail as they did in the past; and the practical minds among those i am now addressing must admit that in toleration alone is to be found the solution of that part of the irish difficulty which is due to sectarian animosities. this brings us face to face with the question, what is religious toleration--i do not mean as a pious sentiment which we are all conscious of ourselves possessing in a truer sense than that in which it is possessed by others, but rather toleration as an essential of the liberty which we protestants enjoy under the british constitution, and boast that all other creeds equally enjoy? perhaps i had better state simply how i answer this question in my own mind. toleration by the irish minority, in regard to the religious faith and ecclesiastical system of the irish majority, implies that we admit the right of rome to say what roman catholics shall believe and what outward forms they shall observe, and that they shall not suffer before the state for these beliefs and observances. i do not think exception can be taken to the statement that toleration in this narrow sense cannot be refused consistently with the fundamental principles of british government. now, however, comes a less obvious, but, as i think, no less essential condition of toleration in the sense above indicated. the roman catholic hierarchy claim the right to exercise such supervision and control over the education of their flock as will enable them to safe-guard faith and morals as preached and practised by their church. i concede this second claim as a necessary corollary of the first. having lived most of my life among roman catholics--two branches of my own family belonging to that religion--i am aware that this control is an essential part of the whole fabric of roman catholicism. whether the basis of authority upon which that system is founded be in its origin divine or human is beside the point. if we profess to tolerate the faith and religious system of the majority of our countrymen we must at least concede the conditions essential to the maintenance of both the one and the other, unless our tolerance is to be a sham. so far all liberal-minded protestants, who know what roman catholicism is, will be with me; and for the main purposes of the argument contained in this chapter it is not necessary to interpret toleration in any wider sense than that which i have indicated. many protestants, among whom i am one, do, it is true, make a further concession to the claim of our roman catholic fellow-countrymen. we would give them in ireland facilities for higher education which we would not give them in england, and we would advocate liberal endowment by the state to this end. but this attitude is, i admit, based upon something more than tolerance, and those who would withhold this concession need not be accused of bigotry or intolerance for so doing. they may be, and often are, actuated by the most liberal motives, by a perfectly legitimate conception of educational principles, or by other considerations which are neither of a narrow nor sectarian character. i need hardly say that in criticising religious systems and their ministers i have not the faintest intention of entering on the discussion of doctrinal issues. i am, of course, here concerned with only those aspects of the religious situation which bear directly on secular life. i am endeavouring, it must be remembered, to arrive at a comprehensive and accurate appreciation of the chief influences which mould the character, guide the thought, and, therefore, direct the action of the irish people as citizens of this world and of their own country. from this standpoint let us try to make a dispassionate survey of protestantism and roman catholicism in ireland, and see wherein their votaries fulfil, or fail to fulfil, their mission in advancing our common civilisation. let us examine, in a word, not merely the direct influence which the creed of each of the two sections of irishmen produces on the industrial character of its adherents, but also its indirect effects upon the mutual relations and regard for each other of protestants and roman catholics. protestantism has its stronghold in the great industrial centres of the north and among the presbyterian farmers of five or six ulster counties. these communities, it is significant to note, have developed the essentially strenuous qualities which, no doubt, they brought from england and scotland. in city life their thrift, industry, and enterprise, unsurpassed in the united kingdom, have built up a world-wide commerce. in rural life they have drawn the largest yield from relatively infertile soil. such, in brief, is the achievement of ulster protestantism in the realm of industry. it is a story of which, when a united ireland becomes more than a dream, all irishmen will be proud. but there is, unhappily, another side to the picture. this industrial life, otherwise so worthily cultivated, is disturbed by manifestations of religious bigotry which sadly tarnish the glory of the really heroic deeds they are intended to commemorate. it is impossible for any close observer of these deplorable exhibitions to avoid the conclusion that the embers of the old fires are too often fanned by men who are actuated by motives, which, when not other than religious, are certainly based upon an unworthy conception of religion. i am quite aware that it is only a small and decreasing minority of my co-religionists who are open to the charge of intolerance, and that the geographical limits of the july orgy are now strictly circumscribed. but this bigotry is so notorious, as for instance in the exclusion of roman catholics from many responsible positions, that it unquestionably reacts most unfavourably upon the general relations between the two creeds throughout the whole of ireland. the existence of such a spirit of suspicion and hatred, from whatever motive it emanates, is bound to retard our progress as a people towards the development of a healthy and balanced national life. many causes have recently contributed to the unhappy continuance of sectarian animosities in ireland. the ritualistic movement and the struggle over the education bill in england, the renewed controversy on the university question in ireland, instances of bigotry towards protestants displayed by county, district, and urban councils in the three southern provinces of ireland, the formation of the catholic association, the question of the form of the king's oath, and, more remotely, the protest against clericalism in such roman catholic countries as france and austria, have one and all helped to keep alive the flame of anti-roman feeling among irish protestants.[ ] there are, happily, other influences now at work in a contrary direction. among the industrial leaders a better spirit prevails. a well-known ulster manufacturer told me recently that only a few years ago, when an applicant for employment appeared at certain northern factories, which my friend named, the first question always put was, 'are you a protestant or roman catholic?' now, he said, it is not what a man believes, but what he can do, which is considered when engaging workers. and outside the cities there are most gratifying signs of better relations between the two creeds. we are on the eve of the creation of a peasant proprietary, involving the rehabilitation of rural life, and one essential condition of the successful inauguration of the new agrarian order is the elimination of anything approaching to sectarian bitterness in communities which will require every advantage derivable from joint deliberation and common effort to enable them to hold their own against foreign competition. i recall a trivial but significant incident in the course of my irish work which left a deep impression on my mind. after attending a meeting of farmers in a very backward district in the extreme west of mayo, i arrived one winter's evening at the roman catholic priest's house. before the meeting i had been promised a cup of tea, which, after a long, cold drive, was more than acceptable. when i presented myself at the priest's house, what was my astonishment at finding the protestant clergyman presiding over a steaming urn and a plate of home-made cakes, having been requested to do the honours by his fellow-minister, who had been called away to a sick bed. a cycle of homilies on the virtue of tolerance could add nothing to the simple lesson which these two clergymen gave to the adherents of both their creeds. i felt as i went on my way that night that i had had a glimpse into the kind of future for ireland towards which my fellow-workers are striving. it is, however, with the religion of the majority of the irish people and with its influence upon the industrial character of its adherents that i am chiefly concerned. roman catholicism strikes an outsider as being in some of its tendencies non-economic, if not actually anti-economic. these tendencies have, of course, much fuller play when they act on a people whose education has (through no fault of their own) been retarded or stunted. the fact is not in dispute, but the difficulty arises when we come to apportion the blame between ignorance on the part of the people and a somewhat one-sided religious zeal on the part of large numbers of their clergy. i do not seek to do so with any precision here. i am simply adverting to what has appeared to me, in the course of my experience in ireland, to be a defect in the industrial character of roman catholics which, however caused, seems to me to have been intensified by their religion. the reliance of that religion on authority, its repression of individuality, and its complete shifting of what i may call the moral centre of gravity to a future existence--to mention no other characteristics--appear to me calculated, unless supplemented by other influences, to check the growth of the qualities of initiative and self-reliance, especially amongst a people whose lack of education unfits them for resisting the influence of what may present itself to such minds as a kind of fatalism with resignation as its paramount virtue. it is true that one cannot expect of any church or religion, as a condition of its acceptance, that it will furnish an economic theory; and it is also true that roman catholicism has, at different periods of history, advantageously affected economic conditions, even if it did not act from distinctively economic motives--for example, by its direct influence in the suppression of slavery[ ] and its creation of the mediæval craft guilds. it may, too, be admitted that during the middle ages, when roman catholicism was freer than now to manifest its influence in many directions, owing to its practically unchallenged supremacy, it favoured, when it did not originate, many forms of sound economic activity, and was, to say the least, abreast of the time in its conception of the working of economic causes. but from the time when the reformation, by its demand for what we protestants conceive to be a simpler christianity, drove roman catholicism back, if i may use the expression, on its first line of defence, and constrained it to look to its distinctively spiritual heritage, down to the present day, it has seemed to stand strangely aloof from any contact with industrial and economic issues. when we consider that in this period adam smith lived and died, the industrial revolution was effected, and the world-market opened, it is not surprising that we do not find roman catholic countries in the van of economic progress, or even the roman catholic element in protestant countries, as a rule, abreast of their fellow-countrymen. it would, however, be an error to ignore some notable exceptions to this generalisation. in belgium, in france, in parts of germany and austria, and in the north of italy economic thought is making headway amongst roman catholics, and the solution of social problems is being advanced by roman catholic laymen and clergymen. even in these countries, however, much remains to be done. the revolution in the industrial order, and its consequences, such as the concentration of immense populations within restricted areas, have brought with them social and moral evils that must be met with new weapons. in the interests of religion itself, principles first expounded to a syrian community with the most elementary physical needs and the simplest of avocations, have to be taught in their application to the conditions of the most complex social organisation and economic life. taking people as we find them, it may be said with truth that their lives must be wholesome before they can be holy, and while a voluntary asceticism may have its justification, it behoves a church to see that its members, while fully acknowledging the claims of another life, should develop the qualities which make for well-being in this life. in fact, i believe that the influence of christianity upon social progress will be best maintained by co-ordinating these spiritual and economic ideals in a philosophy of life broader and truer than any to which the nations have yet attained. what i have just been saying with regard to roman catholicism generally, in relation to economic doctrines and industrial progress, applies, of course, with a hundred fold pertinence to the case of ireland. between the enactment of the first penal laws and the date of roman catholic emancipation, irish roman catholics were, to put it mildly, afforded scant opportunity, in their own country, of developing economic virtues or achieving industrial success. ruthlessly deprived of education, are they to be blamed if they did not use the newly acquired facilities to the best advantage? with their religion looked on as the badge of legal and social inferiority, was it any wonder that priests and people alike, while clinging with unexampled fidelity to their creed, remained altogether cut off from the current of material prosperity? excluded, as they were, not merely from social and political privileges, but from the most ordinary civil rights, denied altogether the right of ownership of real property, and restricted in the possession of personalty, is it any wonder that they are not to-day in the van of industrial and commercial progress? nay, more, was it to have been expected that the character of a people so persecuted and ostracised should have come out of the ordeal of centuries with its adaptability and elasticity unimpaired? that would have been impossible. those who are intimate with the roman catholic people of ireland, and at the same time familiar with their history, will recognise in their character and mental outlook many an inheritance of that epoch of serfdom. i speak, of course, of the mass, for i am not unmindful of many exceptions to this generalisation. but i must now pass on to a more definite consideration of the present action and attitude of the irish roman catholic clergy towards the economic, educational, and other issues discussed in this book. the reasons which render such a consideration necessary are obvious. even if we include ulster, three quarters of the irish people are roman catholics, while, excluding the northern province, quite nine-tenths of the population belong to that religion. again, the three thousand clergymen of that denomination exercise an influence over their flocks not merely in regard to religious matters, but in almost every phase of their lives and conduct, which is, in its extent and character, quite unique, even, i should say, amongst roman catholic communities. to a protestant, this authority seems to be carried very far beyond what the legitimate influence of any clergy over the lay members of their congregation should be. we are, however, dealing with a national life explicable only by reference to a very exceptional and gloomy history of religious persecution. what i may call the secular shortcomings of the roman catholics in ireland cannot be fairly judged except as the results of a series of enactments by which they were successively denied almost all means of succeeding as citizens of this world. from such study as i have been able to give to the history of their church, i have come to the conclusion that the immense power of the irish roman catholic clergy has been singularly little abused. i think it must be admitted that they have not exhibited in any marked degree bigotry towards protestants. they have not put obstacles in the way of the roman catholic majority choosing protestants for political leaders, and it is significant that refugees, such as the palatines, from catholic persecutions in europe, found at different times a home amongst the roman catholic people of ireland. my own experience, too, if i may again refer to that, distinctly proves that it is no disadvantage to a man to be a protestant in irish political life, and that where opposition is shown to him by roman catholics it is almost invariably on political, social, or agrarian, but not on religious grounds. a charge of another kind has of late been often brought against the roman catholic clergy, which has a direct bearing upon the economic aspect of this question. although, as i read irish history, the roman catholic priesthood have, in the main, used their authority with personal disinterestedness, if not always with prudence or discretion, their undoubted zeal for religion has, on occasion, assumed forms which enlightened roman catholics, including high dignitaries of that church, think unjustifiable on economic grounds, and discourage even from a religious standpoint. excessive and extravagant church-building in the heart and at the expense of poor communities is a recent and notorious example of this misdirected zeal. it has been, i believe, too often forgotten that the best monument of any clergyman's influence and earnestness must always be found in the moral character and the spiritual fibre of his flock, and not in the marbles and mosaics of a gaudy edifice. and without doubt a good many motives which have but a remote connection with religion are, unfortunately, at work in the church-building movement. it may, however, to some extent, be regarded as an extreme re-action from the penal times, when the hunted _soggarth_ had to celebrate the mass in cabins and caves on the mountain side--a re-action the converse of which was witnessed in protestant england when puritanism rose up against anglicanism in the seventeenth century. this expenditure, however, has been incurred; and, no one, i take it, would advocate the demolition of existing religious edifices on the ground that their erection had been unduly costly! the moral is for the present and the future, and applies not merely to economy in new buildings, but also in the decoration of existing churches.[ ] but it is not alone extravagant church building which in a country so backward as ireland, shocks the economic sense. the multiplication--in inverse ratio to a declining population--of costly and elaborate monastic and conventual institutions, involving what in the aggregate must be an enormous annual expenditure for maintenance, is difficult to reconcile with the known conditions of the country. most of these institutions, it is true, carry on educational work, often, as in the case of the christian brothers and some colleges and convents, of an excellent kind. many of them render great services to the poor, and especially to the sick poor. but, none the less, it seems to me, their growth in number and size is anomalous. i cannot believe that so large an addition to the 'unproductive' classes is economically sound, and i have no doubt at all that the competition with lay teachers of celibates 'living in community' is excessive and educationally injurious. strongly as i hold the importance of religion in education, i personally do not think that teachers who have renounced the world and withdrawn from contact with its stress and strain are the best moulders of the characters of youths who will have to come into direct conflict with the trials and temptations of life. but here again we must accept the situation and work with the instruments ready to hand. the practical and statesmanlike action for all those concerned is to endeavour to render these institutions as efficient educational agencies as may be possible. they owe their existence largely to the gaps in the educational system of this country which religious and political strife have produced and maintained, and they deserve the utmost credit for endeavouring to supply missing steps in our educational ladder.[ ] if they now fully respond to the spirit of the new movements and meet the demand for technical education by the employment of the most approved methods and equipment, and by the thorough training on sound lines of their staffs, it is impossible that their influence on the young generation should not be as salutary as it will be wide-reaching. but, after all, these criticisms are, for the purposes of my argument, of minor relevance and importance. the real matter in which the direct and personal responsibility of the roman catholic clergy seems to me to be involved, is the character and _morale_ of the people of this country. no reader of this book will accuse me of attaching too little weight to the influence of historical causes on the present state, social, economic and political, of ireland, but even when i have given full consideration to all such influences i still think that, with their unquestioned authority in religion, and their almost equally undisputed influence in education, the roman catholic clergy cannot be exonerated from some responsibility in regard to irish character as we find it to-day. are they, i would ask, satisfied with that character? i cannot think so. the impartial observer will, i fear, find amongst a majority of our people a striking absence of self-reliance and moral courage; an entire lack of serious thought on public questions; a listlessness and apathy in regard to economic improvement which amount to a form of fatalism; and, in backward districts, a survival of superstition, which saps all strength of will and purpose--and all this, too, amongst a people singularly gifted by nature with good qualities of mind and heart. nor can the roman catholic clergy altogether console themselves with the thought that religious faith, even when free from superstition, is strong in the breasts of the people. so long, no doubt, as irish roman catholics remain at home, in a country of sharply defined religious classes, and with a social environment and a public opinion so preponderatingly stamped with their creed, open defections from roman catholicism are rare. but we have only to look at the extent of the 'leakage' from roman catholicism amongst the irish emigrants in the united states and in great britain, to realise how largely emotional and formal must be the religion of those who lapse so quickly in a non-catholic atmosphere.[ ] it is not, of course, to the causes of the defections from a creed to which i do not subscribe that my criticism is directed. i refer to the matter only in order to emphasise the large share of responsibility which belongs to the roman catholic clergy for what i strongly believe to be the chief part in the work of national regeneration, the part compared with which all legislative, administrative, educational or industrial achievements are of minor importance. holding, as i do, that the building of character is the condition precedent to material, social and intellectual advancement, indeed to all national progress, i may, perhaps, as a lay citizen, more properly criticise, from this point of view, what i conceive to be the great defect in the methods of clerical influence. for this purpose no better illustration could be afforded than a brief analysis of the results of the efforts made by the roman catholic clergy to inculcate temperance. among temperance advocates--the most earnest of all reformers--the roman catholic clergy have an honourable record. an irish priest was the greatest, and, for a brief spell, the most successful temperance apostle of the last century, and statistics, it is only fair to say, show that we irish drink rather less than people in other parts of the united kingdom. but the real question is whether we more often drink to intoxication, and police statistics as well as common experience seem to disclose that we do. many a temperate man drinks more in his life than many a village drunkard. again, the test of the average consumption of man, woman and child is somewhat misleading, especially in ireland where, owing to the excessive emigration of adults, there is a disproportionately large number of very young and old. moreover, we irish drink more in proportion to our means than the english, scotch, and welsh, whose consumption is absolutely larger. anyone who attempts to deal practically with the problems of industrial development in ireland realises what a terribly depressing influence the drink evil exercises upon the industrial capacity of the people. 'ireland sober is ireland free,' is nearer the truth, than much that is thought and most of what is said about liberty in this country. now, the drink habit in ireland differs from that of the other parts of the united kingdom. the irishman is, in my belief, physiologically less subject to the craving for alcohol than the englishman, a fact which is partially attributable, i should say, to the less animal dietary to which he is accustomed. by far the greater proportion of the drinking which retards our progress is of a festive character. it takes place at fairs and markets, sometimes, even yet, at 'wakes,' those ghastly parodies on the blessed consolation of religion in bereavement. it is intensified by the almost universal sale of liquor in the country shops 'for consumption on the premises,' an evil the demoralising effects of which are an hundredfold greater than those of the 'grocer's licences' which temperance reformers so strenuously denounce. it is an evil in defence of which nothing can be said, but it has somehow escaped the effective censure of the church. the indiscriminate granting of licences in ireland, which has resulted in the provision of liquor shops in a proportion to the population larger than is found in any other country, is in itself due mainly to the moral cowardice of magistrates, who do not care to incur local unpopularity by refusing licences for which there is no pretence of any need beyond that of the applicant and his relatives. not long ago the magistrates of ireland met in dublin in order to inaugurate common action in dealing with this scandal. appropriate resolutions were passed, and much good has already resulted from the meeting, but had the unvarnished truth been admissible, the first and indeed the only necessary resolution should have run, "resolved that in future we be collectively as brave as we have been individually timid, and that we take heart of grace and carry away from this meeting sufficient strength to do, in the exercise of our functions as the licensing authority, what we have always known to be our plain duty to our country and our god." no such resolution was proposed, for though patriotism is becoming real in ireland, it is not yet very robust. i do not think it unfair to insist upon the large responsibility of the clergy for the state of public opinion in this matter, to which the few facts i have cited bear testimony. but i attribute their failure to deal with a moral evil of which they are fully cognisant to the fact that they do not recognise the chief defect in the character of the people, and to a misunderstanding of the means by which that character can be strengthened. there are, however, exceptions to this general statement. it is of happy augury for the future of ireland that many of the clergy are now leading a temperance movement which shows a real knowledge of the _causa causans_ of irish intemperance. the anti-treating league, as it is called, administers a novel pledge which must have been conceived in a very understanding mind. those enlisted undertake neither to treat nor to be treated. they may drink, so far as the pledge is concerned, as much as they like; but they must drink at their own expense; and others must not drink at their expense. the good nature and sociability of irishmen, too often the mere result of inability to say 'no,' need not be sacrificed. but even if they were, the loss of these social graces would be far more than compensated by a self-respect and seriousness of life out of which something permanent might be built. still, even this league makes no direct appeal to character, and so acts rather as a cure for than as a preventive of our moral weakness. the methods by which clerical influence is wielded in the inculcation of chastity may be criticised from exactly the same standpoint as that from which i have found it necessary to deal with the question of temperance. here the success of the irish priesthood is, considering the conditions of peasant life, and the fire of the celtic temperament, absolutely unique. no one can deny that almost the entire credit of this moral achievement belongs to the roman catholic clergy. it may be said that the practice of a virtue, even if the motive be of an emotional kind, becomes a habit, and that habit proverbially develops into a second nature. with this view of moral evolution i am in entire accord; but i would ask whether the evolution has not reached a stage where a gradual relaxation of the disciplinary measures by which chastity is insured might be safely allowed without any danger of lowering the high standard of continence which is general in ireland and which of course it is of supreme importance to maintain. there are, however, many parishes where in this matter the strictest discipline is rigorously enforced amusements, not necessarily or even often vicious, are objected to as being fraught with dangers which would never occur to any but the rigidly ascetic or the puritanical mind. in many parishes the sunday cyclist will observe the strange phenomenon of a normally light-hearted peasantry marshalled in male and female groups along the road, eyeing one another in dull wonderment across the forbidden space through the long summer day. this kind of discipline, unless when really necessary, is open to the objection that it eliminates from the education of life, especially during the formative years, an essential of culture--the mutual understanding of the sexes. the evil of grafting upon secular life a quasi-monasticism which, not being voluntary, has no real effect upon the character, may perhaps involve moral consequences little dreamed of by the spiritual guardians of the people. a study of the pathology of the emotions might throw doubt upon the safety of enforced asceticism when unaccompanied by the training which the church wisely prescribes for those who take the vow of celibacy. but of my own knowledge i can speak only of another aspect of the effect upon our national life of the restrictions to which i refer. no irishmen are more sincerely desirous of staying the tide of emigration than the roman catholic clergy, and while, wisely as i think, they do not dream of a wealthy ireland, they earnestly work for the physical and material as well as the spiritual well-being of their flocks. and yet no man can get into the confidence of the emigrating classes without being told by them that the exodus is largely due to a feeling that the clergy are, no doubt from an excellent motive, taking joy--innocent joy--from the social side of the home life. to go more fully into these subjects might carry me beyond the proper limits of lay criticism. but, clearly, large questions of clerical training must suggest themselves to those to whom their discussion properly belongs--whether, for example, there is not in the instances which i have cited evidence of a failure to understand that mere authority in the regions of moral conduct cannot have any abiding effect, except in the rarest combination of circumstances, and with a very primitive people. do not many of these clergy ignore the vast difference between the ephemeral nature of moral compulsion and the enduring force of a real moral training? i have dealt with the exercise of clerical influence in these matters as being, at any rate in relation to the subject matter of this book, far more important than the evil commonly described as "the priest in politics." that evil is, in my opinion, greatly misrepresented. the cases of priests who take an improper part in politics are cited without reference to the vastly greater number who take no part at all, except when genuinely assured that a definite moral issue is at stake. i also have in my mind the question of how we should have fared if the control of the different irish agitations had been confined to laymen, and if the clergy had not consistently condemned secret associations. but whatever may be said in defence of the priest in politics in the past, there are the strongest grounds for deprecating a continuance of their political activity in the future. as i gauge the several forces now operating in ireland, i am convinced that if an anti-clerical movement similar to that which other roman catholic countries have witnessed, were to succeed in discrediting the priesthood and lowering them in public estimation, it would be followed by a moral, social, and political degradation which would blight, or at least postpone, our hopes of a national regeneration. from this point of view i hold that those clergymen who are predominantly politicians endanger the moral influence which it is their solemn duty to uphold. i believe however, that the over-active part hitherto taken in politics by the priests is largely the outcome of the way in which roman catholics were treated in the past, and that this undesirable feature in irish life will yield, and is already yielding to the removal of the evils to which it owed its origin and in some measure its justification.[ ] one has only to turn to the spirit and temper of such representative roman catholics as archbishop healy and dr. kelly, bishop of ross--to their words and to their deeds--in order to catch the inspiration of a new movement amongst our roman catholic fellow-countrymen at once religious and patriotic. and if my optimism ever wavers, i have but to think of the noble work that many priests are to my own knowledge doing, often in remote and obscure parishes, in the teeth of innumerable obstacles. i call to mind at such times, as pioneers in a great awakening, men like the eminent jesuit, father thomas finlay, father hegarty of erris, father o'donovan of loughrea, and many others--men with whom i have worked and taken counsel, and who represent, i believe, an ever increasing number of their fellow priests.[ ] my position, then, towards the influence of the roman catholic clergy--and this influence is a matter of vital importance to the understanding of irish problems--- may now be clearly defined. while recognising to the full that large numbers of the irish roman catholic clergy have in the past exercised undue influence in purely political questions, and, in many other matters, social, educational, and economic, have not, as i see things, been on the side of progress, i hold that their influence is now, more than ever before, essential for improving the condition of the most backward section of the population. therefore i feel it to be both the duty and the strong interest of my protestant fellow-countrymen to think much less of the religious differences which divide them from roman catholics, and much more of their common citizenship and their common cause. i also hold with equal strength and sincerity to the belief, which i have already expressed, that the shortcomings of the roman catholic clergy are largely to be accounted for, not by any innate tendency on their part towards obscurantism, but by the sad history of ireland in the past. i would appeal to those of my co-religionists who think otherwise to suspend their judgment for a time. that roman catholicism is firmly established in ireland is a fact of the situation which they must admit, and as this involves the continued powerful influence of the priesthood upon the character of the people, it is surely good policy by liberality and fair dealing, especially in the matter of education, to turn this influence towards the upbuilding of our national life. to sum up the influence of religion and religious controversy in ireland, as it presents itself from the only standpoint from which i have approached the matter in this chapter, namely, that of material, social, and intellectual progress, i find that while the protestants have given, and continue to give, a fine example of thrift and industry to the rest of the nation, the attitude of a section of them towards the majority of their fellow-countrymen has been a bigoted and unintelligent one. on the other hand, i have learned from practical experience amongst the roman catholic people of ireland that, while more free from bigotry, in the sense in which that word is usually applied, they are apathetic, thriftless, and almost non-industrial, and that they especially require the exercise of strengthening influences on their moral fibre. i have dealt with their shortcomings at much greater length than with those of protestants, because they have much more bearing on the subject matter of this book. north and south have each virtues which the other lacks; each has much to learn from the other; but the home of the strictly civic virtues and efficiencies is in protestant ireland. the work of the future in ireland will be to break down in social intercourse the barriers of creed as well as those of race, politics, and class, and thus to promote the fruitful contact of north and south, and the concentration of both on the welfare of their common country. in the case of those of us, of whatever religious belief, who look to a future for our country commensurate with the promise of her undeveloped resources both of intellect and soil, it is of the essence of our hope that the qualities which are in great measure accountable for the actual economic and educational backwardness of so many of our fellow-countrymen, and for the intolerance of too many who are not backward in either respect, are not purely racial or sectarian, but are the transitory growth of days and deeds which we must all try to forget if our work for ireland is to endure. footnotes: [ ] the reproach which is brought upon irish christianity mainly by the extravagances of a section of my co-religionists, to which i have been obliged to refer, came home to me not long ago in a very forcible way. i happened to remark to a friend that it was a disgrace to christianity that mussulman soldiery were employed at the holy sepulchre to keep the peace between the latin and greek christians. he reminded me that the prosperous and progressive municipality of belfast, with a population eminently industrious, and predominantly protestant, has to be policed by an imperial force in order to restrain two sections of irish christians from assaulting each other in the name of religion. [ ] '_pro salute animae meae_' was, i am reminded, the consideration usually expressed in the old charters of manumission. [ ] one of the unfortunate effects of this passion for building costly churches is the importation of quantities of foreign art-work in the shape of woodcarvings, stained glass, mosaics, and metal work. to good foreign art, indeed, one could not, within certain limits, object. it might prove a valuable example and stimulus. but the articles which have actually been imported, in the impulse to get everything finished as soon as possible, generally consist of the stock pieces produced in a spirit of mere commercialism in the workshops of continental firms which make it their business to cater for a public who do not know the difference between good art and bad. much of the decoration of ecclesiastical buildings, whether roman catholic or protestant, might fittingly be postponed until religion in ireland has got into closer relation with the native artistic sense and industrial spirit now beginning to seek creative expression. [ ] the following extract from a statement of the most rev. dr. o'dea, the newly elected bishop of clonfert, is pertinent:--'there is another cause also--i.e. in addition to the absence of university education for roman catholic laymen--which has hindered the employment of the laity in the past. till very recently, the secondary catholic schools received no assistance whatever from the state, and their endowment from private sources was utterly inadequate to supply suitable remuneration for lay teachers. it is evident that a celibate clergy _can_ live on a lower wage than the laity, and they are now charged with having monopolized the schools, because they chose to work for a minimum allowance rather than suffer the country to remain without any secondary education whatever. two causes, then, operated in the past, and in a large measure still operate, to exclude the laity from the secondary schools,--first, these schools were so poverty-stricken that they could not afford to pay lay teachers at such a rate as would attract them to the teaching profession, and, next, the catholic laity as a body were uneducated, and, therefore, unfit to teach in the schools.'--_maynooth and the university question_, p. (footnote). [ ] see, _inter alia_, an article "ireland and america," by rev. mr. shinnors, o.m., in the _irish ecclesiastical record_, february, . 'has the church,' asks father shinnors, 'increased her membership in the ratio that the population of the united states has increased? no. there are many converts, but there are many more apostates. large numbers lapse into indifferentism and irreligion. there should be in america about , , catholics; there are scarcely , , . there are reasons to fear that the great majority of the apostates are of irish extraction, and not a few of them of irish birth.' [ ] this view seems to be taken by the most influential spokesmen of the roman catholic hierarchy. see evidence, _royal commission on university education in ireland_, vol. iii., p. , questions - . [ ] i may mention that of the co-operative societies organised by the irish agricultural organisation society there are no fewer than societies of which the local priests are the chairmen, while to my own knowledge during the summer and autumn of , as many as , persons from all parts of ireland were personally conducted over the exhibit of the department of agriculture and technical instruction at the cork exhibition by their local clergy. the educational purpose of these visits is explained in chap. x. again, in a great number of cases the village libraries which have been recently started in ireland with the assistance of the department (the books consisting largely of industrial, economic, and technical works on agriculture), have been organised and assisted by the roman catholic clergy. chapter v. a practical view of irish education. a little learning, we are told, is a dangerous thing; and in their dealings with irish education the english should have discovered that this danger is accentuated when the little learning is combined with much native wit. in the days when religious persecution was universal--only, be it remembered, a few generations ago--it was the policy of england to avert this danger by prohibiting, as far as possible, the acquisition by irish roman catholics of any learning at all. after the union, englishmen began to feel their responsibility for the state of ireland, a state of poverty and distress which culminated in the famine. knowledge was then no longer withheld: indeed the english sincerely desired to dispel our darkness and enable us to share in the wisdom, and so in the prosperity, of the predominant partner. in their attempts to educate us they dealt with what they saw on the surface, and moulded their educational principles upon what they knew; but they did not know ireland. even if we excuse them for paying scant attention to what they were told by irishmen, they should have given more heed to the reports of their own royal commissions. we have so far seen that the irish mind has been in regard to economics, politics, and even some phases of religious influence, a mind warped and diseased, deprived of good nutrition and fed on fancies or fictions, out of which no genuine growth, industrial or other, was possible. the one thing that might have strengthened and saved a people with such a political, social, and religious history, and such racial characteristics, was an educational system which would have had special regard to that history, and which would have been a just expression of the better mind of the people whom it was intended to serve. now this is exactly what was denied to ireland. not merely has all educational legislation come from england, in the sense of being based on english models and thought out by englishmen largely out of touch and sympathy with the peculiar needs of ireland, but whenever there has been genuine native thought on irish educational problems, it has been either ignored altogether or distorted till its value and significance were lost. and in this matter we can claim for ireland that there was in the country during the first half of the nineteenth century, when england was trying her best to provide us with a sound english education, a comparatively advanced stage of home-grown irish thought upon the educational needs of the people. take, for example, the society for promoting elementary education among the irish poor, know as the kildare street society, which was founded as early as the year . the first resolution passed by this body, which was composed of prominent dublin citizens of all religious beliefs, was set out as follows:-- ( .) resolved--that promoting the education of the poor of ireland is a grand object which every irishman anxious for the welfare and prosperity of his country ought to have in view as the basis upon which the morals and true happiness of the country can be best secured. this society, it is true, did not see or foresee that any system of mixed religious education was doomed to failure in ireland, but they took a wide view of the place of education in a nation's development, and the character of the education which their schools actually dispensed was admirable. this hopeful and enterprising educational movement is described by mr. lecky in a passage from which i take a few extracts:-- the "kildare street society" which received an endowment from government, and directed national education from to , was not proselytising, and it was for some time largely patronized by roman catholics. it is certainly by no means deserving of the contempt which some writers have bestowed on it, and if measured by the spirit of the time in which it was founded it will appear both liberal and useful.... the object of the schools was stated to be united education, "taking common christian ground for the foundation, and excluding all sectarian distinctions from every part of the arrangement;" "drawing the attention of both denominations to the many leading truths of christianity in which they agree." to carry out this principle it was a fundamental rule that the bible must be read without note or comment in all the schools. it might be read either in the authorized or in the douay version.... in there were , schools connected with the society, containing about , pupils. the improvements introduced into education by bell, lancaster, and pestalozzi were largely adopted. great attention was paid to needlework.... a great number of useful publications were printed by the society, and we have the high authority of dr. doyle for stating that he never found anything objectionable [to catholics] in them.[ ] take, again, as an evidence of the progressive spirit of the irish thinkers on education, the remarkable scheme of national education which, after the passing of the catholic emancipation act, was formulated by mr. thomas wyse, of waterford. in addition to elementary schools, mr. wyse proposed to establish in every county, 'an academy for the education of the middle class of society in those departments of knowledge most necessary to those classes, and over those a college in each of the four provinces, managed by a committee representative of the interests of the several counties of the provinces.' 'it is a matter of importance,' wrote mr. wyse, 'for the simple and efficient working of the whole system of national education, that each part should as much as possible be brought into co-operation and accord with the others.' he foresaw, too, that one of the needs of the irish temperament was a training in science which would cultivate the habits of 'education, observation, and reasoning,' and he pointed out that the peculiar manufactures, trades, and occupations of the several localities would determine the course of studies. mr. wyse's memorandum on education led, as is well known, to the creation of the board of national education, but, to quote dr. starkie,[ ] the present resident commissioner of the board, 'the more important part of the scheme, dealing with a university and secondary education, was shelved, in spite of mr. wyse's warnings that it was imprudent, dangerous, and pernicious to the social condition of the country, and to its future tranquillity, that so much encouragement should be given to the education of the lower classes, without at the same time due provision being made for the education of the middle and upper classes.' as still another evidence of the sound thought on educational problems which came from irishmen who knew the actual conditions of their own country and people, the case of the agricultural instruction administered by the national board is pertinent. the late sir patrick keenan has told us that landlords and others who on political and religious grounds distrusted the national system, turned to this feature of the operations of the national board with the greatest fervour. a scheme of itinerant instruction in agriculture, which had a curious resemblance to that which the department of agriculture is now organising, was developed, and was likely to have worked with the greatest advantage to the country at large. sir patrick keenan, who knew ireland and the irish people well, speaks of this part of the scheme as 'the most fruitful experiment in the material interests of the country that was ever attempted. it was,' he adds, 'through the agency of this corps of practical instructors that green cropping as a systematic feature in farming was introduced into the south and west, and even into the central parts of ireland.' but all the hopes thus raised went down, not before any intrinsic difficulties in the scheme itself, or before any adverse opinion to it in ireland, but before the opposition of the liverpool financial reform association, who had their own views as to the limits of state interference with agriculture. these examples, drawn from different stages of irish educational history, might easily be multiplied, but they will serve as typical instances of that want of recognition by english statesmen of irish thought on irish problems, and that ignoring of irish sentiment--as distinguished from irish sentimentality--which i insist is the basal element in the misunderstandings of irish problems. i now come to a brief consideration of some facts of the present educational situation, and i shall indicate, for those readers who are not familiar with current events in ireland, the significant evolution, or revolution, through which irish education is passing. within the last eight years we have had in ireland three very remarkable reports--in themselves symptoms of a widespread unrest and dissatisfaction--on the educational systems of the country. i allude to the reports of two viceregal commissions, one on manual and practical instruction in our primary schools, and the other on our intermediate education; and to the recent report by a royal commission on university education. these reports cover the three grades of our educational system, and each of them contains a strong denunciation and a scathing criticism of the existing provision and methods of instruction in elementary, secondary, and university education (outside dublin university), respectively. one and all showed that the education to be had in our primary and secondary schools, as well as in the examining body known as the royal university, had little regard to the industrial or economic conditions of the country. we find, for example, agriculture taught out of a text book in the primary schools, with the result that the _gamins_ of the belfast streets secured the highest marks in the subject. in the intermediate system are to be found anomalies of a similar kind, which could not long have survived if there had been a living opinion on educational matters in ireland. no careful reader of the evidence given before the commissions can fail to see that under our educational system the schools were practically bribed to fall in with a stereotyped course of studies which left scant room for elasticity and adaptation to local needs; that the teacher was, to all intents and purposes, deprived of healthy initiative; and that the irish parents must as a body have been in the dark as to the bearing of their children's studies on their probable careers in life. a deep and wholesome impression was made in ireland by the exposure of the intrinsic evils of a system calculated in my opinion to turn our youth into a generation of second-rate clerks, with a distinct distaste for any industrial or productive occupation in which such qualities as initiative, self-reliance, or judgment were called for. i am told by competent authorities that there is not a single educational principle laid down in either the report on manual instruction or on intermediate education, which was not known and applied at least half a century ago in continental countries. in fact, in the recess committee investigations, as any reader of the report of that body can see for himself, the committee, guided by foreign experience, foreshadowed practically every reform now being put into operation. it is better, of course, that we should reform late than never, but it is well to bear in mind also, so far as the problems of this book are concerned, how far the education of the country has fallen short of any sound standard, and how little could have been expected from the working of our system. the curve of irish illiteracy has indeed fallen continuously with each succeeding census, but true education as opposed to mere instruction has languished sadly. together with my friends and fellow-workers in the self-help movement, i believe that the problem of irish education, like all other irish problems, must be reconsidered from the standpoint of its relation to the practical affairs and everyday life of the people of ireland. the needs and opportunities of the industrial struggle must, in fact, mould into shape our educational policy and programmes. we are convinced that there is little hope of any real solution of the more general problem of national education, unless and until those in direct contact with the specific industries of the country succeed in bringing to the notice of those engaged in the framing of our educational system the kind and degree of the defects in the industrial character of our people which debar them from successful competition with other countries. education in ireland has been too long a thing apart from the economic realities of the country--with what result we know. in the work of the department of agriculture and technical instruction for ireland, an attempt is being made to establish a vital relation between industrial education and industrial life. it is desired to try, at this critical stage of our development, the experiment--i call it an experiment only because it does not seem to have been tried before in ireland--of directing our instruction with a conscious and careful regard to the probable future careers of those we are educating. this attempt touches, of course, only one department of the whole educational problem, much of which it would be quite outside my present purpose to discuss. but i must guard against the supposition that in our insistence upon the importance of the practical side of education we are under any doubt as to the great importance of the literary side. my friends and i have been deeply impressed by the educational experience of denmark, where the people, who are as much dependent on agriculture as are the irish, have brought it by means of organisation to a more genuine success than it has attained anywhere else in europe. yet an inquirer will at once discover that it is to the "high schools" founded by bishop grundtvig, and not to the agricultural schools, which are also excellent, that the extraordinary national progress is mainly due. a friend of mine who was studying the danish system of state aid to agriculture, found this to be the opinion of the danes of all classes, and was astounded at the achievements of the associations of farmers, not only in the manufacture of butter, but in a far more difficult undertaking, the manufacture of bacon in large factories equipped with all the most modern machinery and appliances which science had devised for the production of the finished article. he at first concluded that this success in a highly technical industry by bodies of farmers indicated a very perfect system of technical education. but he soon found another cause. as one of the leading educators and agriculturists of the country put it to him: 'it's not technical instruction, it's the humanities.' i would like to add that it is also, if i may coin a term, the 'nationalities,' for nothing is more evident to the student of danish education or, i might add, of the excellent system of the christian brothers in ireland, than that one of the secrets of their success is to be found in their national basis and their foundation upon the history and literature of the country. to sum up the educational situation in ireland, it is not too much to say that all our forms of education, technical and general, hang loose. we lack a body of trained teachers; we have no alert and informed public opinion on education and its function in regard to life; and there is no proper provision for research work in all branches, a deficiency, which, i am told by those who have given deep thought and long study to these problems, inevitably reacts most disastrously on the general educational system of the country. this state of things appears not unnatural when we remember that the penal laws were not repealed till almost the close of the eighteenth century, and that a large majority of the irish people had not full and free access to even primary and secondary education until the passing of the emancipation act in . at the present day, the absence of any provision for higher education of which roman catholics will avail themselves is not merely an enormous loss in itself, but it reacts most adversely upon the whole educational machinery, and consequently upon the whole public life and thought of that section of the nation. one of the very first things i had to learn when i came into direct touch with educational problems, was that the education of a country cannot be divided into water-tight compartments, and each part legislated for or discussed solely on its merits and without reference to the other parts. i see now very clearly that the educational system of a country is an organic whole, the working of any part of which necessarily has an influence on the working of the rest. i had always looked upon the lower, secondary, and higher grades as the first, second, and third storeys of the educational house, and i am not quite sure that i attached sufficient importance to the staircase. my view has now changed, and i find myself regarding the university as a foundation and support of the primary and secondary school. it was not on purely pedagogic grounds that i added to my other political irregularities the earnest advocacy of such a provision for higher education as roman catholics will avail themselves of. this great need was revealed to me in my study of the irish mind and of the direction in which it could look for its higher development. my belief is based on practical experience; my point of view is that of the economist. when the new economic mission in ireland began now fourteen years ago, we had to undertake, in addition to our practical programme, a kind of university extension work with the important omission of the university. we had to bring home to adult farmers whose general education was singularly poor, though their native intelligence was keen and receptive, a large number of general ideas bearing on the productive and distributive side of their industry. our chief obstacles arose from the lack of trained economic thought among all classes, and especially among those to whom the majority looked for guidance. the air was thick with economic fallacies or half-truths. we were, it is true, successful beyond our expectations in planting in apparently uncongenial soil sound economic principles. but our success was mainly due, as i shall show later, to our having used the associative instincts of the irish peasant to help out the working of our theories; and we became convinced that if a tithe of our priests, public men, national school teachers, and members of our local bodies had received a university education, we should have made much more rapid progress. i hardly know how to describe the mental atmosphere in which we were working. it would be no libel upon the public opinion upon which we sought to make an impression to say that it really allowed no question to be discussed on its merits. public opinion on social and economic questions is changing now, but i cannot associate the change with any influence emanating from institutions of higher education. in other countries, so far as my investigations have extended, the universities do guide economic thought and have a distinct though wholly unofficial function as a court of appeal upon questions relating to the material progress of the communities amongst which they are situated. of such institutions there are in ireland only two which could be expected to direct in any large way the thought of the country upon economic and other important national questions--maynooth, and trinity college, dublin. whether in their widely different spheres of influence these two institutions could, under conditions other than those prevailing, have so met the requirements of the country as to have obviated what is at present an urgent necessity for a complete reorganisation of higher education need not be discussed; but it is essential to my argument that i should set forth clearly the results of my own observation upon their influence, or rather lack of influence, upon the people among whom i have worked. the influence of maynooth, actual and potential, can hardly be exaggerated, but it is exercised indirectly upon the secular thought of the country. it is not its function to make a direct impression. it is in fact only a professional--i had almost said a technical--school. it trains its students, most admirably i am told, in theology, philosophy, and the studies subsidiary to these sciences, but always, for the vast majority of its students, with a distinctly practical and definite missionary end in view. there is, i believe, an arts course of modest scope, designed rather to meet the deficiencies of students whose general education has been neglected than to serve as anything in the nature of a university arts course. i am quite aware of the value of a sound training in mental science if given in connection with a full university course, but i am equally convinced that the maynooth education, on the whole, is no substitute for a university course, and that while its chief end of turning out a large number of trained priests has been fulfilled, it has not given, and could not be expected to have given, that broader and more humane culture which only a university, as distinguished from a professional school, can adequately provide. moreover, under the maynooth system young clerics are constantly called upon to take a part in the life of a lay community, towards which, when they entered college, they were in no position of responsibility, and upon which, so far as secular matters are concerned, when they emerge from their theological training, they are no better adapted to exercise a helpful influence. in my experience of priests i have met with many in whom i recognised a sincere desire to attend to the material and social well-being of their flocks, but who certainly had not that breadth of view and understanding of human nature which perhaps contact with the laity during the years in which they were passing from discipline to authority might have given to them. however this may be, it is clear and it is admitted that education as opposed to professional training of a high order is still, generally speaking, a want among the priests of ireland, and i look forward to no greater boon from a university or university college for roman catholics than its influence, direct and indirect, on a body of men whose prestige and authority are necessarily so unique. it is, therefore, to trinity college, or the university of dublin, that one would naturally turn as to a great centre of thought in ireland for help in the theoretic aspects, at least, of the practical problems upon whose successful solution our national well-being depends. judged by the not unimportant test of the men it has supplied to the service of the state and country during its three centuries of educational activity, by the part it took in one of the brightest epochs of these three centuries--the days when it gave grattan to grattan's parliament, by the work and reputation of the _alumni_ it could muster to-day within and without its walls, our venerable seat of learning need not fear comparison with any similar institutions in great britain. it may also, of course, be said that many men who have passed through trinity college have impressed the thought of ireland, and, indeed, of the world, in one way or another--such men as, to take two very different examples, burke and thomas davis--but on some of the very best spirits amongst these men trinity college and its atmosphere have exerted influence rather by repulsion than by attraction; and certainly their characteristics of temper or thought have not been of a kind which those best acquainted with the atmosphere of trinity college associate with that institution. still nothing can detract from the credit of having educated such men. but these tests and standards are, for my present purpose, irrelevant. i am not writing a book on irish educational history, or even a record of present-day irish educational achievement. i am rather trying, from the standpoint of a practical worker for national progress, to measure the reality and strength of the educational and other influences which are actually and actively operating on the character and intellect of the majority of the irish people, moulding their thought and directing their action towards the upbuilding of our national life. from this point of view i am bound to say that trinity college, so far as i have seen, has had but little influence upon the minds or the lives of the people. nor can i find that at any period of the extraordinarily interesting economic and social revolution, which has been in progress in ireland since the great catastrophe of the famine period, dublin university has departed from its academic isolation and its aloofness from the great national problems that were being worked out. the more one thinks of it, indeed, and the more one realises the opportunities of an institution like trinity college in a country like ireland, the more one must recognise how small, in recent times, has been its positive influence on the mind of the country, and how little it has contributed towards the solution of any of those problems, educational, economic, or social, that were clamant for solution, and which in any other country would have naturally secured the attention of men who ought to have been leaders of thought. whatever the causes, and many may be assigned, this unfortunate lack of influence on the part of trinity college, has always seemed to me a strong supplementary argument for the creation of another university or university college on a more popular basis, to which the roman catholic people of ireland would have recourse. from the fact that maynooth by its constitution could never have developed into a great national university,[ ] and that trinity college has never, as a matter of fact, done so, and has thus, in my opinion, missed a unique opportunity, it has come about that ireland has been without any great centre of thought whose influence would have tended to leaven the mass of mental inactivity or random-thinking so prevalent in ireland, and would have created a body of educated public opinion sufficiently informed and potent to secure the study and discussion on their merits of questions of vital interest to the country. the demoralising atmosphere of partisanship which hangs over ireland would, i am convinced, gradually give way before an organised system of education with a thoroughly democratic university at its head, which would diffuse amongst the people at large a sense of the value of a balanced judgment on, and a true appreciation of, the real forces with which ireland has to deal in building up her fortunes. to discuss the merits of the different solutions which have been proposed for the vexed problem of higher education in ireland would be beyond the scope of this book. the question will have to be faced, and all i need do here is to state the conditions which the solution will have to fulfil if it is to deal with the aspects of the irish question with which the new movement is practically concerned. what is most needed is a university that will reach down to the rural population, much in the same way as the scottish universities do, and a lower scale of fees will be required than trinity college, with its diminished revenues, could establish. already i can see that the work of the new department, acting in conjunction with local bodies, urban and rural, throughout the country, will provide a considerable number of scholarships, bursaries, and exhibitions for young men who are being prepared to take part in the very real, but rather hazily understood, industrial revival which is imminent. leaving sectarian controversies out of the question, the type of institution which is required in order to provide adequately for the classes now left outside the influence of higher education is an institution pre-eminently national in its aims, and one intimately associated with the new movements making for the development of our national resources. unfortunately, however, in ireland, and indeed in england too, there is a tendency to regard educational institutions almost solely as they will affect religion. at least it is difficult to arouse any serious interest in them except from this point of view. i welcome, therefore, the striking answers given to the queries of lord robertson, chairman of the university commission, by dr. o'dwyer, the roman catholic bishop of limerick, who boldly and wisely placed the question before the country in the light in which cleric and layman should alike regard it:-- _the chairman_.--( ): "i suppose you believe a catholic university, such as you propose, will strengthen roman catholicism in ireland?"--"it is not easy to answer that; not so easy as it looks." ( ):--"but it won't weaken it, or you would not be here?"--"it would educate catholics in ireland very largely, and, of course, a religious denomination composed of a body of educated men is stronger than a religious denomination composed of ignorant men. in that sense it would strengthen roman catholicism." ( ):--"is there any sense in which it won't?"--"as far as religion is concerned, i do not know how a university would work out. if you ask me now whether i think that that university in a certain number of years would become a centre of thought, strengthening the catholic faith in ireland, i cannot tell you. it is a leap in the dark." ( ):--"but it is in the hope that it will strengthen your own church that you propose it?"--"no, it is not, by any means. we are bishops, but we are irishmen, also, and we want to serve our country."[ ] equally significant were the statements of dr. o'dea, the official spokesman of maynooth, when he said, i regard the interest of the laity in the settlement of the university question as supreme. the clergy are but a small, however important, part of the nation, and the laity have never had an institution of higher education comparable to maynooth in magnitude or resources. i recognise, therefore, that the educational grievances of the laity are much more pressing than those of the clergy ... it is generally admitted that irish priests hold a position of exceptional influence, due to historical causes, the intensely religious character of the people, and the want of catholic laymen qualified by education and position for social and political leadership. what bishop berkeley said of them in , in his letter, _a word to the wise_, still holds true, 'that no set of men on earth have it in their power to do good on easier terms, with more advantage to others, and less pains or loss to themselves.' it would be folly to expect that in a mixed community the state should do anything to strengthen or perpetuate this power; but this result will certainly not follow from the more liberal education of the clergy, provided equal advantages are extended to the laity. on the contrary, i am convinced that if the void in the lay leadership of the country be filled up by higher education of the better classes among the catholic laity, the power of the priests, so far as it is abnormal or unnecessary will pass away; and, further, if i believed, with many who are opposed to the better education of the priesthood, that their power is based on falsehood or superstition, i would unhesitatingly advocate the spread of higher education among the laity and clergy alike, as the best means of effectually sapping and disintegrating it.[ ] i had for long indulged a hope that a university of the type which ireland requires would have been the outcome of a great national educational movement emanating from trinity college, which might, at this auspicious hour, have surpassed all the proud achievements of its three hundred years. that hope was dispelled when the cry of 'hands off trinity' was applied to the profane hands of the royal commission. perhaps that attitude may be reconsidered yet. there is one hopeful sentiment which is often heard coming from that institution. an opinion has been strongly expressed that nothing ought to be done to separate in secular life two sections of irishmen who happen to belong to different creeds. whatever may be the logical outcome of the position taken up towards the university problem by those who give expression to this pious opinion, i do not for a moment doubt their sincerity. but i often think that too much importance is attached to the danger of building new walls, and that there is too little appreciation of the wide and deep foundation of the already existing walls between the two sections of irishmen who are so unhappily kept apart. in dealing with this, as with all large irish problems, it had better be frankly recognised that there are in the country two races, two creeds, and, what is too little considered, two separate spheres of economic interest and pursuit. socially two separate classes have naturally, nay inevitably, arisen out of these distinctions. one class has superior advantages in many ways of great importance. the other class is far more numerous, produces far the greater proportion of the nation's wealth, and is, therefore, from the national point of view, of greater importance. but both are necessary. both must be adequately provided for in the supreme matter of higher education. above all, the two classes must be educated to regard themselves as united by the bond of a common country--a sentiment which, if genuine, would treat differences arising from whatever cause, not as a difficulty in the way of national progress, but rather as affording a variety of opportunities for national expansion. i do not concern myself as to the exact form which the new institution or institutions which are to give us the absolutely essential advantage of higher education should take. if in view of the difference in the requirements to which i have alluded, and the complicated pedagogic and administrative considerations which have to be taken into account, schemes of co-education of protestants and roman catholics are difficult of immediate accomplishment, let that ideal be postponed. the two creeds can meet in the playground now: they can meet everywhere in after life. ireland will bring them together soon enough if ireland is given a chance, and when the time is ripe for their coming together in higher education they will come together. if the time is not now ripe for this ideal there is no justification for postponing educational reform until the relations between the two creeds have been elevated to a plane which, in my opinion, they will never reach except through the aid of that culture which a widely diffused higher education alone can afford. * * * * * when i was beginning to write this chapter i chanced to pick up the _chesterfield letters_. i opened the book at the two hundredth epistle, and, curiously enough, almost the first sentence which caught my eye ran: 'education more than nature is the cause of that difference you see in the character of men.' i felt myself at first in strong disagreement with this aphorism. but when i came to reflect how much the nature of one generation must be the outcome of the education of those which went before it, i gradually came to see the truth in lord chesterfield's words. i must leave it to experts to define the exact steps which ought to be taken to make the general education of this country capable of cultivating the judgment, strengthening the will, and so of building up the character. but every day, every thought, i give to the problems of irish progress convinces me more firmly that this is the real task of educational reform, a task that must be accomplished before we can prove to those who brand us with racial inferiority that, in ireland, it was not nature that has been unkind in causing the difference we find in the character of men. footnotes: [ ] _leaders of public opinion in ireland_, ii., - . [ ] _recent reforms in irish education_, p. . [ ] it was not authorised to give degrees to lay students; and even the admission of lay students to an arts course was prohibited by government, lest catholic students should be drawn away from trinity college. see cornwallis correspondence, iii., - . [ ] appendix to first report, p. . [ ] appendix to third report, pp. , . chapter vi. through thought to action. i have now completed my survey of the main conditions which, in my opinion, must be taken into account by anyone who would understand the irish mind, and still more by those who seek to work with it in rebuilding the fortunes of the country. the task has been one of great difficulty, as it was necessary to tell, not only the truth--for that even an official person may be excused--but also the whole truth, which, unless made compulsory by the kissing of the book, is regarded as a gratuitous kissing of the rod. from the frying pan of political dispute, i have passed into the fire of sectarian controversy. i have not hesitated to poach on the preserves of historians and economists, and have even bearded the pedagogues in their dens. before my stock of metaphors is exhausted, let me say that i have one hope of escape from the cross-fire of denunciation which independent speaking about ireland is apt to provoke. i once witnessed a football match between two villages, one of which favoured a political party called by the name of a leader, with an 'ism' added to indicate a policy, the other adopting the same name, still further elongated by the prefix 'anti.' when i arrived on the scene the game had begun in deadly earnest, but i noticed the ball lying unmolested in another quarter of the field. in irish public life i have often had reason to envy that ball, and perhaps now its lot may be mine, while the game goes on and the critics pay attention to each other. to my friendly critics a word of explanation is due. the opinions to which i have given expression are based upon personal observation and experience extending over a quarter of a century during which i have been in close touch with irish life at home, and not unfamiliar with it abroad. i have referred to history only when i could not otherwise account for social and economic conditions with which i came into contact, or with which i desired practically to deal. whether looking back over the dreary wastes of anglo-irish history, or studying the men and things of to-day, i came to conclusions which differed widely from what i had been taught to believe by those whose theories of irish development had not been subjected to any practical test. deeply as i have felt for the past sufferings of the irish people and their heritage of disability and distress, i could not bring myself to believe that, where misgovernment had continued so long, and in such an immense variety of circumstances and conditions, the governors could have been alone to blame. i envied those leaders of popular thought whose confidence in themselves and in their followers was shaken by no such reflections. but the more i listened to them the more the conviction was borne in upon me that they were seeking to build an impossible future upon an imaginary past. those who know ireland from within are aware that irish thought upon irish problems has been undergoing a silent, and therefore too lightly regarded revolution. the surface of irish life, often so inexplicably ruffled, and sometimes so inexplicably calm, has just now become smooth to a degree which has led to hasty conclusions as to the real cause and the inward significance of the change. to chime in with the thoughtless optimism of the hour will do no good; but a real understanding of the forces which have created the existing situation will reveal an unprecedented opportunity for those who would give to the irish mind that full and free development which has been so long and, as i have tried to show, so unnaturally delayed. among these new forces in irish life there is one which has been greatly misunderstood; and yet to its influence during the last few years much of the 'transformation scene' in the drama of the irish question is really due. it deserves more than a passing notice here, because, while its aims as formulated appear somewhat restricted, it unquestionably tends in practice towards that national object of paramount importance, the strengthening of character. i refer to the movement known as the gaelic revival. of this movement i am myself but an outside observer, having been forced to devote nearly all my time and energies to a variety of attempts which aim at the doing in the industrial sphere of very much the same work as that which the gaelic movement attempts in the intellectual sphere--the rehabilitation of ireland from within. but in the course of my work of agricultural and industrial development i naturally came across this new intellectual force and found that when it began to take effect, so far from diverting the minds of the peasantry from the practical affairs of life, it made them distinctly more amenable to the teaching of the dry economic doctrine of which i was an apostle. the reason for this is plain enough to me now, though, like all my theories about ireland, the truth came to me from observation and practical experience rather than as the result of philosophic speculation. for the co-operative movement depended for its success upon a two-fold achievement. in order to get it started at all, its principles and working details had to be grasped by the irish peasant mind and commended to his intelligence. its further development and its hopes of permanence depend upon the strengthening of character, which, i must repeat, is the foundation of all irish progress. the irish agricultural organisation society[ ] exerts its influence--a now established and rapidly-growing influence--mainly through the medium of associations. the gaelic movement, on the other hand, acts more directly upon the individual, and the two forces are therefore in a sense complementary to each other. both will be seen to be playing an important part--i should say a necessary part--in the reconstruction of our national life. at any rate, i feel that it is necessary to my argument that i should explain to those who are as ill-informed about the gaelic revival as i was myself until its practical usefulness was demonstrated to me, what exactly seems to be the most important outcome of the work of that movement. the gaelic league, which defines its objects as 'the preservation of irish as the national language of ireland and the extension of its use as a spoken tongue; the study and publication of existing irish literature and the cultivation of a modern literature in irish,' was formed in . like the agricultural organisation society, the gaelic league is declared by its constitution to be 'strictly non-political and non-sectarian,' and, like it, has been the object of much suspicion, because severance from politics in ireland has always seemed to the politician the most active form of enmity. its constitution, too, is somewhat similar, being democratically guided in its policy by the elected representatives of its affiliated branches. it is interesting to note that the funds with which it carries on an extensive propaganda are mainly supplied from the small contributions of the poor. it publishes two periodicals, one weekly and another monthly. it administers an income of some £ , a year, not reckoning what is spent by local branches, and has a paid staff of eleven officers, a secretary, treasurer, and nine organisers, together with a large number of voluntary workers. it resembled the agricultural movement also in the fact that it made very little headway during the first few years of its existence. but it had a nucleus of workers with new ideas for the intellectual regeneration of ireland. in face of much apathy they persisted with their propaganda, and they have at last succeeded in making their ideas understood. so much is evident from the rapidly-increasing number of affiliated branches of the league, which in march, , amounted to , almost treble the number registered two years before. but even this does not convey any idea of the influence which the movement exerts. within the past year the teaching of the irish language has been introduced into no less than , national schools. in the number of schools in which irish was taught was only about . the statement that our people do not read books is generally accepted as true, yet the sale of the league publications during one year reached nearly a quarter of a million copies. these results cannot be left unconsidered by anybody who wishes to understand the psychology of the irish mind. the movement can truly claim to have effected the conversion of a large amount of intellectual apathy into genuine intellectual activity. the declared objects of the league--- the popularising of the national language and literature--do not convey, perhaps, an adequate conception of its actual work, or of the causes of its popularity. it seeks to develop the intellectual, moral, and social life of the irish people from within, and it is doing excellent work in the cause of temperance. its president, dr. douglas hyde, in his evidence given before the university commission,[ ] pointed out that the success of the league was due to its meeting the people half way; that it educated them by giving them something which they could appreciate and assimilate; and that it afforded a proof that people who would not respond to alien educational systems, will respond with eagerness to something they can call their own. the national factor in ireland has been studiously eliminated from national education, and ireland is perhaps the only country in europe where it was part of the settled policy of those, who had the guidance of education to ignore the literature, history, arts, and traditions of the people. it was a fatal policy, for it obviously tended to stamp their native country in the eyes of irishmen with the badge of inferiority and to extinguish the sense of healthy self-respect which comes from the consciousness of high national ancestry and traditions. this policy, rigidly adhered to for many years, almost extinguished native culture among irishmen, but it did not succeed in making another form of culture acceptable to them. it dulled the intelligence of the people, impaired their interest in their own surroundings, stimulated emigration by teaching them to look on other countries as more agreeable places to live in, and made ireland almost a social desert. men and women without culture or knowledge of literature or of music have succeeded a former generation who were passionately interested in these things, an interest which extended down even to the wayside cabin. the loss of these elevating influences in irish society probably accounts for much of the arid nature of irish controversies, while the reaction against their suppression has given rise to those displays of rhetorical patriotism for which the irish language has found the expressive term _raimeis_, and which (thanks largely to the gaelic movement) most people now listen to with a painful and half-ashamed sense of their unreality. the gaelic movement has brought to the surface sentiments and thoughts which had been developed in gaelic ireland through hundreds of years, and which no repression had been able to obliterate altogether, but which still remained as a latent spiritual inheritance in the mind. and now this stream, which has long run underground, has again emerged even stronger than before, because an element of national self-consciousness has been added at its re-emergence. a passionate conviction is gaining ground that if irish traditions, literature, language, art, music, and culture are allowed to disappear, it will mean the disappearance of the race; and that the education of the country must be nationalised if our social, intellectual, or even our economic position is to be permanently improved. with this view of the gaelic movement my own thoughts are in complete accord. it is undeniable that the pride in country justly felt by englishmen, a pride developed by education and a knowledge of their history, has had much to do with the industrial pre-eminence of england; for the pioneers of its commerce have been often actuated as much by patriotic motives as by the desire for gain. the education of the irish people has ignored the need for any such historical basis for pride or love of country, and, for my part, i feel sure that the gaelic league is acting wisely in seeking to arouse such a sentiment, and to found it mainly upon the ages of ireland's story when ireland was most irish. it is this expansion of the sentiment of nationality outside the domain of party politics--the distinction, so to speak, between nationality and nationalism--which is the chief characteristic of the gaelic movement. nationality had come to have no meaning other than a political one, any broader national sentiment having had little or nothing to feed upon. during the last century the spirit of nationality has found no unworthy expression in literature, in the writings of ferguson, standish o'grady and yeats, which, however, have not been even remotely comparable in popularity with the political journalism in prose and rhyme in which the age has been so fruitful. it has never expressed itself in the arts, and not only has ireland no representative names in the higher regions of art, but the national deficiency has been felt in every department of industry into which design enters, and where national art-characteristics have a commercial value. the national customs, culture, and recreations which made the country a pleasant place to live in, have almost disappeared, and with them one of the strongest ties which bind people to the country of their birth. the gaelic revival, as i understand it, is an attempt to supply these deficiencies, to give to irish people a culture of their own; and i believe that by awakening the feelings of pride, self-respect, and love of country, based on knowledge, every department of irish life will be invigorated. thus it is that the elevating influence upon the individual is exerted. politics have never awakened initiative among the mass of the people, because there was no programme of action for the individual. perhaps it is as well for ireland that such should have been the case, for, as it has been shown, we have had little of the political thought which should be at the back of political action. political action under present conditions must necessarily be deputed to a few representatives, and after the vote is given or the cheering at a meeting has ceased, the individual can do nothing but wait, and his lethargy tends to become still deeper. in the gaelic revival there is a programme of work for the individual; his mind is engaged, thought begets energy, and this energy vitalises every part of his nature. this makes for the strengthening of character, and so far from any harm being done to the practical movement, to which i have so often referred, the testimony of my fellow-workers, as well as my own observation, is unanimous in affirming that the influence of the branches of the gaelic league is distinctly useful whenever it is sought to move the people to industrial or commercial activity. many of my political friends cannot believe--and i am afraid that nothing that i can say will make them believe--that the movement is not necessarily, in the political sense, separatist in its sentiment. this impression is, in my opinion, founded on a complete misunderstanding of anglo-irish history. those who look askance at the rise of the gaelic movement ignore the important fact that there has never been any essential opposition between the english connection and irish nationality. the elizabethan chiefs of the sixteenth and the gaelic poets of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the relations between the two countries were far worse than they are to-day, knew nothing of this opposition. the true sentiment of nationality is a priceless heritage of every small nation which has done great things, and had it not largely perished in ireland, separatist sentiment, the offspring, not of irish nationality, but of irish political nationalism, could hardly have survived until to-day. but undoubtedly we strike here on a danger to the gaelic movement, so far at least as that movement is bound up with the future of the gaelic league; a danger which cannot be left out of account in any estimate of this new force in irish life. the continuance of the league as a beneficent force, or indeed a force at all, seems to me, as in the case of the co-operative organisation to which i have compared it, to be vitally dependent on a scrupulous observance of that part of its constitution which keeps the door open to irishmen of every creed or political party. only thus can the league remain a truly national body, and attract from all classes irishmen who are capable of forwarding its true policy. i do not think there is much danger of a spirit of sectarian exclusiveness developing itself in a body mainly composed of roman catholics whose president is a protestant. but it cannot be denied that there has been an occasional tendency to interpret the 'no politics' clause of the constitution in a manner which seems hardly fair to unionists or even to constitutional home rulers who may have joined the organisation on the strength of its declaration of political neutrality. if this is not a mere transitory phenomenon its effect will be serious. as a political body the league would immediately sink into insignificance and probably disappear amid a crowd of contending factions. it would certainly cease to fulfil its great function of creating a nationality of the thought and spirit, in which all irishmen who wish to be anything else than english colonists might aspire to share. its early successes in bringing together men of different political views were remarkable. at the very outset of its career it enlisted the support of so militant a politician as the late rev. r.r. kane, who declared that though a unionist and an orangeman he had no desire to forget that he was an o'cahan. on this basis it is difficult to set a limit to the fruitfulness of the work which this organisation might do for ireland, and i cannot regard any who would depart from the letter and spirit of its constitution as sincere, or if sincere as wise, friends of the movement with which they are associated. of minor importance are certain extravagances in the conduct of the movement which time and practical experience can hardly fail to correct. i have borne witness to the value of the cultivation of the language even from my own practical standpoint, but i cannot think that to sign cheques in irish, and get angry when those who cannot understand will not honour them, is a good way of demonstrating that value. i should, speaking generally, regard it as a mistake, supposing it were practicable, to substitute irish for english in the conduct of business. if any large development of the trade in pampooties, turf and potheen between the aran islands and the mainland were in contemplation, this attempt might be justified. but on behalf of those philistines who attach paramount importance to the development of irish industry, trade and commerce on a large and comprehensive scale, i should regret a course which, from a business point of view, would be about as wise as the advocacy of distinctive irish currency, weights and measures. and i protest more strongly against the reasons which have been given to me for this policy. i have been told that, in order to generate sufficient enthusiasm, a young movement of the kind must adopt a rigorous discipline and an aggressive policy. not only are we thus confronted with a false issue, but by giving countenance to the outward acceptance of what the better sense rejects, these over-zealous leaguers are administering to the irish character the very poison which all irish movements should combine to eliminate from the national life. the position which i have given to the gaelic revival among the new influences at work and making for progress in ireland will hardly be understood by those who have never embraced the idea of combining all such forces in a constructive and comprehensive scheme of national advancement. one instance of the potential utility of the gaelic league will appeal to those of my readers who attach as much importance as i do to the improvement of the peasant home. concerted action to this end is being planned while i write. it is proposed to take a few districts where the peasants are members of one of the new co-operative societies, and where the clergy have taken a keen interest in the economic and social advancement of the members of the society, but where the cottages are in the normal condition. the new department will lend the services of its domestic economy teachers. the organisation society, the clergy, and the department thus working together will, i hope, be able to get the people of the selected districts to effect an improvement in their domestic surroundings which will act as an invaluable example for other districts to follow. but in order that this much needed contribution to the well-being of the peasant proprietary, upon which all our thoughts are just now concentrated, may be assisted with the enthusiasm which belongs in ireland to a consciously national effort, it is hoped that common action with the gaelic league may be possible, so that this force also may be enlisted in the solution of this part of our central problem, the rehabilitation of rural life in ireland. it is, however, on more general grounds that i have, albeit as an outside observer, watched with some anxiety and much gratification the progress of the gaelic revival. in the historical evolution of the irish mind we find certain qualities atrophied, so to speak, by disuse; and to this cause i attribute the past failures of the race in practical life at home. i have shown how politics, religion, and our systems of education have all, in their respective influences upon the people, missed to a large extent, the effect upon character which they should have made it their paramount duty to produce. nevertheless, whenever the intellect of the people is appealed to by those who know its past, a recuperative power is manifested which shows that its vitality has not been irredeemably impaired. it is because i believe that, on the whole, a right appeal has been made by the gaelic league that i have borne testimony to its patriotic endeavours. the question of the gaelic revival seems to be really a form of the eternal question of the interdependence of the practical and the ideal in ireland. their true relation to each other is one of the hardest lessons the student of our problems has to learn. i recall an incident in the course of my own studies which i will here recount, as it appears to me to furnish an admirable illustration of this difficulty as it presented itself to a very interesting mind. during the years covering the rise and fall of parnell, when interest in the irish question was at its zenith, the newspapers of the united states kept in london a corps of very able correspondents, who watched and reported to their transatlantic readers every move in the home rule campaign. an american public, by no means limited to the american-irish, devoured every morsel of this intelligence with an avidity which could not have been surpassed if the united states had been engaged in a war with great britain. among these correspondents perhaps the most brilliant was the late harold frederic. not many months before he died i received a letter from him, in which he said that, although we were unknown to each other, he thought, from some public utterances of mine, that we must have many views in common. he had often intended to get an introduction to me, and now suggested that we should 'waive things and meet.' we met and spent an evening together, which left some deep impressions on my mind. he told me that the irish question possessed for him a fascination for which he could give no rational explanation. he had absolutely no tie of blood or material interest with ireland, and his friendship for it had brought him the only quarrels in which he had ever been engaged. what chiefly interested me in harold frederic's philosophy of the irish question was that he had arrived at a diagnosis of the irish mind not substantially different from my own. since that evening i have come across a passage in one of his novels, which clothes in delightful language his view of the chaotic psychology of the celt: there, in ireland, you get a strange mixture of elementary early peoples, walled off from the outer world by the four seas, and free to work out their own racial amalgam on their own lines. they brought with them at the outset a great inheritance of eastern mysticism. others lost it, but the irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and brooded on it, and rooted their whole spiritual side in it. their religion is full of it; their blood is full of it.... the ireland of two thousand years ago is incarnated in her. they are the merriest people and the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile, the most talented and the most unproductive, the most practical and the most visionary, the most devout and the most pagan. these impossible contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood.[ ] in our conversation what struck me most was the influence which politics had exercised even on his philosophic mind, notwithstanding a low estimate of our political leaders. in one of a series of three notable articles upon the irish question, which appeared anonymously in the _fortnightly review_[ ] in the winter of - , and of which he told me he was the writer, he had given a character sketch of what he called 'the rhetoricians.' their performances since the union were summarised in the phrase 'a century of unremitting gabble,' and he regarded it as a sad commentary on irish life that such brilliant talents so largely ran to waste in destructive criticism. i naturally turned the conversation on to my own line of thought, and discussed the practical conclusions to which his studies had led him. i tried to elicit from him exactly what he had in his mind when, in one of the articles to which i have referred, he advocated 'a reconstruction of ireland on distinctive national lines.' i hoped to find that his psychological study of my countrymen would enable him to throw some light upon the means by which play could be given at home to the latent capacities of the race. i found that he was in entire accord with my view, that the chief difficulty in the way of constructive statesmanship was the defect in the irish character about which i have said so much. i was prepared for that conclusion, for i had already seen the lack of initiative admirably appreciated in the following illuminating sentence of his:--'the celt will help someone else to do the thing that other has in mind, and will help him with great zeal and devotion; but he will not start to do the thing he himself has thought of.'[ ] but i was disappointed when he bade me his first and last good-bye that i had not convinced him that there was any way out of the irish difficulty other than political changes, for which, at the same time, he appeared to think the people singularly unfitted. the fact is we had arrived at the point where the student of irish life usually finds himself in a _cul de sac_. if he has accurately observed the conditions, he is face to face with a problem which appears to be in its nature insoluble. for at every turn he finds things being done wrong which might so easily be done right, only that nobody is concerned that they should be done right. and what is worse, when he has learned, in the course of his investigations, to discount the picturesque explanation of our unsuccess in practical life which in ireland veils the unpleasant truth, he will find that the people are quite aware of their defects, although they attribute them to causes beyond their power to remove. then, too, the sympathetic inquirer is shocked by the lack of seriousness in it all. with all their past griefs and their high aspirations, the irish people seem to be play-acting before the world. the inquirer does not, perhaps, reflect that, if play-acting be inconsistent with the deepest emotions, and with the pursuit of high ideals, then he condemns a little over one half of the human race.[ ] he probably comes to the main conclusion adopted in these pages, and realises that the irish question is a problem of character. and as irish character is the product of irish history, which cannot be re-enacted, he leaves the problem there. harold frederic left it there, and there it has been taken up by those whose endeavour forms the story which i have to tell. i now come to the principles which, it appears to me, must underlie the solution of this problem. the narrative contained in the second part of this book is a record of the efforts made during the last decade of the nineteenth and the first two years of the twentieth century by a small, but now rapidly augmenting group of irishmen, to pluck the brand of irish intellect from the burning of the irish question. the problem before us was, my readers will now understand, how to make headway in view of the weakness of character to which i have had to attribute the paralysis of our activities in the past. we were quite aware that our progress would at first be slow. but as we were satisfied that the defects of character which stood in the way of economic advancement were due to causes which need no longer be operative, and that the intellect of the people was unimpaired, we faced the problem with confidence. the practical form which our work took was the launching upon irish life of a movement of organised self-help, and the subsequent grafting upon this movement of a system of state-aid to the agriculture and industries of the country. i need not here further elaborate this programme, for the steps by which it has been and is being adopted will be presently described in detail. but there is one aspect of the new movement in ireland which must be understood by those who would grasp the true significance and the human interest of an evolution in our national life, the only recent parallel for which, as far as i am aware, is to be found in japan: though to my mind the conscious attempt of the irish people to develop a civilisation of their own is far more interesting than the recent efforts of the japanese to westernise their institutions. the problem of mind and character with which we had to deal in ireland presented this central and somewhat discouraging fact. in practical life the irish had failed where the english had succeeded, and this was attributed to the lack of certain english qualities which have been undoubtedly essential to success in commerce and in industry from the days of the industrial revolution until a comparatively recent date. it was the individualism of the english economic system during this period which made these qualities indispensable. the lack of these qualities in irishmen to-day may be admitted, and the cause of the deficiency has been adequately explained. but those who regard the irish situation as industrially hopeless probably ignore the fact that there are other qualities, of great and growing importance under modern economic conditions, which can be developed in irishmen and may form the basis of an industrial system. i refer to the range of qualities which come into play rather in association than in the individual, and to which the term 'associative' is applied.[ ] so that although much disparaging criticism of irish character is based upon the survival in the celt of the tribal instincts, it is gratifying to be able to show that even from the practical english point of view, our preference for thinking and working in groups may not be altogether a _damnosa hereditas_. if, owing to our deficiency in the individualistic qualities of the english, we cannot at this stage hope to produce many types of the 'economic man' of the economists, we think we see our way to provide, as a substitute, the economic association. if the association succeeds, and by virtue of its financial success becomes permanent, a great change will, in our opinion, be produced on the character of its members. the reflex action upon the individual mind of the habit of doing, in association with others, things which were formerly left undone, or badly done, may be relied upon to have a tonic effect upon the character of the individual. this is, i suppose, the secret of discipline, which, though apparently eliminating volition, seems in weak characters to strengthen the will. there is, too, as we have learned, in the association a strange influence which develops qualities and capacities that one would not expect on a mere consideration of the character of its members. this psychological phenomenon has been admirably and most entertainingly discussed by the french psychologist, le bon,[ ] who, in the attractive pursuit of paradox, almost goes to the length of the proposition that the association inherently possesses qualities the opposite of those possessed by its members. my own experience--and i have had opportunities of observing hundreds of associations formed by my friends upon the principles above laid down--does not carry me quite so far. but, unquestionably, the association in ireland does often become an entity as distinct from the individualities of which it is composed, as is a new chemical compound from its constituent elements. associations of the kind we had in our minds, which were to be primarily for purely business purposes, were bound to have many collateral effects. they would open up outside of politics and religion, but not in conflict with either, a sphere of action where an independence new to the country would have to be exercised. in ireland public opinion is under an obsession which, whether political, religious, historical, or all three combined, is probably unique among civilised peoples. until the last few years, for example, it was our habit--one which immensely weakened the influence of ireland in the imperial parliament--to form extravagant estimates of men, exalting and abasing them with irrational caprice, not according to their qualities so much as by their attitude towards the passion of the hour. the ups and downs of the reputations of lord spencer and mr. arthur balfour in ireland are a sufficient illustration of our disregard of the old latin proverb which tells us that no man ever became suddenly altogether bad. even now public opinion is too prone to attach excessive value to projects of vague and visionary development, and to underrate the importance of serious thought and quiet work, which can be the only solid foundation of our national progress. in these new associations--humble indeed in their origin, but destined to play a large part in the people's lives--projects, professing to be fraught with economic benefit, have to be judged by the cruel precision of audited balance sheets, and the worth of men is measured by the solid contribution they have made to the welfare of the community. * * * * * i have now accomplished one long stage of my journey towards the conclusion of this discussion of the needs of modern ireland. were i to stop here, probably most of those who had been induced to open yet another book upon the irish question would accuse me, and not without justice, of being responsible for a barren graft upon a barren controversy. i fear no such criticism, whatever other shortcomings may be detected, from those who have the patience to read on. for when i pass from my own reflections to record the work to which many thousands of my countrymen have addressed themselves in building up the ireland of the twentieth century, i shall have a story to tell which must inspire hope in all who can be persuaded that ireland in the past has not often been treated fairly and has never been understood. i have shown--and it was necessary to show, if a repetition of misunderstanding was to be avoided--that the irish people themselves are gravely responsible for the ills of their country, and that the forces which have mainly governed their action hitherto are rapidly bringing about their disappearance as a distinct nationality. but i shall now have to tell of the widespread and growing adoption of certain new principles of action which i believe to be consonant with the genius and traditions of the race, and the acceptance of which seems to me vitally necessary if the irish people are to play a worthy part in the future history of the world. that part is a far greater one than they could ever hope to play as an independent and separate state, yet their success in playing it must closely depend upon their remaining a distinct nationality, in the sense so clearly and wisely indicated by his majesty when, in his reply to the address of the belfast corporation, he spoke of the 'national characteristics and ideals' which he desired his kingdoms to cherish in the midst of their imperial unity.[ ] the great experiment which i am about to relate is, in its own province, one of the many applications which we see around us of the conception here put forward. and i believe that a few more years of quiet work by those who are taking part in this movement, with its appeal to irish intellect, and its reliance upon irish patriotism, is all that is needed to prove that by developing the industrial qualities of the celt on associative lines we can in politics as well as in economics, add strength to the irish character without making it less irish or less attractive than of old. footnotes: [ ] this body is fully described in the next chapter. [ ] see appendix to third report, p. . [ ] _the damnation of theron ware_. this was the title of the book i read in the united states. i am told he published it in england under the title of _illuminations_--a nice discrimination! [ ] they appeared under the signature of 'x.' in nov. and dec., , and jan., . [ ] _fortnightly review_, jan. , pp. , . [ ] the difficulties of the writer who is not a writer are great. i sent this chapter to two literary friends, one of whom, with the help of a globe, disputed my accuracy in a learned ethnological disquisition with which he favoured me. the other warned me to be even more obscure and sent me the following verses, addressed by 'cynicus' (j.k. stephen) to shakespeare, "you wrote a line too much, my sage, of seers the first, the first of sayers; for only half the world's a stage, and only all the women players." [ ] these qualities, as will be explained later, happen to have a special economic value in the farming industry, and so are available for the elevation of rural life, with whose problems we are now so deeply concerned in ireland. their applicability to urban life need not be discussed here. but my study of the co-operative movement in england has convinced me that, if the english had the associative instincts of the irish, that movement would play a part in english life more commensurate with its numerical strength and the volume of its commercial transactions, than can be claimed for it so far. [ ] _la psychologie de la foule_. [ ] july th, ,--his majesty thus confirmed the striking utterance of imperial policy contained in lord dudley's speech to the incorporated law society, on the th of november, . his excellency, after protesting against the conception of empire as a 'huge regiment' in which each nation was to lose its individuality, said--"lasting strength, lasting loyalty, are not to be secured by any attempt to force into one system or to remould into one type those special characteristics which are the outcome of a nation's history and of her religious and social conditions, but rather by a full recognition of the fact that these very characteristics form an essential part of a nation's life; and that under wise guidance and under sympathetic treatment they will enable her to provide her own contribution and to play her own special part in the life of the empire to which she belongs." part ii. _practical_. "for a country so attractive and a people so gifted we cherish the warmest regard, and it is, therefore, with supreme satisfaction that i have during our stay so often heard the hope expressed that a brighter day is dawning upon ireland. i shall eagerly await the fulfilment of this hope. its realisation will, under divine providence, depend largely upon the steady development of self-reliance and co-operation, upon better and more practical education, upon the growth of industrial and commercial enterprise, and upon that increase of mutual toleration and respect which the responsibility my irish people now enjoy in the public administration of their local affairs is well-fitted to teach."--_message of the king to the irish people_, st august, . chapter vii. the new movement: its foundation on self-help. the movement for the reorganisation of irish agricultural and industrial life, to which i have already frequently referred, must now be described in practical operation. before i do this, however, there are two lines of criticism which the very mention of a new movement may suggest, and which i must anticipate. every year has its tale of new movements, launched by estimable persons whose philanthropic zeal is not balanced by the judgment required to discriminate between schemes which possess the elements of permanence, and those which depend upon the enthusiasm or financial support of their promoters, and are in their nature ephemeral. there is, consequently, a widespread and well justified mistrust of novel schemes for the industrial regeneration of ireland. i confess to having had my ingenuity severely taxed on some occasions to find a sympathetic circumlocution wherewith to show cause for declining to join a new movement, my real reason being an inward conviction that nothing except resolutions would be moved. in the complex problem of building up the economic and social life of a people with such a history as ours, we must resist the temptation to multiply schemes which, however well intended, are but devices for enabling individuals to devolve their responsibilities upon the community or upon the government, and which owe their bubble reputation and brief popularity to this unconscious humouring of our chief national defect. on the contrary, we must seek to instil into the mind of each individual the too little recognised importance of his own contribution to the sum of national achievement. the building of character must be our paramount object, as it is the condition precedent of all social and economic reform in ireland. to explain the principles by the observance of which the agency of the association may be utilised as an economic force, while at the same time the industrial character of the individual may be developed, was one of the chief aims i had in view in the foregoing analysis of the irish mind and character, as they have emerged from history and are stunted in their growth by present influences. the facts about to be recited will, i hope, suffice to prove that the reformer in ireland, if he has a true insight into the great human problem with which he is dealing, may find in the association not only a healthy stimulus to national activities, but also a means whereby the assistance of the state may be so invoked and applied that it will concentrate, and not dissipate, the energies of the people. the other criticism which i think it necessary to anticipate would, if ignored, leave room for a wrong impression as to much of the work which is being done both on the self-help and on the state-aid sides of the new movement. education, it will be said, is the only real solvent to the range of problems discussed in this book, most other agencies of social and economic reform being of doubtful efficacy and, if they tend to postpone educational effort, positively harmful. there is much truth in this view. but it must be remembered that the backward condition of our economic life is due mainly to the fact that our educational systems have had little regard to our history or economic circumstances. we must, therefore, at this stage in our national development give to education a much wider interpretation than that which is usually applied to the term. we cannot wait for a generation to grow up which has been given an education calculated to fit it for the modern economic struggle, even if there were any probability that the necessary reforms would soon be carried against the prejudices which are aroused by any proposal to train the minds, or even the hands and eyes, of the rising generation. in the meantime much of the work, both voluntary and state-aided, now initiated in ireland, must consist of educating adults to introduce into their business concerns the more advanced economic and scientific methods which the superior education of our rivals in agriculture and industry abroad has enabled them to adopt, and which my experience of irish work convinces me our people would have adopted long ago if they had had similar educational advantages. and i would further point out that there is no better way of promoting the reform of education in the ordinary, the pedagogic, sense, than by bringing to bear upon the minds of parents those educational influences which are calculated to convince them of the advantage of improved practical education for their children. so to the economist and to the educationist alike i would submit that the new work of economic and social reform should be judged as a whole, and not prejudged by that hypercriticism of details which ignores the fact that the conditions with which it is attempted to deal are wholly unprecedented. i am quite content that the movement which i am about to describe should be ultimately known and judged by its fruits. meanwhile, i think that to the intelligent critic it will sufficiently justify its existence if it continues to exist. * * * * * the story of the new movement, which must now be told, begins in the year , when a few irishmen, the writer of these pages among them, set themselves the task of bringing home to the rural population of ireland the fact that their prosperity was in their own hands much more than they were generally led to believe. i have already pointed out that in order to direct the irish mind towards practical affairs and in order effectively to arouse and apply the latent capacities of the irish people to their chief industry, agriculture, we must rely upon associative, as distinct from individual effort; or, in other words, we must get the people to do their business together rather than separately as the english do. fortunately for us, it happened that this course, which was clearly indicated by the character and temperament of the people, was equally prescribed by economic considerations. the population and wealth of ireland are, i need hardly say, so predominantly agricultural that the welfare of the country must depend upon the welfare of the farming classes. it is notorious that the industry by which these classes live has for the last quarter of a century become less and less profitable. it is also recognised that the prime cause of agricultural depression, foreign competition, is not likely to be removed, while that from the colonies is likely to increase. the extraordinary development of rapid and cheap transit, together with recently invented processes of preservation, have enabled the more favoured producers in the newly developed countries of both hemispheres successfully to enter into competition in the british markets with the farmers of these islands. the agricultural producers in other european countries, although to some extent protected by tariffs, have had to face similar conditions; but in most of these countries, though not in the united kingdom, the farmers have so changed their methods, to meet the altered circumstances, that they seem to have gained by improvement at home as much as they have lost by competition from abroad thus our farmers find themselves harassed first by the cheaper production from vast tracts of virgin soil in the uttermost parts of the earth, and secondly by a nearer and keener competition from the better organised and better educated producers of the continent. while the opening up of what the economists call the 'world market,' has necessitated, as a condition of successful competition, improved methods of production for, and carriage to, the market, a third and less obvious force has effected an important change in the method of distribution in the market. the swarming populations, which the factory system has brought together in industrial centres, have to be supplied with food by a system of distribution which must above all things be expeditious. this requirement can only be met by the regular consignment of food in large quantities, of such uniform quality that the sample can be relied upon to be truly indicative of the quality of the bulk. thus the rapid distribution of produce in the markets becomes as important a factor in agricultural economy as improved methods of production or cheap and expeditious carriage. now this new market condition is being met in two ways. in the united states, and, in a less marked degree, at home, an army of middlemen between the producer and the consumer attends to this business for a share of the profits accruing from it, whilst in many parts of the continent the farmers themselves attend, partially at any rate, to the business side of their industry instead of paying others to do it all for them. i say all, for middlemen are necessary at the distributive end: but it is absolutely essential, in a country like ireland, that at the producing end the farmers should be so organised that they themselves can manage the first stages of distribution, and exercise some control over the middlemen who do the rest. the foreign agricultural producers have long been alive to this necessity, for their superior education enabled them to grasp the economic situation and even to realise that the matter is not one of acute political controversy. here, then, was a definite practical problem to the solution of which the promoters of the new movement could apply their principle of co-operative effort. the more we studied the question the more apparent it became that the enormous advantage which the continental farmers had over the irish farmers, both in production and in distribution, was due to superior organisation combined with better education. state-aid had no doubt done a great deal abroad, but in every case it was manifest that it had been preceded, or at least accompanied, by the organised voluntary effort without which the interference of the government with the business of the people is simply demoralising. generally speaking, the task before us in ireland was the adaptation to the special circumstances of our country of methods successfully pursued by communities similarly situated in foreign countries. we had to urge upon farmers that combination was just as necessary to their economic salvation as it was recognised to be by their own class, and by those engaged in other industries, elsewhere. they must combine, so we urged on them, for example, to buy their agricultural requirements at the cheapest rate and of the best quality in order to produce more efficiently and more economically; they must combine to avail themselves of improved appliances beyond the reach of individual producers, whether it be by the erection of creameries, for which there was urgent need, or of cheese factories and jam factories which might come later; or in ordinary farm operations, to secure the use of the latest agricultural machinery and the most suitable pure-bred stock; they must combine--not to abolish middle profits in distribution, whether those of the carrying companies or those of the dealers in agricultural produce--but to keep those profits within reasonable limits, and to collect in bulk and regularise consignments so that they could be carried and marketed at a moderate cost; they must combine, as we afterwards learned, for the purpose of creating, by mutual support, the credit required to bring in the fresh working capital which each new development of their industry would demand and justify. in short, whenever and wherever the individuals in a farming community could be brought to see that they might advantageously substitute associated for isolated production or distribution, they must be taught to form themselves into associations in order to reap the anticipated advantages. this brief statement of our general aims will furnish a rough idea of the economic propaganda which we initiated, and if i give a few illustrations of the practical application of the new principle to the farming industry, i shall have done all that will be required to leave on the reader's mind a true though perhaps an incomplete impression of the character and scope of the self-help side of the new movement. i shall first give a sketch of the unrecorded struggles of its pioneers, because these struggles prove to those engaged in social and economic work in ireland that, in the wholly abnormal condition of our national life, no project which is theoretically sound need be rejected because everybody says it is impracticable. the work of the morrow will largely consist of the impossible of to-day. if this adds to the difficulty, it also adds to the fun. when we arrived at the conclusion that the introduction of the principle of agricultural co-operation was a vital necessity, the first practical question which had to be decided was how the industrial army, which was to do battle for ireland's position in the world market, should be organised and disciplined for the task. it is evident that before a body of men who have never worked together can form a successful commercial combination, they must be provided with a constitution and set of rules and regulations for the conduct of their business. these must be so skilfully contrived that they will harmonise all the interests involved. and when an arrangement has been come to which is, not only in fact but also obviously, equitable, it remains as part of the process of organisation to teach the participants in the new project the meaning, and to imbue them with the spirit, of the joint enterprise into which they have been persuaded to enter with perhaps no very clear understanding of all that is involved. there were in ireland no precedents to guide us and no examples to follow, but the co-operative movement in england appeared to furnish most of the principles involved and a perfect machinery for their application.[ ] so lord monteagle and mr. r.a. anderson, my first two associates in the new movement, joined me as regular attendants at the annual co-operative congresses. we were assiduous seekers after information at the head-quarters of the co-operative union in manchester. we had the good fortune to fall in with vansittart neale, and tom hughes, both of whom have passed away, and with mr. holyoake, who, with the exception of mr. ludlow, is now the sole survivor of that noble group of practical philanthropists, the christian socialists. mr. j.c. gray, who succeeded mr. vansittart neale as the general secretary of the co-operative union, gave us invaluable help and continues to do so to this day. the leaders of the english movement sympathised with our efforts. the union paid us the compliment of constituting our first converts its irish section. liberal support was given out of the central english funds towards the cost of the missionary work which was to spread co-operative light in the sister isle. we can never forget the generosity of the workingmen in england in giving their aid to the irish farmers, especially when it is remembered that they had no sanguine anticipations for the success of our efforts and no prospect of advantages to themselves if we did succeed. it must be admitted that the outlook was not altogether rosy. agricultural co-operation had never succeeded in england, where it seemed to be accepted as one of the disappointing limitations of the co-operative movement that it did not apply to rural communities in these islands. there were also in ireland the peculiar difficulties arising from ceaseless political and agrarian agitation. it was naturally asked--did irish farmers possess the qualities out of which co-operators are made? had they commercial experience or business education? had they business capacity? would they display that confidence in each other which is essential to successful association, or indeed that confidence in themselves without which there can be no business enterprise? could they ever be induced to form themselves into societies, and to adopt, and loyally adhere to those rules and regulations by which alone equitable distribution of the responsibility and profit among the participants in the joint undertaking can be assured, and harmony and successful working be rendered possible? then, our best-informed irish critics assured us that voluntary association for humdrum business purposes, devoid of some religious or political incentive, was alien to the celtic temperament and that we should wear ourselves out crying in the wilderness. we were told that irishmen can conspire but cannot combine. economists assured us that even if we succeeded in getting farmers to embark on the projected enterprises, financial disaster would be the inevitable result of our attempts to substitute in industrial undertakings, ever becoming more technical and requiring more and more commercial knowledge and experience, democratic management for one-man control. on the other hand there were some favouring conditions, the importance of which our studies of the human problems already discussed will have made my readers realise. isolated, the irish farmer is conservative, sceptical of innovations, a believer in routine and tradition. in union with his fellows, he is progressive, open to ideas, and wonderfully keen at grasping the essential features of any new proposal for his advancement. he was, then, himself eminently a subject for co-operative treatment, and his circumstances were equally so. the smallness of his holding, the lack of capital, and the backwardness of his methods made him helpless in competition with his rivals abroad. the process of organisation was also, to some extent, facilitated by the insight the people had been given by the land league into the power of combination, and by the education they had received in the conduct of meetings. it was a great advantage that there was a machinery ready at hand for getting people together, and a procedure fully understood for giving expression to the sense of the meeting. on the other hand, the domination of a powerful central body, which was held to be essential to the success of the political and agrarian movement, had exercised an influence which added enormously to the difficulty of getting the people to act on their own initiative. though the economic conditions of the irish farmer clearly indicated a need for the application of co-operative effort to all branches of his industry, it was necessary at the beginning to embrace a more limited aim. it happened at the time we commenced our irish work that one branch of farming, the dairying industry, presented features admirably adapted to our methods. this industry was, so to speak, ripe for its industrial development, for its change from a home to a factory industry. new machinery, costly but highly efficient, had enabled the factory product, notably that of denmark and sweden, to compete successfully with the home-made article, both in quality and cost of production. here, it will be observed, was an opportunity for an experiment in co-operative production, under modern industrial conditions, which would put the associative qualities of the irish farmer to a test which the british artisan had not stood quite as well as the founders of the co-operative movement had anticipated. to add to the interest of the situation, capitalists had seized upon the material advantages which the abundant supply of irish milk afforded, and the green pastures of the "golden vein" were studded with snow white creameries which proclaimed the transfer of this great irish industry from the tiller of the soil to the man of commerce. the new-comers secured the milk of the district by giving the farmer much more for his milk than it was worth to him, so long as he pursued the old methods of home manufacture. this induced farmers to go out of the butter-making business. after a while the price was reduced, and the proprietor, finding it necessary to give the suppliers only what they could make out of their milk without his modern equipment, realised profits altogether out of proportion to his share of the capital embarked or the labour involved in the production of the butter. the economic position was ideal for our purpose, and we had no difficulty in explaining it to the farmers themselves. the social problem was the real difficulty. to all suggestions of co-operative action they at first opposed a hopeless _non possumus_. their objections may be summed up thus:--they had never combined for any business purpose. how could they trust the committee they were asked to elect from amongst themselves to expend their money and conduct their business? it was all very well for the proprietor with his ample capital, free hand, and business experience, to work with complicated machinery and to consign his butter out of the reach of the local butter buyer, and to save the waste and delay of the local butter market. but they knew nothing of the business and would only make fools of themselves. the promoters--they were not putting anything into the scheme--how much did they intend to take out?[ ] there was nothing in this attitude of mind which we had not fully anticipated. we were confident that, as we were on sound economic ground, no matter what difficulties might confront us it was only a question of time for the attainment of our ends. all that was required was that we should keep pegging away. my own experience was not encouraging at first. i was, and am, a poor speaker, and in ireland a man who cannot express his thoughts with facility, whether he has got them or not, accentuates the difficulties under which a prophet labours in his own country. i made up for my deficiencies in the first essential of irish public life by engaging a very eloquent political speaker, the late mr. mulhallen marum, m.p., to stump the country. he gave to the propaganda a relish which my prosaic economics altogether lacked. the nationalist band sometimes came out to meet him. we all know the efficiency of the drum in politics and religion, but it seemed to me a little out of place in economics. however, he created an excellent impression, but unhappily he died of heart disease before he had attended more than three or four meetings. this was a severe blow to us, and we toiled away under some temporary discouragement. my own diary records attendance at fifty meetings before a single society had resulted therefrom. it was weary work for a long time. these gatherings were miserable affairs compared with those which greeted our political speakers. on one occasion the agricultural community was represented by the dispensary doctor, the schoolmaster, and the sergeant of police. sometimes, in spite of copious advertising of the meeting, the prosaic nature of the objects had got abroad, and nobody met. mr. anderson, who sometimes accompanied me and sometimes went his rounds alone, had similar experiences. i may quote a passage from some of his reminiscences, recently published in the _irish homestead_, the organ of the co-operative movement in ireland. it was hard and thankless work. there was the apathy of the people and the active opposition of the press and the politicians. it would be hard to say now whether the abuse of the conservative _cork constitution_ or that of the nationalist _eagle_, of skibbereen, was the louder. we were "killing the calves," we were "forcing the young women to emigrate," we were "destroying the industry." mr. plunkett was described as a "monster in human shape," and was adjured to "cease his hellish work." i was described as his "man friday" and as "rough-rider anderson." once, when i thought i had planted a creamery within the precincts of the town of rathkeale, my co-operative apple-cart was upset by a local solicitor who, having elicited the fact that our movement recognised neither political nor religious differences--that the unionist-protestant cow was as dear to us as her nationalist-catholic sister--gravely informed me that our programme would not suit rathkeale. "rathkeale," said he, pompously, "is a nationalist town--nationalist to the backbone--and every pound of butter made in this creamery must be made on nationalist principles, or it shan't be made at all." this sentiment was applauded loudly, and the proceedings terminated. on another occasion a similar project was abandoned because the flow of water to the disused mill which it was proposed to convert into a creamery, passed through a conduit lined with cement originally purchased from a man who now occupied a farm from which another had been evicted. to some minds these little complications would have spelled failure. to my associates they but accentuated the need for the movement which they had so laboriously thought out, and the very nature of the difficulties confirmed them in their belief that the economic doctrine they were preaching was adapted to meet the requirements of the case. and so the event proved. in the year the movement had gathered volume to such an extent--although the societies then numbered but one for every twenty that are in existence to-day--that it became beyond the power of a few individuals to direct its further progress. in april of that year a meeting was held in dublin to inaugurate the irish agricultural organisation society, ltd. (now commonly known as the i.a.o.s.), which was to be the analogue of the co-operative union in england. in the first instance it was to consist of philanthropic persons, but its constitution provided for the inclusion in its membership of the societies which had already been created and those which it would itself create as time went on. it had, and has to-day, a thoroughly representative committee. i was elected the first president, a position which i held until i entered official life, when lord monteagle, a practical philanthropist if ever there was one, became my successor. father finlay, who joined the movement in , and who has devoted the extraordinary influence which he possesses over the rural population of ireland to the dissemination of our economic principles, became vice-president. both he and lord monteagle have been annually re-elected ever since. the growth of the movement in the last nine years under the fostering care of the i.a.o.s. is highly satisfactory. by the autumn of this year ( ) considerably over eight hundred societies had been established, and the number is ever growing; of these were dairy, and agricultural societies, nearly agricultural banks, home industries societies, poultry societies, while there were others with miscellaneous objects. the membership may be estimated--i am writing towards the end of the society's statistical year--at about , , representing some , persons. the combined trade turnover of these societies during the present year will reach approximately £ , , , a figure the meaning of which can only be appreciated when it is remembered that the great majority of the associated farmers are in so small a way of business that in england they would hardly be classed as farmers at all. these societies consist, as has been explained, of groups of farmers who have been taught by organisers that certain branches of their business can be more profitably conducted in association than by individuals acting separately. the principle of agricultural co-operation with its economic advantages will, as time goes on, be further extended by the combined action of societies. with this end in view federations are constantly being formed with a constitution similar to that of the societies, the only difference being that the members of the federation are not individuals but societies, the government of the central body being carried on by delegates from its constituent associations. the two largest of these federations, one for the sale of butter, and another for the combined purchase by societies of their agricultural requirements, have been working successfully for several years. federations, too, are being formed, as societies find that their business can be conducted more economically, for example, in dairying by centralising the manufacture of butter, or in the egg export trade by the alliance of many districts to enable large contracts to be undertaken. in the near future a further development of federation will be required to complete a scheme now under consideration for the mutual insurance of live stock. such a scheme involves the existence of two prime conditions, a local organisation for the purpose of effective supervision, and the spreading of the risk over a large area. in all such enterprises and economic changes the organisation society is either the initiator, or is called in for advice, and its continued existence in a purely advisory capacity as a link between the societies where concerted action is required, will be necessary even when the organisation of farmers into societies is completed. the economic life of rural communities is in continual need of adjustment. now it is an invention like a steam separator which revolutionises an industry. at another time the crisis created by a change in the tariff of a foreign country forces the producer either to find a new outlet for his wares, or to abandon a hitherto profitable employment. a striking instance of the value of organisation and connection with a central advisory body occurred in , when swine fever broke out in denmark, and the exports of live swine fell from , in one year to , in the next. the organisation of the farmers, however, enabled them easily to consult together how best to meet the emergency, and their decision to start co-operative bacon-curing factories was the foundation of their present great export trade in manufactured bacon. i must not overburden with details a narrative intended for readers to whom i merely wish to give a deeper and wider understanding of irish life than most of them probably possess. but there is just one form of agricultural co-operation to which i can usefully devote a few paragraphs, because it throws much light upon the associative qualities of the people and also upon the educational and social value of the movement. i refer to the agricultural banks, more properly called credit associations, which have been organised upon the raiffeisen system. before the irish agricultural organisation society was formed we had read of these institutions, and of the marvellously beneficial effect they had produced upon the most depressed rural communities abroad. but only in the last few years have we fully realised that they are even more required and are likely to do more good in ireland than in any other country; for on the psychological side of our work we formerly but dimly saw things which we now see clearly. the exact purpose of these organisations is to create credit as a means of introducing capital into the agricultural industry. they perform the apparent miracle of giving solvency to a community composed almost entirely of insolvent individuals. the constitution of these bodies, which can, of course, be described only in broad outline here, is somewhat startling. they have no subscribed capital, but every member is liable for the entire debts of the association. consequently the association takes good care to admit men of approved character and capacity only. it starts by borrowing a sum of money on the joint and several security of its members. a member wishing to borrow from the association is not required to give tangible security, but must bring two sureties. he fills up an application form which states, among other things, what he wants the money for. the rules provide--and this is the salient feature of the system--that a loan shall be made for a productive purpose only, that is, a purpose which, in the judgment of the other members of the association as represented by a committee democratically elected from among themselves, will enable the borrower to repay the loan out of the results of the use made of the money lent. raiffeisen held, and our experience in ireland has fully confirmed his opinion, that in the poorest communities there is a perfectly safe basis of security in the honesty and industry of its members. this security is not valuable to the ordinary commercial lender, such as the local joint stock bank. even if such lenders had the intimate knowledge possessed by the committee of one of these associations as to the character and capacity of the borrower, they would not be able to satisfy themselves that the loan was required for a really productive purpose, nor would they be able to see that it was properly applied to the stipulated object. one of the rules of the co-operative banks provides for the expulsion of a member who does not apply the money to the agreed productive purpose. but although these "banks" are almost invariably situated in very poor districts, there has been no necessity to put this rule in force in a single instance. social influences seem to be quite sufficient to secure obedience to the association's laws. another advantage conferred by the association is that the term for which money is advanced is a matter of agreement between the borrower and the bank. the hard and fast term of three months which prevails in ireland for small loans is unsuited to the requirements of the agricultural industry--as for instance, when a man borrows money to sow a crop, and has to repay it before harvest. the society borrows at four or five per cent, and lends at five or six per cent. in some cases the congested districts board or the department of agriculture have made loans to these banks at three per cent. this enables the societies to lend at the popular rate of one penny for the use of one pound for a month. the expenses of administration are very small. as the credit of these associations develops, they will become a depository for the savings of the community, to the great advantage of both lender and borrower. the latter generally makes an enormous profit out of these loans, which have accordingly gained the name of 'the lucky money,' and we find, in practice, that he always repays the association and almost invariably with punctuality. the sketch i have given of the agricultural banks will, perhaps, be sufficient to show what an immense educational and economic benefit they are likely to confer when they are widely extended throughout ireland, as i hope they will be in the near future. under this system, which, to quote the report of the indian famine commission, , 'separates the working bees from the drones,' the industrious men of the community who had no clear idea before of the meaning or functions of capital or credit, and who were generally unable to get capital into their industry except at exorbitant rates of interest and upon unsuitable terms, are now able to get, not always, indeed, all the money they want, but all the money they can well employ for the improvement of their industry. there is no fear of rash investment of capital in enterprises believed to be, but not in reality productive--the committee take good care of that. the whole community is taught the difference between borrowing to spend and borrowing to make. you have the collective wisdom of the best men in the association helping the borrower to decide whether he ought to borrow or not, and then assisting him, if only from motives of self-interest, to make the loan fulfil the purpose for which it was made. i was delighted to find when i was making an enquiry into the working of the system that, whereas the debt-laden peasants had formerly concealed their indebtedness, of which they were ashamed, those who were in debt to the new banks were proud of the fact, as it was the best testimonial to their character for honesty and industry.[ ] one other sphere of activity worked by the co-operative associations needs a passing notice. the desire that, together with material amelioration, there should be a corresponding intellectual advancement and a greater beauty in life has prompted many of the farmers' societies to use their organisation for higher ends. a considerable number of them have started village libraries, and by an admirable selection of books have brought to their members, not only the means of educating themselves in the more difficult technical problems of their industry, but also a means of access to that enchanted world of irish thought which inspires the gaelic revival to which i have already referred. social gatherings of every kind, dances, lectures, concerts, and such like entertainments, which have the two-fold effect of brightening rural life and increasing the attachment of the members to their society, are becoming a common feature in the movement, and this more human aspect has attracted to it the attention of many who do not understand its economic side. we have gratifying evidence from many of the clergy that the movement thus developed has kept at home young people who would otherwise have fled from the continued hardship and intellectual emptiness of rural life at home. these results are in no small measure due to the zeal and devotion of the governing body and staff of the i.a.o.s. the general policy of the society is guided by a committee of twenty-four members, one-half of whom are elected by the individual subscribers and the other half by the affiliated societies. it is representative in the best sense and influential accordingly. the success of the committee is no doubt mainly due to the wisdom which they have displayed in the selection of the staff. in the most important post, that of secretary, they have kept on my chief fellow-worker in the early struggle, mr. r.a. anderson, who has devoted himself to the cause with all the energy of a nature at once enthusiastic, unselfish, and practical, and who has succeeded in inspiring his staff of organisers and experts with his own spirit. among these, two deserve special mention, mr. george w. russell, one of the assistant secretaries, who has, under the _nom de plume_ "a.e.," attained fame for a poetry of rare distinction of thought and diction, and mr. p.j. hannon, the other assistant secretary, who has proved himself a splendid propagandist. each of these gentlemen has brought to the movement a zeal and ability which could only come of a devotion to high ideals of patriotism, curiously combined with a shrewd practical instinct for carrying on varied and responsible business undertakings. with the growing work the staff has been repeatedly augmented to enable the central society to keep pace with the demand made by groups of farmers to be initiated into the principles of co-operative organisation and the details of its application to the particular branches of farming carried on in their several districts. at the same time the societies which have been established need, during their earlier years, and with each extension of their operations, constant advice and supervision. hence skilled organisers have to be kept to form co-operative dairy societies, inspect creameries, and give technical advice upon the manufacture and sale of butter, the care of machinery, the adequacy of the water supply, the drainage system, and many similar technical questions. others are employed to start poultry societies, which when organised have still to be instructed by a danish expert in the proper method of packing, selecting, and grading the eggs for export. in tillage districts there is a constant demand for organisers of purely agricultural societies, which aim at the joint purchase of seeds and manures, of implements and other farm requisites, and at the better disposal of produce; while the growing importance of an improved system of agricultural credit keeps four organisers of agricultural banks constantly at work home industries, bee-keeping, and horticulture, may be added to the objects for which societies have been formed and which require separate expert organisers. and in addition to all this work, the central association has found it necessary to keep a staff of accountants, versed in the principles of co-operative organisation, to instruct these miscellaneous societies in simple and efficient systems of bookkeeping, and in the general principles of conducting business. to complete the description of the propagandist activities of the central body, there is a ceaseless flow of leaflets and circulars containing advice and direction to bodies of farmers who, for the first time in their lives, have combined for business purposes; while a little weekly paper, the _irish homestead_, acts as the organ of the movement, promotes the exchange of ideas between societies scattered throughout the country, furnishes useful information upon all matters connected with their business operations, and keeps constantly before the associated farmers the economic principles which must be observed, and, above all, the spirit in which the work must be approached, if the movement is to fulfil its mission.[ ] one of the difficulties incidental to a movement of this kind, which, for the reasons already set forth, had to be rapidly and widely extended, was the enormous cost to its supporters. it is needless to say that such a staff as i have described could not be kept continuously travelling by rail and road for so many years without the provision of a large fund. these officers must obviously be men with exceptional qualifications, if they are not only to impress the thought of their agricultural audiences, but also to move them to action, and to sustain the newly organised societies through the initial difficulties of their unfamiliar enterprise. such men are not to be found idle, and if they preach this gospel, they are entitled to live by it. they are not by any means overpaid, but their salaries in the aggregate amount to a large annual sum. before the creation of the department of agriculture and technical instruction in large sums were spent by the i.a.o.s. not only in its proper work of organisation, but also in giving technical instruction, which was found to be essential to commercial success. when the society was relieved of this educational work many of its supporters withdrew their subscriptions under the impression that there was now no longer any need for its continued existence. but so far from the society's usefulness having ceased, it has now become more important than ever that the doctrine of organised self-help, which must be the foundation of any sound irish economic policy, should be insisted upon and put into practical operation as widely as possible. all those who are devoting their lives to the firm establishment of this self-help movement among the chief wealth-producers of the country are agreed that no better educational work can be done at the moment than that which is bringing about so salutary a change in the economic attitude of the irish mind. it is not to be wondered at that the greater part of the necessary funds should have been drawn from a very limited circle of public-spirited men capable of grasping the significance of a movement the practical effect of which would appear to be permanent only to those who had a deep insight into irish problems.[ ] the difficulty of a successful appeal to a wider public has been the impossibility of giving in brief form an adequate explanation, such as that which it is hoped these pages will afford, of the part the movement was to play in irish life. we were asked whether our scheme was business or philanthropy. if philanthropy, it would probably do more harm than good. if business, why was it not self-supporting? i remember hearing the movement ridiculed in the house of commons by a prominent irish member on the ground that the accounts of the i.a.o.s. showed that £ , (£ , would be nearer the mark now) had been put into the 'business,' and that this large capital had been entirely lost! when we proved that agricultural co-operation brought a large profit to the members of the societies we formed, it was suggested that a small part of this profit would give us all we required for our organising work. so it will in time, but if instead of merely refusing financial assistance to our converts, we were, on the other hand, to demand it from them, we certainly should not lessen the difficulty of launching our movement among the farmers of ireland. some of our critics denounced the expenditure of so much money for which, in their opinion, there was nothing to show, and said that the time had come to stop this 'spoon-feeding.' when those for whose exclusive benefit the costly work had been undertaken learned that all we had to offer was the cold advice that they should help themselves, they not infrequently raised a wholly different objection to our economic doctrine. spoonfeeding they might have tolerated, but there was nothing in the spoon! the movement has survived all these criticisms. the lack of moral and of financial support which retarded its progress in the early years, has been so far surmounted the movement may now, i think, appeal for further help as one that has justified its existence. the opinion that it has done so is not held only by those who are engaged in promoting it, nor by irish observers alone. the efforts of the irish farmers so to reorganise their industry that they may hopefully approach the solution of the problems of rural life are being watched by economists and administrators abroad. enquirers have come to ireland during the last two years from germany, france, canada, the united states, india, south africa, cyprus and the west indies, having been drawn here by the desire to understand the combination of economic and human reform. it was not alone the economic advantages of the movement which interested them, but the way in which the organisation at the same time acted upon the character and awoke those forces of self-help and comradeship in which lies the surety of any enduring national prosperity. a native governor from a famine district in the madras presidency, who, perhaps, better than any one realised the importance of these human factors, because the lethargy of his own people had forced it on his notice, said, when he was referred to the department of agriculture and technical instruction for information, "oh, don't speak to me about government departments. they are the same all over the world. i come here to learn what the irish people are doing to help themselves and how you awaken the will and the initiative." i hope to show later that state assistance properly applied is not necessarily demoralising but very much the reverse. it is consoling, too, to our national pride, long wounded by contemptuous references to our industrial incapacity as compared with our neighbours, to find that our latest efforts are regarded by them as worthy of imitation. from the other side of the channel no less than five county councils have sent deputations of farmers to ireland to study the progress of the movement, and already an english organisation society, expressly modelled upon its irish namesake, has been established and is endeavouring to carry out the same work. it is not surprising that the facts which i have cited should be interesting to the honest inquirer. a summary of actual achievement will show that this movement has spread all over ireland, that its principle of organised self-help has been universally accepted, and that nothing but time and the necessary funds are required by its promoters to give it, within the range of its applicability, general effect. it is no exaggeration to say that there has been set in motion and carried beyond the experimental stage a revolution in agricultural methods which will enable our farmers to compete with their rivals abroad, both in production and in distribution, under far more favourable conditions than before. alike in its material and in its moral achievements this movement has provided an effective means whereby the peasant proprietary about to be created will be able to face and solve the vital problems before it, problems for which no improvement in land tenure, no rent reductions actual or prospective, could otherwise provide an adequate solution. furthermore, nothing could be more evident to any close observer of irish life than the fact that had it not been for the new spirit which the workers in this movement, mostly humble unknown men, had generated, the attitude of the irish democracy towards england's latest concession to ireland would have been very different from what it is. in the last dozen years hundreds and thousands of meetings have been held to discuss matters of business importance to our rural communities. at these meetings landlord and tenant-farmer have often met each other for the first time on a footing of friendly equality, as fellow-members of co-operative societies. it is significant that all through the negotiations which culminated in the dunraven treaty, landlords who had come into the life of the people in connection with the co-operative movement took a prominent part in favour of conciliation. i would further give it as my opinion, whatever it may be worth, that the movement has exercised a profound influence in those departments of our national life where, as i have shown in previous chapters, new forces must be not only recognised but accepted as essential to national well-being, if we are to cherish what is good and free ourselves from what is bad in the historical evolution of our national life. in the domain of politics it is hard to estimate even the political value of the exclusion of politics from deliberations and activities where they have no proper place. in our religious life, where intolerance has perpetuated anti-industrial tendencies, the new movement is seen to be bringing together for business purposes men who had previously no dealings with each other, but who have now learned that the doctrine of self-help by mutual help involves no danger to faith and no sacrifice of hope, while it engenders a genuinely christian interpretation of charity.[ ] i cannot conclude the story of this movement without paying a brief tribute of respect and gratitude to those true patriots who have borne the daily burden of the work. i hope the picture i have given of their aims and achievements will lead to a just appreciation of their services to their country. by these men and women applause or even recognition was not expected or desired: they knew that it was to those who had the advantages of leisure, and what the world calls position, that the credit for their work would be given. but it is of national importance that altruistic service should be understood and given freedom of expansion. i have, therefore, presented as faithfully as i could the origin and development of one of the least understood, but in my opinion, most fruitful movements which has ever been undertaken by a body of social and economic reformers. as irish leaders they have preferred to remain obscure, conscious that the most damaging criticism which could be applied to their work would be that it depended on their own personal qualities or acts for its permanent utility. but most assuredly the real conquerors of the world are those who found upon human character their hopes of human progress. footnotes: [ ] the story of the conversion of some of the tenants on the vandeleur estate into a co-operative community in by mr. e.t. craig, a scotchman who took up the agency of the property, told in the _history of ralahine_ (london, trübner & co., ) is worth reading. the experiment, most hopeful as far as it went, was only two years in existence when the landlord gambled away his property at cards in a dublin club and the utopia was sold up. but in the co-operative world mr. craig, who died as recently as , is revered as the author of the most advanced experiment in the realisation of co-operative ideals. the economic significance of the narrative is obviously not important, and i doubt whether joint ownership of land, except for the purpose of common grazing, is a practical ideal. the ready response, however, of the irish peasants to mr. craig's enthusiasm and the way in which they took up the idea form an interesting study of the irish character. [ ] the late canon bagot had done good service in explaining the value of the new machinery; but unhappily the vital importance of co-operative organisation was not then understood. he formed some joint stock companies with the result that, having no co-operative spirit to offset their commercial inexperience, they all proved, instead of co-operative successes, competitive failures. this fact added to our early difficulties. [ ] it should be noted that this form of association for credit purposes, owing to its peculiar constitution, applies only to a grade of the community whose members all live on about the same scale and that a fairly low one. it is obvious that unlimited liability would lose its efficacy in developing the sense of responsibility if some members of the association were so substantial that its creditors would make them primarily responsible in the event of failure. the fact, however, that the scheme has worked with unvarying success among the poorest of the poor, and the most irish of the irish, renders it as good an illustration as can be found of what may be done by sympathetic and intelligent treatment of irish economic problems. mr. henry w. wolff, the foremost authority on people's banks in these islands, and mr. r.a. yerburgh, m.p., a generous subscriber to the irish agricultural organisation society, have taken great interest in this part of the movement and have rendered much assistance. [ ] those who wish to go more fully into the details of the co-operative agricultural movement in ireland should write to the secretary irish agricultural organisation society, lincoln-place, dublin. the publications of the society are somewhat voluminous, and the inquirer should intimate any particular branches of the subject in which he is especially interested. those wishing to keep _au courant_ with the further development of the movement would do well to take in the _irish homestead_, post free _ s. d._ per annum. [ ] the chief donors belong to the class of philanthropists who do not care to advertise their beneficence. i, therefore, respect their wishes and withhold their names. [ ] i recall an occasion when the vice-president of the i.a.o.s. (a nationalist in politics and a jesuit priest), who has been ever ready to lend a hand as volunteer organiser when the prior claims of his religious and educational duties allowed, found himself before an audience which he was informed, when he came to the meeting, consisted mainly of orangemen. he began his address by referring to the new and somewhat strange environment into which he had drifted. he did not, however, see why this circumstance should lead to any misunderstanding between himself and his audience. he had never been able to understand what a battle fought upon a famous irish river two centuries ago had got to do with the practical issues of to-day which he had come to discuss. the dispute in question was, after all, between a scotchman and a dutchman, and if it had not yet been decided, they might be left to settle it themselves--that is if too great a gulf did not separate them. chapter viii. the recess committee. the new movement, six years after its initiation, had succeeded beyond the most sanguine expectations of its promoters. all over the country the idea of self-help was taking firm hold of the imagination of the people. co-operation had got, so to speak, into the air to such an extent that, whereas at the beginning, as i well remember, our chief difficulty had been to popularise a principle to which one section of the community was strongly opposed, and in which no section believed, it was now no longer necessary to explain or support the theory, but only to show how it could be advantageously applied to some branch of the farmer's industry. it was not, strange to say, the economic advantage which had chiefly appealed to the quick intelligence of the irish farmer, but rather the novel sensation that he was thinking for himself, and that while improving his own condition he was working for others. this attitude was essential to the success of the movement, because had it not been for a vein of altruism, the "strong" farmers would have held aloof, and the small men would have been discouraged by the abstention of the better-off and presumably more enlightened of their class. perhaps, too, we owed something to the recognition on the part of the working farmers of ireland that they were showing a capacity to grasp an idea which had so far failed to penetrate the bucolic intelligence of the predominant partner. whatever the causes to which the success of the movement was attributable, those who were responsible for its promotion felt in the year that it had reached a stage in its development when it was but a question of time to complete the projected revolution in the farming industry, the substitution of combined for isolated methods of production and distribution. it was then further brought home to them that the principle of self-help was destined to obtain general acceptance in rural ireland, and that the time had come when a sound system of state aid to agriculture might be fruitfully grafted on to this native growth of local effort and self-reliance. from time to time our public men had included in the list of irish grievances the fact that england enjoyed a board of agriculture while ireland had no similar institution. as a matter of fact a mere replica of the english board would not have fulfilled a tithe of the objects we had in view. that much at least we knew, but beyond that our information was vague. what, having regard to irish rural conditions, should be the character and constitution of any department called into being to administer the aid required? here indeed was a vital and difficult problem. even those of us who had given the closest thought to the matter did not know exactly what was wanted; nor, if we had known our own minds, could we have formulated our demand in such a way as to have obtained a backing from representative public bodies, associations, and individuals sufficient to secure its concession. instead, therefore, of agitating in the conventional manner we determined to try to direct the best thought of the country to the problem in hand, with a view to satisfying the government, and also ourselves, as to what was wanted. we had confidence that a demand presented to parliament, based upon calm and deliberate debate among the most competent of irishmen, would be conceded. the story of this agitation, its initiation, its conduct, and its final success will, i am sure, be of interest to all who feel any concern for the welfare of ireland. i have accepted the common characterisation of the irish as a leader-following people. when we come to analyse the human material out of which a strong national life may be constructed, we find that there are in ireland--in this connection i exclude the influence of the clergy, with which i have dealt specifically in another chapter--two elements of leadership, the political and the industrial. the political leaders are seen to enjoy an influence over the great majority of the people which is probably as powerful as that of any political leaders in ancient or modern times; but as a class they certainly do not take a prominent, or even an active part in business life. this fact is not introduced with any controversial purpose, and i freely acknowledge can be interpreted in a sense altogether creditable to the nationalist members. the other element of leadership contains all that is prominent in industrial and commercial life, and few countries could produce better types of such leaders than can be found in the northern capital of the country. but, unhappily, these men are debarred from all influence upon the thought and action of the great majority of the people, who are under the domination of the political leaders. this is one of the strange anomalies of irish life to which i have already referred. its recognition, and the desire to utilise the knowledge of business men as well as politicians, took practical effect in the formation of the recess committee. the idea underlying this project was the combination of these two forces of leadership--the force with political influence and that of proved industrial and commercial capacity--in order to concentrate public opinion, which was believed to be inclining in this direction, on the material needs of the country. the general election of had, by universal admission, postponed, for some years at any rate, any possibility of home rule, and the cessation of the bitter feelings aroused when home rule seemed imminent provided the opportunity for an appeal to the irish people in behalf of the views which i have adumbrated. the appeal took the form of a letter, dated august th, , by the author to the irish press, under the quite sincere, if somewhat grandiloquent, title, "a proposal affecting the general welfare of ireland." the letter set out the general scope and purpose of the scheme. after a confession of the writer's continued opposition to home rule, the admission was made that if the average irish elector, who is more intelligent than the average british elector, were also as prosperous, as industrious, and as well educated, his continued demand, in the proper constitutional way, for home rule would very likely result in the experiment being one day tried. on the other hand, the opinion was expressed that if the material conditions of the great body of our countrymen were advanced, if they were encouraged in industrial enterprise, and were provided with practical education in proportion to their natural intelligence, they would see that a political development on lines similar to those adopted in england was, considering the necessary relations between the two countries, best for ireland; and then they would cease to desire what is ordinarily understood as home rule. a basis for united action between politicians on both sides of the irish controversy was then suggested. finding ourselves still opposed upon the main question, but all anxious to promote the welfare of the country, and confident that, as this was advanced, our respective policies would be confirmed, it would appear, it was suggested, to be alike good patriotism and good policy to work for the material and social advancement of the people. why then, it was asked, should any irishman hesitate to enter at once upon that united action between men of both parties which alone, under existing conditions, could enable either party to do any real and lasting good to the country? the letter proceeded to indicate economic legislation which, though sorely needed by ireland, was hopelessly unattainable unless it could be removed from the region of controversy. the _modus co-operandi_ suggested was as follows:--a committee sitting in the parliamentary recess, whence it came to be known as the recess committee, was to be formed, consisting in the first instance, of irish members of parliament nominated by the leaders of the different sections. these nominees were to invite to join them any irishmen whose capacity, knowledge, or experience might be of service to the committee, irrespective of the political party or religious persuasion to which they might belong. the day had come, the letter went on to say, when "we unionists, without abating one jot of our unionism, and nationalists, without abating one jot of their nationalism, can each show our faith in the cause for which we have fought so bitterly and so long, by sinking our party differences for our country's good, and leaving our respective policies for the justification of time." needless to say, few were sanguine enough to hope that such a committee would ever be brought together. if that were accomplished some prophesied that its members would but emulate the fame of the kilkenny cats. a severe blow was dealt to the project at the outset by the refusal of mr. justin mccarthy, who then spoke for the largest section of the nationalist representatives, to have anything to do with it. his reply to the letter must be given in full:-- my dear mr. plunkett, i am sure i need not say that any effort to promote the general welfare of ireland has my fullest sympathy. i readily acknowledge and entirely believe in the sincerity and good purpose of your effort, but i cannot see my way to associate myself with it. your frank avowal in your letter of august th is the expression of a belief that if your policy could be successfully carried out the irish people "would cease to desire home rule." now, i do not believe that anything in the way of material improvement conferred by the parliament at westminster, or by dublin castle, could extinguish the national desire for home rule. still, i do not feel that i could possibly take part in any organisation which had for its object the seeking of a substitute for that which i believe to be ireland's greatest need--home rule. yours very truly, justin mccarthy. , eaton-terrace, s.w., october nd, . i had not much hope that i could influence mr. mccarthy's decision; but it was so serious an obstacle to further action that i made one more appeal. i wrote to my respected and courteous correspondent, pointing out the misconception of my proposal, which had arisen from the use made of the six words quoted by him, which were hardly intelligible without the context. i asked him to reconsider his refusal to join in the proposal for promoting the material improvement of our country, on account of a contingency which he confidently declared could not arise. but in those days economic seed fell upon stony political ground. the position was rendered still more difficult by the action of colonel saunderson, the leader of the irish unionist party, who wrote to the newspapers declaring that he would not sit on a committee with mr. john redmond. on the other hand, mr. redmond, speaking then for the "independent" party, consisting of less than a dozen members, but containing some men who agreed with mr. field's admission in the house of commons that "man cannot live on politics alone," joined the committee and acted throughout in a manner which was broad, statesmanlike, conciliatory, and as generous as it was courageous. his letter of acceptance ran as follows:-- dear mr. plunkett, i received your letter, in which you ask me to co-operate with you in bringing together a small committee of members of parliament to discuss certain measures to be proposed next session for the benefit of ireland. while i cannot take as sanguine a view as you do of the benefits likely to flow from such a proceeding, i am unwilling to take the responsibility of declining to aid in any effort to promote useful legislation for ireland. i will, under the circumstances, co-operate with you in bringing such a committee as you suggest together. very truly yours, j.e. redmond. october st, . before these decisions were officially announced the idea had "caught on." public bodies throughout the country endorsed the scheme. the parliamentarians, who formed the nucleus of the committee, came together and invited prominent men from all quarters to join them. a committee which, though informal and self-appointed, might fairly claim to be representative in every material respect, was thus constituted on the lines laid down. truly, it was a strange council over which i had the honour to preside. all shades of politics were there--lords mayo and monteagle, mr. dane and sir thomas lea (tories and liberal unionist peers and members of parliament) sitting down beside mr. john redmond and his parliamentary followers. it was found possible, in framing proposals fraught with moral, social, and educational results, to secure the cordial agreement of the late rev. dr. kane, grand master of the belfast orangemen, and of the eminent jesuit educationist, father thomas finlay, of the royal university. the o'conor don, the able chairman of the financial relations commission, and mr. john ross, m.p., now one of his majesty's judges, both unionists, were balanced by the lord mayor of dublin, and mr. t.c. harrington, m.p., who now occupies that post, both nationalists. the late sir john arnott fitly represented the commercial enterprise of the south, while such men as mr. thomas sinclair, universally regarded as one of the wisest of irish public men, sir william ewart, head of the leading linen concern in the north, sir daniel dixon, now lord mayor of belfast, sir james musgrave, chairman of the belfast harbour board, and mr. thomas andrews, a well-known flax-spinner and chairman of the belfast and county down railway, would be universally accepted as the highest authorities upon the needs of the business community which has made ulster famous in the industrial world. mr. t.p. gill, besides undertaking investigation of the utmost value into state aid to agriculture in france and denmark, acted as hon. secretary to the committee, of which he was a member. the story of our deliberations and ultimate conclusions cannot be set forth here except in the barest outline. we instituted an inquiry into the means by which the government could best promote the development of our agricultural and industrial resources, and despatched commissioners to countries of europe whose conditions and progress might afford some lessons for ireland. most of this work was done for us by the late eminent statistician, mr. michael mulhall. our funds did not admit of an inquiry in the united states or the colonies. however, we obtained invaluable information as to the methods by which countries which were our chief rivals in agricultural and industrial production have been enabled to compete successfully with our producers even in our own markets. our commissioners were instructed in each case to collect the facts necessary to enable us to differentiate between the parts played respectively by state aid and the efforts of the people themselves in producing these results. with this information before us, after long and earnest deliberation we came to a unanimous agreement upon the main facts of the situation with which we had to deal, and upon the recommendations for remedial legislation which we should make to the government. the substance of our recommendations was that a department of government should be specially created, with a minister directly responsible to parliament at its head. the central body was to be assisted by a consultative council representative of the interests concerned. the department was to be adequately endowed from the imperial treasury, and was to administer state aid to agriculture and industries in ireland upon principles which were fully described. the proposal to amalgamate agriculture and industries under one department was adopted largely on account of the opinion expressed by m. tisserand, late director-general of agriculture in france, one of the highest authorities in europe upon the administration of state aid to agriculture.[ ] the creation of a new minister directly responsible to parliament was considered a necessary provision. ireland is governed by a number of boards, all, with the exception of the board of works (which is really a branch of the treasury), responsible to the chief secretary--practically a whole cabinet under one hat--who is supposed to be responsible for them to parliament and to the lord lieutenant. the bearers of this burden are generally men of great ability. but no chief secretary could possibly take under his wing yet another department with the entirely new and important functions now to be discharged. what these functions were to be need not here be described, as the department thus 'agitated' for has now been three years at work and will form the subject of the next two chapters. on august st, , less than a year from the issue of the invitation to the political leaders, the report was forwarded to the chief secretary to the lord lieutenant for ireland, with a covering letter, setting out the considerations upon which the committee relied for the justification of its course of action. attention was drawn to the terms of the original proposal, its exceptional nature and essential informality, the political conditions which appeared to make it opportune, the spirit in which it was responded to by those who were invited to join, and the degree of public approval which had been accorded to our action. we were able to claim for the committee that it was thoroughly representative of those agricultural and industrial interests, north and south, with which the report was concerned. there were two special features in the brief history of this unique coming together of irishmen which will strike any man familiar with the conditions of irish public life. the first was the way in which the business element, consisting of men already deeply engaged in their various callings--and, indeed, selected for that very reason--devoted time and labour to the service of their country. still more significant was the fact that the political element on the committee should have come to an absolutely unanimous agreement upon a policy which, though not intended to influence the trend of politics, was yet bound to have far-reaching consequences upon the political thought of the country, and upon the positions of parties and leaders. it was thought only fair to the nationalist members of the committee that every precaution should be taken to prevent their being placed in a false position. 'to avoid any possible misconception,' the covering letter ran, 'as to the attitude of those members of the committee who are not supporters of the present government, it is right here to state that, while under existing political conditions they agreed in recommending a certain course to the government, they wish it to be understood that their political principles remain unaltered, and that, were it immediately possible, they would prefer that the suggested reforms should be preceded by the constitutional changes of which they are the well-known advocates.' it is interesting to note that the committee claimed favourable consideration for their proposals on the ground that they sought to act as 'a channel of communication between the irish government and irish public opinion.' little interest, they pointed out, had been hitherto aroused in those economic problems for which the report suggested some solution. they expressed the hope that their action would do something to remedy this defect, especially in view of the importance which foreign governments had found it necessary to attach to public opinion in working out their various systems of state aid to agriculture and industries. at the same time the committee emphasised, in the covering letter, their reliance on individual and combined effort rather than on state aid. they were able to point out that, in asking for the latter, they had throughout attached the utmost importance to its being granted in such a manner as to evoke and supplement, and in no way be a substitute for self-help. if they appeared to give undue prominence to the capabilities of state initiation, it was to be remembered that they were dealing with economic conditions which had been artificially produced, and which, therefore, might require exceptional treatment of a temporary nature to bring about a permanent remedy. i fear those most intimately connected with the above occurrences will regard this chapter as a very inadequate description of events so unprecedented and so full of hope for the future. my purpose is, however, to limit myself, in dealing with the past, to such details as are necessary to enable the reader to understand the present facts of irish life, and to build upon them his own conclusions as to the most hopeful line of future development. i shall, therefore, pass rapidly in review the events which led to the fruition of the labours of the recess committee. public opinion in favour of the new proposals grew rapidly. before the end of the year ( ) a deputation, representing all the leading agricultural and industrial interests of the country, waited upon the irish government, in order to press upon them the urgent need for the new department. the lord lieutenant, after describing the gathering as 'one of the most notable deputations which had ever come to lay its case before the irish government,' and noting the 'remarkable growth of public opinion' in favour of the policy they were advocating, expressed his heartfelt sympathy with the case which had been presented, and his earnest desire--which was well known--to proceed with legislation for the agricultural and industrial development of the country at the earliest moment. the demand made upon the government was, argumentatively, already irresistible. but economic agitation of this kind takes time to acquire dynamic force. mr. gerald balfour introduced a bill the following year, but it had to be withdrawn to leave the way clear for the other great irish measure which revolutionised local government. the unconventional agitation went on upon the original lines, appealing to that latent public opinion which we were striving to develop. in another bill was introduced, and, owing to its masterly handling by the chief secretary in the house of commons, ably seconded by the strong support given by lord cadogan, who was in the cabinet, it became law. i cannot conclude this chapter without a word upon the extraordinary misunderstanding of mr. gerald balfour's policy to which the obscuring atmosphere surrounding all irish questions gave rise. in one respect that policy was a new departure of the utmost importance. he proved himself ready to take a measure from ireland and carry it through, instead of insisting upon a purely english scheme which he could call his own. these pre-digested foods had already done much to destroy our political digestion, and it was time we were given something to grow, to cook, and to assimilate for ourselves. it will be seen, too, in the next chapter, that he had realised the potentiality for good of the new forces in irish life to which he gave play in his two great linked acts--one of them popularising local government, and the other creating a new department which was to bring the government and the people together in an attempt to develop the resources of the country. yet his eminently sane and far-seeing policy was regarded in many quarters as a sacrifice of unionist interests in ireland. its real effect was to endow unionism with a positive as well as a negative policy. but all reformers know that the further ahead they look, the longer they have to wait for their justification. meanwhile, we may leave out of consideration the division of honour or of blame for what has been done. the only matter of historic interest is to arrive at a correct measure of the progress made. the new movement had thus completed the first and second stages of its mission. the idea of self-help had become a growing reality, and upon this foundation an edifice of state aid had been erected. when a nationalist member met a tory member of the recess committee he laughed over the success with which they had wheedled a measure of industrial home rule out of a unionist government. none the less they cordially agreed that the people would rise to their economic responsibility. the promoters of the movement had faith that this new departure in english government would be more than justified by the english test, and that in the new sphere of administration the government would be accorded, without prejudice, of course, to the ultimate views either of unionists or home rulers, not only the consent, but the whole-hearted co-operation of the governed. footnotes: [ ] the memorandum which he kindly contributed to the recess committee was copied into the annual report of the united states department of agriculture for . chapter ix. a new departure in irish administration. to the average english member of parliament, the passing of an act "for establishing a department of agriculture and other industries and technical instruction in ireland and for other purposes connected therewith," probably signified little more than the removal of another irish grievance, which might not be imaginary, by the concession to ireland of an equivalent to the board of agriculture in england. in reality the difference between the two institutions is as wide as the difference between the two islands. the chief interest of the new department consists in the free play which it gives to the pent-up forces of a re-awakening life. a new institution is at best but a new opportunity, but the department starts with the unique advantage that, unlike most irish institutions, it is one which we irishmen planned ourselves and for which we have worked. for this reason the opportunity is one to which we may hope to rise. before i can convey any clear impression of the part which the department is, i believe, destined to play on the stage of irish public life, it will be necessary for me to give a somewhat detailed description of its functions and constitution. the subject is perhaps dull and technical; but readers cannot understand the ireland of to-day unless they have in their minds not only an accurate conception of the new moral forces in irish life and of the movements to which these forces have given rise, but also a knowledge of the administrative machinery and methods by which the people and the government are now, for the first time since the union, working together towards the building up of the ireland of to-morrow. the department consists of the president (who is the chief secretary for the time being) and the vice-president. the staff is composed of a secretary, two assistant secretaries (one in respect of agriculture and one in respect of technical instruction), as well as certain heads of branches and a number of inspectors, instructors, officers and servants. the recess committee, it will be remembered, had laid stress upon the importance of having at the head of the department a new minister who should be directly responsible to parliament; and, accordingly, it was arranged that the vice-president should be its direct ministerial head. the act provided that the department should be assisted in its work by a council of agriculture and two boards, and also by a consultative committee to advise upon educational questions. but before discussing the constitution of these bodies, it is necessary to explain the nature of the task assigned to the new department which began work in april, . it was created to fulfil two main purposes. in the first place, it was to consolidate in one authority certain inter-related functions of government in connection with the business concerns of the people which, until the creation of the department, were scattered over some half-dozen boards, and to place these functions under the direct control and responsibility of the new minister. the second purpose was to provide means by which the government and the people might work together in developing the resources of the country so far as state intervention could be legitimately applied to this end. to accomplish the first object, two distinct government departments, the veterinary department of the privy council and the office of the inspectors of irish fisheries, were merged in the new department. the importance to the economic life of the country of having the laws for safeguarding our flocks and herds from disease, our crops from insect pests, our farmers from fraud in the supply of fertilisers and feeding stuffs and in the adulteration of foods (which compete with their products), administered by a department generally concerned for the farming industry need not be laboured. similarly, it was well that the laws for the protection of both sea and inland fisheries should be administered by the authority whose function it was to develop these industries. there was also transferred from south kensington the administration of the science and arts grants and the grant in aid of technical instruction, together with the control of several national institutions, the most important being the royal college of science and the metropolitan school of art; for they, in a sense, would stand at the head of much of the new work which would be required for the contemplated agricultural and industrial developments. the albert institute at glasnevin and the munster institute in cork, both institutions for teaching practical agriculture, were, as a matter of course, handed over from the board of national education. the desirability of bringing order and simplicity into these branches of administration, where co-related action was not provided for before, was obvious. a few years ago, to take a somewhat extreme case, when a virulent attack of potato disease broke out which demanded prompt and active governmental intervention, the task of instructing farmers how to spray their potatoes was shared by no fewer than six official or semi-official bodies. the consolidation of administration effected by the act, in addition to being a real step towards efficiency and economy, relieved the chief secretary of an immense amount of detailed work to which he could not possibly give adequate personal attention, and made it possible for him to devote a greater share of his time to the larger problems of general irish legislation and finance. the newly created powers of the department, which were added to and co-ordinated with the various pre-existing functions of the several departments whose consolidation i have mentioned above, fairly fulfilled the recommendation of the recess committee that the department should have 'a wide reference and a free hand.' these powers include the aiding, improving, and developing of agriculture in all its branches; horticulture, forestry, home and cottage industries; sea and inland fisheries; the aiding and facilitating of the transit of produce; and the organisation of a system of education in science and art, and in technology as applied to these various subjects. the provision of technical instruction suitable to the needs of the few manufacturing centres in ireland was included, but need not be dealt with in any detail in these pages, since, as i have said before, the questions connected therewith are more or less common to all such centres and have no specially irish significance. for all the administrative functions transferred to the new department moneys are, as before, annually voted by parliament. towards the fulfilment of the second purpose mentioned above--the development of the resources of the country upon the principles of the recess committee--an annual income of £ , , which was derived in about equal parts from irish and imperial sources, and is called the department's endowment, together with a capital sum of about £ , , were provided. it will be seen that a very wide sphere of usefulness was thus opened out for the new department in two distinct ways. the consolidation, under one authority, of many scattered but co-related functions was clearly a move in the right direction. upon this part of its recommendations the recess committee had no difficulty in coming to a quick decision. but the real importance of their report lay in the direction of the new work which was to be assigned to the department. under the new order of things, if the department, acting with as well as for the people, succeeds in doing well what legitimately may and ought to be done by the government towards the development of the resources of the country, and, at the same time, as far as possible confines its interference to helping the irish people to help themselves, a wholly new spirit will be imported into the industrial life of the nation. the very nature of the work which the department was called into existence to accomplish made it absolutely essential that it should keep in touch with the classes whom its work would most immediately affect, and without whose active co-operation no lasting good could be achieved. the machinery for this purpose was provided by the establishment of a council of agriculture and two boards, one of the latter being concerned with agriculture, rural industries, and inland fisheries, the other with technical instruction. these representative bodies, whose constitution is interesting as a new departure in administration, were adapted from similar continental councils which have been found by experience, in those foreign countries which are ireland's economic rivals, to be the most valuable of all means whereby the administration keeps in touch with the agricultural and industrial classes, and becomes truly responsive to their needs and wishes. the council of agriculture consists of two members appointed by each county council (cork being regarded as two counties and returning four members), making in all sixty-eight persons. the department also appoint one half this number of persons, observing in their nomination the same provincial proportions as obtained in the appointments by the popular bodies. this adds thirty-four members, and makes in all one hundred and two councillors, in addition to the president and vice-president of the department, who are _ex-officio_ members. thus, if all the members attended a council meeting, the vice-president would find himself presiding over a body as truly representative of the interests concerned as could be brought together, consisting, by a strange coincidence, of exactly the same number as the irish representatives in parliament. the council, which is appointed for a term of three years, the first term dating from the st april, , has a two-fold function. it is, in the first place, a deliberative assembly which must be convened by the department at least once a year. the domain over which its deliberations may travel is certainly not restricted, as the act defines its function as that of "discussing matters of public interest in connection with any of the purposes of this act." the view mr. gerald balfour took was that nothing but the new spirit he laboured to evoke would make his machine work. although he gave the vice-president statutory powers to make rules for the proper ordering of the council debates, i have been well content to rely upon the usual privileges of a chairman. i have estimated beforehand the time required for the discussion of matters of inquiry: the speakers have condensed their speeches accordingly, the business has been expeditiously transacted, and in the mere exchange of ideas invaluable assistance has been given to the department. the second function of the council is exercised only at its first meeting, and consequently but once in three years. at this first triennial meeting it becomes an electoral college. it divides itself into four provincial committees, each of which elects two members to represent its province on the agricultural board and one member to represent it on the board of technical instruction. the agricultural board, which controls a sum of over £ , a year, consists of twelve members, and as eight out of the twelve are elected by the four provincial committees--the remaining four being appointed by the department, one from each province--it will be seen that the council of agriculture exercises an influence upon the administration commensurate with its own representative character. the board of technical instruction, consisting of twenty-one members, together with the president and vice-president of the department, has a less simple constitution, owing to the fact that it is concerned with the more complex life of the urban districts of the country. as i have said, the council of agriculture elects only four members--one for each province. the department appoints four others; each of the county boroughs of dublin and belfast appoints three members; the remaining four county boroughs appoint one member each; a joint committee of the councils of the large urban districts surrounding dublin appoint one member; one member is appointed by the commissioners of national education, and one member by the intermediate board of education. the two boards have to advise upon all matters submitted to them by the department in connection, in the one case, with agriculture and other rural industries and inland fisheries, and, in the other case, in connection with technical instruction. the advisory powers of the boards are very real, for the expenditure of all moneys out of the endowment funds is subject to their concurrence. hence, while they have not specific administrative powers and apparently have only the right of veto, it is obvious that, if they wished, they might largely force their own views upon the department by refusing to sanction the expenditure of money upon any of the department's proposals, until these were so modified as practically to be their own proposals. it is, therefore, clear that the machinery can only work harmoniously and efficiently so long as it is moved by a right spirit. above all it is necessary that the central administrative body should gain such a measure of popular confidence as to enable it, without loss of influence, to resist proposals for expenditure upon schemes which might ensure great popularity at the moment, but would do permanent harm to the industrial character we are all trying to build up. i need not fear contradiction at the hands of a single member of either board when i say that up to the present perfect harmony has reigned throughout. the utmost consideration has been shown by the boards for the difficulties which the department have to overcome; and i think i may add that due regard has been paid by the administrative authority to the representative character and the legitimate wishes of the bodies which advise and largely control it. the other statutory body attached to the department has a significance and potential importance in strange contrast to the humble place it occupies in the statute book. the agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) act, , has, like many other acts, a part entitled 'miscellaneous,' in which the draughtsman's skill has attended to multifarious practical details, and made provision for all manner of contingencies, many of which the layman might never have thought of or foreseen. travelling expenses for council, boards, and committees, casual vacancies thereon, a short title for the act, and a seal for the department, definitions, which show how little we know of our own language, and a host of kindred matters are included. in this miscellany appears the following little clause:-- for the purpose of co-ordinating educational administration there shall be established a consultative committee consisting of the following members:-- (a.) the vice-president of the department, who shall be chairman thereof; (b.) one person to be appointed by the commissioners of national education; (c.) one person to be appointed by the intermediate education board; (d.) one person to be appointed by the agricultural board; and (e.) one person to be appointed by the board of technical instruction. now the real value of this clause, and in this i think it shows a consumate statesmanship, lies not in what it says, but in what it suggests. the committee, it will be observed, has an immensely important function, but no power beyond such authority as its representative character may afford. any attempt to deal with a large educational problem by a clause in a measure of this kind would have alarmed the whole force of unco-ordinated pedagogy, and perhaps have wrecked the bill. the clause as it stands is in harmony with the whole spirit of the new movement and of the legislation provided for its advancement. the committee may be very useful in suggesting improvements in educational administration which will prevent unnecessary overlapping and lead to co-operation between the systems concerned. indeed it has already made suggestions of far-reaching importance, which have been acted upon by the educational authorities represented upon it. as i have said in an earlier chapter when discussing irish education from the practical point of view, i have great faith in the efficacy of the economic factor in educational controversy, and this committee is certainly in a position to watch and pronounce on any defects in our educational system which the new efforts to deal practically with our industrial and commercial problems may disclose. there remains to be explained only one feature of the new administrative machinery, and it is a very important one. the recess committee had recommended the adaptation to ireland of a type of central institution which it had found in successful operation on the continent wherever it had pursued its investigations. so far as schemes applicable to the whole country were concerned, the central department, assuming that it gained the confidence of the council and boards, might easily justify its existence. but the greater part of its work, the recess committee saw, would relate to special localities, and could not succeed without the cordial co-operation of the people immediately concerned. this fact brought mr. gerald balfour face to face with a problem which the recess committee could not solve in its day, because, when it sat, there still existed the old grand jury system, though its early abolition had been promised. it was extremely fortunate that to the same minister fell the task of framing both the act of , which revolutionised local government, and the act of , now under review. the success with which these two acts were linked together by the provisions of the latter forms an interesting lesson in constructive statesmanship. time will, i believe, thoroughly discredit the hostile criticism which withheld its due mead of praise from the most fruitful policy which any administration had up to that time ever devised for the better government of ireland. the local authorities created by the act of provided the machinery for enabling the representatives of the people to decide themselves, to a large extent, upon the nature of the particular measures to be adopted in each locality and to carry out the schemes when formulated. the act creating the new department empowered the council of any county or of any urban district, or any two or more public bodies jointly, to appoint committees, composed partly of members of the local bodies and partly of co-opted persons, for the purpose of carrying out such of the department's schemes as are of local, and not of general importance. true to the underlying principle of the new movement--the principle of self-reliance and local effort--the act lays it down that 'the department shall not, in the absence of any special considerations, apply or approve of the application of money ... to schemes in respect of which aid is not given out of money provided by local authorities or from other local sources.' to meet this requirement the local authorities are given the power of raising a limited rate for the purposes of the act. by these two simple provisions for local administration and local combination, the people of each district were made voluntarily contributory both in effort and in money, towards the new practical developments, and given an interest in, and responsibility for their success. it was of the utmost importance that these new local authorities should be practically interested in the business concerns of the country which the department was to serve. mr. gerald balfour himself, in introducing the local government bill, had shown that he was under no illusion as to the possible disappointment to which his great democratic experiment might at first give rise. he anticipated that it would "work through failure to success." to put it plainly, the new bodies might devote a great deal of attention to politics and very little to business. i am told by those best qualified to form an opinion (some of my informants having been, to say the least, sceptical as to the wisdom of the experiment), that notwithstanding some extravagances in particular instances, it can already be stated positively that local government in ireland, taken as a whole, has not suffered in efficiency by the revolution which it has undergone. this is the opinion of officials of the local government board,[ ] and refers mainly to the transaction of the fiscal business of the new local authorities. from a different point of observation i shall presently bear witness to a display of administrative capacity on the part of the many statutory committees, appointed by county, borough, and district councils to co-operate with the department, which is most creditable to the thought and feeling of the people. it would be quite unfair to a large body of farmers in ireland if, in describing the administrative machinery for carrying out an economic policy based upon self-help and dependent for its success upon the conciliatory spirit abroad in the country, i were to ignore the part played by the large number of co-operative associations, the organisation, work and multiplication of which have been described in a former chapter. the recess committee, in their enquiries, found that, in the countries whose competition ireland feels most keenly, departments of agriculture had come to recognise it as an axiom of their policy that without organisation for economic purposes amongst the agricultural classes, state aid to agriculture must be largely ineffectual, and even mischievous. such departments devote a considerable part of their efforts to promoting agricultural organisation. short a time as this department has been in existence it has had some striking evidence of the justice of these views. as will be seen from the first annual report of the department, it was only where the farmers were organised in properly representative societies that many of the lessons the department had to teach could effectually reach the farming classes, or that many of the agricultural experiments intended for their guidance could be profitably carried out. although these experiment schemes were issued to the county councils and the agricultural public generally, it was only the farmers organised in societies who were really in a position to take part in them. some of these experiments, indeed, could not be carried out at all except through such societies. both for the sake of efficiency in its educational work, and of economy in administration, the department would be obliged to lay stress on the value of organisation.[ ] but there are other reasons for its doing so: industrial, moral, and social. in an able critique upon bodley's _france_ madame darmesteter, writing in the _contemporary review_, july, , points out that even so well informed an observer of french life as the author of that remarkable book failed to appreciate the steadying influence exercised upon the french body politic by the network of voluntary associations, the _syndicats agricoles_, which are the analogues and, to some extent, the prototypes, in france of our agricultural societies in ireland. the late mr. hanbury, during his too brief career as president of the board of agriculture, frequently dwelt upon the importance of organising similar associations in england as a necessary step in the development of the new agricultural policy which he foreshadowed. his successor, lord onslow, has fully endorsed his views, and in his speeches is to be found the same appreciation of the exemplary self-reliance of the irish farmers. i have already referred to the keen interest which both agricultural reformers and english and welsh county councils have been taking in the unexpectedly progressive efforts of the irish farmers to reorganise their industry and place themselves in a position to take advantage of state assistance. i believe that our farmers are going to the root of things, and that due weight should be given to the silent force of organised self-help by those who would estimate the degree in which the aims and sanguine anticipations of the new movement in ireland are likely to be realised. and it is not only for its foundation upon self-reliance that the latest development of irish government will have a living interest for economists and students of political philosophy. they will see in the facts under review a rapid and altogether healthy evolution of the irish policy so honourably associated with the name of mr. arthur balfour. his chief secretaryship, when all its storm and stress have been forgotten, will be remembered for the opening up of the desolate, poverty-stricken western seaboard by light railways, and for the creation of the congested districts board. the latter institution has gained so wide and, as i think, well merited popularity, that many thought its extension to other parts of ireland would have been a simpler and safer method of procedure than that actually recommended by the recess committee, and adopted by mr. gerald balfour. the land act of applied a treatment to the problem of the congested districts--a problem of economic depression and industrial backwardness, differing rather in degree than in kind from the economic problem of the greater part of rural ireland--as simple as it was new. a large capital sum of irish moneys was handed over to an unpaid commission consisting of irishmen who were acquainted with the local circumstances, and who were in a position to give their services to a public philanthropic purpose. they were given the widest discretion in the expenditure of the interest of this capital sum, and from time to time their income has been augmented from annually voted moneys. they were restricted only to measures calculated permanently to improve the condition of the people, as distinct from measures affording temporary relief. i agree with those who hold that mr. arthur balfour's plan was the best that could be adopted at the moment. but events have marched rapidly since , and wholly new possibilities in the sphere of irish economic legislation and administration have been revealed. a new irish mind has now to be taken into account, and to be made part of any ameliorative irish policy. hence it was not only possible, but desirable, to administer state help more democratically in than in . the policy of the congested districts board was a notable advance upon the inaction of the state in the pre-famine times, and upon the system of doles and somewhat objectless relief works of the latter half of the nineteenth century; but the policy of the new departure now under review was no less notable a departure from the paternalism of the congested districts board. when that body was called into existence it was thought necessary to rely on persons nominated by the government. when the department was created eight years later it was found possible, owing to the broadening of the basis of local government and to the moral and social effect of the new movement, to rely largely on the advice and assistance of persons selected by the people themselves. the two departments are in constant consultation as to the co-ordination of their work, so as to avoid conflict of administrative system and sociological principle in adjoining districts; and much has already been done in this direction. my own experience has not only made me a firm believer in the principle of self-help, but i carry my belief to the extreme length of holding that the poorer a community is the more essential is it to throw it as much as possible on its own resources, in order to develop self-reliance. i recognise, however, the undesirability of too sudden changes of system in these matters. meanwhile, i may add in this connection that the wyndham land act enormously increases the importance of the congested districts board in regard to its main function--that of dealing directly with congestion, by the purchase and resettlement of estates, the migration of families, and the enlargement of holdings.[ ] i have now said enough about the aims and objects, the constitution and powers, and the relations with other governmental institutions, of the new department, to enable the reader to form a fairly accurate estimate of its general character, scope and purpose. from what it is i shall pass in the next chapter to what it does, and there i must describe its everyday work in some detail. but i wish i could also give the reader an adequate picture of the surge of activities raised by the first plunge of the department into irish life and thought. after a time the torrent of business made channels for itself and went on in a more orderly fashion; practical ideas and promising openings were sifted out at an early stage of their approach to the department from those which were neither one nor the other; time was economised, work distributed, and the functions of demand and supply in relation to the department's work throughout ireland were brought into proper adjustment with each other. yet, even at first, to a sympathetic and understanding view, the waste of time and thought involved in dealing with impossible projects and dispelling false hopes was compensated for by the evidence forced upon us that the irish people had no notion of regarding the department as an alien institution with which they need concern themselves but little, however much it might concern itself with them. they were never for a moment in doubt as to its real meaning and purpose. they meant to make it their own and to utilise it in the uplifting of their country. no description of the machinery of the institution could explain the real place which it took in the life of the country from the very beginning. but perhaps it may give the reader a more living interest in this part of the story, and a more living picture of the situation, if i try to convey to his mind some of the impressions left on my own, by my experiences during the period immediately following the projection of this new phenomenon into irish consciousness. when in upper merrion-street, dublin, opposite to the land commission, big brass plates appeared upon the doors of a row of houses announcing that there was domiciled the department of agriculture and technical instruction, the average man in the street might have been expected to murmur, 'another castle board,' and pass on. it was not long, however, before our visiting list became somewhat embarrassing. we have since got down, as i have said, to a more humdrum, though no less interesting, official life inside the department. but let the reader imagine himself to have been concealed behind a screen in my office on a day when some event, like the dublin horse show, brought crowds in from the country to the irish capital. such an experience would certainly have given him a new understanding of some then neglected men and things. while i was opening the morning's letters and dealing with "files" marked "urgent," he would see nothing to distinguish my day's work from that of other ministers, who act as a link between the permanent officials of a spending department and the government of the day. but presently a stream of callers would set in, and he would begin to realise that the minister is, in this case, a human link of another kind--a link between the people and the government. a courteous and discreet private secretary, having attended to those who have come to the wrong department, and to those who are satisfied with an interview with him or with the officer who would have to attend to their particular business, brings into my not august presence a procession of all sorts and conditions of men. some know me personally, some bring letters of introduction or want to see me on questions of policy. others--for these the human link is most needed--must see the ultimate source of responsibility, which, in ireland, whether it be head of a family or of a department, is reduced from the abstract to the concrete by the pregnant pronoun 'himself.' i cannot reveal confidences, but i may give a few typical instances of, let us say, callers who might have called. first comes a visitor, who turns out to be a 'man with an idea,' just home from an unpronounceable address in scandinavia. he has come to tell me that we have in ireland a perfect gold mine, if we only knew it--in extent never was there such a gold field--no illusory pockets--good payable stuff in sight for centuries to come--and so on for five precious minutes, which seem like half a day, during which i have realised that he is an inventor, and that it is no good asking him to come to the point. but i keep my eye riveted on his leather bag which is filled to bursting point, and manifest an intelligent interest and burning curiosity. the suggestion works, and out of the bag come black bars and balls, samples of fabrics ranging from sack-cloth to fine linen, buttons, combs, papers for packing and for polite correspondence, bottles of queer black fluid, and a host of other miscellaneous wares. i realise that the particular solution of the irish question which is about to be unfolded is the utilisation of our bogs. well, this _is_ one of the problems with which we have to deal. it is physically possible to make almost anything out of this irish asset, from moss litter to billiard balls, and though one would not think it, aeons of energy have been stored in these inert looking wastes by the apparently unsympathetic sun, energy which some think may, before long, be converted into electricity to work all the smokeless factories which the rising generation are to see. indeed, the vista of possibilities is endless, the only serious problem that remains to be solved being 'how to make it pay,' and upon that aspect of the question, unhappily, my visitor had no light to throw. the next visitor, who brings with him a son and a daughter, is himself the product of an irish bog in the wildest of the wilds. his parish priest had sent him to me. a little awkwardness, which is soon dispelled, and the point is reached. this fine specimen of the 'bone and sinew' has had a hard struggle to bring up his 'long family'; but, with a capable wife, who makes the most of the _res angusta domi_--of the pig, the poultry, and even of the butter from the little black cows on the mountain--he has risen to the extent of his opportunities. the children are all doing something. lace and crochet come out of the cabin, the yarn from the wool of the 'mountainy' sheep, carded and spun at home, is feeding the latest type of hosiery knitting machine and the hereditary handloom. the story of this man's life which was written to me by the priest cannot find space here. the immediate object of his visit is to get his eldest daughter trained as a poultry instructress to take part in some of the 'county schemes' under the department, and to obtain for his eldest son, who has distinguished himself under the tuition of the christian brothers, a travelling scholarship. for this he has been recommended by his teachers. they had marked this bright boy out as an ideal agricultural instructor, and if i could give the reader all the particulars of the case it would be a rare illustration of the latent human resources we mean to develop in the ireland that is to be. i explain that the young man must pass a qualifying examination, but am glad to be able to admit that the circumstances of his life, which would have to be taken into account in deciding between the qualified, are in his case of a kind likely to secure favourable consideration. and now enters a sporting friend of mine, a 'practical angler,' who comes with a very familiar tale of woe. the state of the salmon fisheries is deplorable: if the department does not fulfil its obvious duties there will not be a salmon in ireland outside a museum in ten years more. he has lived for forty-five years on the banks of a salmon river, and he knows that i don't fish. but this much the conversation reveals: his own knowledge of the subject is confined to the piece of river he happens to own, the gossip he hears at his club, and the ideas of the particular poacher he employs as his gillie. his suggested remedy is the abolition of all netting. but i have to tell him that only the day before i had a deputation from the net fishermen in the estuary of this very river, whose bitter complaint was that this 'poor man's industry' was being destroyed by the mackerel and herring nets round the coast, and--i thought my friend would have a fit--by the way in which the gentlemen on the upper waters neglect their duty of protecting the spawning fish! some belonging to the lower water interest carried their scepticism as to the efficacy of artificial propagation to the length of believing that hatcheries are partially responsible for the decrease. as so often happens, the opposing interests, disagreeing on all else, find that best of peacemakers, a common enemy, in the government. the department is responsible--for two opposite reasons, it is true, but somehow they seem to confirm each other. we must labour to find some other common ground, starting from the recognition that the salmon fisheries are a national asset which must be made to subserve the general public interest. i assure my friend that when all parties make their proper contribution in effort and in cash, the department will not be backward in doing their part. at the end of this interview a messenger brings a telegram for 'himself' from a stockowner in a remote district.[ ] 'my pigs,' runs one of the most businesslike communications i ever received, 'are all spotted. what shall i do?' i send it to the veterinary branch, which, with the board of agriculture in england, is engaged in a scheme for staying the ravages of swine fever, a scheme into which the late mr. hanbury threw himself with his characteristic energy. the problem is of immense importance, and the difficulty is not mainly quadrupedal. unless the police 'spot' the spotted pigs, we too often hear nothing about them. i am sure it must be daily brought home to the english board, as it is to the irish department, that an enormous addition might be made to the wealth of the country if our veterinary officers were intelligently and actively aided, in their difficult duties for the protection of our flocks and herds, by those most immediately concerned. so far it has been an interesting morning bright with the activities out of which the future is to be made. the element of hope has predominated, but now comes a visitor who wishes to see me upon the one part of my duties and responsibilities which is distasteful to me--the exercise of patronage. he has been unloaded upon me by an influential person, upon whom he has more legitimate claims than upon the department. he has prepared the way for a favourable reception by getting his friends to write to my friends, many of whom have already fulfilled a promise to interview me in his behalf. his mother and two maiden aunts have written letters which have drawn from my poor private secretary, who has to read them all, the dry quotation, 'there's such a thing as being so good as to be good for nothing.' the young hopeful quickly puts an end to my speculations as to the exact capacity in which he means to serve the department by applying for an inspectorship. i ask him what he proposes to inspect, and the sum and substance of his reply is that he is not particular, but would not mind beginning at a moderate salary, say £ a year. as for his qualifications, they are a sadly minus quantity, his blighted career having included failure for the army, and a clerkship in a bank, which only lasted a week when he proved to be deficient in the second and dangerous in the third of the three r's. his case reminds me of a story of my ranching days, which the exercise of patronage has so often recalled to my mind that i must out with it. riding into camp one evening, i turned my horse loose and got some supper, which was a vilely cooked meal even for a cow camp. recognising in the cook a cowboy i had formerly employed, i said to him, 'you were a way up cow hand, but as cook you are no account. why did you give up riding and take to cooking? what are your qualifications as a cook any way?' 'qualifications!' he replied, 'why, don't you know i've got varicose veins?' my caller's qualifications are of an equally negative description, though not of a physical kind. he is one of the young micawbers, to whom the department from its first inception has been the something which was to turn up. he had, of course, testimonials which in any other country would have commanded success by their terms and the position of the signatories, but which in ireland only illustrate the charity with which we condone our moral cowardice under the name of good nature. i am glad when this interview closes. one more type--a nationalist member of parliament! he does not often darken the door of a government office--they all have the same structural defect, no front stairs--he never has asked and never thought he would ask anything from the government. but he is interested in some poor fishermen of county clare who pursue their calling under cruel disadvantages for want of the protection from the atlantic rollers which a small breakwater would afford. it is true that they were the worst constituents he had--- went against him in 'the split,'--but if i saw how they lived, and so on. i knew all about the case. a breakwater to be of any use would cost a very large sum, and the local authority, though sympathetic, did not see their way to contribute their proportion, and without a local contribution, i explained, the department could not, consistently with its principles, unless in most exceptional--here he breaks in: 'oh! that red tape. you're as bad as the rest--exceptional, indeed! why, everything is exceptional in my constituency. i am a bit that way myself. but, seriously, the condition of these poor people would move even a government official. besides, you remember the night i made thirteen speeches on the naval estimates--the government wanted a little matter of twenty millions--and you met me in the lobby and told me you wished to go to bed, and asked me what i really wanted, and--i am always reasonable--i said i would pass the whole naval programme if i got the government to give them a boat-slip at ballyduck.--"done!" you said, and we both went home.--i believe you knew that i had got constituency matters mixed up, that ballyduck was inland, and that it was ballycrow that i meant to say.--but you won't deny that you are under a moral obligation.' well, i would go into the matter again very carefully--for i thought we might help these fishermen in some other way--and write to him. he leaves me; and, while outside the door he travels over the main points with my private secretary, the lights and shades in the picture which this strange personality has left on my mind throw me back behind the practical things of to-day. in parliament facing the sassanach, in ireland facing their police, he has for years--the best years of his life--displayed the same love of fighting for fighting's sake. in the riots he has provoked, and they are not a few, he is ever regardless of his own skin, and would be truly miserable if he inflicted any serious bodily harm on a human being--even a landlord. it is impossible not to like this very human anachronism, who, within the limitations imposed by the convenience of a citizenship to which he unwillingly belongs, does battle for faith, and fame, and honour, and the ruined hearths of clare. the reader may take all this as fiction. i am sure no one will annoy me by trying on any of the caps i have displayed on the counter of my shop. what i do fear is that the picture of some of my duties which i have given may have made a wrong impression of the department's work upon the reader's mind. he may have come to the conclusion that, contrary to all the principles laid down, an attempt was being made to do for the people things which the new movement was to induce the people to do for themselves. the department may appear to be using its official position and government funds to constitute itself a sort of universal providence, exercising an authority and a discretion over matters upon which in any progressive community the people must decide for themselves. however near to the appearances such an impression might be, nothing could be further from the facts. if i have helped the reader to unravel the tangled skein of our national life, if i have sufficiently revealed the mind of the new movement to show that there is in it 'a scheme of things entire,' it should be quite clear that the deliberate intentions both of mr. gerald balfour and of those irishmen whom he took into his confidence are being fulfilled in letter and in spirit. it only remains for me to attempt an adequate description of the work of the department created by that chief secretary, and, above all, of the way in which the people themselves are playing the part which his statesmanship assigned to them. footnotes: [ ] see report of the local government board, - . [ ] see annual general report of the department - , pp. - . [ ] _cf. ante_, pp. - . [ ] no fiction about this, nor about the following letter to the secretary:-- 'the scratatory, vitny dept. 'honord sir, 'i want to let ye know the terible state we're in now. al the pigs about here is dyin in showers. send down a vit at oncet.' chapter x. government with the consent of the governed. in the preceding chapter i attempted to give to the reader a rough impression of the general purpose and miscellaneous functions of the new department. i described in some detail the constitution and powers of the council of agriculture--a sort of business parliament--which criticises our doings and elects representatives on our boards; and of the two boards which, in addition to their advisory functions, possess the power of the purse. i laid special stress upon the important part these instruments of the popular will were intended to play as a link between the people and the department. i gave a similar description and explanation of the committees of agriculture and technical instruction, appointed by local representative bodies, by means of which the people were brought into touch with the local as distinct from the central work, and made responsible for its success. the details were necessarily dull; and so also must be those which will now be required in order to indicate the general nature and scope of the work for the accomplishment of which all this machinery was designed. yet i am not without hope that even the general reader may find a deep human interest in the practical endeavour of the humbler classes of my fellow-countrymen to reconstruct their national life upon the solid foundation of honest work. the department has at the time of writing been in existence for three years, the term of office, it will be remembered, of the council of agriculture and of the two boards. it would be unreasonable to expect in so short a time any great achievement; but the understanding critic will attach importance rather to the spirit in which the work was approached than to the actual amount of work which was accomplished. he may say that no true estimate of its value can be formed until the enthusiasm aroused by its novelty has had time to wear off. those of us who know the real character of the work are quite satisfied that the interest which it aroused during the period in which the people had yet to grasp its meaning and utility is not likely to become less real as the blossom fades and the fruit begins to swell. the attitude of the irish people towards the department and its work has not been that of a child towards a new toy, but of a full-grown man towards a piece of his life's work, upon which he feels that he entered all too late. indeed, so quickly have the people grasped the significance of the new opportunities for material advancement now placed within their reach, that the department has had to carry out, and to assist the statutory local committees in carrying out, a number and variety of schemes which, at any rate, proved that public opinion did not regard it as a transitory experiment; but as a much-needed institution which, if properly utilised, might do much to make up for lost time, and which, in any case, had come to stay. the amount of the work which we were thus constrained to undertake was somewhat embarrassing; but so general and so genuine was the desire to make a start that we have done our best to keep pace with the local demands for immediate action. the staff of the department caught the spirit in which the task had been set by the country, and showed a keen anxiety to get to work; and i am glad to have an opportunity of acknowledging that both the indoor and outdoor support it has received leaves the department without excuse if it has not already justified its existence. i shall deal as mercifully as i can with my readers in helping them towards an understanding of what has been actually done in the three years under review. i am aware that if i were to attempt a description of all the schemes which the variety of local needs suggested, and in the execution of which the assistance of the many-sided department was sought and obtained, i should lose the patient readers, who have not already fainted by the way, in a jungle where they could not see the wood for the trees. these things can be studied by those interested,--and they i hope, in ireland at any rate, are not few--in the annual reports and other official publications of the department. for the general reader i must try to indicate in broad outline the nature and scope of that side of the new movement which seeks to supplement organised self-help and open the way for individual enterprise by a well considered measure of state assistance. i shall be more than satisfied if i succeed in giving him a clear insight into the manner in which the delicate task of making state interference with the business of the people not only harmless but beneficial has been set about. it is obvious that the fulfilment of this object must depend upon the soundness of the economic policy pursued, and upon the establishment and maintenance of mutual confidence between the central authority and the popular representative bodies through which the people utilise the new facilities afforded by the state. i think the best way of giving the information which is required for an understanding of our somewhat complicated scheme for agricultural and industrial development under democratic control is first to explain the line of demarcation which we have drawn between the respective functions of the department and the people's committees throughout the country; and then i must give a rapid description of some of the most important features of the department's policy and programme. i shall add a sufficiency of detail from the actual work accomplished in these organising and experimental years, to illustrate both the difficulties which are incidental to such a policy, and the manner in which these difficulties may be surmounted. when it became manifest that both the country and the department were anxious to drive ahead, the first thing to do was to lay down a _modus operandi_ which would assign to the local and central bodies their proper shares in the work and responsibilities and secure some degree of order and uniformity in administration. this was quickly done, and the plan adopted works smoothly. the department gives the local committee general information as to the kind of purpose to which it can legally and properly apply the funds jointly contributed from the rates and the central exchequer. the committee, after full consideration of the conditions, needs and industrial environment of the community for which it acts, selects certain definite projects which it considers most applicable to its district, allocates the amount required to each project, and sends the scheme to the department for its approval. when the scheme is formally approved, it becomes the official scheme in the locality for the current year; and the local committee has to carry it out. although harmony now usually exists between the local and central authorities to the advantage and comfort of both, a considerable amount of friction was inevitable until they got to understand each other. the occasional over-riding of local desires by the 'autocratic' department, which in the first rush of its work had to act in a somewhat peremptory fashion, was, no doubt, irritating. now, however, it is generally recognised that the central body, having not only the advice of its experts and access to information from similar departments in other countries to guide it, but also being in a position to profit by the exchange of ideas which is constantly going on between it and all the local committees in ireland, is in a position of special advantage for deciding as to the bearing of local schemes upon national interests, and sometimes even as to their soundness from a purely local point of view. passing now from the conditions under which the department's work is done, we come to review some typical portions of the work itself so far as it has proceeded. this falls naturally, both as regards that which is done by the central authority for the country at large and that which is locally administered, into two divisions. the first consists of direct aid to agriculture and other rural industries, and to sea and inland fisheries. the second consists of indirect aid given to these objects, and also to town manufactures and commerce, through education--a term which must be interpreted in its widest sense. needless to say, direct aids, being tangible and immediately beneficial, are the more popular: a bull, a boat, or a hand-loom is more readily appreciated than a lecture, a leaflet, or an idea. yet in the department we all realise--and, what is more important, the people are coming to realise--that by far the most important work we have to do is that which belongs to the sphere of education, especially education which has a distinctly practical aim. to this branch of the subject i shall, therefore, first direct the reader's attention. it must be remembered that, for reasons fully set out in the earlier portions of the book, i am treating the irish question as being, in its most important economic and social aspects, the problem of rural life. the department's scheme of technical instruction, therefore, need not here be detailed in its application to the needs of our few manufacturing towns, but only in its application to agriculture and the subsidiary industries. i do not suggest that the questions relating to the revival of industry in our large manufacturing centres and provincial towns are not of the first importance. the local authorities in these places have eagerly come into the movement, and the department has already taken part in founding, in our cities and larger towns, comprehensive schemes of technical education, as to the outcome of which we have every reason to be hopeful. not only that, but it is highly necessary for the department to consider these schemes in close relation to its work upon the more specially rural problems, for, as i have said elsewhere,[ ] the interdependence of town and country, and the establishment of proper relations between their systems of industry and education, is a prime factor in irish prosperity. but the rural problem, as i have so often reiterated, is the core of the irish question; and to deal at all adequately with technical education, so far as we carry it on upon lines common both to great britain and ireland, would lead us too far afield on the present occasion. i must, therefore, content myself with indicating my reasons for leaving it rather on one side, and pass on to a brief description of the department's educational work in respect of its two-fold aim of developing agriculture and the subsidiary industries. in the case of agriculture our task is perfectly plain. we know pretty well what we want to do, for we are dealing with an existing industry, and with known conditions. the productivity of the soil, the demand of the market, the means of transport from the one to the other, are all easily ascertainable. what most needs to be provided in ireland is a much higher technical skill, a more advanced scientific and commercial knowledge, as applied to agricultural production and distribution.[ ] this, in our belief, depends, more than upon any other agency, upon the soundness of the education which is provided to develop the capacities of those in charge of these operations. our chief difficulty is that of co-ordinating our teaching of technical agriculture with the general educational systems of the country--a difficulty which the other educational authorities are all united with us in seeking to remove. when, on the other hand, education--again, i believe, the chief agency for the purpose--is considered as a means for the creation of new industries, we come face to face with a wholly different problem. we have no longer an industry which we are seeking to foster and develop going on under our eyes, steadying us in our theorising, and in our experimenting upon the mind of the worker, by bringing us into close touch with the actual conditions of his work. our chief aim must be to develop his adaptability for the ever-changing and, we hope, improving economic industrial conditions amidst which he will have to work. but unless we can satisfy parents that the schemes of development in which their children are being educated to take their place have an assured prospect of practical realisation, they will naturally prefer an inferior teaching which seems to them to offer a better prospect of an immediate wage or salary. the teachers in the secondary schools of the country, who, so far, have shown a desire to assist us in giving an industrial and commercial direction to our educational policy, would also in that event have to meet the wishes of the parents; and thus education would fall back into the old rut with its cramming, its examinations and result fees--all leading to the multiplication of clerks and professional men, and preventing us from turning the thoughts and energies of the people towards productive occupations. the natural trend of our educational policy will now be clear. leaving out of account large towns, where our problem is, as i have said, the same as that which confronts the industrial classes in the manufacturing centres of great britain, we are chiefly concerned with the application of science to the cultivation of the soil and the improvement of live stock, and of business principles to the commercial side of farming; with the teaching of dairying, horticulture, apiculture, and what has been called farm-yard lore, outside the rural home, and with domestic economy inside. on the industrial as distinct from the agricultural side of the work in rural localities, technical instruction must be directed towards the development of subsidiary rural industries. we early came to the conclusion that we could not expect to find a system which we could simply transplant from some other country. the system adopted in great britain, where each county or group of counties maintains an agricultural college and an experimental farm, and many more elaborate systems on the continent, were all found on examination to be inapplicable to our own rural conditions, unsuitable to the national character, and unrelated to the history of our agriculture. many of these schemes might have turned out a few highly qualified authorities on the theory of agriculture, and even good practical directors for those who farm on a large scale. but we are dealing with a country with great possibilities from an agricultural point of view, but where, nevertheless, agriculture in many parts is in a very backward condition, and where it is probably safe to say that three-fifths of the farms are crowded on one-fourth of the land. we are dealing with a community with whom the systems of elementary, secondary and higher education have not tended to prepare the student for agricultural pursuits. a system of agricultural and domestic education suited to the wants of those who are to farm the land must recognise and foster the new spirit of self-help and hope which is springing up in the country, and must be made so interesting as to become a serious rival to the race meeting and the public-house. the daily drudgery of farm work must be counteracted by the ambition to possess the best stock, the neatest homestead and fences, the cleanest and the best tilled fields. the unsolved problem of agricultural education is to devise a system which will reach down to the small working farmers who form the great bulk of the wealth producers of ireland, to give them new hope, a new interest, new knowledge and, i might add, a new industrial character. we were met at the outset by the difficulty which would apply to any system--that of finding trained teachers. this deficiency was felt in two directions--first, in the secondary school, in which the preliminary scientific studies should be undertaken, which are necessary to enable a lad to profit by more advanced instruction later on; and, secondly, in the special training of technical agriculture. it would not have been desirable to overcome these difficulties by any very extensive importation of teachers from without. i certainly hold the occasional importation of teachers with outside experience to be most desirable, but these should not form more than a leaven of the pedagogic lump; for it is a serious hindrance when to the task of familiarising students with a new system of education there is added that of familiarising a large body of teachers with the intellectual, social and economic conditions of the people among whom they are to work. the manner in which the teacher difficulty was surmounted may be briefly stated, first, as regards the school, and, secondly, as regards the teaching of agriculture. those already engaged in the teaching profession could not be relegated again to the _status pupillaris_. there was only one way in which they could assist us to overcome the difficulty, and that involved a great sacrifice on their part, the sacrifice of their well-earned vacation, but a sacrifice which they willingly made. the teachers most urgently needed were those of practical science, with knowledge of experimental work; and about five hundred teachers from secondary schools, in order to qualify themselves, have attended summer courses specially organised by the department at several centres in ireland, while about four hundred have availed themselves of special summer courses in such subjects as drawing, manual instruction, domestic economy, building construction, wood-carving and modelling. for the provision of a future supply of thoroughly trained teachers of science and of technology, including agriculture, the royal college of science has been re-organised. although this institution was brought under the new conditions little more than three years ago, it will be seen that no time has been lost when i state that the first batch of men who have received a three years' course of training under the new programme are already at work under county committees. for the training of these teachers, scholarships had to be provided, and new professors and teachers, particularly in agriculture, had to be appointed. in regard to agricultural instruction we had to begin by carefully considering what, among many alternative plans, should be our immediate as well as our more remote aims. the department's officers had studied continental systems, and some of them had taken part in establishing systems of agricultural education in great britain. but it was not until the summer of that we had sufficiently studied the question in ireland itself, with direct reference to the history, the environment, and the ideals of the people, to justify us in initiating a policy or formulating a definite programme for its execution.[ ] the main object was to secure for the youth of the present generation who will later be concerned with agriculture, sound and thorough instruction in its principles and practice. everyone who has given any thought to the subject knows how difficult it is to teach technical agriculture unless provision has been made in the general education of the country for instruction in those fundamental principles of science which, recognised or unrecognised, lie at the root of, and profoundly influence agricultural practice. this foundation, as i have shown, is now being laid in ireland. in our scheme the boy who has managed to avail himself of a two or three years' course of practical science in one of the secondary schools is then prepared to take full advantage of courses of technology, and will have to make up his mind as to the career he is to follow. we are now considering the case of a boy who is going to become a farmer, the class to which we chiefly look for the future well-being of ireland. it is necessary that he should be taught the practical as well as the technical side of agriculture. the practical work he can learn upon his father's farm during spring and summer, and the technical by continuing his studies during the winter months in a school of agriculture. the establishment of such winter schools is in contemplation. but, in the meanwhile, to bring home to farmers the advantages of a first-class agricultural education for their sons, and at the same time to teach these farmers the more practical application of science to agriculture, the department decided on a preliminary period of itinerant instruction. the teacher difficulty, experienced on all sides of our work, was probably felt more acutely in regard to the specialised teachers of agriculture than in any other connection. here it was necessary to take the young men brought up upon farms and possessed of the normal qualifications of the irish practical farmer. we then had to make them into teachers by adding to their inherited and home-manufactured capacities a scientific training. in the training of agricultural teachers the albert institute, glasnevin, has been utilised by the department. this school has also been re-organised to meet the new programme, and it will probably form in future a link between the winter schools of agriculture and the royal college of science in the training of our agricultural teachers. partly by these methods, partly by the temporary engagement of lecturers on special subjects, and partly by the appointment of trained teachers from england or scotland, the system of itinerant instruction has been brought into operation as fully as could be expected in the time. already half the county committees have been provided with county instructors, while the remainder have nearly all drafted schemes and allocated funds for a similar purpose, ready to go to work as soon as more teachers have been trained. the itinerant instruction scheme, it may be pointed out, besides one obvious, has another less immediately recognisable purpose. the direct business of the itinerant instructor is, by the aid of experimental plots, simple lectures, and demonstrations, to teach the farmers of his district as much as they can take in without the scientific preparation in which, as adults who have grown up under the old system of education, they are still lacking. but he does more than that. he not only conducts a school for adults, but in the very process of instruction he necessarily makes them aware of the vital necessity of a school for the young; and they begin, as parents, to understand and to desire the kind of instruction in the schools of the country which will prepare their children to take more advantage of the advanced teaching in agriculture than they themselves can ever hope to do. this preparation is provided for as follows. to the department, as has already been explained, was handed over the administration of the science and art grants formerly administered by south kensington. the department accordingly drew up a programme of experimental science and drawing, carrying capitation grants, for day secondary schools. the intermediate education board, acting on the suggestion of the consultative committee for co-ordinating education,[ ] adopted this programme and at the same time undertook to accept the reports of the department's inspectors as the basis of their awards in the new "subject." these steps insured the rapid and general introduction of this practical teaching in secondary schools, and, owing particularly to the spirit in which their authorities and teaching staffs accepted the innovation, the work has been carried out with the happiest results. i now come to the subjects grouped together under the classification of 'domestic economy.' these differ only in detail in their application to town and country. to these subjects the department attaches great importance. in the industrial life of manufacturing towns i am persuaded that far too little thought has been given to this element of industrial efficiency. from a purely economic point of view a saving in the worker's income due to superior housewifery is equivalent to an increase in his earnings; but, morally, the superior thrift is, of course, immensely more important. "without economy," says dr. johnson, "none can be rich, and with it few can be poor," and the education which only increases the productiveness of labour and neglects the principles of wise spending will place us at a disadvantage in the great industrial struggle. when we come to consider domestic economy as an agency for improving the conditions of the peasant home, not only by thrift, but by increasing the general attractiveness of home life, the introduction of a sound system of domestic economy teaching becomes not only important, but vital. the establishment of such a system and the task of making it operative and effective in the country is beset with difficulties. the teacher difficulty confronts us again, and also that of making pupils and their parents understand that there are other objects in domestic training than that of qualifying for domestic service. a corps of instructresses in domestic economy is, however, already abroad throughout the country, nearly all the county councils having already appointed them. some of these teachers, who have made the best contributions towards the as yet only partially determined question of the ultimate aim and present possibilities of a course of instruction in hygiene, laundry work, cookery, the management of children, sewing, and so forth, have told me that the demand in rural districts seems to be chiefly for the class of instruction which may lead to success in town life. i have heard of a class of girls in a connaught village who would not be content with knowing the accomplishments of a farmer's wife until they had learned how to make asparagus soup and cook sweetbreads. no doubt they had read of the way things are done in the kitchens of the great. this tendency should never be encouraged, but neither can it always be inflexibly repressed without endangering the main objects of the class. women teachers of poultry-keeping, dairying, domestic science and kindred subjects are trained at the munster institute, cork, and the school of domestic economy, kildare street, dublin, both of which have been equipped to meet the needs of the new programme. the want of teachers, and not any lack of interest on the part of the country, has alone prevented all the counties from adopting schemes for encouraging improvement in all these branches of work. i may add that more than one hundred and fifty of these qualified teachers are now at work under county committees. i have already, in this chapter, indicated that outside large industrial centres, our educational policy is, broadly speaking, twofold. we seek, in the first place, through our programme in experimental science and its allied subjects, now so generally adopted by secondary schools in ireland, to give that fundamental training in science and scientific method which, most thinkers are agreed, constitutes a condition precedent to sound specialised teaching of agriculture as well as other forms of industry. we seek further, by methods less academic in character--for example, by itinerant instruction which is of value chiefly to those with whom 'school' is a thing of the past--to teach not only improved agricultural methods but also simple industries, and to promote the cultivation of industrial habits which are as essential to the success of farming as to that of every other occupation. classes in manual work of various kinds--woodwork, carpentry, applied drawing and building construction, lace and crochet making, needlework, dressmaking and embroidery, sprigging, hosiery and other such subjects, have been numerously and steadily attended. i do not ignore the argument that such home industries must in time give way before the competition of highly-organised factory industries. the simple answer is that it is desirable, and indeed necessary, to employ the energy now running to waste in our rural districts--energy which cannot in the nature of things be employed in highly-organised industries. to the small farmer and his family, time is a realisable, though too often unrealised, asset, and it is part of our aim to aid the family income by employing their waste time. even if we can only cause them to do at home what they now pay someone else to do, we shall not only have improved their budget but shall have contributed to the elevation of the standard of home life, and thus, in no small measure, to the solution of the difficult problem of rural life in ireland. i think the reader will now understand the general character of the problem with which we were confronted and the means by which its solution is being sought. our policy was not one which was likely to commend itself to the "man in the street." indeed, to be quite candid, it was a little disappointing even to myself that i could not immortalise my appointment by erecting monuments both to my constructive ability and to my educational zeal in the shape of stately edifices at convenient railway centres, preferably along the tourist routes. we have had to stand the fire of the critic fresh from his holiday on the continent where he had seen agricultural and technological institutions, magnificently housed and lavishly equipped, fitting generations of young men and young women for competition with our less fortunate countrymen. it is hard to prevail in argument against the man who has gone and seen for himself. it is useless to point out to the man with a kodak that the corinthian façade and the marble columns of the _aula maxima_ which aroused his patriotic envy are but a small part of the educational structure which he saw and thought he understood. if he would read the history of the systems and trace the successive stages by which the need for these great institutions was established, he would have a little more sympathy with the difficulties of the department, a little more patience with its fabian policy. i must not, however, utter a word which suggests that the department has any ground of complaint against the country for the spirit in which it has been met; especially as there was one factor to be taken into account which made it difficult for public opinion to approve of our policy. as i have already explained, a large capital sum of a little over £ , was handed over to the department at its creation. during the first year, what with the organisation of the staff, the thinking out of a policy on every side of the department's work, the constitution of the statutory committees to administer its local schemes in town and country, the agreement, after long discussion, between the central body and these committees upon the local schemes, and all the other preparatory steps which had to be taken before money could wisely be applied, it is obvious that the department could not have spent its income. in the second year, and even the third year, savings were effected, and the original capital sum has been largely increased. what more natural than that in a poor country a spending department which was backward in spending should appear to be lacking in enterprise, if not in administrative capacity? but whether the policy was right or wrong it has unquestionably been approved by the best thought in the country, a fact which throws a very interesting light upon the constitutional aspects of the department. at each successive stage the policy was discussed at the council of agriculture and its practical operation was dependent upon the consent of the boards which have the power of the purse. a vice-president who had not these bodies at his back would be powerless, in fact would have to resign. thoughtless criticism has now and again condemned not only the parsimonious action of the department, but the invertebrate conduct of the council of agriculture and the boards in tolerating it. the time will soon come when the service rendered to their country by the members of the first council and boards, who gave their representative backing to a slow but sure educational policy, and scorned to seek popularity in showy projects and local doles, will be gratefully remembered to them. already we have had some gratifying evidences that the country is with us in the paramount importance we attach to education as the real need of the hour. most readers will be surprised to hear that in the short time the department has been at work it has aided in the equipment of nearly two hundred science laboratories and of about fifty manual instruction workshops, while the many-sided programme involved in the movement as a whole is in operation in some four hundred schools attended by thirty-six thousand pupils. nothing can be more gratifying than the unanimous testimony of the officers of the department to the increasing practical intelligence and reasonableness of the numerous committees responsible for the local administration of the schemes which the department has to approve of and supervise. the demand for visible money's worth has largely given place to a genuine desire for schemes having a practical educational value for the industry of the district. county clare is not generally considered the most advanced part of ireland, nor can kilrush be very far distant from 'the back of godspeed'; yet even from that storm-battered outpost of irish ideas i was memorialised a year ago to induce the county council to pay less attention to the improvement of cattle and more to the technical education of the peasantry. under the heading of direct aids to agriculture, rural industries, and sea and inland fisheries, there is much important and useful work which the department has set in motion, partly by the use of its funds and partly by suggestion and the organisation of local effort. the most obvious, popular and easily understood schemes were those directed to the improvement of live stock. the department exercised its supervision and control with the help of advisory committees composed of the best experts it could get to volunteer advice upon the various classes of live stock. it is unnecessary to give any details of these schemes. the department profited by the experience of, and received considerable assistance from the royal dublin society, which had for many years administered a government grant for the improvement of horses and cattle. the broad principle adopted by the department was that its efforts and its available resources should be devoted rather to improving the quality, than to increasing the quantity, of the stock in the country, the latter function being regarded as belonging to the region of private enterprise. it is impossible to over-estimate the importance to the country of having a widespread interest aroused and discussion stimulated on problems of breeding which affect a trade of vast importance to the economic standing of the country--a trade which now reaches in horned cattle alone an annual export of nearly three quarters of a million animals. all manner of practical discussions were set on foot, ranging from the production of the ideal, the general purposes cow, to that controversy which competes, in the virulence with which it is waged, with the political, the educational, and the fiscal questions--the question whether the hackney strain will bring a new era of prosperity to ireland, or whether it will irretrievably destroy the reputation of the irish hunter. the discussion of these problems has been accompanied by much practical work which, in due time, cannot fail to produce a considerable improvement upon the breed of different classes of live stock. in one year over one thousand sires have been selected by the experts of the department for admission to the stock improvement schemes. probably an equal number of breeding animals offered for inspection have been rejected. many a _cause celèbre_ has not unnaturally arisen over the decisions of the equestrian tribunal, and there have not been wanting threats that the attention of parliament should be called to the gross partiality of the department which has cast a reflection upon the form of stallion a or upon the constitutional soundness of stallion b. on the whole, as far as i can gather, the best authorities in the country are agreed that since the department has been at work there has been established a higher standard of excellence in the bucolic mind as regards that vastly important national asset, our flocks and herds. again for details i must refer the reader to official documents. there he will find as much information as he can digest about the vast variety of agricultural activities which originate sometimes with the department's officers or with its _journal_ and leaflets, the circulation of which has no longer to be stimulated from our statistics and intelligence bureau, and sometimes emanate from the local committees, whose growing interest in the work naturally leads to the discovery of fresh needs and hitherto unthought of possibilities of agricultural and industrial improvement. i may, however, indicate a few of the subjects which have been gone into even in these years while the new department has been trying so far as it might, without sacrifice of efficiency and sound economic principle, to keep pace with the feverish anxiety of a genuinely interested people to get to work upon schemes which they believe to be practical, sound, and of permanent utility. a question which has troubled administrators of state aid to every progressive agricultural community, and which each country must settle for itself, is by what form of object lesson in ordinary agriculture intelligent local interest can best be aroused we have advocated widely diffused small experimental plots, and they have done much good. probably the most useful of our crop improvement schemes have been those which have demonstrated the profitableness of artificial manures, the use of which has been enormously increased. the profits derivable in many parts of ireland from the cultivation of early potatoes has been demonstrated in the most convincing manner. to what may be called the industrial crops, notably flax and barley, a great deal of time and thought has been applied and much information disseminated and illustrated by practical experiments. in many quarters interest has been aroused in the possibilities of profitable tobacco culture. many negative and some positive results have been attained by the department in the as yet incomplete experiments upon this crop. much has been learned about the functions of central and local agricultural and small industry shows, those occasional aids to the year's work which disseminate knowledge and stimulate interest and friendly rivalry among the different producers. the reduction in the death-rate among young stock, due to preventible causes such as white scour and blackleg, is well worthy of the attention of those who wish to study the more practical work of the department. the branch of the department's work which deals with the sea-fisheries can only be very briefly touched on. it falls into two main heads which may roughly be termed the administrative and the scientific; the latter, of course, having economic developments as its ultimate object. the issue of loans to fishermen for the purchase of boats and gear, contributing to the cost of fishery slips and piers, circulating telegraphic intelligence, the making of by-laws for the regulation of the fisheries, the patrolling of the irish fishing grounds to prevent illegalities, and the attempts which are being made to develop the valuable irish oyster fishery by the introduction, with modifications suited to our own seaboard, of a system of culture comparable to those which are pursued with success in france and norway, may be mentioned as falling under the more directly economic branch of our activities. irish oysters are already attaining considerable celebrity, owing to the distance of our oyster beds from contaminating influences; and it is hoped that when the department's experiments are complete the irish oyster will be made subject to direct control for all its life, until it is despatched to market. attention is also being given to the relative value of seed oysters, other than native, for relaying on irish beds. on the more directly scientific side, the department has undertaken the survey of the trawling grounds around the coast to obtain an exact knowledge of the movements of the marketable fish at different times of their life, so that we may be guided in making by-laws and regulations by a full knowledge of the times and places at which protection is necessary. the biological and physical conditions of the western seas are also being studied in special reference to the mackerel fishery, with the object of correlating certain readily observable phenomena with the movements of the fish, and so of predicting the probable success of a fishery in a particular season. the routine observations of the department's fishery cruiser have been so arranged as to synchronise with those of other nations, in order to assist the international scheme of investigation now in progress, wherever its objects and those of the department are the same. while these various practical projects have been in operation, we have done our best to keep abreast of the times by sending missions to other countries, consisting of an expert accompanied by practical irishmen who would bring home information which was applicable to the conditions of our own country. the first batch of itinerant instructors in agriculture, whose training for the important work of laying the foundations for our whole scheme of agricultural instruction i have referred to, were taken on a continental tour by the professor of agriculture at the royal college of science, in order to give special advantages to a portion of our outdoor staff upon the success of whose work the rate of our progress in agricultural development might largely depend. and not only have we in our first three years gleaned as much information as possible by sending qualified irishmen to study abroad the industries in which we were particularly interested, but we also took steps to give the mass of our people at home an opportunity of studying these industries for themselves. with the somewhat unique experiment carried out for this object, i will conclude the story of the new department's activities in its early years. the part we took at the cork exhibition of was well understood in ireland, but not perhaps elsewhere. we secured a large space both in the main industrial hall and in the grounds, and gave an illustration not of what ireland had done, but of what, in our opinion, the country might achieve in the way of agricultural and industrial development in the near future. exhibiting on the one hand our available resources in the way of raw material, we gave, on the other hand, demonstrations of a large number of industries in actual operation. these exhibits, imported with their workers, machinery and tools, from several european countries and from great britain, all belonged to some class of industry which, in our belief, was capable of successful development in ireland. in the indoor part of the exhibit there was nothing very original, except perhaps in its close relation to the work of a government department. but what attracted by far the greatest interest and attention was a series of object lessons in many phases of farm activities, where, in our opinion, great and immediate improvements might be made. here were to be seen varieties of crops under various systems of treatment, demonstrations of sheep-dipping, calf-rearing on different foods, illustrations of the different breeds of fowl and systems of poultry management, model buildings and gardens for farmer and labourer; while in separate buildings the drying and pressing of fruit and vegetables, the manufacture of butter and cheese, and a very comprehensive forestry exhibit enabled our visitors to combine profitable suggestion with, if i may judge from my frequent opportunities of observing the sightseers in whom i was particularly interested, the keenest enjoyment. we kept at the exhibition, for six months, a staff of competent experts, whose instructions were to give to all-comers this simple lesson. they were to bring home to our people that, here in ireland before their very eyes, there were industries being carried on by foreigners, by englishmen, by scotchmen, and in some instances by irishmen, but in all cases by men and women who had no advantage over our workers except that they had the technical training which it was the desire of the department to give to the workers of ireland. the officials of the department entered into the spirit of this scheme enthusiastically and cheerfully, some of them, in addition to their ordinary work, turning the office into a tourist agency for these busy months. with the generous help of the railway companies they organised parties of farmers, artisans, school teachers, members of the statutory committees, and, in fact, of all to whom it was of importance to give this object lesson upon the relations between practical education and the promotion of industry. nearly , persons were thus moved to cork and back before the exhibition closed--an achievement largely due to the assistance given by the irish agricultural organisation society and the clergy throughout the country. this experiment, both in its conception and in its results, was perhaps unique. there were not wanting critics of the new department who stood aghast at so large an expenditure upon temporary edifices and a passing show; but those who are in touch with its educational work know that this novel application of state assistance fulfilled its purpose. it helped substantially to generate a belief in, and stimulate a demand for, technical instruction which it will take us many years adequately to supply. an american visitor who, as i afterwards learned, takes an active part in the discussion of the rural problems of his own country, disembarked at queenstown in order to 'take in' the cork exhibition. in his rush through dublin he 'took in' the department and the writer. 'mr. vice-president,' he said, before the hand-shaking was completed, 'i have visited all the great expositions held in my time. i have been to the cork exposition. i often saw more things, but never more ideas.' with this characteristically rapid appreciation of a movement which seeks to turn irish thought to action, my strange visitor vanished as suddenly as he came. * * * * * those whose sympathy with ireland has induced them to persevere through the mass of details with which this story of small beginnings is pieced together may wonder why the bearing of hopeful efforts for bringing prosperity and contentment to ireland upon the mental attitude of millions of irishmen scattered throughout the british empire and the united states, and so upon the lives of the countries in which they have made their homes, is apparently ignored. i fully recognise the vast importance of the subject. a book dealing comprehensively with the actual and potential influence of irish intellect upon english politics at home, and upon the politics of the united states, a carefully reasoned estimate of the part which irish intellect is qualified, and which i firmly believe it is destined, to play wherever the civilisation of the world is to be under the control of the english-speaking peoples--more especially where these peoples govern races which speak other tongues and see through other eyes--a clear and striking exposition of the true relation between the small affairs of the small island and that greater ireland which takes its inspiration from the sorrows, the passions, the endeavours, and the hopes of those who stick to the old home--such a book would possess a deep human interest, and would make a high and wide appeal. nevertheless, i feel that at the present time the most urgent need, from every point of view on which i have touched, is to focus the thought available for the irish question upon the definite work of a reconstruction of irish life. such is the purpose of this book. i do not wish to attach any exaggerated importance to the scheme of social and economic reform of which i have attempted to give a faithful account; nor is it in their practical achievement, be it great or small, that the initiators and organisers of the new movement take most pride. what these irishmen are proud of is the manner in which the people have responded to their efforts to bring irish sentiment into an intimate and helpful relation with irish economic problems. they had to reckon with that greatest of hindrances to the spirit of enterprise, a rooted belief in the potentiality of government to bring material prosperity to our doors. as i have pointed out, the practical demonstration which ireland had received of the power of government to inflict lasting economic injury gave rise to this belief; and i have noted the present influences to which it seems to owe its continuance until to-day. i believe that, if any enduring interest attaches to the story which i have told, it will consist in the successive steps by which this initial difficulty has been overcome. let me summarise in a few words what has been, so far, actually accomplished. those who did the work of which i have written first launched upon irish life a scheme of organised self-help which, perhaps more by good luck than design, proved to be in accordance with the inherited instincts of the people, and, therefore, moved them to action. next they called for, and in due season obtained, a department of government with adequate powers and means to aid in developing the resources of the country, so far as this end could be attained without transgressing the limits of beneficial state interference with the business of the people. in its constitution this department was so linked with the representative institutions of the country that the people soon began to feel that they largely controlled its policy and were responsible for its success. meanwhile, the progress of economic thought in the country had made such rapid strides that, in the administration of state assistance, the principle of self-help could be rigidly insisted upon and was willingly submitted to. the result is that a situation has been created which is as gratifying as it may appear to be paradoxical. within the scope and sphere of the movement the irish people are now, without any sacrifice of industrial character, combining reliance upon government with reliance upon themselves. that a movement thus conceived should so rapidly have overcome its initial difficulties and should, i might almost add, have passed beyond the experimental stage, will suggest to any thoughtful reader that above and beyond the removal by legislation of obstacles to progress--and much has been accomplished in this way of recent years--there must have been new, positive influences at work upon the national mind. these will be found in the growing recognition of the fact that the path of progress lies along distinctively irish lines, and that otherwise it will not be trodden by the irish people. much good in the same direction has been done, too, by the generous and authoritative admission by england that the future development of ireland should be assisted and promoted 'with a full and constant regard to the special traditions of the country.'[ ] but after all, while these concessions to irish sentiment, vitally important though they be, may speed us on our road to national regeneration, they will not take us far. it remains for us irishmen to realise--and the chief value of all the work i have described consists in the degree in which it forces us to realise--the responsibility which now rests with ourselves. we have been too long a prey to that deep delusion, which, because the ills of the country we love were in past days largely caused from without, bids us look to the same source for their cure. the true remedies are to be sought elsewhere; for, however disastrous may have been the past, the injury was moral rather than material, and the opportunity has now arrived for the patient building up again of irish character in those qualities which win in the modern struggle for existence. the field for that great work is clear of at least the worst of its many historic encumbrances. ireland must be re-created from within. the main work must be done in ireland, and the centre of interest must be ireland. when irishmen realise this truth, the splendid human power of their country, so much of which now runs idly or disastrously to waste, will be utilised; and we may then look with confidence for the foundation of a fabric of irish prosperity, framed in constructive thought, and laid enduringly in human character. the end. footnotes: [ ] pages , . [ ] it must be borne in mind that the department is not officially concerned with the question of the economic distribution of land referred to on pp. - . [ ] for a full description of the department's scheme of agricultural education i may refer to a _memorandum on agricultural education in ireland,_ written by the author and published by the department, july, . [ ] see _ante_, pp. - . [ ] speech of the lord lieutenant to the incorporated law society, november th, . see also p. . index a.e. (george w. russell) agitation as a policy, , agricultural board, , , _seq_. agriculture:-- agricultural holdings:-- improvement of, _seq_. transfer of peasants to new farms, _seq_. agricultural organisation: denmark, department of agriculture and farmers' societies, england, mr. hanbury's and lord onslow's views, irish agricultural organisation society (see that title) societies , co-operation (see that title). department of agriculture and technical instruction (see that title) depression in, education in relation to, , _seq_. exodus of rural population, state-aid, , tillage, decrease of, agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) act, , , , albert institute, glasnevin, , altruism, appeal to in co-operation, america, irish in: causes of their success and failure, _seq_. irish in american politics, _seq_. loss of religion in, anderson, r.a.:-- co-operative movement, , irish agricultural organisation society, andrews, mr. thomas:-- recess committee, anti-english sentiment:-- irish in america and, nature and cause, anti-treating league, arnott, sir john:-- recess committee, art, modern ecclesiastical art in ireland, association, economic, value of, associative qualities of the irish, bacon curing:-- denmark, , bagot, canon:-- creamery movement, balfour, arthur:-- irish policy, , balfour, gerald:-- , agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) act, , local government act, , , policy of explained, recess committee proposals; bill, banks, agricultural credit, _seq._ barley experiments of the department of agriculture, belfast chamber of commerce and home rule, berkeley, bishop:-- irish priests, on "mending our state," "parties" and "politics," bessborough commission, tenants improvements, &c. board of national education, board of technical instruction, , _seq_. bodley's _france_, madame darmesteter's review, boer war and the irish attitude, bogs, utilisation of, boycotting, bright, john:-- peasant proprietorship, brooke, stopford, buckle, personal factor in history, bulwer lytton, burke, butt, isaac, butter, danish, cadogan, lord, catholic association, catholic emancipation act, , , catholic university (see university question). celtic race, harold frederic's opinion, _seq_. character:-- associative qualities of the irish, education and character, gaelic revival, effect of on national character, , industrial character, irish inefficiency a problem of character, irish question a problem of character, , , lack of initiative in irish character, moral timidity of irish character, , , , prosperity of ireland, to be founded on character, roman catholicism and irish character, - , chesterfield, lord:-- education as the cause of difference in the character of men, christian brothers' schools, christian socialists, church-building in ireland,. church disestablishment act, ,--land purchase clauses, clan-system in ireland, clergy, roman catholic:-- action and attitude towards questions of the day authority, , _seq_. moral influence, , political influence, temperance reform, , college of science and department of agriculture, colonies, history of the irish in, _seq_. commercial restrictions--effect of on irish industrial character, _seq_. con o'neal forbids his posterity to build houses, etc., congested districts board:-- agricultural banks, loans to department of agriculture and, land act ( ) and, success of, , convents and monasteries, increase of, co-operative movement:-- agricultural banks, _seq_. agricultural depression, cause of, altruism, appeal to, anderson, r.a., , , associative qualities of irish, , , beginnings, combination, necessity of, co-operative union, manchester, craig, mr. e.t., and the vandeleur estate, creameries, _seq_. denmark, , educating adults, english co-operation, , finlay, father thomas, , , gaelic revival and, _seq_. gray, mr. t.c., holyoake, mr., hughes, mr. tom, irish agricultural organisation society (see that title). _irish homestead_, , ludlow, mr., marum, mr. mulhallen, middlemen, monteagle, lord, moral effects, , neale, mr. vansittart, necessity of co-operation for small landholders, _seq_. production and distribution problems, , roman catholic clergy and, state-aid side, , success, causes of , vandeleur estate community, village libraries, wolff, mr. henry w., yerburgh, mr., cork:-- exhibition, department's exhibit, , _seq_. craig, mr. e.t.-- co-operative movement creameries, co-operative, beginnings, _seq_. crop improvement schemes of the department, council of agriculture, , _seq_. dairying industry--co-operation and, _seq_. dane, mr.:-- recess committee, darmesteter, madame, _syndicats agricoles_, davis, thomas:-- political methods, , denmark:-- co-operation in, , high schools, department of agriculture and technical instruction:-- agriculture and technical instruction (ireland) act, , , , agricultural board, , _seq._ agricultural education, , , _seq._ , agricultural organisation, albert institute, glasnevin, , balfour, gerald, , board of technical instruction, , _seq._ college of science and, congested districts board and department, consultative committee for co-ordinating education, , , constitution, etc., co-operative movement and the benefits of organisation, cork exhibition exhibit, , _seq._ council of agriculture, , _seq._ crop improvement schemes domestic economy teaching, early days' experiences, _seq._ educational policy, , , , educational work, endowment, etc., home industries, industrial education and industrial life, intermediate education board and, , itinerant instruction, , irish agricultural organisation society and, live stock schemes, local committees, local government act and work of department, metropolitan school of art munster institute, cork, and, , parliamentary representation, , powers, _seq._ provincial committees, purposes, recess committee's recommendations, royal dublin society and, rural life improvement, sea fisheries, staff, teachers, technical instruction, , , , _seq._, , , , work already accomplished, _seq._ desmolins, m.:-- english love of home, devon commission, tenants' improvements, dineen, rev. p.s.:-- editor o'rahilly's poems, dixon, sir daniel:-- recess committee, domestic economy teaching, drink evil:-- anti-treating league, causes, roman catholic clergy's influence, , dudley, lord, , dufferin, lord:-- effect of commercial restrictions in ireland, duffy, sir c.g. dunraven conference, , , economic system in england, individualism of, economic thought:-- influence of roman catholicism, _seq_. lack of in ireland, _seq_. education:-- agricultural instruction, _seq_. board of national education, christian brothers, commissioners of national education, consultative committee for co-ordinating education, , , continental methods, defects of present system, denmark high schools, department of agriculture's policy and work, , , , , economic, , education bill, english education in ireland, influence of on national life, industrial, , intermediate education system, , , irish education schemes, _seq_. itinerant instruction, , keenan, sir patrick, kildare street society, literary education, lord chesterfield on education manual and practical instruction in primary schools, commission, , maynooth, influence of, - , , monastic and conventual institutions, national factor in national education, , practical, _seq_. reports of commissions, roman catholics, higher education, , , royal university, technical instruction, , _seq_., , trinity college, influence of, , _seq_. university:-- place of the university in education, royal commission on university education, wyse's scheme, education bill, emigration, causes of, etc., , england:-- anti-english sentiment in ireland, , co-operation in, , , , , economic system, individualism of, misunderstanding of irish question, _seq_. ewart, sir william:-- recess committee, experimental plots of the department, ferguson, sir samuel:-- national sentiment, field, mr. william, finlay, father thomas:-- , irish agricultural organisation society, recess committee fisheries--department of agriculture, development scheme, _seq_ flax improvement schemes, _fortnightly review_:-- harold frederic on irish question, france, _syndicats agricoles_, franchise extension in , effects of on irish political thought, frederic, harold:-- views on irish question, _seq_. free trade, effect of in ireland, gaelic revival:-- _seq_. appeal to the individual co-operative movement and, _seq_. gaelic league, aims and objects, hyde, douglas, irish language as a commercial medium, national factor in education, importance of, politics and the gaelic revival, , rural life, rehabilitation, gill, mr. t.p.:-- recess committee, gladstone:-- belfast chamber of commerce, home rule deputation, home rule, attitude towards, , , tenants' improvements, glasnevin, albert institute, , grattan, gray, mr. j.c.:-- co-operative movement, grazing, increase of, grundtvig, bishop, hanbury, mr.:-- agricultural societies, necessity of, suppression of swine fever, hannon, mr. p.j.--i.a.o.s. harrington, mr. t.c.:-- recess committee healy, archbishop, work for ireland, hegarty, father, work for ireland, historical grievances, , , , , _seq_. , holdings, small, problem of, holyoake, mr.:-- co-operative movement, domestic economy teaching, home: improvement of, irish conception of, irish, "homelessness at home," cause of , home industries, , home rule:--bill , gladstone's attitude to the question nationalist tactics as a means of attaining rosebery, lord, attitude to the question, ulster and home rule, , . _seq_. unionist attitude towards, hughes, tom, co-operative movement, hyde, douglas, individualism of english economic system, industrial character of the irish, effect of commercial restrictions, industrial leadership, and political leadership, industry:-- commercial restrictions, - education and industrial life, free trade, effect of, gaelic league and, home rule and, peasant industries protestantism and industry roman catholicism and industry. , _seq_. state-aid initiative, lack of in irish character, intermediate education , , irish agricultural organisation society:-- agricultural banks, _seq._ agricultural organisation:-- denmark, department of agriculture and farmers' societies, england, mr. hanbury's view, onslow, lord, opinion, welsh co. councils, and, anderson, r.a., central body, necessity for cork exhibition, tours organised by, department of agriculture and, federations, principal, finlay, father thomas, , , , funds, _seq_. gaelic revival and the co-operative movement, _seq._ hannon, mr. p.j., inauguration, _irish, homestead_, , monteagle, lord, roman catholic clergy and the movement, rural life social movements, , russell, george w. (a.e.), societies, number, etc. staff, &c. village libraries, _irish homestead_, , irish language as a commercial medium, "irish night" in house of commons, irish question:-- anomalies, character, a problem of, , , emigration, english misunderstanding, _seq._ frederic, harold, diagnosis by, _seq_. gaelic revival and, historical grievances, _seq_. home rule (see that title) human problem, land act marks a new era in, land system (see that title). our ignorance about ourselves parnell's death, effect of, political remedies, irish belief in, rural life, problem, , , sentiment, force of, ulster's attitude important, itinerant instructors, , , , johnson, dr., on "economy," kane, rev. r.r.:-- recess committee, keenan, sir patrick:-- itinerant instructors, , kelly, dr. (bishop of ross):-- work for ireland, kildare street school of domestic economy kildare street society, - land acts:-- , ; , , ; , congested districts, :-- , , , , marks a new era in ireland, transfer of peasants to new farms, land conference:-- landed gentry not to be expatriated, nationalist leaders' attitude, land purchase acts, land question and tenure question, , land system:-- causes of failure in irish land system, dual ownership land acts: , ; , , ; , ; , , , , , . land purchase acts, legislation, _seq_. peasant proprietorship, germs of, tenure question, , lawless, emily:-- "with the wild geese," le bon, "la psychologie de la foule," lea, sir thomas:-- recess committee, leadership in ireland, political and industrial, lecky, mr.:-- irish grievances, kildare street society, live stock improvement schemes, liverpool financial reform association, local government:-- balfour, mr. gerald, , , department of agriculture and local effort, educative effect of, nationalist leaders' attitude success in working, , lucas, mr., ludlow, mr.:-- co-operative movement, mccarthy, mr. justin:-- recess committee, manchester, co-operative union manual and practical instruction in primary schools' commission, , manures, artificial-- department of agriculture's encouragement in the use of, marum, mr. mulhallen--co-operative movement maynooth, influence of, , , mayo, lord:-- recess committee, _memorandum on agricultural education_ metropolitan school of art, middlemen, monasteries and convents, increase of, monteagle, lord:-- co-operative movement, i.a.o.s. president, recess committee moral timidity of irish character, , , morals:-- roman catholic clergy's influence on, , mulhall, mr. michael:-- recess committee, munster institute, cork, , musgrave, sir james:-- recess committee, national education board, agricultural teaching, nationalist party:-- home rule, , land conference and, local government and, policy, qualifications of leaders, , recess committee and, responsibility of leaders, tactics:-- _seq._ effect of on irish political character, nationality:-- education and nationality, _seq._ expansion of, outside party politics, modern conception of irish nationality, neale, vansittart:-- co-operative movement, o'connell, o'conor don:-- recess committee, o'dea, dr.:-- university commission, statements, , o'donnell, dr.:-- ploughing up of grazing lands, o'donovan, father, o'dwyer, dr.:-- evidence before university commission, o'gara, dr.:-- on the cultivation of the land, o'grady, standish, onslow, lord:-- agricultural organisation, benefit of, o'rahilly, egan:-- lament for the irish clans, oyster culture, parnell:-- , downfall, effect on national idea and aims, , , peasant industries, necessity for, peasant proprietary:-- agricultural organisation, necessity of, _seq_. bright, john, and, peasant industries, necessity of, problem of next generation, , penal laws, effect of, , plantation system, politics:-- agitation as a policy, , america, irish in politics in, _seq,_ gaelic revival and politics, , irishmen as politicians,. _seq._ "irish night" in house of commons, nationalist leaders' effect on irish political character, obsession of the irish mind by politics, , _seq_. "one-man" system, political leadership and industrial leadership, political remedies, irish belief in, political "wilderness," "priest in politics," separation, ulster liberal unionist association, unionists (irish):-- industrial element and, , influence in irish life, _seq._ population.-- relation of population to area, potato culture improvement schemes, production and distribution, problems, , protestantism:-- duty of, ulster, , raiffeisen system of banking, - railways--light railway system, _raimeis_, recess committee:-- , _seq._ , cadogan, lord, and, , constitution proposed, finlay, father thomas, gill, mr. t.p. ideas leading to its formation, m'carthy, mr. justin, letter, members, mulhall, mr. michael, nationalist members, recommendations, redmond, mr. john, and, report, , , results, _seq._ state-aid question, tisserand's memorandum, redmond, mr. john:-- recess committee, religion:-- influence of on irish life, , _seq._ protestantism, , , roman catholic church (see that title). sectarian animosities, , toleration, meaning of word, ritualistic movement, robertson, lord:-- university commission, roman catholic church:-- church-building and increase of monasteries, etc., , , clergy:-- action and attitude towards questions of the day, _seq_. authority of, , _seq._ co-operative movement, moral influence, , political influence, , temperance reform, , economic conditions, influence on _seq._ effect on irish character, - , higher education of roman catholics, , rosebery, lord:-- attitude towards home rule, ross, mr. john:-- recess committee, royal college of science, , , royal commission on university education, , , royal dublin society, aid to department of agriculture, royal university education, defects in, rural life:-- emigration, causes of, , gaelic revival's influence on, industries, , , problem of, , , rehabilitation, , russell, george w. (a.e.), salisbury, lord:-- "twenty years of resolute government," saunderson, colonel:-- recess committee, scotch-irish in america, sea fisheries--department of agriculture's improvement schemes, self-help movement (see co-operative movement). sentiment:-- anti-english, cause of, _seq_. force of in irish question, , separation, home rule and, shinnors, rev. mr.:-- irish in america, sinclair, thomas:-- recess committee, social order, irish attachment to, _spectator_:--english non-allowance for sentiment, _speed's chronicle_:-- con o'neal, etc. spencer, lord, starkie, dr.:-- mr. wyse's education scheme, state-aid:-- , , , , stephen, j.k. ("cynicus") stopford brooke, swine fever, technical instruction, , , _seq_. , , , temperance reform, _seq_. tenure question and land question, tillage, decrease of, tisserand, m.:-- recess committee memorandum, tobacco culture, trinity college, influence of, , _seq._ two irelands, ulster:-- attitude towards the rest of ireland, home rule, objections to, , , ulster liberal unionist association, political thought in, unionist (irish) party:-- industrial element in irish life and, , , influence in irish life, _seq._ policy, ulster and home rule, , _seq._ united ireland, first real conception of, united irish league, university question:-- , catholic university:-- o'dea, dr., on, o'dwyer, dr., on, hyde, dr., evidence before commission, maynooth, influence of, , , , place of the university in education, trinity college, influence of, , _seq._ university reform necessary, vandeleur estate, co-operative community, village libraries, , wolff, mr. henry w.:-- people's banks, wyndham, mr.:-- land act. , , wyse, mr. thomas:-- scheme of irish education, yeats, w.b. yerburgh, mr. r.a.:-- agricultural banks, [illustration] john redmond's last years by stephen gwynn london edward arnold [all rights reserved] preface in writing this book, i have had access to my late leader's papers for the period beginning with the war. these were placed at my disposal by his son, major william archer redmond, d.s.o., m.p. i had also the consent of mrs. redmond to my undertaking the task. but for the book and for the opinions expressed in it i am solely responsible. no condition having been imposed upon me, it seemed best, for many reasons, that it should be written, as it has been written, without consultation. a writer in whom such a trust has been placed may well be at a loss how to express his gratitude, but can never convey the measure of his anxiety. from those who cherish redmond's memory, and especially from those who were nearest to him in comradeship and affection, i must only crave the indulgence which should be accorded to sincere effort. differences of interpretation there will be in any review of past events, and others can claim with justice that on many points they were better situated for full understanding than was i. yet for the period which is specially studied, if there is failure in comprehension it cannot be excused by lack of opportunity to be thoroughly informed. to readers at large i would say this--that if any sentence in these pages be uncandid or ungenerous, it is most unworthy to be found in the record of such a man. s.g. contents chapter page i. introductory ii. redmond as chairman iii. the home rule bill of iv. the rival volunteer forces v. war in europe vi. the raising of the irish brigades vii. the rebellion and its sequel viii. the convention and the end index portrait of john redmond _frontispiece_ john redmond's last years chapter i introductory i the time has not yet come to write the biography of john redmond. not until the history of the pledge-bound irish parliamentary party can be treated freely, fully and impartially as a chapter closed and ended will it be possible to record in detail the life of a man who was associated with it almost from its beginning and who from the opening of this century guided it with almost growing authority to the statutory accomplishment of its desperate task; who knew, in it and for it, all vicissitudes of fortune and who gave to it without stint or reservation his whole life's energy from earliest manhood to the grave. but when the war came, unforeseen, shifting all political balances, transmuting the greatest political issues, especially those of which the irish question is a type, it imposed upon men and upon nations, but above all on the leaders of nations, swift and momentous decisions. because that critical hour presented to redmond's vision a great opportunity which he must either seize single-handed or let it for ever pass by; because he rose to the height of the occasion with the courage which counts upon and commands success; because he sought by his own motion to swing the whole mass and weight of a nation's feeling into a new direction--for all these reasons his last years were different in kind from any that had gone before; and as such they admit of and demand separate study. intelligent comprehension of what he aimed at, what he achieved, and what forces defeated him in these last years of his life is urgently needed, not for the sake of his memory, but for ireland's sake; because until his policy is understood there is little chance that irishmen should attain what he aspired to win for ireland--the strength and dignity of a free and united nation. it is of redmond's policy for ireland in relation to the war, and to the events which in ireland arose out of the war, that this book is mainly designed to treat. yet to make that policy intelligible some history is needed of the startling series of political developments which the war interrupted but did not terminate--and which, though still recent, are blurred in public memory by all that has intervened. further back still, a brief review of his early career must be given, not only to set the man's figure in relation to his environment, but to show that this final phase was in reality no new departure, no break with his past, but a true though a divergent evolution from all that had gone before. * * * * * ireland, although so small in extent and population, is none the less a country of many and locally varying racial strains; and john redmond sprang from one of the most typical. he was a wexfordman; that is to say, he came from the part of ireland where if you cross the channel there is least difference between the land you leave and the land you sail to; where the sea-divided peoples have been always to some extent assimilated. here in the twelfth century the first norman-welsh invaders came across. the leader of their first party, raymond le gros, landed at a point between wexford and waterford; the town of wexford was his first capture; and where he began his conquest he settled. from this stock the redmond name and line descend. thus john redmond came from an invading strain in which norman and celt were already blended; and he grew up in a country thickly settled with men whose ancestors came along with his from across the water. till a century ago the barony of forth retained a dialect of its own which was in effect such english as men spoke before chaucer began to write; and even to-day in any wexford fair or market you will see among the strong, well-nourished, prosperous farmers many faces and figures which an artist might easily assimilate to an athletic example of the traditional john bull. redmond himself, hawk-faced and thick-bodied, might have been taken for no bad reincarnation of raymond le gros. to this extent he was less of a celt than many of his countrymen; but he was assuredly none the less irish because he was a wexfordman. the county of his birth was the county which had made the greatest resistance to english power in ireland since sarsfield and his "wild geese" crossed to flanders. born in , he grew up in a country-side full of memories of events then only some sixty years old; he knew and spoke with many men who had been out with pike or fowling-piece in . rebel was to him from boyhood up a name of honour; and this was not only a phase of boyish enthusiasm. in his mature manhood, speaking as leader of the irish party, he told the house of commons plainly that in his deliberate judgment ireland's situation justified an appeal to arms, and that if rebellion offered a reasonable prospect of gaining freedom for a united ireland he would counsel rebellion on the instant. but if he was always and admittedly a potential rebel, no man was ever less a revolutionary. as much a constitutionalist as hampden or washington, he was so by temperament and by inheritance. the tradition of parliamentary service had been in his family for two generations. two years after his birth his great-uncle, john edward redmond, from whom he got his baptismal names, was elected unopposed as liberal member for the borough of wexford, where his statue stands in the market-place, commemorating good service rendered. much of the rich flat land which lies along the railway from wexford to rosslare harbour was reclaimed by this redmond's enterprise from tidal slob. on his death in the seat passed to his nephew william archer redmond, whose two sons were john and william redmond, with whom this book deals. thus the present major william archer redmond, m.p., represents four continuous generations of the same family sent to westminster among the representatives of nationalist ireland. not often is a family type so strongly marked as among the men of this stock. but the portraits show that while the late major "willie" redmond closely resembled his father, in john redmond and john redmond's son there were reproduced the more dominant and massive features of the first of the parliamentary line. to sum up then, john redmond and his brother came of a long strain of catholic gentry who were linked by continuous historic association of over seven centuries to a certain district in south leinster, and who retained leadership among their own people. the tradition of military service was strong, too, in this family. their father's cousin, son to the original john edward redmond, was a professional soldier; and their mother was the daughter of general hoey. they were brought up in an old-fashioned country house, ballytrent, on the wexford coast, and the habits of outdoor country life and sport which furnished the chief pleasure of their lives were formed in boyhood. their upbringing differed from that of boys in thousands of similar country houses throughout ireland only in one circumstance; they were catholics, and even so lately as in their boyhood catholic land-owners were comparatively few. john redmond was four years older than his younger brother, born in . he got his schooling under the jesuits at clongowes in early days, before the system of government endowment by examination results had given incentive to cramming. according to his own account he did little work and nobody pressed him to exertion. but the jesuits are skilful teachers, and they left a mark on his mind. it is scarcely chance that the two speakers of all i have heard who had the best delivery were pupils of theirs--redmond and sir william butler. they taught him to write, they taught him to speak and to declaim, they encouraged his natural love of literature. his taste was formed in those days and it was curiously old-fashioned. his diction in a prepared oration might have come from the days of grattan: and he maintained the old-fashioned habit of quotation. no poetry written later than byron, moore and shelley made much appeal to him, save the irish political ballads. but scarcely any english speaker quoted shakespeare in public so often or so aptly as this irishman. from clongowes he went to trinity college, dublin, where he matriculated in october at the age of seventeen. his academic studies seem to have been half-hearted. at the end of a year his name was taken off the college books by his father, but was replaced. at the close of his second year of study, in july , it was removed again and for good. but apart from what he learnt at school, his real education was an apprenticeship; he was trained in the house of commons for the work of parliament. he was a boy of fifteen, of an age to be keenly interested, when the representation of wexford passed from his great-uncle to his father. probably the reason why he was removed from trinity college was the desire of mr. william redmond to have his son with him in london. certainly john redmond was there during the session of , for on the introduction of mr. gladstone's second home rule bill he recalled a finely apposite shakespearean quotation which he had heard butt use in a home rule debate of that year. in may his father procured him a clerkship in the house. the post to which he was assigned was that of attendant in the vote office, so that his days (and a great part of his nights) were spent in the two little rooms which open off the members' lobby, that buzzing centre of parliamentary gossip, activity and intrigue. half a dozen steps only separated him from the door of the chamber itself, and that door he was always privileged to pass and listen to the debates, standing by the entrance outside the magical strip of matting which indicates the bar of the house. from this point of vantage he watched the first stages of a parliament in which mr, gladstone set out with so triumphant a majority--and watched too the inroads made upon the power and prestige of that majority by the new parliamentary force which had come into being. redmond himself described thus (in a lecture delivered at new york in ) the policy which came to be known as "the new departure": "mr. parnell found that the british parliament insisted upon turning a deaf ear to ireland's claim for justice. he resolved to adopt the simple yet masterly device of preventing parliament doing any work at all until it consented to hear." in the task of systematic and continuous obstruction parnell at once found a ready helper, mr. joseph biggar. but parnell, biggar and those who from to acted generally or frequently with them were only members of the body led by butt; though they were, indeed, ultimately in more or less open revolt against butt's leadership. when butt died, and was at least nominally replaced by mr. shaw, the growth of parnell's ascendancy became more marked. in the general election of sixty home rulers were returned to parliament; and at a meeting attended by over forty, twenty-three declared for parnell as their leader. a question almost of ceremonial observance immediately defined the issue. liberals were in power, and government was more friendly to ireland's claims than was the opposition. mr. shaw and his adherents were for marking support of the government by sitting on the government side of the chamber. parnell insisted that the irish party should be independent of all english attachments and permanently in opposition till ireland received its rights. with that view he and his friends took up their station on the speaker's left below the gangway, where they held it continuously for thirty-nine years. mr. william redmond was no supporter of the new policy. as the little group which parnell headed grew more and more insistent in their obstruction, the member for wexford spoke less and less. his interventions were rare and dignified. in the debate on the address in the new parliament of he acted as a lieutenant to mr. shaw. yet he was on very friendly terms with parnell--almost a neighbour of his, for the parnell property, lying about the vale of ovoca, touched the border of wexford. mr. william redmond's career in that parliament was soon ended. in november he died, and, normally, his son, whose qualifications and ambitions were known, would have succeeded him. but collision between government and the parnellite party was already beginning. mr. t.m. healy, then parnell's secretary, had been arrested for a speech in denunciation of some eviction proceedings. this was the first arrest of a prominent man under mr. forster's rule as chief secretary, and parnell, with whom in those days the decision rested, decided that mr. healy should immediately be put forward for the vacant seat. in later days he was to remind mr. healy how he had done this, "rebuking and restraining the prior right of my friend, jack redmond." redmond had not long to wait, however. another vacancy occurred in another wexford seat, the ancient borough of new ross, and he was returned without opposition at a crucial moment in the parliamentary struggle. that struggle was not only parliamentary. from the famine year of onwards a fierce agitation had begun, whose purpose was to secure the land of ireland to the people who worked it. davitt was to the land what parnell was to the parliamentary campaign: but it was parnell's genius which fused the two movements. to meet the growing power of the land league, mr. forster demanded a coercion bill, and after long struggles in the cabinet he prevailed. against this bill it was obvious that all means of parliamentary resistance would be used to the uttermost. they were still of a primitive simplicity. in the days before parnell the house of commons had carried on its business under a system of rules which worked perfectly well because there was a general disposition in the assembly to get business done. a beginning of the new order was made when a group of ex-military men attempted to defeat the measure for abolishing purchase of commissions in the army by a series of dilatory motions. this, however, was an isolated occurrence. any english member who set himself to thwart the desire of the house for a conclusion by using means which the general body considered unfair would have been reduced to quiescence by a demonstration that he was considered a nuisance. his voice would have been drowned in a buzz of conversation or by less civil interruptions. this implied, however, a willingness to be influenced by social considerations, and, more than that, a loyalty to the traditions and purposes of the house. parnell felt no such willingness and acknowledged no such loyalty. "his object," said redmond in the address already quoted, "was to injure it so long as it refused to listen to the just claims of his country." the house, realizing parnell's intention, visited upon him and his associates all the penalties by which it was wont to enforce its wishes: but the penalties had no sting. all the displays of anger, disapproval, contempt, all the vocabulary of denunciation in debate and in the press, all the studied forms of insult, all the marks of social displeasure, only served to convince the irishmen that they were producing their effect. still, the house continued to act on the assumption that it could vindicate its traditions in the old traditional way: it was determined to change none of the rules which had stood for so many generations: it would maintain its liberties and put down in its own way those who had the impertinence to abuse them. the breaking-point came exactly at the moment when redmond was elected. on monday, jan. th, , mr. forster introduced his coercion bill. it was open, of course, to any member to speak once, and once only, on the main motion. but every member had an indefinite right to move the adjournment of the debate, and on each such motion every member could speak again. the debate was carried all through that week. it was resumed on monday, st. the declaration of redmond's election was fixed for tuesday, february st, in new ross--there being no contest. a telegram summoned him to come instantly after the declaration to london. he took the train at noon, travelled to dublin and crossed the channel. at holyhead about midnight another telegram told him that the debate was still proceeding. he reached euston on the wednesday morning, drove straight to the house, and there, standing at the bar, saw what he thus described: "it was thus, travel-stained and weary, that i first presented myself as a member of the british parliament. the house was still sitting, it had been sitting without a break for over forty hours, and i shall never forget the appearance the chamber presented. the floor was littered with paper. a few dishevelled and weary irishmen were on one side of the house, about a hundred infuriated englishmen upon the other; some of them still in evening dress, and wearing what were once white shirts of the night before last. mr. parnell was upon his legs, with pale cheeks and drawn face, his hands clenched behind his back, facing without flinching a continuous roar of interruption. it was now about eight o'clock. half of mr. parnell's followers were out of the chamber snatching a few moments' sleep in chairs in the library or smoke room. those who remained had each a specified period of time allotted him to speak, and they were wearily waiting their turn. as they caught sight of me standing at the bar of the house of commons there was a cheer of welcome. i was unable to come to their aid, however, as under the rules of the house i could not take my seat until the commencement of a new sitting. my very presence, however, brought, i think, a sense of encouragement and approaching relief to them; and i stood there at the bar with my travelling coat still upon me, gazing alternately with indignation and admiration at the amazing scene presented to my gaze. "this, then, was the great parliament of england! of intelligent debate there was none. it was one unbroken scene of turbulence and disorder. the few irishmen remained quiet, too much amused, perhaps, or too much exhausted to retaliate. it was the english--the members of the first assembly of gentlemen in europe, as they love to style it--who howled and roared, and almost foamed at the mouth with rage at the calm and pale-featured young man who stood patiently facing them and endeavouring to make himself heard." an hour later the closure was applied, for the first time in parliament's history. the records of hansard spoil a story which redmond was fond of telling--that he took his oath and his seat, made his maiden speech and was suspended all in the same evening. in point of fact he took his seat that wednesday afternoon, when the house sat for a few hours only and adjourned again. next day news came in that davitt had been arrested in ireland. mr. dillon, in the process of endeavouring to extract an explanation from the government, was named and suspended. when the prime minister after this rose to speak, mr. parnell moved: "that mr. gladstone be not heard." the speaker, ruling that mr. gladstone was in possession of the house, refused to put the motion. mr. parnell, insisting that his motion should be put, came into collision with the authority of the chair and was formally "named." mr. gladstone then moved his suspension and a division was called--whereupon, under the rules which then existed, all members were bound to leave the chamber. on this occasion the irish members remained seated, as a protest, and after the division the speaker solemnly reported this breach of order to the house. for their refusal to obey the irish members present were suspended from the service of the house, and as a body they refused to leave unless removed by physical force. accordingly, man by man was ordered to leave and each in turn rose up with a brief phrase of refusal, after which the sergeant-at-arms with an officer approached and laid a hand on the recusant's shoulder. redmond, when his turn came, said: "as i regard the whole of these proceedings as unmitigated despotism, i beg respectfully to decline to withdraw." that was his maiden speech. having delivered it, "mr. redmond," says hansard, "was by desire of mr. speaker removed by the sergeant-at-arms from the house." it was a strange beginning for one of the greatest parliamentarians of our epoch--and one of the greatest conservatives. the whole bent of his mind was towards moderation in all things. temperamentally, he hated all forms of extravagant eccentricity; he loved the old if only because it was old; he had the keenest sense not only of decorum but of the essential dignity which is the best guardian of order. yet here he was committed to a policy which aimed deliberately at outraging all the established decencies--at disregarding ostentatiously all the usages by which an assembly of gentlemen had regulated their proceedings. what is more, it was an assembly which redmond found temperamentally congenial to him--an assembly which, apart from its relation to ireland, he thoroughly admired and liked. in , when irish members were fiercely in opposition to the government, he concluded his description of parliament with these words: "in the main, the house of commons is, i believe, dominated by a rough-and-ready sense of manliness and fair-play. of course, i am not speaking of it as a governing body. in that character it has been towards ireland always ignorant and nearly always unfair. i am treating it simply as an assembly of men, and i say of it, it is a body where sooner or later every man finds his proper level, where mediocrity and insincerity will never permanently succeed, and where ability and honesty of purpose will never permanently fail." that was no mean tribute, coming from one who held himself aloof from all the personal advantages belonging to the society whose rules he did not recognize. the opinion to which the irish members of parnell's following were amenable was not made at westminster; it did not exist there--except, and that in its most rigid form, amongst themselves. it is worth while to recall for english readers--and perhaps not for them only--what membership of parnell's party involved. in the first place, there was a self-denying ordinance by which the man elected to it bound himself to accept no post of any kind under government. all the chances which election to parliament opens to most men--and especially to men of the legal profession--were at once set aside. absolute discipline and unity of action, except in matters specially left open to individual judgment, were enforced on all. these were the essentials. but in the period of acute war between the irish and all other parties which was opening when redmond entered there was a self-imposed rule that as the english public and english members disapproved and disliked the irishmen an answering attitude should be adopted: that even private hospitality should be avoided and that the belligerents should behave as if they were quite literally in an enemy's country. later, when mr. gladstone had adopted the irish cause and alliance with the liberal party had begun, the rigour of this attitude was modified. many irish members joined the liberal clubs and went freely to houses where they were sure of sympathy. yet neither of the redmonds followed far in this direction, and the habit of social isolation which they formed in their early days lasted with them to the end. if john redmond ever went to any house in london which was not an irish home it was by the rarest exception. for society, parnell's party depended on themselves and their countrymen and sympathizers. but they were in no way to be pitied; they were the best of company for one another. it was a movement of the young, it had all the strength and audacity of youth, it was a great adventure. a few men from an older generation came with them, mr. biggar, justin mccarthy and others. but their leader, though older than most of his followers, was a young man by parliamentary standards. in parnell was only thirty-three; and within four years more he was as great a power in the house as mr. gladstone. some few years back i heard willie redmond say in the members' smoking-room, "isn't it strange to think that parnell would be sixty now if he had lived. i can't imagine him as an old man." yet the accent of maturity was on parnell's leadership; the men whom he led were essentially young. in , when redmond entered parliament, mr. dillon was thirty, mr. t.p. o'connor and mr. sexton veterans of thirty-three, mr. healy twenty-six. mr. william o'brien (who did not come in until ) was of the same year as mr. dillon. redmond was younger than any of them, being elected at the age of twenty-four. yet nobody then thought it surprising that he should be sent in to represent the party on a mission to australia and the united states at a most difficult time. the phoenix park murders had created widespread indiscriminating anger against all irish nationalists throughout the empire, and redmond found it difficult to secure even a hall to speak in. for support there was sent to him his brother, then a youth of twenty-one, and feeling ran so strong against the two that the prime minister of new south wales (sir henry parkes) proposed their expulsion from the colony. nevertheless, redmond made good. "the irish working-men stood by me," he said, "and in fact saved the situation." fifteen thousand pounds were collected before they left the island continent. it indicates well the changed conditions to remember that when in mr. hazleton and the late t.m. kettle were selected to go on a far less arduous and difficult mission to america, there was much talk about the astonishing youth of our representatives. yet both were then older than john redmond was in --to say nothing of his brother, who must have been the most exuberantly youthful spokesman that a serious cause ever found. the redmonds' stay in australia, which lasted over a year, determined one important matter for both young men; they found their wives in the colony whose prime minister proposed to expel them. john redmond married miss joanna dalton and his brother her near kinswoman, miss eleanor dalton. willie redmond was elected to parliament in his absence for his father's old seat--mr. healy having vacated wexford to fight and win a sensational election in county monaghan. this early visit to the great transmarine dominions, and the ties which he formed there, left a marked impression on john redmond's mind, which was reinforced by other visits in later years, and by all the growing associations that linked him to life and politics in the dominions. redmond knew vastly more, and in truth cared vastly more, about the british empire than most imperialists. his affection was not based on any inherited prejudice, nor inspired by a mere geographical idea. he was attracted to that which he had seen and handled, in whose making he had watched so many of his fellow-countrymen fruitfully and honourably busy. he felt acutely that the empire belonged to irish nationalists at least as much as to english tories. america also was familiar to him, and he had every cause to be grateful to the united states; but his interest in the dominions was of a different kind. he felt himself a partner in their glories, and by this feeling he was linked in sympathy to a great many elements in british life that were otherwise uncongenial to him--and was, on the other hand, divided in sympathy from some who in irish politics were his staunch supporters. he could never understand the psychology of the little englander. "if i were an englishman," he once said to me, "i should be the greatest imperialist living." from first to last his attitude was that which is indicated by a passage of his speech on mr. gladstone's first home rule bill: "as a nationalist, i may say i do not regard as entirely palatable the idea that for ever and a day ireland's voice should be excluded from the councils of an empire which the genius and valour of her sons have done so much to build up and of which she is to remain a part."[ ] ii to follow in detail redmond's career under parnell's leadership would be beyond the scope of this book. less conspicuous in parliament than such lieutenants of "the chief" as mr. sexton, mr. dillon and mr. healy, john redmond acted as one of the party whips and was in much demand outside parliament as a platform speaker. in august he was once more sent overseas to attend the convention of the irish race at chicago. he had to tell his hearers of victory and of repulse. "when you last assembled in convention, two years ago, the irish party in parliament did not number more than forty; to-day we hold five-sixths of the irish seats, and speak in the name of five-sixths of the irish people in ireland. two years ago we had arrayed against us all english political parties and every english statesman; to-day we have on our side one of the great english political parties, which, though its past traditions in ireland have been evil, still represents the party of progress in england, and the greatest statesman of the day, who has staked his all upon winning for ireland her national rights. two years ago england had in truth, in mitchel's phrase, the ear of the world. to-day, at last, that ear, so long poisoned with calumnies of our people, is now open to the voice of ireland. two years ago the public opinion of the world--aye, and even of this free land of america--was doubtful as to the justice of our movement; to-day the opinion of the civilized world, and of america in particular, is clearly and distinctly on our side." on the other hand, in england the forces of reaction had succeeded. the home rule bill had been defeated and the liberal party broken up. a government was in power whose programme was one of coercion. but ireland, redmond said, was ready for the fight and confident that with the weapons at command the enemy could be defeated. who were the enemy, and what the weapon? his speech made this plain. "once more irish landlords have behaved themselves with unaccountable folly and stupidity. they have once more stood between ireland and her freedom, and have refused even an extravagant price for the land because the offer was coupled with the concession of an irish parliament. so be it. i believe the last offer has been made to irish landlordism. the ultimate settlement of this question must now be reserved for the parliament of ireland, and meantime the people must take care to protect themselves and their children. in many parts of ireland, i assert, rent is to-day an impossibility, and in every part of ireland the rents demanded are exorbitant, and will not, and cannot, be paid." he was wrong. the settlement of this vast question was to be accomplished through the imperial parliament, not the irish. yet it was accomplished in essence by an agreement between irishmen for which redmond himself was largely responsible. that settlement, however, merely ratified in the final stage in the conversion of both countries to parnell's policy of state-aided land purchase. tentative beginnings were made with it under the government which was in power from to ; but the main characteristic of this period was a fierce revival of the land war. it was virulent in wexford, and in redmond shared the experience which few irish members escaped or desired to escape; he was sentenced to imprisonment on a charge of intimidation for a speech condemning some evictions. he and his brother met in wexford jail, and both used to describe with glee their mutual salutation: "good heavens, what a ruffian you look!" cropped hair and convict clothes were part of mr. balfour's resolute government. yet in those days ireland was winning, and winning fast. mr. gladstone's personal ascendancy, never stronger than in the wonderful effort of his old age, asserted itself more and more. public sympathy in great britain was turning against the wholesale evictions, the knocking down of peasants' houses by police and military with battering-rams. the tory party sought for a new political weapon, and one day _the times_ came out with the facsimile of what purported to be a letter in parnell's hand. this document implied at least condonation of the phoenix park murders. other letters equally incriminating were published. parnell denied the authorship, his denial was not accepted; fierce controversy ended in the establishment of one of the strangest commissions of enquiry ever set up--a semi-judicial tribunal of judges. its proceedings created the acutest public interest, drawn out over long months, up to the day when sir charles russell had before him in the witness-box the original vendor of the letters--one pigott. pigott's collapse, confession of forgery, flight and suicide, followed with appalling swiftness: and the result was to generate through england a very strong sympathy for the man against whom, and against whose followers, such desperate calumnies had been uttered and exploited. parnell's prestige was no longer confined to his own countrymen: and the sense of all home rulers was that they fought a winning battle, under two allied leaders of extraordinary personal gifts. then, as soon as it was clear that the attack of the pigott letters had recoiled on those who launched it, came the indication of a fresh menace. proceedings for divorce were taken with parnell as the co-respondent: the case was undefended. mr. gladstone and probably most englishmen expected that parnell would retire, at all events temporarily, from public life, as, in lord morley's words, "any english politician of his rank" would have been obliged to do. parnell refused to retire; and gladstone made it publicly known that if parnell continued to lead the irish party, his own leadership of the liberal party, "based, as it had been, mainly on the prosecution of the irish cause," would be rendered "almost a nullity." the choice--for it was a choice--was left to the irish. to retain parnell as leader in gladstone's judgment made gladstone's task impossible, and therefore indicated gladstone's withdrawal from public life. to part with parnell meant parting with the ablest leader that nationalist ireland had ever found. a more heartrending alternative has never been imposed on any body of politicians, and john redmond, unlike his younger brother, was not of those to whom decision came by an instinctive act of allegiance. his nature forced him to see both sides, but when he decided it was with his whole nature. the issue was debated by the irish party in committee room of the house of commons, with the press in attendance. in this encounter redmond for the first time stepped to the front. he had hitherto been outside the first flight of irish parliamentarians. now, he was the first to state the case for maintaining parnell's leadership, and throughout the discussions he led on that side. when parnell's death came a few months after the "split" declared itself, there was no hesitation as to which of the parnellites should assume the leadership of their party. redmond resigned his seat in north wexford and contested cork city, where parnell had long been member. he was badly beaten, and for some three months the new leader of the parnellites was without a seat in the house--though not during a session. another death made a new opening, and in december his fight at waterford against no less a man than michael davitt turned for a moment the electoral tide which was setting heavily against the smaller group. it was a notable win, and the hero of that triumph retained his hold on the loyalty of those with whom he won it when the rest of ireland had turned away from him. the tie lasted to his death--and after it, for waterford then chose as its representative the dead leader's son, and renewed that choice in the general election of , when other allegiances to the old party were like leaves on the wind. other ties were formed in these years, which lasted through redmond's life. i have deliberately abstained from entering into either the merits or the details of the "split." but certain of its aspects must be recognized. in the division into parnellites and anti-parnellites, parnellites were a small but fierce minority. it needed resolution for a man to be a parnellite, all the more because the whole force of the catholic church was thrown against them, and in some instances disgraceful methods were used. one of redmond's best friends was the owner of a local newspaper; it was declared to be a mortal sin to buy, sell, or read his journal. the business was reduced to the verge of ruin but the man went on, till a new bishop came and gradually things mended. he, like redmond, was a staunch practising catholic, and later on was the friend and trusted associate of many priests; but he stood for an element in ireland which refused to allow the least usurpation by ecclesiastical authority in the sphere of citizenship. willie redmond won east clare, as his brother won waterford city, after a turbulent election with the priests against him. he gave in that contest, as always, at least as good as he got; but his collision with individuals never affected his devotion or his brother's to their church. but in social life the estrangements of these days were far-reaching, and, at least negatively, so far as redmond was concerned, they were lasting. his existence had been saddened and altered shortly before the break up by the death of his first wife, which left him a young widower with three children. after the "split" the whole circle of friends among whom he had lived in dublin and in london was shattered and divided; and in later life none, i think, of those broken intimacies was renewed. in redmond's nature there was a total lack of rancour. clear-sighted as he was, he realized how desperately difficult a choice was imposed on nationalists by parnell's situation, and he knew how honestly men had differed. he could command completely his intellectual judgment of their action, and there were many whom in later stages of the movement he trusted none the less for their divergence from him at this crisis. but he was more than commonly a creature of instinct; and the associations of his intimate life were all decided in these years. his affection was given to those who were comrades in this pass of danger. the only two exceptions to be made are, first and chiefly, mr. devlin, who was too young to be actively concerned with politics at the time of parnell's overthrow; and, to speak truth, it is not possible to be so closely associated as redmond was with this lieutenant of his, or to be so long and loyally served by him, and not to undergo his personal attraction. the other exception is mr. j.j. mooney, who entered parliament and politics later than the "split," but whose personal allegiance to mr. redmond was always declared. he acted for long as redmond's secretary and always as his counsellor--for in all the detail of parliamentary business, especially on the side of private bill legislation, the house had few more capable members. he was perhaps more completely than mr. devlin one of the little group of intimates with whom redmond loved to surround himself in the country. all the rest were old champions of the fight over parnell's body; but by far the closest friend of all was his brother willie. their marriages to kinswomen had redoubled the tie of blood. it should be noted here that redmond married for the second time in , after ten years of widowerhood. his wife was, by his wish and her own, never at all in the public eye. all that should be said here is that his friends found friendship with him easier and not more difficult than before this marriage, and were grateful for the devoted care which was bestowed upon their leader. she accompanied him on all his political journeyings, whatever their duration, and gave him in the fullest measure the companionship which he desired. footnotes: [footnote : this speech is included in "home rule: speeches of john redmond, m.p.," a volume edited in by mr. barry o'brien. it contains also the american addresses quoted in this chapter, and a speech to the dublin convention in , quoted in the next.] chapter ii redmond as chairman i the parliament of - was barren of results for ireland, being consumed by factious strife, at westminster between the houses and in ireland between the parties. with gladstone's retirement it seemed as if home rule were dead. but thinking men realized that the irish question was still there to be dealt with, and approach to solution began along new lines. when lord salisbury returned to power in , land purchase was cautiously extended with much success: the congested districts board, originally established by mr. arthur balfour, was showing good results, and his brother mr. gerald balfour, now chief secretary, felt his way towards a policy which came to be described as "killing home rule with kindness." a section of irish nationalist opinion was scared by the menace contained in this epigram; and consequently, when in mr. horace plunkett (as he then was) put forward proposals for a conference of irishmen to consider possible means for developing irish agriculture and irish industries under the existing system, voices were raised against what was denounced as a new attempt to divert nationalist ireland from its main purpose of achieving self-government. mr. plunkett's original proposal was that a body of four anti-parnellites, two parnellites and two unionists should meet and deliberate in ireland, during the recess. in the upshot the nationalist majority refused to take any part; but redmond, with one of his supporters, mr. william field, served on the "recess committee" and concurred in its report, out of which came the creation of the department of agriculture and technical instruction. in the commission on financial relations, which had been set up by the liberal ministry in , reported, and its findings produced a state of feeling which for a moment promised co-operation between divided interests in ireland. unionist magnates joined with nationalists in denouncing the system of taxation, which the commission--by a majority of eleven to two--had described as oppressive and unjust to the weaker country. redmond was one of the members of this commission, which included also distinguished representatives of his nationalist opponents--mr. blake and mr. sexton; and he no doubt cherished hopes arising from the resolute demands for redress uttered by lord castletown and other irish unionist peers. those hopes were soon dispelled; nothing but much controversy came of the demand for improved financial relations. mr. gerald balfour's schemes were more tangible, and in redmond announced that the government's proposal to introduce a measure of local government for ireland should have his support. the bill, when it came, exceeded expectation in its scope, and redmond gave it a cordial welcome in the name of the parnellites. the larger group, however, then led by mr. dillon, declined to be responsible for accepting it. later, in the working of this measure, redmond pressed strongly that elections under it should not be conducted on party lines and that the landlord class should be brought into local administrative work. his advice unfortunately was not taken. then followed the south african struggle, and in giving voice to a common sentiment against what nationalist ireland held to be an unjust war the two irish parties found themselves united and telling together in the lobby. formal union followed. by this time the cleavage between parnellite and anti-parnellite was less acute than that between mr. healy's section and the followers of mr. dillon and mr. o'brien. the choice of redmond as chairman was due less to a sense of his general fitness than to despair of reaching a decision between the claims of the other three outstanding men. the sacrifice to be made was made at mr. dillon's expense, and he did not acquiesce willingly or cordially. the cordiality which ultimately marked his relations with redmond was of later growth--fostered by the necessity which mr. dillon found imposed on him of defending loyally the party's leader against attacks from the men who had been most active in selecting him. a part of the compact under which redmond was elected to the chair limited the power of the newly chosen. he was to be chairman, not leader; that is to say, he was not to act except after consultation with the party as a whole: he was not to commit them upon policy. this meant in practice that he acted as head of a cabinet, which from onwards consisted of mr. dillon, mr. devlin and mr. t.p. o'connor--the last representing not only a great personal parliamentary experience and ability, but also the powerful and zealous organization of irish in great britain. redmond adhered scrupulously to the spirit of this compact. there was only one instance in which he took action without consultation. but that instance was the most important of all--his speech at the outbreak of the war. another thing which governed his conduct in the chair of the party, as indeed it governed that of nearly all the rank and file, was his horror of the years which ireland had gone through since parnell's fall. he loathed faction and he had struggled through murky whirlpools of it; for the rest of his life he was determined, almost at any cost, to maintain the greatest possible degree of unity among irish nationalists. yet in the end he unhesitatingly made a choice and took an action which risked dividing, and in the last event actually divided, nationalist ireland as it had never been divided before. there were things for which he would face even that supreme peril. deep in his heart there was a vision which compelled him. it was the vision of ireland united as a whole. all this, however, lay far in the future when he was elected to the chair; for the moment his task was to reunite irish nationalists, and it began prosperously. from the first his position was one of growing strength. irishmen all the world over were heartsick of faction and rejoiced in even the name of unity. redmond made it a reality. while leading the little parnellite party, reduced at last to nine, his line of action was comparable to that pursued by mr. william o'brien from onwards. it had, to put things mildly, not been calculated to assist the leader of the main nationalist body. in , justin mccarthy, then retired from politics, wrote in his book on _british political parties_: "parnell's chief lieutenant had shown in the service of his chief an energy and passion which few of us expected of him, and was utterly unsparing in his denunciations of the men who maintained the other side of the controversy. from this it was not unnatural to expect difficulties occasioned both by the leader's temper and by the temper of those whom he led. but men who had been adverse assured me that they had changed their opinions and were glad to find they could work with redmond in perfect harmony and that his manners and bearing showed no signs whatever of any bitter memories belonging to the days of internal dispute." in truth, the man's nature was kindly and tolerant; courtesy came more natural to him than invective. above all, he was sensitive for the reputation of his country in the eyes of the world, and the spectacle of irishmen heaping vilifications on each other always filled him with distaste. whether the taunts passed between nationalist and unionist or nationalist and nationalist made little difference to his feeling. with him it was no empty phrase that he regarded all irishmen in equal degree as his fellow-countrymen. in he was once more a party to a continued effort made by irishmen outside of party lines to solve a part of the national difficulty. the policy of land purchase had proved its immense superiority over that of dual ownership and had even been introduced on a considerable scale. but its very success led to trouble, because on one side of a boundary fence there would be farmers who had purchased and whose annual instalments of purchase money were lower than the rents paid by their neighbours on the other side of the mearing. renewed struggle against rent led to new eviction scenes on the grand scale; and by this time landlord opinion was half converted to the purchase policy, as a necessary solution. the persistency of one young galway man, captain john shawe taylor, brought about the famous land conference of , in which mr. o'brien, mr. healy, mr. redmond and mr. t.w. russell on behalf of the tenants met lord dunraven, lord mayo, colonel hutcheson poe and colonel nugent everard representing (though not officially) the landlord interest: and the result of the agreement reached by this body was seen in mr. wyndham's land purchase act of . this great and drastic measure altered fundamentally the character of the irish problem. directly by its own effect, and indirectly by the example of new methods, it changed opinion alike in ireland and great britain. in ireland hitherto, as has been already seen, resistance to home rule had come primarily from the landlord class, by whom the nationalist desire for self-government was construed as a cloak for the wish to revive or reverse the ancient confiscations. now, the land question was by general consent settled, at least in principle; in proportion as landlords were bought out the leading economic argument against home rule disappeared. the opposition reduced itself strictly to political grounds; and it began to be plain that the true heart of resistance lay in ulster. also, lines of cleavage in the unionist camp began to appear. already, landlords in the south and west had found a common ground of action with representatives of the tenants. it was felt, alike in ireland and england, that this precedent might be developed further. in england political opinion was much affected by the apparent success of an attempt to deal with the irish problem piecemeal. the congested districts board had done much to relieve those regions where famine was always a possibility; local government had given satisfactory results; and now land purchase was hailed as the beginning of a new era. the idea of seeing how much farther the principle of tentative approach could be carried took strong hold of many minds, and the word "devolution" came into fashion. when it became known that sir antony macdonnell, then under-secretary at dublin castle, had, in consultation with lord dunraven, drafted a scheme for transferring parts of irish administration to a purely irish authority, a situation rapidly defined itself in which ulster broke away from the more liberal elements in irish unionism. the ulster group demanded and obtained the resignation of mr. george wyndham; they demanded also the dismissal of the under-secretary. but sir antony macdonnell was not of a resigning temper; he had not acted without authority, and he was defended zealously by the irish members. the section of liberal opinion which adhered rather to lord rosebery than to sir henry campbell-bannerman probably drew the conclusion that the irish party were prepared at least to tolerate the policy of approaching home rule step by step; and beyond doubt they were impressed by the prestige of sir antony macdonnell's record and personality. the son of a small irish catholic landlord, educated at the galway college of the queen's university, he had entered the indian civil service and in it risen to the highest point of power. the recommendation that he should be brought home to assist in the government of ireland had come from lord lansdowne, then governor-general of india, who knew that the famous administrator of the punjab was a catholic irishman of nationalist sympathies. he had been accepted by mr. wyndham, his official chief, "rather as a colleague than as a subordinate." officially and publicly, the credit for the land act of went to the chief secretary, and mr. wyndham deserves much of it. but no one who knew the two men could have doubted that in the shaping of a measure involving so wide a range of detail, the leading part must have been taken by the irish civil servant who in india had acquired most of his fame from a sweeping measure of land reform. proposals to alter the method and conduct of irish administration before touching the parliamentary power to legislate and to tax came with extraordinary weight in coming from such a man; and the history of the previous home rule bills was not encouraging to anyone, especially to those who had been members of mr. gladstone's two last administrations. from the time of the parnell divorce case onwards, the irish question had brought to liberals nothing but embarrassment and embitterment. the enthusiasm for home rule which grew steadily from up to the severance between gladstone and parnell had vanished in the squalid controversies of the "split." moreover, now, by the action of mr. chamberlain, a new dividing line had been brought into british politics. the cry of protection seemed in the opinion of all liberals to menace ruin to british prosperity; the banner of free trade offered a splendid rallying-point for a party which had known fifteen years of dissension and division. prudent men thought it would be unsafe, unwise and unpatriotic to compromise this great national interest by retaining the old watch-word on which gladstone had twice fought and twice been beaten. it was clear, too, that a home rule bill would provoke a direct conflict with the house of lords and would raise that great struggle on not the most favourable issue. statesmen like sir edward grey and mr. asquith probably believed that a partial measure, an instalment of self-government, to which some influential sections of the tory party would not be unfriendly, might have strong hopes of passing into law. so it came to pass that in the election of the liberal party came into power with a majority of unexampled magnitude, but with a government pledged, negatively, not to introduce a home rule bill in that parliament, but, positively, to attempt an irish settlement by the policy of instalments. in all this lay the seeds of trouble for the irish leader. liberals have never understood that ireland will not take from them what it would take from the tories. it will accept, as a palliative, from the party opposed to home rule what it will not accept from those who have admitted the justice of the national demand. ii "for myself," said redmond in his speech to the irish convention in may , "i have always expressed in public and in private my opinion that no half-way house on this question is possible; but at the same time i am, or at any rate i try to be, a practical politician. in the lodgment this idea of instalments had got in the minds of english statesmen i recognized the fact--and after all in politics the first essential is to recognize facts--i recognized the fact that in this parliament we were not going to get a pure home rule bill offered, and i consented, and i was absolutely right in consenting, that whatever scheme short of that was put forward would be considered calmly on its merits." this meant that during the whole of the year and a part of the proposal of the new irish bill was under discussion with the irish leaders. the course of these deliberations was undoubtedly a disappointment. mr. bryce was replaced by mr. birrell as chief secretary, but the scheme still fell short of what redmond had hoped to attain. unfortunately, and it was a characteristic error, his sanguine temperament had led him to encourage in ireland hopes as high as his own. the production of the irish council bill and its reception in ireland was the first real shock to his power. mr. birrell in introducing the measure spoke with his eye on the tories and the house of lords. he represented it as only the most trifling concession; he emphasized not the powers which it conveyed but the limitations to them. redmond in following him was in a difficult position. he stressed the point that to accept a scheme which by reason of its partial nature would break down in its working would be ruinous, because failure would be attributed to natural incapacity in the irish people. acceptance, therefore, he said, could not be unconditional and undoubtedly to his mind it was conditioned by his hope of securing certain important amendments, which he outlined. none the less, the tone of his speech was one of acceptance, and he concluded: "i have never in all the long years that i have been in this house spoken under such a heavy sense of responsibility as i am speaking on this measure this afternoon. ever since mr. gladstone's bill of ireland has been waiting for some scheme to settle the problem--waiting sometimes in hope, sometimes almost in despair; but the horrible thing is this, that all the time that ireland has been so waiting there has been a gaping wound in her side, and her sons have had to stand by helpless while they saw her very life-blood flowing out. who can say that is an exaggeration? twenty years of resolute government by the party above the gangway have diminished the population of ireland by a million. no man in any position of influence can take upon himself the awful responsibility of despising and putting upon one side any device that may arrest that hemorrhage, even although he believed, as i do, that far different remedies must be applied before ireland can stand upon her feet in vigorous strength. we are determined, as far as we are concerned, that these other remedies shall be applied; but in the meantime we should shrink from the responsibility of rejecting anything which, after that full consideration which the bill will receive, seems to our deliberate judgment calculated to relieve the sufferings of ireland and hasten the day of her full national convalescence." there is no doubt that the element in him which urged him to welcome anything that could set irishmen working together on irish problems made it almost impossible for him to throw aside this chance. it was clear to me also that by long months of work in secret deliberation the proposals originally set out had been greatly altered, so much so that in surveying the bill he was conscious mainly of the improvements in it; and that in this process his mind had lost perception of how the measure was likely to affect irish opinion--especially in view of his own hopeful prognostications. at all events, the reception of mr. birrell's speech, even by redmond's own colleagues, marked a sudden change in the atmosphere. some desired to vote at once against the measure; many were with difficulty brought into the lobby to support even the formal stage of first reading. in ireland there was fierce denunciation. a convention was called for may st. the crowd was so great that many of us could not make our way into the mansion house; and redmond opened the proceedings by moving the rejection of the bill. in the interval since the debate he had been confronted with a definite refusal to concede the amendments for which he asked. these were mainly two, of principle: for the objection taken to the finance of the bill was a detail, though of the first importance. the bill proposed to hand over the five great departments of irish administration to the control of an irish council. the decisions of that council were to be subject to the veto of the lord-lieutenant, as are the decisions of parliament to the veto of the crown. but the bill proposed not merely to give to the viceroy the power of vetoing proposed action but of instituting other action on his own initiative. secondly, the council was to exercise its control through committees, each of which was to have a paid chairman, nominated by the crown. "it would be far better," redmond had said in the house of commons, "to have one man selected as the chairmen of these committees are to be selected, to have charge, so far as the council is concerned, of the working of the department, and then all these chairmen acting together could form a sort of organic body which would give cohesion, would co-ordinate and give stability to the whole of the work. i am afraid that the government seem to have shrunk from that for fear the argument would be used against them that they were really creating a ministry." that was the real difficulty. a council subject only to a veto on its acts, even though it could neither pass a by-law nor strike a rate, would undoubtedly be said by the unionist opposition to be a rudimentary parliament. a group of chairmen possessing administrative powers like those of ministers would be labelled a ministry; and the liberals who had pledged themselves not to give effect to their home rule principles were sensitive to charges of breach of faith. it is a curious fact in politics that the public promise conveyed in the adoption of certain principles is generally taken to be on the level of ordinary commercial obligation. failure to keep it jeopardizes a man's reputation for political stability, just as failure to pay a tailor's bill imperils a man's financial character. but a promise to political opponents that you will not give effect to your principles stands on the level of a card debt: it is a matter of honour to make good; and on this point mr. asquith in particular has always shown an adamantine resolution. from onwards it was with mr. asquith that redmond had chiefly to count. sir henry campbell-bannerman, who, personally, had given no such limiting pledges, and who during his two years of leadership commanded a respect, an affectionate allegiance, from his followers in the house without parallel at all events since mr. gladstone's day, was fast weakening in health. he lived long enough to give freedom to south africa, the one outstanding achievement of that parliament; and by the success of that great measure he did more to remove british distrust of home rule than even gladstone ever accomplished. it was no fault of his if liberalism failed to settle the irish question at the moment when liberal power reached its highest point. the failure of the council bill had one good result, and one only. it cleared the way for a definite propaganda on home rule. but before this could be undertaken it was necessary to pull nationalist ireland together, for it was once more rent with division and distrust. mr. healy, who in had been expelled from the irish party and its organization on the motion of mr. o'brien and against redmond's advice, and mr. o'brien, who had subsequently retired from the party against redmond's wish, were both of them formidable antagonists; and each was vehement in attack on the main body of nationalists and their leader. it was some time before redmond braced himself to the struggle; but from the opening of the autumn recess in he undertook a campaign throughout ireland which it would be difficult to overpraise. in a series of speeches at chosen centres, delivered before great audiences, he laid down once more the national demand as he conceived it; and in each speech he dealt with a different aspect of the case for home rule. a formal outcome of this campaign was the re-establishment of national unity. mr. o'brien and mr. healy returned to the irish party for a brief period. but the more important result was the re-establishment of redmond's personal position. he had made an effort which would have been great for any man, but for him was a victory over his own temperament. that temperament had in it, negatively, a great lack of personal ambition and, positively, a strong love for a quiet life. he did his work in parliament regularly and conscientiously, always there day in and day out; and it was work of a very exacting kind. this had become the routine of his existence and he did it without strain. but to go outside it was for him always an effort. he hated town life; but more than this, he hated ceremonies, presentations, receptions in hotels, and all the promiscuous contact of political gatherings. nevertheless, when he came to such an occasion no living man acquitted himself better. apart from his oratory, he had an admirable manner, a dignified yet friendly courtesy which gained attachment. in the course of the autumn and winter following the irish council bill he must have met and been seen by a hundred times more of his adherents than in any similar period of his leadership. people all over ireland heard him not only on the public platform but in small addresses to deputations, in impromptu speeches at semi-public dinners, and all of this strengthened him where an irish leader most needs to be strengthened--in the hearts of the people. the hold which he gained then stood to him during the years which followed and up to the outbreak of the war. but it could have been still further strengthened, and if ambition had been a motive force in him, he would have strengthened it. more than that, if he had realized his full value to ireland, he would have felt it his duty to do so. modesty, combined with a certain degree of indolence, made him leave all that contact with the mass of his followers which is necessary to leadership to be effected through his chief colleagues, mr. dillon and mr. devlin--who, through no will of theirs, became rather joint leaders than lieutenants, so far as ireland was concerned. circumstances helped to emphasize this tendency. his work lay very greatly in london, parliament occupied every year a longer and longer space. the task of platform advocacy all over england was urgent, and in england redmond stood out alone. it was little to be wondered at that when each long deferred recess came he made it a vacation and not a change of work. the seclusion from direct intercourse with the mass of his followers which conditions imposed upon him was further accentuated by his personal tastes and his choice of a dwelling. in the early years of the nineteenth century the mountain range which runs along the east coast from outside dublin through wicklow into county wexford was a country difficult of access and unsubdued. here in emmet found a refuge, and after emmet's death here michael dwyer still held out: connemara itself was hardly wilder or less accessible, till the "military road" was run, little more than a hundred years ago, from dublin over the western slopes of featherbed, past glencree, and through callary bog, skirting glendalough and traversing the wild recesses of glenmalure, so that it cuts across the headwaters of those beautiful streams which meet in the vale of ovoca. from glenmalure the road climbs a steep ridge and then travels in wide downward curves across the seaward side of lugnaquilla--fifth in height among irish mountains. here, at the head of a long valley which runs down to the meeting of the waters, was built one of the barracks which billeted the original garrison of the road. later, these buildings had been used for constabulary; but with peaceful times this grew needless, for there was little disturbance among these wicklow folk, tenants of little farms, each with a sheep-run on the vast hills. nothing could be less like the flat sea-bordering lands of the barony of forth in which the redmonds spent their boyhood than these wild, sweeping, torrent-seamed folds of hill and valley; but the place came to him as part of his inheritance from "the chief." parnell's home at avondale was some ten miles from here, lying in woods beside the ovoca river; but the parnell property stretched up to the slopes of lugnaquilla, and the dismantled barrack was used by him as a shooting lodge. here, in the early days before his life became absorbed in the masterful attachment which led finally to his overthrow, he spent good hours; and here the two redmonds and those others of his followers who were his companions came to camp roughly in this strange, gaunt survival of military rule. after parnell's death redmond bought the barrack and a small plot of land about it, and it became increasingly and exclusively his home in ireland. it was, indeed, ireland itself for him. in it and through it he knew ireland intimately, felt ireland intensely and intensively, not only as a place, but as a way of being. ireland to him meant aughavanagh. partly, no doubt, the almost unbroken wildness of his surroundings appealed to an element of romance in his character, which was strongly emotional though extremely reticent. only an artist would have recognized beauty in those scenes, for in all ireland it would be difficult to find a landscape with less amenity; the hill shapes are featureless, without boldness or intricacy of line. redmond, a born artist in words, possessing strongly the sense of form, was sensitive to beauty in all kinds--yet rather to the beauty that is symmetrical, graceful and well-planned. a sailor does not love the sea for its beauty, and redmond loved ireland as a sailor loves the sea--yet with a difference. ireland to him in a great measure was aughavanagh, and aughavanagh was a place of rest. ireland is a good country to rest in. but it would have been far better for redmond and for ireland if ireland had been the place not of his rest, but of his work. his work was essentially that of an agent of ireland carrying on ireland's affairs in a strange capital. he spent more of his time in london than in ireland, but he was never part of the life of london, never in any sense a londoner. he was part of the life of the house of commons, for that was his place of work; and when he left it he went to aughavanagh as a man returns from the city to his home. this home of his was in no sense connected with his active occupations. he was no lover of gardening or of farming; he had none of the irishman's taste for the overseeing of stock or land; he enjoyed shooting, but he was not a passionate sportsman. what was a passion with him--- for he sacrificed much to it--was rest in the place of his choice. it was not a lonely habitation. he was no recluse, and when there he was always surrounded by his friends. i do not know precisely how one could constitute a list of them--but half a dozen men at least came and went there as they chose. mr. mooney, mr. hayden, "long john" o'connor, dr. kenny--these, and above all, paddy o'brien, the party's chief acting whip--were constant there. some came to shoot, and willie redmond used to come over from his house at delgany, where the glen of the downs debouches seaward; walking generally, for he was the fastest and most untiring of mountaineers: very few cared to keep beside him on the hills. others were content to share the daily bathes, morning and afternoon, in a long deep pool where the little stream tumbling down a series of cascades makes a place to dive and swim in. these were the friends of redmond's own generation, and they were also his son's friends; but the two daughters had their allies, and one way or another the party was apt to be a big one--very simply provided for. when i went there first (in ) you climbed a narrow stone stair to the first floor; on the left was a dining-room, beyond that a billiard-room; on the right, redmond's study, and beyond that his bedroom. another flight took you to the upper regions, where were two dormitories--the girls to the right, the men to the left. later, he made some alterations, and the upstair rooms were subdivided off; the garden was developed; it became more of a house and less of a barrack; but the character of the life did not change. it was most simple, most hospitable, most unconventional and most remote. certainly a great part of aughavanagh's charm for him lay in its remoteness. it was seven irish miles up a hilly road from the nearest railway station, post office or telegraph station. aughrim was three hours' train journey from dublin, on a tiny branch line, and trains were few. until motors brought him (to his intense resentment) within reach, he was as inaccessible as if he had lived in clare or mayo. so it came to pass that though he knew to the very core one typical district of ireland, and was far more closely in touch with a few score of irish peasants through their daily life than any of his leading associates, he was yet cut off by his own choice from much that is ireland--and perhaps from much that was most important to him. political opinion is created in the towns, and he knew the irish townsfolk, so far as he could manage it, only through his correspondence, and through those business visits to dublin which he made as few as possible. if his work had lain, where it should by rights have lain, in a ministerial office in dublin, all would have been well. as it was, the deliberate and extreme seclusion of his life in ireland weakened his influence. he was far too shrewd not to know this, and far too unambitious to care. work he never shrank from. but the daily solicitations of people with personal grievances to lay before him, personal interests which they desired him to promote, made a form of trouble which in his periods of rest from work he refused to undergo. the same qualities in him were responsible for his persistent refusal to accept private hospitality where he went on public business. whether in ireland or in great britain, he must stay at a hotel, and many were the magnates of liberalism whose ruffled feelings it was necessary to smooth down on this account. he detested being lionized and wanted always, when the public affair was over, to get away to his own quarters. the demands on him in england for platform work were portentous. every constituency which wanted a meeting on the home rule question wanted redmond and no other speaker. of course he could not go to one-twentieth of the places where he was asked for; and his objection to going was not the effort involved but the impossibility either of indefinitely repeating himself or of finding something new to say each time. "if it was in america," he would say, "i would speak as often as you asked me" (it was my misfortune to have to do the asking), "because they never report a speech." the fact is worth noting, for in scores of instances what was adduced by opponents as quotation from his utterances in the united states represented simply some american journalist's impression, perhaps less of what redmond said than of what, in the reporter's opinion, he should have said. those who represented him as putting one face on the argument in america and another in great britain did not know the man. "i have made it a rule," he said to me more than once, "to say the extremest things i had to say in the house of commons." however, all the machinery which was employed by the opponents of home rule to prejudice ireland's case in the british constituencies proved very ineffectual. for one thing, the lesson of south africa had gone home. for another, and perhaps a greater, no cause ever had a missionary better adapted to the temperament of the british democracy. the dignity and beauty of redmond's eloquence, the weight which he could give to an argument, his extraordinary gift for simplifying an issue and grouping thoughts in large bold masses--all these things carried audiences with them. iii between and we were still, though with rapidly increasing success, trying to get a hearing for the irish question--trying to push it once more to the front. the change of leadership from sir henry campbell-bannerman to mr. asquith had damped liberal enthusiasm. we got solid work done for ireland in the university act of , though redmond would have preferred a university of the residential type, like that in which he had himself been an undergraduate. a highly contentious measure was also carried in the land act of . but a new power was coming to the front, at once assisting and thwarting our efforts. mr. lloyd george put a new fighting spirit into liberalism: but the objects which he had at heart could only be achieved by a great expenditure of electoral power, and among those objects irish self-government found only a secondary place. when mr. gladstone spoke of liberty he thought of what he had helped to bring to greece, italy, bulgaria and montenegro--what he had tried to bring to ireland. when mr. lloyd george spoke of liberty, he thought of what he wanted to bring to england first, and to ireland by the way; his conviction that ireland needed self-government was not so deeply rooted as his conviction that the poor throughout the united kingdom needed help. old age pensions had been popular, but had not been a fighting issue. mr. lloyd george provided the fighting issue with a vengeance when he set himself to pay for them. unfortunately, nationalist ireland had no enthusiasm for the budget which english radicalism made its flag. a country of peasant proprietors was easily scared by the very name of land taxes. but above all the finance bill dealt drastically, and many thought unfairly, with the powerful liquor trade, which in its branches of brewing and distilling included the main manufacturing interest of southern ireland, and on its retail side was incredibly diffused through the whole shopkeeping community. the dissident nationalists saw their chance. mr. o'brien emerged from one of his periodic retirements to lead a whirlwind campaign against the "robber budget." redmond and our party were obliged to oppose a measure which pressed so hard as this undoubtedly did on ireland. our opposition to the land taxes was withdrawn when valuable concessions had been made, but no such compromise was considered possible on the liquor taxes. on the other hand, it grew clear that the measure was likely to produce a conflict in which the power of the house of lords might be challenged on the most favourable ground: and for that reason, when the third reading was reached, the irish party abstained from voting against it. this course, while it facilitated close co-operation with liberalism in the general election which followed, weakened us in ireland; and eleven out of the eighty-three nationalist members returned in january ranked themselves as outside the party; though mr. o'brien's actual following was limited to seven cork members and mr. healy. iv the action of the lords in rejecting the budget of had an important personal result. it placed mr. asquith in a rôle which no one was ever better qualified to fill--that of a liberal statesman defending principles of democratic control menaced after a long period of security. the prime minister, not the chancellor of the exchequer, now became the protagonist; and this was to redmond's liking, for he felt that mr. asquith was more concerned with the problems which had occupied gladstone's closing years and mr. lloyd george with those of a later day. yet in the first grave encounter after the rejection of the budget, redmond and the leader of the liberal party came to sharp differences. the general election had amply justified the advice which was urged by him on sir henry campbell-bannerman when the house of lords rejected the education bill in --namely, that the liberal party should take up at once the inevitable fight before their enormous strength had been frittered away in a series of disappointments. the majority of was too swollen to be healthy: owing to the ruling out of home rule, it included a number of men only partial adherents of the full liberal programme; and a diminution of its proportions owing to the traditional swing of the pendulum was certain. but in january the losses were more than even sanguine tory prophets predicted. tories came back equal in strength to the liberals: labour was only forty, so that the irish party held the balance in the house. the election had been fought expressly on the issue of government's claim to enable a liberal government to deal with certain problems, among which the irish question occupied the foremost place. it was easy now for the tories to argue that the government appealing to the country on that issue had lost two hundred seats. they said: "you have authority to pass your budget--but for these vast unconstitutional changes you have no mandate." the temper of their party, which had more than doubled its numbers, was very high: in the liberal ranks depression reigned and counsels were divided. at the beginning of the election mr. asquith had made a great speech in the albert hall in which he outlined the liberal policy. in it he declared that the pledge against introducing a home rule bill was withdrawn, and that the establishment of self-government for ireland, subject to the supremacy of the imperial parliament, was among the government's main purposes. but the house of lords was in the way. "we shall not assume office and we shall not hold office unless we can secure the safeguards which experience shows us to be necessary for the legislative utility and honour of the party of progress." this was universally taken to mean that he would obtain a guarantee that the king would, if necessary, consent to the creation of sufficient new peers to override the hostile majority. but as the election progressed, uncertainties developed and an alternative policy of attempting to reform the upper house was advocated in certain quarters. the question arose also as to whether the first business of the new house should be to pass the budget which the lords had thrown out or to proceed with the attack on the power of veto. redmond's view on this was not in doubt. at a meeting in dublin on february , , he declared in the most emphatic manner that to deal with the budget first would be a breach of mr. asquith's pledge to the country, since it would throw away the power of the house of commons to stop supply. this speech attracted much attention, and the memory of it was present to many a fortnight later when mr. asquith was replying to mr. balfour at the opening of the debate on the address. the prime minister dwelt strongly on the administrative necessity for regularizing the financial position disturbed by the upper house's unconstitutional action. he indicated also the need for reform in the composition of that house. but, above all, he disclaimed as improper and impossible any attempt to secure in advance a pledge for the contingent exercise of the royal prerogative. "i have received no such guarantee and i have asked for no such guarantee," he said. the change was marked indeed from the moment when he uttered in the albert hall his sentence against assuming office or holding office without the necessary safeguards--an assurance at which the whole vast assembly rose to their feet and cheered. every word in his speech on the address added to the depression of his followers and the elation of the opposition. redmond followed him at once. in such circumstances as then existed, it was exceedingly undesirable for the irish leader to emphasize the fact that his vote could overthrow the government: and the least unnecessary display of this power would naturally and properly have been resented by the government's following. no one knew this better than redmond, yet the position demanded bold action. his speech, courteous, as always, in tone, and studiously respectful in its reference to the position of the crown, was an open menace to the government. he quoted the prime minister's words at the albert hall, he appealed to the house at large for the construction which had been everywhere put on them; and it was apparent that he had the full sympathy not only of his own party and of labour, but of most of mr. asquith's own following. he concluded in these words: "if the prime minister is not in a position to say that he has such guarantees as are necessary to enable him to pass a veto bill this year, and if in spite of that he intends to remain in office and proposes to pass the budget into law and then to adjourn--i do not care for how short or how long--the consideration of the bill dealing with the veto of the house of lords, that is a policy which ireland cannot and will not support." the effect on the house was such that no one rose to continue the debate. next day it was resumed, and not only labour speakers, but one after another of the liberals, including some of the prime minister's most docile, old-fashioned supporters rose and declared that redmond and not the leader of the house had expressed their views. so began a remarkable struggle in which the combined forces of the private members--liberal, labour and irish--united by a common desire to destroy the domination of the peers, contended against the cabinet's policy of attempting not merely to limit the power of veto but to reconstitute the upper house. in such a process men saw that the driving force of the majority would waste away and that the composite character of their alliance would lead to certain disruption. before the debate on the address concluded it was plain that redmond had won. from that period onwards his popularity, and, through him, the popularity of the party which he led, was immensely increased in great britain. he was regarded as one of the men who had rendered best service to democracy against privilege. he himself believed that in this first contest ireland had decided the victory--had decided the overthrow of the house which had so long opposed its liberties. labour had then neither the essential leader nor the necessary parliamentary strength: liberalism was confused and uncertain at the critical moment. yet in the very process of achieving this success redmond laid himself open to attack. the budget was regarded with dislike by a very large section of irishmen, and apart from considerations of political strategy the irish members would certainly have voted against it. now, the power was in their hands to defeat it finally. by so doing they would, of course, justify to some degree the unconstitutional action of the lords; but this consideration did not weigh with mr. o'brien and mr. healy. they accused redmond of selling the real interests of ireland to keep a government in office which could offer nothing in return but a gambling chance of limiting the veto of the lords. mr. o'brien was firmly confident that no such measure would ever pass. he denounced the bargain, not merely because it was a bargain in which redmond accepted what was in his view a ruinous injustice to ireland, but because it was a bargain in which the irish had been outwitted. this line of argument was to be dinned into the ears of ireland during all the remaining years of redmond's life. the only conclusive answer to it was to gain home rule. if, in the long run, it came to appear that the attackers had been right in their contention, and that ireland had never received the expected return, the fault for that result lay with ireland itself no less than with england; it most assuredly did not lie with john redmond. a great weight of responsibility rests on those who from the first hour of ireland's opportunity ingeminated distrust to an over-suspicious people. for the moment, however, the attack made no headway. irishmen have a shrewd political sense, and they felt that in the struggle to pin liberal ministers to the true fighting objective redmond had won. they were also delighted to see the irish party openly exert its power--not quite realizing that such exhibitions were against the interest of the democratic alliance, which had to undergo a grave test. the government's vacillation had rendered another general election necessary if the veto question were to be fought out. on april th the house adjourned for the whitsuntide recess, after which the crisis was to come with the decision of the house of lords whether to accept or reject the veto resolution, which had then passed the commons. on may th, after a short and sudden illness, king edward died. both the great english parties were unwilling to renew the most acute political struggle of modern times at the opening of a new reign, and means of accommodation was sought through a conference which sat first on june th and held twenty-one meetings. no representative of ireland was on this body. on november th it reported that no result had come of its efforts, and a new general election was fixed for december st. when the conference finally broke down redmond was on his way back from america, whither he had gone accompanied by mr. devlin. mr. t.p. o'connor at the same time undertook a tour in canada. the success of these missions showed that the interest and the confidence of the irish race were higher than at any previous period: the ambassadors brought back a contribution of one hundred thousand dollars to the election funds, and the ship on which they came was saluted by bonfires all along the coast of cork. ireland, too, was subscribing as ireland had not subscribed since parnell's zenith: and this was an ireland in which the land-hunger had been largely appeased. the theory that ireland's demand for self-government was merely generated by ireland's poverty began to look ridiculous. it was the cue of the tory press at this moment to excite prejudice against the liberals by representing them as the bondslaves of the "dollar dictator"--ordered about by an irish autocrat with swollen money-bags from new york. this line of argument did us little harm in great britain; in ireland it improved redmond's position, for it was a useful answer to mr. o'brien's representation of him as the abject tool of liberal politicians. the election, on the whole, strengthened our party. mr. healy was thrown out; and mr. o'brien, though he retained the seven seats held by his adherents in cork, failed in two out of three personal candidatures. in great britain the second election of the year had the surprising result of reproducing almost exactly the same division of parties: and this added greatly to the strength of the government. the tory leaders now, instead of insisting on a maintenance of the old constitution, went into alternative proposals--including the adoption of the referendum. this was their constructive line; the destructive resolved itself largely into an endeavour to focus resistance on the question of ireland--the purpose for which alone, they said, abolition of the veto was demanded. as has often happened, action taken by the vatican gave the opponents of home rule a useful weapon. the _ne temere_ decree, promulgated in the year , laid down that any marriage to which a roman catholic was a party, if not solemnized according to the rites of the church of rome, should be treated as invalid from a canonical point of view. although legally binding, it should be regarded as no marriage in the eyes of an orthodox roman catholic until it was regularized in the manner provided by the church, the case of an unhappy mixed marriage in belfast was exploited with fury on a thousand platforms. another decree, the _motu proprio_, was construed as seeking to establish immunity for the clergy from proceedings in civil courts. this, however, was of less platform value, because no instance could be found of a practical application; whereas the mccann case unquestionably gave tory disputants a formidable instrument for evoking the ancient distrust of roman catholicism which is so deeply ingrained in the protestant mind. in spite of all, the english democracy remained steady in its purpose. party feeling, however, ran to heights not known in living memory. in july the parliament bill went to the lords, where it was altered out of all recognition. on july th mr. asquith sent a letter to mr. balfour stating that the king had guaranteed that he would exercise his prerogative to secure that the bill should be passed substantially as it left the commons. on the th the extreme section of the tory party, headed by lord hugh cecil, refused to allow the prime minister a hearing in the house of commons. from an irish point of view the episode was noteworthy. at the outset of this critical session redmond had cautioned his party to abstain from giving provocation and from allowing themselves to be provoked. the counsel was the harder to follow because some of the most vehement of the younger tories sat below the gangway, almost in physical contact with irish members, and hot words passed. still, it was grounded into all that we should not allow the great issue then at trial to be represented as an irish quarrel. our cause was linked with the whole cause of democracy as against privilege: it was an issue for the whole united kingdom; and that was never plainer than on this day of july. english, scottish and welsh members hurled interruptions and taunts at each other across the floor of the house, while irish members sat watching. something older and more far-reaching than the opposition to ireland's demand now was felt itself assailed; and a force in which the irish movement was only one stream of many swept against it. anger in the tory party was not directed against ireland's representatives; and an odd chance made this plain. the fierce scene in the house reached its culmination when ministers withdrew in a body from the treasury bench and the two sides of the house stood up, one cheering, the other hooting, in opposite ranks. for a moment it seemed as if the affair would come to blows, till mr. will crooks, with a genial inspiration, uplifted his voice in song: "should auld acquaintance be forgot?" the tension was relaxed and members moved out in groups--we irishmen necessarily among the tories. in the movement i saw willie redmond go up to one of the fiercest among the ulstermen, whose face was dark with passion. colloquy began: "isn't it a hard thing that you wouldn't let us speak?" the ulsterman turned: "not let you speak? my dear fellow, we'd listen to you for as long as you liked--it's only these accursed english liberals." and upon this mutual understanding the two irishmen walked down the floor into the lobby exchanging expressions of mutual goodwill and possibly of mutual comprehension. this little piece of by-play, so full of irish nature, struck me at the time as something more than amusing--as having in it a ray of hopeful significance. but the most sanguine imagination would never have foreseen the series of events which brought it to pass, not merely that these two men should wear the same uniform, on a common service, but that the same gazette should publish both their names as enrolled on the same day in the french legion of honour. on that day mr. charles craig was a prisoner in germany, wounded in a famous fight; and willie redmond was in a grave towards which ulster comrades had been the first to carry him. there is an irish saying, "men may meet, but the mountains stand apart." in july such an association as the gazette of july illustrated would have seemed hardly more possible than the meeting of the everlasting hills. the dramatic crisis of the parliamentary struggle between the two houses of parliament did not, and could not, come in the house of commons. its place was in the final citadel of privilege, and privilege surrendered on august th, when the bill passed the lords after the most exciting and uncertain division that is ever likely to be known. but there were elements in the tory party which did not accept defeat, though they had not yet clearly decided on what battleground to renew their efforts. for the moment, however, men were disposed to pause and take stock of the new situation. but at such a time events cannot stand still, and almost at the same moment as the parliament act was carried, the government took a step which gravely affected the irish party. payment of members was established by a resolution of the house of commons. irish nationalist members had always been paid from the party fund, that is to say, by their supporters. payment was conditional, not of right, and it was not made except when the member was in attendance: it amounted only to twenty pounds a month. the new payment came from the british treasury; it was made irrespective of the desire of constituents, or of any other consideration; and it amounted to a sum which in a country of small incomes sounded very imposing. unquestionably the receipt of it weakened the position of the party in the eyes of ireland, and gave a new sting to the charge of a bargain. all this was clearly discerned in advance, by no one more than by redmond; and an amendment was moved to strike irish members out of the application of the resolution. but the situation was hopelessly involved, the irish party having repeatedly voted for payment of members as part of the radical programme which they supported as affecting any normally governed country; and government refused to make the exception. as a result, redmond's following lost much of the prestige which had resulted from scrupulous observance of the understanding that no nationalist member should take office under government. to join the irish party had been, in effect, for most men, to make a vow of poverty. now, on the contrary, it involved acceptance of what was in ireland's eyes a well-paid and unlaborious office. the irish are no less prone than any other nation to take a cynical view of these matters. yet assuredly no man ever gave more service for less pay than the nationalist leader, and it was the harder because he was a man who liked comfort and had no ambition. if at the time of the great "split" he had stood down from politics, success would have been assured to him at the bar in ireland, or, more surely still, and far more profitably, at westminster itself. there never was anyone so well-fitted for the work of a parliamentary barrister who has to deal with great interests before a tribunal largely composed of laymen. no one had the house of commons tone more perfectly than redmond, and no one that i ever heard equalled his gift for making a complicated issue appear simple. when he was thrown out of parliament at the cork election, he thought of retirement, mainly for one reason: it would be better for his children. yet, first by personal loyalty to parnell, later by his loyalty to ireland, he was held firm to his task--always a poor man, always knowing that it lay in his power, without the least sacrifice of principle, to become rich by a way of work less laborious and infinitely less harassing than that which he pursued. the effect upon the irish situation produced by the payment of members was slow to develop, and obscure. but an obvious and grave complication was introduced into both british and irish politics at the moment when the democratic alliance had achieved its first great objective. parliament had been in session almost continuously since the beginning of , with the added strain of two general elections thrown in. there was a widespread desire to clear the autumn of , so that members might have some breathing space, and, not less important, devote themselves to propagandist work in their constituencies for the new struggle of carrying measures under the hardly won parliament act. each of these measures must involve a fight prolonged over three years. but this desire ran against the purposes of mr. asquith's chief lieutenant, whose power and popularity were now at their height. mr. lloyd george in the course of the session had introduced his insurance bill, and it was welcomed with astonishing effusion from both sides of the house. as discussion proceeded, however, the complexity and difficulty of its proposals, and the number of oppositions which they provoked, became so apparent that it was not in human nature for politicians at such a crisis to forgo the opportunity. most of the liberal party would have preferred to drop the bill temporarily and refer it to a committee of enquiry. mr. lloyd george was convinced that this would be fatal to his measure, concerning which he was possessed by a missionary zeal. probably when his career comes under the study of impartial history it will be perceived that never at any moment was he so passionately and so honestly in earnest as upon this quest. but it is certain that by pursuit of it he created enormous difficulties in the way of those reforms which the democratic alliance at large most desired to achieve. he carried his point; an autumn session followed, in which the mind of the electorate was diverted from the irish question and all other questions except that of insurance, and parliament itself was jaded to the brink of exhaustion. the matter was difficult for us in ireland because, owing to the different system of public health administration, many of the most important provisions could not apply, and because the bill as a whole was framed to meet the needs of a highly industrialized and crowded community. broadly speaking, it was less desired in ireland than in great britain; and even for great britain mr. lloyd george was legislating in advance of public opinion rather than in response to it. mr. o'brien and his following vehemently opposed the application of the bill to ireland; and the irish catholic bishops, by a special resolution, expressed their view to the same effect. the bill, however, had a powerful advocate in mr. devlin, and the irish party decided to support its extension to ireland, subject to certain modifications which they obtained. apart from the new unsettlement of public opinion which it created both in great britain and in ireland, the insurance act added to our difficulties on the home rule question. it was clear already that the question of finance lay like a rock ahead. up to the proceeds of irish revenue had always given a margin over the cost of all irish services, though that margin had dwindled almost to vanishing-point. old age pensions completely turned the beam and left us in the position of costing more than we contributed. now the outlay on insurance added half a million a year to the balance against us. still, difficulties and perplexities were not limited to one side. the tory party were much divided since the crisis on the parliament act. a section, and the most active section, had been violently opposed to the surrender on the critical division, and these men were profoundly discontented with mr. balfour's leadership; so mr. balfour, yielding to intimations, suddenly resigned. somewhat unexpectedly, mr. bonar law was chosen to succeed him, mr. long and mr. chamberlain waiving their respective claims. this choice was of sinister augury. mr. law did not know ireland. but, canadian-born, he came from a country in which the irish factions and theological enmities had always had their counterpart; his father, a presbyterian minister, came of ulster stock. all the blood in him instinctively responded to the tap of the orange drum. as far back as january , , he had urged armed resistance to home rule. this was a line which mr. balfour did not see his way to take, and probably here rather than elsewhere lay the reason for the choice of mr. bonar law. the most active section of the tory party--probably a minority, for in such cases minorities decide--regarded the passing of the parliament act as an outrage on the constitution, which should be resisted by any means, constitutional or unconstitutional. but no possibility existed of mobilizing a force in great britain to fight for the veto of the house of lords, nor again did the resistance to a new franchise act, or even to welsh disestablishment, promise to be desperate. in one part only of these islands was there material for a form of struggle in which the ballot-box and the division lobby might be supplemented, if not replaced, by quite other methods of political war. the tory party saw in ulster their best fighting chance. there was no use in telling them that they jeopardized the british constitution; from their point of view the british constitution--as they had known it--was already gone; it was destroyed in principle and must be either restored or refashioned according to their mind. this temper, with the attitude towards parliamentary tradition which it produced, rendered the political history of the next two and a half years unlike any other in the history of these countries. the main purpose of this book is to record and illustrate redmond's action during the period which began with the opening of the great war. but since that action was conditioned by the circumstances preceding the war--since in two notable ways it aimed at a solution of the fierce political struggle which the war interrupted--the political history connected with the passage of the home rule bill through parliament must be outlined in detail, with avoidance, so far as may be, of a controversial tone. v it is however necessary, before closing this preliminary review, to take some account of redmond's relation to his party, and, in general, of the working of the parliamentary machine. difficulties were imposed on him and on the party from onwards by our very success. electoral chances had placed us apparently in the position of maximum power. from january onwards we had a government committed to home rule, yet so far dependent on us that we could put it out at any moment. yet this was by no means an ideal state of affairs. the government's weakness was our weakness, and they were liable to the reproach that they never proposed a home rule measure except when they could not dispense with the irish vote. still, from this embarrassing position we achieved an extraordinary result. right across our path was the obstacle of the house of lords. it was not an impassable barrier for measures in which the british working classes were keenly interested--for it let the trades disputes bill go through; but it was wholly regardless of irish and of welsh popular opinion. under redmond's leadership we smashed the house of lords. the english middle class instinct for compromise was asserting itself, when he took hold and gave direction to the great mass of popular indignation which the hereditary chamber had roused against itself. yet guiding action in an alliance of which he was not the head was delicate work. a clumsy speaker in debate might do infinite mischief. when a party is in opposition, all its members can talk, and are encouraged to talk, to the utmost; little harm can be done to one's own side by what is said in criticism of measures proposed. support and exposition is a much more ticklish business. add to this the fact that under the fully developed system of parliamentary obstruction--that is, of using discussion to prevent legislation from being put through--the best service that a member can render to government is to say nothing, but vote. the tactics of limiting discussion to chosen speakers in important debates and of discouraging sharply any intervention which might help to delay a division were pushed further in the irish party than elsewhere. we were there under different conditions from the rest; our objective was as clearly defined as in a military operation: and we all understood the position. we recognized also that negotiation must be a matter for redmond and his inner cabinet of three, and that many things could not be usefully discussed in a body of seventy men. but the net result was that the bulk of the party lost interest in their work, and, which was worse, that ireland lost interest in the bulk of the party. it followed, not unnaturally, that the constituencies held one voting machine to be as good as another, and they did not generally send any men who could have been of service in debate. they did not any longer see their members heading a fiery campaign against rents, or flamboyant in attack on the government; they heard very little of them at all. they knew little and cared less about the work of education in british constituencies, which had to be carried on through the mouths of irish members. redmond has often been blamed, but quite unjustly, for failure to attract men of talent into his ranks. parnell had that power. he had, and used, the right of suggesting names. but under the constitution of the united irish league (originally the work of mr. william o'brien when reunion was accomplished in ) the machinery of local conventions was set up and no interference with their choice was permitted to the central directorate--which could only insist that a man properly selected must take the party pledge. whether this machinery was inevitable or no, cannot be argued here; but redmond himself complained repeatedly in public that it worked badly. candidates were often chosen purely for local and even personal considerations, and seldom with any real thought of finding the man best fitted to do ireland's work at westminster. this evil, for it was an evil, resulted from the political stagnation in a country where one dominant permanent issue overshadowed all others. there being no unionist candidature possible in the majority of constituencies, any contest was deprecated--and from some points of view rightly--as leading to possible faction between nationalists. the choice of a member really fell into too few hands; the electorate as a whole was not sufficiently interested. nevertheless, several able men came into our ranks, and under the conditions it was not possible to utilize their talents fully, as they would have been utilized had we been in opposition, not in support of the government. more could have been done, however, to give them their opportunity, and the responsibility for not varying the list of speakers rests on redmond. it was his policy to avoid personal intervention, and to leave such choices to be settled by proposals from the party itself. this was a real limitation to his excellence as leader--for leader he was. there was, however, an even more important limitation arising out of his personal temperament. as chairman, i never expect to see his equal. he had the most perfect public manners of any man i have known, whether in dealing with some vast assembly or small confidential gathering. the latter type of meeting is the more difficult to handle, and nothing could exceed his gift for presiding over and guiding debate. he could set out a political situation to his party with extraordinary force and lucidity. he could also, when he chose, so present an issue as to suggest almost irresistibly the conclusion which he desired--and this was how he led. where he came short in the quality of leadership was in the personal contact. his relations with all his followers in the party were courteous and cordial; yet without the least appearance of aloofness he was always aloof. he did not invite discussion. it needed some courage to go to him with a question in policy, and if you went, the answer would be simply a "yes" or "no." he lacked what lord morley attributed to gladstone, "the priceless gift of throwing his mind into common stock." no one thought more constantly, or further ahead; but he could not, rather than would not, impart his mind by bringing it into contact with others. men like being taken into their leader's confidence, and he knew this and, i have reason to believe, knew the disability which his temperament laid upon him. yet he never made an effort to combat it, partly i think from pride, for he hated everything that savoured of earwigging; he was not going to put constraint upon himself that his following might be more enthusiastic. there was no make-believe about him, and he was never one who liked discussion for discussion's sake. profoundly conservative, he had no welcome for novel points of view. i cannot put it more strongly than by saying that he was more apparently aware of the qualities which made t.m. kettle difficult to handle in his team than of those which made that brilliant personality an ornament and a force in our party. a more serious aspect of this conservatism was the separation which it produced between him and the newer ireland. he welcomed the gaelic league and disliked sinn fein, but undervalued both as forces: he was never really in touch with either of them. ideally speaking, he ought to have seen to it that his party, which represented mainly the standpoint of parnell's day, was kept in sympathy with the new young ireland. but from the point of view of those who shared his outlook--and they were the vast majority, in ireland and in the party--redmond's essential limitation, as a leader, was that he lacked the magnetic qualities which produce idolatry and blind allegiance. what his followers gave him was admiration, liking and profound respect. no less than this was strictly due to his high standard of honour, his scorn of all personal pettiness, his control of temper. in twelve years i heard many complaints of the manner in which things were managed in the party: i scarcely ever remember to have heard anyone complain of him. he was always spoken of as "the chairman"; no one attributed to him sole responsibility; and he was the last on whom any man desired to lay a fault. yet when it came, as it often did, to a question of weighing advices one against the other, there was no mistake how men's opinions inclined. he had taught his party by experience to have almost implicit confidence in his judgment; and by this earned confidence he led and he ruled. chapter iii the home rule bill of the year , in which the straight fight on home rule was to begin, opened stormily. mr. churchill was announced to speak under the auspices of the ulster liberal association in the ulster hall at belfast. it was the hall in which his father, lord randolph churchill, had used the famous phrase "ulster will fight and ulster will be right." belfast was determined that the son should not unsay what the father had said in this consecrated building; it would be, as an ulster member put it in the house of commons, "a profanation." on this first round, ulster won; mr. churchill spoke at belfast, but not in the ulster hall. there were angry demonstrations against him; his person had to be strongly protected and he went away from the meeting by back streets. it was noticeable that no such precautions were needed for redmond, who attended the meeting and walked quite unmolested through the crowd. the british electorate, as a whole, was somewhat scandalized by the exhibition of so violent a temper; but the education of the british electorate was only beginning. congestion of business from the previous session deferred the introduction of the home rule bill till april. great demonstrations for and against it were held in advance. in dublin on march st was such a gathering as scarcely any man remembered. o'connell street is rather a boulevard than a thoroughfare; it is as wide as whitehall and its length is about the same. on that day, from the parnell monument at the north end to the o'connell monument at the south, you could have walked on the shoulders of the people. four separate platforms were erected, and redmond spoke from that nearest to the statue of his old chief. he dwelt on the universality of the demonstration; nine out of eleven corporations were represented officially by their civic officers; professional men, business men, were all fully to the fore. but one section of his countrymen were conspicuously absent. to ulster he had this to say: "we have not one word of reproach or one word of bitter feeling. we have one feeling only in our hearts, and that is an earnest longing for the arrival of the day of reconciliation." a feature of that gathering, little noted at the time, assumes strange significance in retrospect. at one platform patrick pearse, then headmaster of st. enda's school, spoke in irish. what he said may be thus roughly rendered: "there are as many men here as would destroy the british empire if they were united and did their utmost. we have no wish to destroy the british, we only want our freedom. we differ among ourselves on small points, but we agree that we want freedom, in some shape or other. there are two sections of us--one that would be content to remain under the british government in our own land, another that never paid, and never will pay, homage to the king of england. i am of the latter, and everyone knows it. but i should think myself a traitor to my country if i did not answer the summons to this gathering, for it is clear to me that the bill which we support to-day will be for the good of ireland and that we shall be stronger with it than without it. i am not accepting the bill in advance. we may have to refuse it. we are here only to say that the voice of ireland must be listened to henceforward. let us unite and win a good act from the british; i think it can be done. but if we are tricked this time, there is a party in ireland, and i am one of them, that will advise the gael to have no counsel or dealings with the gall [the foreigner] for ever again, but to answer them henceforward with the strong hand and the sword's edge. let the gall understand that if we are cheated once more there will be red war in ireland." the platform where pearse spoke was set up within a stone's throw of the general post office in which, four years later, he was to give effect to the words he spoke then and to earn his own death in undoing the work of redmond's lifetime. at that moment no one heeded his utterance, nor the speech, also in irish, of professor john macneill from another platform, which went, as its speaker was destined to go, half the way with pearse. but redmond never attempted to conceal the existence of this element in ireland. speaking on the introduction of the home rule bill on april th, he dealt at the very opening with the charge that the irish people wanted separation and that the irish leaders were separatists in disguise: "i will be perfectly frank on this matter. there always has been, and there is to-day, a certain section of irishmen who would like to see separation from this country. they are a small, a very small section. they were once a very large section. they are a very small section, but the men who hold, these views at this moment only desire separation as an alternative to the present system, and if you change the present system and give into the hands of irishmen the management of purely irish affairs, even that small feeling in favour of separation will disappear; and if it survives at all, i would like to know how under those circumstances it could be stronger or more powerful for mischief than at the present moment." sincerer words were never spoken, nor, i think, a better justified forecast. where redmond and all of us were wrong was that we underestimated the possibility of accomplishing what pearse ultimately accomplished, even when assisted by the widespread disillusionment and sense of betrayal which was the atmosphere of . but no one in ireland in thought of a separatist rebellion. what was on all tongues was the possibility of physical resistance to home rule. the debate on the first reading went by with little reference to this contingency, but mr. bonar law closed his speech on that note. he had attended the great counter-demonstration in belfast which followed ours in dublin and had seen in it "the expression of the soul of a people." "these people look upon their being subject to an executive government taken out of the parliament in dublin with as much horror, i believe with more horror, than the people of poland ever regarded their being put under subjection by russia; they say they will not submit except by force to such government. these people in ulster are under no illusion. they know they cannot fight the british army. but these men are ready, in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down their lives." bloodshed, if bloodshed there was to be, was anticipated in ulster only, and the resistance indicated at this point was purely passive. but even after the bill had been introduced, tories entertained the hope that a nationalist convention might save them trouble and reject what the government offered. even mr. o'brien, however, had given the bill a lukewarm approval, and at this moment redmond's prestige stood very high. when the convention assembled, he utilized that advantage to the full. these assemblies presented a problem which might intimidate the most capable chairman. theoretically deliberative, they had at least a representative character; all branches of the united irish league, all branches of the hibernians and foresters, all county and district councils sent up their chosen men, to whom were added such clergy as chose to attend. the result was a mass of over two thousand persons packed into a single room; they deliberated in the physical conditions of a crowd; hearing was difficult, disorder only too easily brought about. i have seen one of these conventions sharply divided in opinion, and counting of votes would have been impossible. on this day, however, there was only one opinion: the business was to manifest support and to strengthen the leader's hand, redmond at the outset laid down the proposition that it was their "duty" as nationalists to accept what he described as a far better bill than gladstone ever offered. he further indicated the need for a resolution that the question of supporting, proposing or rejecting amendments should be left to the irish party. this was promptly carried by acclamation. all decisions were unanimous that day. but before this or any other resolution was put to the convention, redmond asked the multitude there to give, what they gave most willingly, a welcome to mr. gladstone's grandson, who as a young member of parliament had just voted for the bill. the greeting which he received showed that ireland had not forgotten what gladstone's last years had been. in the first of his speeches upon the bill, sir edward grey, a survivor from gladstone's ministry, said, as he threw a glance back over the struggle from to : "two things stirred me at the time; they stir me still. one is mr. gladstone's intense grip of the fact that there was a national spirit in ireland, and the splendour of the effort he made in his last years to acknowledge and reconcile that spirit. the other is the irish response to mr. gladstone. it was not the assent of mere tacticians who had gained an advocate and a point. it was genuine, warm and living feeling, a response of gratitude and sympathy the same in kind and as living as his own." if redmond's task from onwards was not lightened by the existence of any such genuine, warm and living feeling for any of mr. asquith's ministry, perhaps ireland is not to blame. there was no intense grip of any fact in the government's attitude, and on one cardinal point they were unstable as water. sir edward carson, in opposing the introduction of the bill, had used the words: "what argument is there that you can raise for giving home rule to ireland that you do not equally raise for giving home rule to that protestant minority in the north-east province?" redmond, following him, made one of his few false moves in debate. "is that the proposal? is that the demand?" he asked. sir edward carson shot the question at him: "will you agree to it?" seldom does the house see a practised speaker so much embarrassed; redmond in confusion passed to another topic. he was soon to be confronted with that same line of reasoning, pushed not dialectically by an opponent, but as a step in parliamentary negotiation from the treasury bench. mr. churchill, who introduced the second reading, made it apparent that the demonstration in belfast had not been wasted on him. "whatever ulster's rights may be," he said, "they cannot stand in the way of the whole of the rest of ireland. half a province cannot impose a permanent veto on the nation. the utmost they can claim is for themselves. i ask, do they claim separate treatment for themselves? do the counties of down and antrim and londonderry, for instance, ask to be excepted from the scope of this bill? do they ask for a parliament of their own, or do they wish to remain here? we ought to know." this was to proceed at once into the region of a bargain. mr. gladstone, with his grip on the existence of a national spirit in ireland, would have known that concession on such point was a very different matter from some alteration in the financial terms or in the composition of the parliament. it admitted, in fact, the contention that ireland was not a nation but a geographical expression. as soon as the bill went into committee, the result was seen. the first serious amendment proposed to exclude the four counties, antrim, down, armagh, and derry, and it was moved from the liberal benches. three liberal speakers supported it in the early stages of a debate which lasted to the third day--and on the division the majority, which had been for the second reading, fell to . mr. churchill did not vote--nor, although this was not then so apparently significant, did mr. lloyd george. thus from the very first the point of danger revealed itself. by the mere threat of a resistance which could only be overcome through the use of troops, ulster had made the first dint for the insertion of a wedge into the composite home rule alliance, and into the cabinet itself. all this had been gained without any tactical sacrifice, without even anything like a full disclosure of the force which lay behind this line of attack. nor was the full extent of weakness revealed. in such a case, much depended on the personality of the man who moved the amendment, and mr. agar-robartes was one of the most whimsically incongruous figures in the government ranks. twentieth-century liberalism wears a somewhat drab and serious aspect, but this ultra-fashionable example of gilded youth would have been in his place among the votaries of charles james fox. the climax of his incongruity was a vehement and rather antiquated protestantism; he was, for instance, among the few who opposed the alteration of the coronation oath to a formula less offensive to catholics. nobody doubted that his cornish constituents would endorse whatever he did, for the house held few more popular human beings, but no one took him very seriously as a politician. this particular view of his certainly made no breach between him and his inseparable associate, mr. neil primrose, who, as time went on, took as strong a line against ulster's claims as agar-robartes did for them.--_sunt lacrimae rerum_. i remember vividly in august the sudden apparition of this pair, side by side as always, in their familiar place below the gangway, but in quite unfamiliar guise, for khaki was still new to the benches. the two brilliant lads--for they were little more--have gone now, swept into the abyss of war's wreckage; the controversy which divided them remains, virulent as ever. agar-robartes stuck to his guns and voted against the bill henceforward; the other liberals who supported him were ultimately brought into the government lobby. what had really mattered was mr. churchill's speech on the second reading. captain pirrie, one of redmond's few closely attached friends outside the irish party, bound, i think, far more in affection to the irish leader than to his own chiefs, complained angrily of the government's evasive reticence. this brought up the prime minister, whose speech was brief and direct: "this amendment proceeds on an assumption which i believe is radically false, namely, that you can split ireland into parts. you can no more split ireland into parts than you can split england or scotland into parts." when sir edward carson had spoken, the ulster leader's speech enabled redmond to point out that ulstermen refused to accept this proposal as a means by which ulster might be reconciled to home rule, but were ready to vote for it simply as a wrecking amendment. general opinion on both sides of the house agreed that the amendment made the bill impossible; and the majority held that therefore ulster must give way. ulster, on the other hand, held that therefore there must be no home rule bill. but there was a liberal element evidently not convinced that home rule might not be possible with ulster excluded. mr. birrell admitted that the plan of segregating a portion had been considered, but had been rejected, on the merits, as unworkable. still he professed himself open to conviction. the argument which mr. bonar law decided to use was a threat. government are saying to the people of ulster, he said, "convince us that you are in earnest, show us that you will fight, and we will yield to you as we have yielded to everybody else." captain craig, following, said that the prime minister anticipated that ulster's objection would after a few years be merely a ripple on the surface. "if the right honourable gentleman has challenged this part of his majesty's dominions to civil war, we accept the challenge." this temper soon had ugly expression. on june th an excursion party of the ancient order of hibernians (the roman catholic counterpart to the orange order) met with another excursion party of protestants, mainly sunday-school children, at a place called castledawson. taunts were exchanged and one of the hibernians tried to snatch a flag from the other procession; so a disturbance began in which some of the children were hurt and many frightened. this discreditable incident was magnified with all the rancour of partisanship--as in the state of feeling must have been expected. but the reprisals were startling. all catholics were driven out of the belfast shipyards; many were injured, and over two thousand men were still deprived of work on july th, when the unionist party held a great meeting at blenheim. mr. bonar law, facing for the first time a vast typical gathering of his supporters, said that, on a previous occasion, when speaking as little more than a private member of parliament, he had counselled action outside constitutional limits. now, he emphasized it that he took the same attitude as leader of the unionist party. "we shall use any means--whatever means seem to us to be most likely to be effective--any means to deprive them" (the government) "of the power they have usurped and to compel them to face the people whom they have deceived. the home rule bill in spite of us may go through the house of commons. there are things stronger than parliamentary majorities. i can imagine no length of resistance to which ulster will go in which i shall not be ready to support them, and in which they will not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the british people." sir edward carson said on behalf of ulster: "it will be our duty shortly to take such steps--and, indeed, they are already being taken--as will perfect our arrangements for making home rule absolutely impossible. we will shortly challenge the government to interfere with us if they dare. we will do this regardless of consequences, of all personal loss and inconvenience. they may tell us, if they like, that this is treason." well might mr. bonar law say in returning thanks that this day "would be a turning-point in their political history." moderate opinion was by no means glad to have reached this turning-point, and _the times_ rebuked mr. law for his violence. but, tactically, the unionists were right: they had a government indisposed to action and they made the most of their opportunity. mr. churchill again took up the conduct of the controversy, and in the recess proceeded to outline a policy which he described as federal devolution. the prime minister had said you could no more split ireland into parts than england or scotland. but mr. churchill argued that, in the interest of efficiency, england must be divided into provincial units with separate assemblies; that lancashire, for instance, had on many matters a very different outlook from that of yorkshire. he did not draw the conclusion; but it was not difficult to infer that mr. churchill was at least as ready to give separate rights to ulster as to any group of english counties, and was equally ready to pitch overboard the prime minister's argument for refusing partition in ireland. in the meantime ulster's preparations continued. it was indicated that they would bear a religious character, and the protestant churches were deeply involved. the proposal of a covenant was made public in august, though the actual signing of it was deferred to "ulster day," september th. sir edward carson was provided with a guard carrying swords and wooden rifles, and in one instance dummy cannon made a feature of the pageant. these things excited a good deal of derision, and the language of the covenant was held to be only "hypothetical treason." the main words were: "we stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the united kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament in ireland." the covenant in that committed the signatories to no breach of the law; it was only a pledge to refuse to recognize the authority of a parliament not yet in being. all ulster's proceedings might so far be dismissed, as the attorney-general, mr. rufus isaacs, dismissed them, as being "a demonstration admirably stage-managed, and led by one of great histrionic gifts." the threats of the use of force, said the attorney-general, would not turn them aside by a hair's-breadth. mr. asquith, equally vigorous in his speech, was less decisive in his conclusions. speaking at ladybank on october th, he denounced "the reckless rodomontade of blenheim, which furnishes forth the complete grammar of anarchy." but he was careful to point out that there was no demand for separate treatment for ulster, and that irish unionists were simply refusing to consent to home rule under any conditions. he refrained from saying how a demand for separate treatment of ulster would be dealt with if it were made. when parliament resumed its sittings, in a temper much heated by all the challenge and controversy of the recess, mr. lloyd george pushed this line of argument a shade further. he argued that sir edward carson himself persisted in treating ireland as a unit. "until ulster departs from that position there is no case. ulster has a right to claim a hearing for separate treatment; she has no right to say, 'because we do not want home rule ourselves the majority of irishmen are not to have home rule.'" yet upon the balance of events, unionists were probably disappointed. a very strong british feeling against sir edward carson and his belfast following had been generated by the expulsion of catholics from the shipyards and in general by the advocacy of civil war. in october several notable men who had previously counted as unionists--sir arthur conan doyle, sir frederick pollock, sir j. west-ridgway--all declared for home rule. exasperation against the incidence of the new insurance act lost the government votes at every by-election; but the irish cause on the whole gained ground, and the chief cause of that advance was the respect universally felt for redmond's personality and leadership. on november nd he attended a huge meeting of the national liberal federation at nottingham along with the prime minister and received a wonderful welcome. the step was novel. never since parnell's work began had the leader of the irish people stood on the same platform in great britain with the leader of any english party. it was, however, the return of a compliment, for mr. asquith had come to dublin in the summer and there spoken along with the irish leader. moreover, a recent incident had shown how necessary it was to maintain the closest co-operation; a snap division on november th had inflicted defeat on the government and occasioned loss of perhaps a fortnight's parliamentary time. but in the very act of thus strengthening his hold on the british electorate, redmond gave ground to those in ireland who desired to represent him as a mere tool of the liberal party, a pawn in mr. asquith's game. foreseeing this evil did not help to combat it, and on the whole it was redmond's inclination to take a sanguine view of his country's good sense and generosity. the committee stage of discussion lasted beyond the end of the year. on the finance arrangements redmond had to face fierce opposition from mr. o'brien's party, which was endorsed by the irish council of county councils. here difficulties were inevitable, and attack was easy either for the unionists, who pressed the argument that ireland was to be started on its career of self-government with a subsidy of some two millions per annum from great britain, or for the o'brienites, who urged that the country was already overtaxed in proportion to its resources, that it needed large expenditure for development, and that the possible budget indicated by the bill left no serious possibility for reducing taxes or for undertaking even necessary expenditure. redmond, on the other hand, was bound to conciliate the vested interests of civil servants, officials in all degrees, and the immense police force. retrenchment on the vast area of unproductive expenditure which castle government had created could only be hoped for at a very distant date. he could not therefore promise substantial economy; nor could he argue for a further increase of subsidy without playing into the tories' hands. on all this detail of the measure, the attack in debate was bound to be very powerful. so far as great britain was concerned, the reply of home rulers was tolerably effective. in it had been feasible to propose home rule with an imperial contribution of two and a half millions. by the possible margin had dropped heavily, and mr. gladstone had foretold that within fifteen years ireland would absorb more money for purely irish services than irish taxation produced. this prophecy had been fulfilled to the letter, and everyone saw that to continue the union meant increasing this charge automatically. it was better to cut the loss and at least say that it should not exceed a fixed figure. but in ireland men dwelt always on the report of the financial relations commission, which had represented the balance as heavily against england and the account for overtaxation of the poorer country as reaching three hundred millions. no man quoted this document oftener than redmond, and none was a firmer believer in its justification. but he realized, as his countrymen did not, that such a claim could never hope for cash settlement, that its value was as an argument for the concession of freedom upon generous terms. how could he urge that the terms proposed were ungenerous, when great britain offered to pay the cost of all irish services--amounting to a million and a half more than irish revenue--and to provide over and above this a yearly grant of half a million, dropping gradually, it is true, but still remaining at a subsidy of two hundred thousand a year so long as the finance arrangements of the bill lasted? nevertheless, these arrangements were bad ones, and this was where the bill was most vulnerable on its merits; for self-government without the control of taxation and expenditure is at best an unhopeful experiment. but in the public mind at large only one difficulty bulked big, and that was ulster. men on both sides began to be uneasy about the consequences of what was happening, and this temper reflected itself in the house. on new year's day , at the beginning of the report stage, sir edward carson moved the exclusion of the province of ulster. his speech was in a new tone of studied conciliation. but, as the prime minister immediately made clear, there was no offer that if this concession were made opposition would cease. it was merely recommended as the sole alternative to civil war. redmond, in following, let fall an _obiter dictum_ on the position of the irish controversy: "no one who observes the current of popular opinion in this country can doubt for one instant that if this opposition from the north-east corner of ulster did not exist, home rule would go through to-morrow as an agreed bill." for this reason, he said, he would go almost any length within certain well-defined limits to meet that section of his fellow-countrymen. his conditions were, first, that the proposal must be a genuine one, not put forward as a piece of tactics to wreck the bill, but frankly as part of a general settlement of the home rule question; secondly, that it must be of reasonable character; and thirdly, not inconsistent with the fundamental principle of national self-government. ulster's present proposal, if accepted, carried with it no promise of a settlement; it was unreasonable as proposing to strike out of ireland five counties with nationalist majorities. but finally, on a broader ground, it destroyed the national right of ireland. "ireland for us is one entity. it is one land. tyrone and tyrconnell are as much a part of ireland as munster or connaught. some of the most glorious chapters connected with our national struggle have been associated with ulster--aye, and with the protestants of ulster--and i declare here to-day, as a catholic irishman, notwithstanding all the bitterness of the past, that i am as proud of derry as of limerick. our ideal in this movement is a self-governing ireland in the future, when all her sons of all races and creeds within her shores will bring their tribute, great or small, to the great total of national enterprise, national statesmanship, and national happiness. men may deride that ideal; they may say that it is a futile and unreliable ideal, but they cannot call it an ignoble one. it is an ideal that we, at any rate, will cling to, and because we cling to it, and because it is there, embedded in our hearts and natures, it is an absolute bar to such a proposal as this amendment makes, a proposal which would create for all times a sharp, eternal dividing line between irish catholics and irish protestants, and a measure which would for all time mean the partition and disintegration of our nation. to that we as irish nationalists can never submit." later in the debate, mr. bonar law admitted quite frankly the argument against treating all ulster as unionist, and he proceeded to suggest that any county in ulster might be given power to decide whether or not it should come into the new parliament. it was plain, however, and mr. churchill made it plainer, that the unionist leader did not speak for ulster; ulster's intention was still to use its own opposition to home rule as a bar to self-government for the whole of ireland. equally was it plain that the plebiscite by counties would not be unacceptable to mr. churchill. the proposal for the exclusion of the entire province was defeated by a majority of and the third reading was carried by . a few days later the city of derry returned a home ruler, and the ulster representation became seventeen for the bill and sixteen against. this dramatic change produced a considerable effect on british opinion. redmond, speaking at a luncheon given to the winner, mr. hogg, indicated the lines on which he was disposed to bargain. he would be willing to give ulster more than its proportional share of representation in the irish parliament. the debate in the house of lords was marked by certain speeches which showed that public opinion had moved considerably. lord dunraven declared for the second reading, though pressing all the line of objection to the bill which had been taken by mr. o'brien and his party. he heaped scorn also as an irishman upon "this absurd theory of two nations which is only invented to make discord where accord would naturally be." lord macdonnell, whose administrative experience could no more be questioned than his genius for administration, held that though amendment was needed the framework of the bill was good, and that urgent necessity existed for the change to self-government. he alluded to the opinion expressed by mr. balfour in , that the proper way of reforming dublin castle was by increasing the power of the chief secretary and his under-secretary, and thereby getting a stronger grip on the various departments of the "complicated system" prevailing. "i thought so too," said lord macdonnell, who in as under-secretary had tried his hand at this reform. "it was one of the illusions that i took with me to ireland twenty years ago--but i am now a wiser man.... my observation of the boards had convinced me before i left ireland that no scheme of administrative reform which depends on bureaucratic organization for its success, or which has not behind it a popular backing, has the least chance of success in an attempt to establish in ireland a government that is satisfactory to the imperial parliament or acceptable to the irish people."--this was a repudiation of the irish council bill of by its main author. lord grey, a vivid and attractive personality, declared strongly for "such a measure of home rule as will give the irish people power to manage their own domestic affairs." it was a conviction that had been forced upon him by his experience of greater britain. "practically every american, every canadian, every australian is a home ruler." but the settlement must proceed upon federal lines; his ideal for ireland was the provincial status of ontario or quebec, linked federally to a central parliament at westminster. the most significant speech, however, came from the archbishop of york. disclaiming all party allegiance, dr. lang claimed to express "the opinions of a very large number of fair-minded citizens." he admitted that there was an irish problem, which could not be solved by "a policy however generous of promoting the economic welfare of ireland." "some measure of home rule is necessary not only to meet the needs of ireland but the needs of the imperial parliament." this bill, however, in his opinion, was ill-adapted to the latter purpose. it would be a block rather than a relief to the congestion of business. but these objections were "abstract and academic" in face of the real governing fact. "the figure of ulster, grim, determined, menacing, dominates the scene.... we may not like it. frankly, i do not like it. it carries marks of religious and racial bitterness and suspicion. it uses language about dis-obedience to the law which must provoke disquiet and dislike in the minds of all who care for the good government of the country. i am not competent, because i have not shared in the experience of the history of the ulster people, to decide whether or not their fears are groundless. all these things seem to me to be beside the point. if ulster means to do what it says, then the results are certainly such as no citizen can contemplate without grave concern.... i admit, everyone must admit, that there are circumstances in which a government is entitled and bound to run this kind of risk. at the present time i think we all feel that there is a call upon governments to stiffen rather than to slacken their determination in the presence of threats of dis-obedience or disorder. i will go further and admit that there is one condition which would justify in my mind his majesty's government in running the risk of the forcible coercion of ulster. that condition is that they should have received from the people of this country an authority, clear and explicit, to undertake that risk. it is perfectly true that the prime minister gave notice that if his party were returned to power they would be free to raise again the question of home rule, but there is a great difference between the abstract question of home rule and a concrete home rule bill." that speech undoubtedly represented the temper prevailing in the class of balancing electors which is so largo in england. some of us who read it at the time recognized how far the long struggle for autonomy had prevailed, but also how strong were the forces which no argument could reach. men like dr. lang might be offended, even shocked by the action of those who claimed to be england's garrison in ireland; but they would be very slow to use force against such a section, although quite ready to justify coercion of the irish majority. yet what impressed redmond was the advance made, rather than the revelation of what resistance remained. ho had been more than thirty years an advocate of ireland's cause; and now by the spokesman of the impartial educated mind of england the justice of that cause was admitted. the argument that a general election was necessary, or would be efficacious in solving the problem, was one with which he felt well able to contend. in that speech the archbishop of york admitted his impression that in by-elections there had been "much more of food taxes and the insurance act than of home rule." on the other hand, for ulster such a speech had the plainest possible moral: ulster's game was to become more grim, more determined, more menacing. the home rule controversy had now resolved itself into a question whether ulster really meant business. sir edward carson set himself to make that plain beyond yea or nay. in a speech delivered in belfast, at the opening of a new drill hall, he asked and answered the question, "why are we drilling?" he and his colleagues did not recognize the parliament act, he said; a law passed under it would be only an act of usurpation, a breach of right. "we seek nothing but the elementary right implanted in every man: the right, if you are attacked, to defend yourself." ulster was going to stand by its covenant. "when we talk of force, we use it, if we are driven to use it, to beat back those who will dare to barter away those elementary rights of citizenship which we have inherited.... go on, be ready, you are our great army. under what circumstances you have to come into action, you must leave with us. there are matters which give us grave consideration which we cannot and ought not to talk about in public. you must trust us that we will select the most opportune methods of, if necessary, taking on ourselves the whole government of the community in which we live. i know a great deal of that will involve statutory illegality, but it will also involve much righteousness." some of the questions which needed grave consideration were suggested by happenings that followed hard on this speech. much ridicule had been poured on the drillings with dummy muskets. ulster evidently decided to push the matter a step further. a consignment of one thousand rifles with bayonets, in cases marked "electrical fittings," was seized at belfast on june , . other incidents of the same nature followed. it was argued, by those who sought to represent the whole campaign as an elaborate piece of bluff, that the weapons were useless and that they were deliberately sent to be seized. a feature which scarcely bore out this view was that one consignment was addressed to the lord-lieutenant of an ulster county who was also an officer in the army. a justice of the peace, or an officer, to whom a consignment of arms had been sent for a nationalist organization would have been ordered to clear himself in the fullest way of complicity, and even of sympathy, or he would have forfeited his commission. the noble-man involved, however, made no explanation, and was probably never officially asked to do so. it was commonly believed in the house of commons that at some point, if not repeatedly, government consulted the irish leader or his principal advisers as to whether measures of repression should be undertaken against ulster. no such consultation took place. but the opinion prevailing among the leading nationalists was no doubt known or inferred. mr. dillon, speaking on june , , when the danger-point had been clearly reached, justified the previous abstinence from coercion. "i have held the view from the beginning that it would not have been wise policy for a government engaged in the great work of the political emancipation of a nation to embark on a career of coercion. i knew, and knew well, all the difficulties and all the reproaches that the government would have to face if they abstained from coercion. it is a difficult and almost unprecedented course for a government to take, and it is, as the chief secretary said, a courageous one. but with all its difficulties and dangers it is the right course. we who have been through the mill know what the effect of coercion is. we know that you do not put down irishmen by coercion. you simply embitter them and stiffen their backs." it is therefore unquestionable that the decision to do nothing had redmond's approval. whatever may be thought of that policy, one factor was assuredly underestimated--the effect produced on the public mind by the spectacle of highly placed personages defying the law and defying it with impunity. it was possible to argue that a conviction for hypothetical treason would be difficult to secure and that failure in a prosecution would only encourage lawless conduct. but privy councillors who made preparations for prospective rebellion and remained privy councillors were a new phenomenon. the public thought, and it was apparent that the public would think, that government was afraid to quarrel with what is called society. society shared that belief and began to extend its influence in a new direction. no government can permit itself to be defied without general relaxation of discipline, and the effects extended themselves to the army. at a meeting on july th in ulster a telegram was read out from "covenanters" in an ulster regiment, urging "no surrender until ammunition is spent and the last drop of blood." in his speech on that occasion sir edward carson declared that every day brought him at least half a dozen letters from british officers asking to be enrolled among the future defenders of ulster. one officer, he said, having signed the covenant, was ordered to send in his papers and resign his commission. the officer refused to do so, and after a short time was simply told to resume his duty. "we have assurance from the prime minister," said sir edward carson, "that the forces of the crown are not to be used against ulster. government know that they could not rely on the army to shoot down the people of ulster." later events in ireland furnished a grim commentary as to what the army would be willing, and would not be willing, to do in the way of shooting down in ireland; and such words as these of sir edward carson were destined to be among the chief difficulties which redmond had to encounter when he sought to lead ireland into the war. at the meeting of that day, delegates were present from a british league to assist ulster in her resistance. behind this new quasi-military organization stood now the whole of one great party. sir edward carson transmitted a message from mr. bonar law in these words: "whatever steps we may feel compelled to take, whether they be constitutional, or in the long run whether they be unconstitutional, we will have the whole of the unionist party under his leadership behind us." later in the autumn, on the first anniversary of ulster day, there was formally announced the formation of an ulster provisional government, with a military committee attached to it. a guarantee fund to indemnify all who might be involved in damaging consequences was set on foot, and a million sterling was indicated as the necessary amount to be obtained. in the meantime signs of distress came from the liberal camp. mr. churchill, in speeches to his constituents, renewed the suggestions for partition. more notable was a letter from lord loreburn, who had till recently been lord chancellor, and who was known as a steady and outspoken home ruler. he appealed in _the times_ of september , , for a conference between parties on the irish difficulty. irish nationalist opinion grew profoundly uneasy, and redmond at limerick on october th set out his position with weighty emphasis. he referred to the fact that during the summer he himself, assisted by mr. devlin, had followed sir edward carson and other ulster speakers from place to place through great britain, and on the same ground had stated the case for home rule. he claimed, and with justice, a triumphant success for this counter-campaign. "the argumentative opposition to home rule is dead, and all the violent language, all the extravagant action, all the bombastic threats, are but indications that the battle is over." still, he was too old a politician, he said, not to build a bridge of gold to convenience his opponents' retreat, provided that the fruits of victory were not flung away. mr. churchill had told the ulstermen that there was no demand they could make which would not be matched, and more than matched, by their countrymen and the liberal party. on this it was necessary to be explicit. "irish nationalists can never be assenting parties to the mutilation of the irish nation; ireland is a unit. it is true that within the bosom of a nation there is room for diversities of the treatment of government and of administration, but a unit ireland is and ireland must remain.... the two-nation theory is to us an abomination and a blasphemy." these were carefully chosen words, and they indicated a possible acceptance of the proposal that ulster should have control of its own administration in regard to local affairs, but that irish legislation should be left to a common parliament. this plan sir edward grey described as his "personal contribution" to a discussion of possibilities which had been inaugurated by a notable speech from the prime minister. at ladybank, on october th, mr. asquith invited "interchange of views and suggestions, free, frank, and without prejudice." nothing, however, could be accepted which did not conform to three governing considerations. first, there must be established "a subordinate irish legislature with an executive responsible to it"; secondly, "nothing must be done to erect a permanent and insuperable bar to irish unity"; and thirdly, though the process of relieving congestion in the imperial parliament could not be fully accomplished by the present bill, ireland must not be made to wait till a complete scheme of decentralization could be carried out. the second of these conditions was plainly the most significant. it was taken to mean that "county option"--the right for each county to decide whether it would come under a home rule government--would not create "a permanent and insuperable" obstacle, since each county could be given the opportunity to vote itself in at any time. redmond's next important speech in england showed by its emphasis that he felt a danger. he denounced "the gigantic game of bluff and black-mail" which was in progress. the proposed exclusion of ulster was not a proposition that could be considered. it would bring about, he thought, the ruin of ulster's prosperity. "for us it would mean the nullification of our hopes and aspirations for the future." it would stereotype an old evil in the region where it still existed. what ulster really feared, he said, was the loss, not of freedom or prosperity, but of protestant ascendancy. this was the truth; protestant ascendancy, which in his boyhood had existed throughout all ireland, was in consequence of the irish party's work dead in three provinces. it remained and must remain in ulster, where protestants were a majority, but it would be qualified if that region came under the control of a parliament elected by all ireland. that was and is the true reason of ulster's resistance to national self-government. what he would concede and what he would reject, redmond indicated in general words: "there is no demand, however extravagant and unreasonable it may appear to us, that we are not ready carefully to consider, so long as it is consistent with the principle for which generations of our race have battled, the principle of a settlement based on the national self-government of ireland. i shut no door to a settlement by consent, but ... we will not be intimidated or bullied into a betrayal' of our trust." it was noted at that time that he had said nothing to rule out sir edward grey's proposal, which would have left the local majority predominant in ulster's own affairs; and on december th sir edward grey spoke again, showing a firmness that was the more impressive because of his habitual moderation of tone. one thing, he said, was worse than carrying home rule by force, and that would be the abandonment of home rule. two suggestions had been made--a proposal for the temporary exclusion of ulster and a plan for giving to ulster administrative autonomy. neither had been received by ulster "in a spirit which seemed likely to lead to a settlement.... was it a settlement by consent they wanted, or was their aim simply the destruction of the bill?" this emphasized what redmond had said a few days earlier at birmingham, when he declared that the fight against home rule was not an honest one, that its real purpose was to defeat the parliament act and restore to the tory party its special control over the legislative machine. the facts were plain on the surface. the tories clamoured for a fresh general election, urging that the electors never realized that the liberal programme involved civil war. but to concede this claim indirectly defeated the parliament act, which would then have broken down at the first attempt to apply it. what added to the insincerity of the argument was ulster's repeated refusal to be influenced by the result of any election. under no circumstances, speaker after speaker from ulster declared, would they submit to home rule. the prospect of civil war remained, with only one limitation. mr. bonar law undertook that if a general election took place and the liberals again came back, the british unionist party would not support ulster in physical resistance. they would, however, continue to oppose a home rule bill by all constitutional means. nevertheless, the english disposition to compromise was already operating. mr. asquith was the last of mankind to make a quixotic stand for principle, and the most disposed to pride himself on a practical recognition of realities. his government was in rough water. during the summer mr. lloyd george's transaction in marconi shares had been magnified by partisan rancour into a crime. much more serious was the split with labour, which led to the loss of seat after seat at by-elections, when the allied forces which stood behind the parliament act attacked each other and let the tories in. the women's franchise agitation was also coming to its stormiest point. redmond's part was one of extraordinary difficulty. the cause for which he stood was one affecting the interests of only a small minority of the total electorate concerned in the struggle which now spread over both islands. the irish problem belonged in reality to the victorian era; those in the british electorate whom it could stir to enthusiasm were stirred by a memory, not by a new gospel. normally, but for the chance of parnell's overthrow, it would have been solved in gladstone's last years. for most liberals, for all labour men, the fact that it had passed beyond the sphere of argument meant a lack of driving force. it was a part of accepted liberal orthodoxy; minds were centred rather on those social controversies in which mr. lloyd george was the dominant figure, and upon which opinion had not yet crystallized. further, the cry of protestant liberties in danger, the cause of protestants who conducted their arming to the accompaniment of hymns and prayer, made inevitably a searching appeal to the feelings of an island kingdom where the prejudice against roman catholics is more instinctive than anywhere else in the world. looking back on it all, i marvel not at the difficulties we encountered, but at the success with which we surmounted them; and the great element in that success was redmond's personality. his dignity, his noble eloquence, his sincerity, and the large, tolerant nature of the man, won upon the public imagination. his tact was unfailing. in all those years, under the most envenomed scrutiny, he never let slip a word that could be used to our disadvantage. this is merely a negative statement. it is truer to say that he never touched the question without raising it to the scope of great issues. nothing petty, nothing personal came into his discourse; he so carried the national claim of ireland that men saw in it at once the test and the justification of democracy. that is why the irish cause, instead of being a millstone round the neck of the parliamentary alliance, was in truth a living cohesive force. but in order to keep it so it must be pleaded, not as a question for ireland only but for the democracy of great britain and, in a still larger sense, for the commonwealth of the british empire. liberal statesmen in their desire to simplify their own task underestimated altogether the difficulty which their professed short-cuts to the goal--or rather, their attempted circuits round obstacles--created inevitably for the irish leader. they did not realize that his genuine feeling--based on knowledge--for the british democracy at home, and still more for its offshoots overseas, was unshared by his countrymen, still aloof, still suspicious, and daily impressed by the spectacle of those who most paraded allegiance to british imperialism professing a readiness to tear up the constitution rather than allow freedom to ireland. liberal statesmen did not understand that redmond could only justify to ireland the part which he was taking if he won, and that he and not they must be the judge of what ireland would consider a defeat. in all probability, also, they overrated his power and that of the party which he led. they did not guess at the potency of new forces which only in these months began to make themselves felt, and which in the end, breaking loose from redmond's control, undid his work. a new phase in irish history had begun, of which sir edward carson was the chief responsible author. chapter iv the rival volunteer forces the first stir of a new movement in nationalist ireland outside the old political lines came from labour--from irish labour, as yet unorganized and terribly in need of organization. on august , , a strike in dublin began under the leadership of mr. larkin. it had all the violence and disorder which is characteristic of economic struggles where labour has not yet learned to develop its strength; it opened new cleavages at this moment when national union was most necessary: it was fought with the passion of despair by workers whose scale of pay and living was a disgrace to civilization; and after five months it was not settled but scotched, leaving dark embers of revolutionary hate scattered through the capital of ireland. one incident showed some of the consequences ready to spring, even in england itself, from the action taken in ulster. mr. larkin at the end of october was sentenced to six months' imprisonment for sedition and inciting to disturbance. a fierce outcry ran through the labour world in great britain; by-elections were in progress, and government was angrily challenged with having one law for the rich and another for the poor, one law for labour and another for the unionist party. to this pressure government yielded, and mr. larkin was liberated after a few days in jail. but in ireland more formidable symptoms soon made themselves manifest. captain j.r. white, son of sir george white, the defender of ladysmith, was a soldier by hereditary instinct and had won the distinguished service order in south africa. but some strain in his composition answered to other calls, and upon tolstoyan grounds he ceased to be a soldier, without ceasing to be a natural leader of men. his first public appearance was at a meeting in london in support of home rule addressed by a number of prominent persons who were not roman catholics. but his interests were plainly not so much nationalist as broadly humanitarian; freedom for the individual soul rather than for the nation was his object: and he suddenly enrolled himself among mr. larkin's allies. his proposal was outlined to a great assembly of the strikers gathered in front of liberty hall: mr. larkin set it out. they must no longer be "content to assemble in hopeless haphazard crowds" but must "agree to bring themselves under the influences of an ordered and sympathetic discipline." "labour in its own defence must begin to train itself to act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force. how could they accomplish this? by taking a leaf out of the book of carson. if carson had permission to train his braves of the north to fight against the aspirations of the irish people, then it was legitimate and fair for labour to organize in the same militant way to preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves." thus began in a small sectional manner a national movement which led far indeed. mr. o'cathasaigh, from whose _story of the irish citizen army_ i quote, attributes the failure of that purely labour organization chiefly to the establishment of the irish volunteers. this was a development which redmond on his part neither willed nor approved, yet one which in the circumstances was inevitable. who could suppose that the formation of combatant forces would remain a monopoly of any party? there was no mistaking the weight which a hundred thousand ulster volunteers, drilled and regimented, threw into sir edward carson's advocacy. as early as september , during the parliamentary recess, redmond received at least one letter--and possibly he received many--urging him to raise the standard of a similar force, and pointing out that if he did not take this course it might be taken by others less fit to guide it. the letter of which i speak elicited no answer. it was never his habit to reply to inconvenient communications--a policy which he inherited from parnell, who held that nearly every letter answered itself within six months, if it were let alone. certainly in this case it so happened. long before six months were up, facts had made argument superfluous. wisdom is easy after the event, and few would dispute now that the constitutional party ought either to have dissociated itself completely from the appeal to force, or to have launched and controlled it from the outset. neither of these lines was followed, and the responsibility for what was done and what was not done must lie with redmond. yet, as i read it, the key to his policy lay in a dread, not of war, but of civil war. to arm irishmen against each other was of all possible courses to him the most hateful. it opened a vision of fratricidal strife, of an ireland divided against itself by new and bloody memories. moreover, though he had, as the world came to know, soldiering in his blood--though the call to war, when he counted the war righteous, stirred what was deepest in him--by training and conviction he was essentially a constitutionalist: he realized profoundly how strong were the forces behind constitutionalism in great britain, how impregnable was the position of british ministers if they boldly asserted the law with equality as between man and man. where he was mistaken was in his estimate of the government with which he had to deal, and especially of mr. asquith. speaking to his constituents early in the new year of he said, "the prime minister is as firm as a rock, and is, i believe, the strongest and sanest man who has appeared in british politics in our time." the verdict of history might have borne out this judgment had mr. asquith never been forced to face extraordinary times. in the event, it was mr. asquith's lack of firmness and failure in strength which drove redmond into belated acceptance of a policy modelled on sir edward carson's. as early as july the demonstrations in ulster led to discussion of a countermove among young men in dublin. but there was no public proposal, until at the end of october professor macneill, vice-president of the gaelic league, published an article in the league's official organ calling on nationalist ireland to drill and arm. the first meeting of a provisional committee followed a few days later. support was asked from all sections of nationalist opinion; but, as a whole, members of the united irish league and of the ancient order of hibernians, who constituted the bulk of redmond's following, refused to act. still, about a third of the committee were supporters of the parliamentary party; they included professor kettle, who was from to among its most brilliant members. it was, however, significant that the lord mayor, a prominent official nationalist, refused the use of the mansion house for a meeting at which it was proposed to start the enrolment of irish volunteers. as a result, the venue was changed to the rotunda, and so great enthusiasm was shown that the rink was used for the assembly. even that did not suffice for half the gathering. three overflow meetings were held, and four thousand men are said to have been enrolled that evening. yet the movement did not spread at once with rapidity. by the end of december recruits only amounted to ten thousand. for this two causes were answerable. the first was the honourable refusal of the committee to allow companies to be enrolled except according to locality. they would have no sectional companies of sinn fein volunteers, of united irish league volunteers, of hibernian volunteers. all must mix equally in the ranks. the second was the fear of most nationalists that by joining an organization with which the national leader was not identified they might weaken his hand. this operated, although the declared intention of the organization was to strengthen redmond's position. at limerick in january pearse said: "in the volunteer movement we are going to give mr. redmond a weapon which will enable him to enforce the demand for home rule." briefly, for several months the numbers of the new force did not show that the whole of nationalist ireland was in support of it. ireland was waiting for a sign from redmond, and it did not come. the events which literally drove irish constitutional nationalists into following ulster's example had still to occur. there was, however, a wide extension of the cadres of the organization, and it was being spread by men some of whom--like professor macneill--dissented from redmond's attitude of quiescence, while some were general opponents of the whole constitutional policy. they covered the country with committees, recruited, it is true, from all sections of nationalist ireland. but it was inevitable that the element who distrusted redmond, and whose distrust he reciprocated, should attain an influence out of all proportion to its following in the country. government's action--and this sentence will run like a refrain through the rest of this book--contributed largely to strengthen the extremists and to weaken redmond's hold on the people. during eleven months the ulster volunteers had been drilling, had been importing arms, and no step was taken to interfere. within ten days after the irish volunteer force began to be enrolled, a proclamation (issued on december , ) prohibited the importation of military arms and ammunition into ireland. a system of search was instituted. but the ulstermen were already well supplied. redmond was blamed for not forcing the withdrawal of the proclamation. he controlled the house of commons, it was said. this was the line of argument constantly taken by dissentient nationalists; and it was true that he could at any moment put the government out. critics did not stop to ask for whose advantage that would be. government by issuing this proclamation had effected no good: they had embarrassed their chief ally, and they had laid the foundation for an imposing structure of incidents which grew with pernicious rapidity into a monumental proof that law, even under a liberal administration, has one aspect for protestant ulster and quite another for the rest of ireland. but in england at the beginning of the fateful year the irish volunteers had not yet become recognized as a factor in the main political situation. an attitude of mind had been studiously fostered which found crude expression soon after the house met. one of the liberal party was arguing that ulster had made home rule an absolute necessity, because nationalists would have "fourfold justification if they resisted in the way you have taught them to resist the government of this country in maintaining the old system." "they have not the pluck," interjected captain craig, the most prominent of the ulster members. the present lord chancellor, mr. f.e. smith, was voluble in declarations that nationalists would "neither fight for home rule nor pay for home rule." these taunts did not ease redmond's position, especially as it became plain that ulster's threat of violence had succeeded. mr. asquith, referring to the "conversations" between leaders which had taken place during the winter, said that since no definite agreement had been reached the government had decided to reopen the matter in the house. this meant, as redmond pointed out with some asperity, that the prime minister had accepted responsibility for taking the initiative in making proposals to meet objections whose reasonableness he did not admit. the opposition, he thought, should have been left to put forward some plan. yet redmond's attitude, and the attitude of the house, was considerably affected by an unusual speech which had been delivered by the ulster leader. sir edward carson, as everyone knows, is not an ulsterman, and the chief of many advantages which ulster gained from his advocacy was that ulster's case was never stated to great britain as ulstermen themselves would have stated it. it is not true to say that ulstermen by habit think of ireland as consisting of two nations, for all ulstermen traditionally regard themselves as irish and so have always described themselves without qualification. but it is true to say that ulster protestants have regarded irish catholics as a separate and inferior caste of irishmen. the belief has been ingrained into them that as protestants they are morally and intellectually superior to those of the other religion. their whole political attitude is determined by this conviction. they refuse to come under a dublin parliament because in it they would be governed by a majority whom they regard as their inferiors. it is in their deliberate view natural that roman catholics should submit to be controlled by protestants, unnatural that protestants should submit to be controlled by roman catholics. it does not express the truth to say that sir edward carson was adroit enough to avoid putting this view of the case to the electors of great britain or to the house of commons. temperamentally and instinctively, he did not share it. he was a southern irishman who at the opening of his life held himself, as not one ulsterman in a thousand does, perfectly free to make up his mind for or against the maintenance of the union. he reached the conclusion not only that home rule would be disastrous for ireland, for the united kingdom, and for the british empire, but that it would mean for irishmen the acceptance of an inferior status in the empire. as citizens of the united kingdom, he held, they were more honourably situated than they could be as citizens of an irish state within the empire. this was an attitude of mind which ulster could endorse, although it did not fully represent ulster's conviction: but this was the case which sir edward carson always made on behalf of ulster, and he made it as an irishman whose personal interests and connections lay in the south of ireland, not in the north. his argument was the more persuasive because it was based on a view of ireland's true interest--not of ulster's only; and it was the harder on that account for redmond to repel peremptorily. more than this, between him and redmond there was an old personal tie. the irish bar is a true centre of intercourse between men of varying political and religious beliefs, and as junior barristers edward carson and john redmond went the munster circuit together. all this lay behind the appeal which on february , , was implied rather than expressed in the novel phrase and still more unaccustomed tone of a consummate orator. "believe me," sir edward carson said, "whatever way you settle the irish question" (and that phrase threw over the cry of "no home rule"), "there are only two ways to deal with ulster. it is for statesmen to say which is the best and right one. she is not a part of the community which can be bought. she will not allow herself to be sold. you must therefore either coerce her if you go on, or you must in the long run, by showing that good government can come under the home rule bill, try and win her over to the case of the rest of ireland. you probably can coerce her--though i doubt it. if you do, what will be the disastrous consequences not only to ulster, but to this country and the empire? will my fellow-countryman"--and at this emphatic word, which jettisoned absolutely the theory of two nations, the speaker turned to his left, where redmond sat in his accustomed place below the gangway--"will my fellow-countryman, the leader of the nationalist party, have gained anything? i will agree with him--i do not believe he wants to triumph any more than i do. but will he have gained anything if he takes over these people and then applies for what he used to call--at all events his party used to call--the enemies of the people to come in and coerce them into obedience? no, sir; one false step taken in relation to ulster will, in my opinion, render for ever impossible a solution of the irish question. i say this to my nationalist fellow-countrymen, and, indeed, also to the government: you have never tried to win over ulster. you have never tried to understand her position. you have never alleged, and can never allege, that this bill gives her one atom of advantage." then, carried away by the course of his argument, an angry note came into his voice, and before a minute had passed we were back in the old atmosphere. he accused us of wanting "not ulster's affections but her taxes." well might redmond say when he rose that sir edward carson had been heard by all of us with very mixed feelings. "i care not about the assent of englishmen," he said; "i am fighting this matter out between a fellow-countryman and myself, and i say that it was an unworthy thing for him to say that i am animated by these base motives, especially after he had lectured the house on the undesirability of imputing motives." on the personal note redmond was to the full as effective as his opponent, and his speech of that day was memorable. it was also very much more to the taste of the liberal rank and file than what came from their own front bench. "we do not by any means take the tragic view of the probabilities or even the possibilities of what is called civil war in ulster," he said; and added that the house of commons ought, in his opinion, "to resent as an affront these threats of civil war." yet in the end he promised, for the sake of peace, "consideration in the friendliest spirit" (not very different from acceptance) of any proposals that the government might feel called upon to put forward. it is noteworthy that in this prolonged debate there was no reference to the new fact of a second volunteer force. but on february th a question was asked about it. on the th there was allusion to another growing element of danger--the discussions among officers of the army of a combined refusal to serve against ulster. all these factors must have weighed with redmond and with his chief colleagues in their discussions with the government during the next three weeks. "friendly consideration" passed into acceptance on march th, when mr. asquith, introducing the home rule bill for its passage in the third consecutive session (as required by the parliament act), outlined the proposed modifications in it. they involved partition. but the exclusion was to be optional by areas and limited in time. the proposal to take a vote by counties had, it will be remembered, been originally suggested by mr. bonar law, and in following the prime minister he could not well repudiate it. the test, however, which he now put forward was whether or not the proposals satisfied ulster: and he fixed upon the time-limit of six years as being wholly unacceptable. redmond, on the other hand, while declaring that the government had gone to "the extremest limits of concession," said that the proposals had one merit: they would "elicit beyond doubt or question by a free ballot the real opinion of the people of ulster." this indicated his conviction that if home rule really came the majority in ulster would prefer to take their chances under it; the proposal of exclusion being merely a tactical manoeuvre to defeat home rule by splitting the nationalists. its efficacy for that purpose was immediately demonstrated. mr. o'brien followed redmond with a virulent denunciation of "the one concession of all others which must be hateful and unthinkable from the point of view of any nationalist in ireland." opposition from mr. o'brien and from mr. healy was no new thing. but by acceptance of these proposals the nationalist leader made their opposition for the first time really formidable. telegrams rained in that march afternoon--above all on mr. devlin, from his supporters in belfast, who felt themselves betrayed and shut out from a national triumph which they had been the most zealous to promote. from this time onward the position of redmond personally and of his party as a whole was perceptibly weakened. especially an alienation began between him and the catholic hierarchy. it was impossible that the clergy should be well disposed towards proposals which, as mr. healy put it, would make cardinal logue a foreigner in his own cathedral at armagh. yet upon the whole the shake to redmond's power was less than might have been expected--largely, no doubt, because the offer was repelled. sir edward carson described it as "sentence of death with stay of execution for six years." with a great advocate's instinct, he fastened on the point in the government's proposal which was least defensible. in my opinion these modifications of the bill were never adequately discussed in the meetings of the irish party. all was done between the government and redmond's inner cabinet, consisting of redmond himself, mr. dillon, mr. devlin and mr. t.p. o'connor. the negotiations were most delicate and difficult, and above all secrecy is hard to maintain when a body of over seventy men, each keenly concerned for the view of his constituents, comes to be consulted. yet i think it a pity that the party never thrashed this question out. once the principle of option was admitted, a great deal had to be considered. voting must be a referendum either to the province as a whole, to the constituencies separately, or to local units of administration. a referendum by constituencies was as impossible as one by parishes: for instance, mr. devlin's west belfast, out of the city's four divisions, would certainly have voted to remain under the irish parliament, and an absurd situation would have resulted. the choice lay between a vote by counties or by the province as a whole. in the province, three counties out of nine were as predominantly nationalist as any part of leinster. in two others, tyrone and fermanagh, nationalists were about per cent of the electorate. but the bulk of the population of ulster resided in four counties of the north-east, so that protestants over the whole province had a majority of some two hundred thousand. an appeal to the province, therefore, might involve the exclusion from home rule of a very large area which was thoroughly nationalist. on the other hand, every scheme of exclusion had in view the possibility of the excluded area changing its mind on the question after a short trial. to separate the four overwhelmingly protestant counties was to set up a body in which a change of vote would be much harder to bring about than in the province. as a matter of statesmanship there was much to be said for closing with the ulstermen's original demand that the province should come in or stay out as a whole. it satisfied ulster's sentiment and lessened the chances of crystallizing a protestant block of excluded territory, which would tend to become less and less irish. the answer to this was that nationalists would never consent and did never consent to the possibility of permanent exclusion for any part. insistence on the time-limit was from this point of view a matter of absolute principle. yet many believed then, and believe now, that if any part of ulster were excluded by legislation it would certainly come in voluntarily after a short period. on the other hand, if any part were excluded even for a year, it was difficult to believe that it could ever be brought in except by its own consent. the view, however, to which we were committed (with the party's general approval), was expressed by redmond at the customary st. patrick's day nationalist banquet in london. "to agree to the permanent partition of ireland would be," he said, "an outrage upon nature and upon history." he quoted a phrase used by mr. austen chamberlain, who had described it as "the statutory negation of ireland's national claim." but, he argued, no such sacrifice of principle had been made. the demand of nationalists was for a parliament for the whole of ireland, having power to deal with "every purely irish matter." temporary limitations of this demand had already been accepted. "we have agreed, as parnell agreed in the bill of , and as we all agreed in the bill of , that the power of dealing with some of the most vital of irish questions should not come within the purview of the new parliament for a definite number of years." the control of police, for instance, was reserved to the imperial parliament in all those bills for a term of years. but this did not mean that parnell or we abandoned ireland's right to manage her own police. reservation of the police in perpetuity would have been impossible to accept. in the same way, said redmond, "the automatic ending of any period of exclusion is for us a fixed and immutable principle." to maintain this conformity with national sentiment great advantages were sacrificed. the whole debates of this period turned on the question of the time-limit. if it had never been raised, opposition would still have existed, but the fact would have been plain from the outset that protestant ulster claimed to dictate not only where it had the majority, but where the majority was against it. redmond probably believed that the opinion of nationalists in the north could not be brought to consent to abandonment of the time-limit. if so, he probably underrated, then as always, the influence he possessed. it is always easy to persuade irishmen that if you are going to do a thing you should do it "decently." what is more, a real effect could have been produced on much moderate opinion in ulster by saying to ulster: "stay out if you like, and come in when you like. when you come in, you will be more than welcome." but the decision for this course would have needed to be taken before the proposals were made, since any attempt to enlarge them was bound to renew and intensify the inevitable storm of nationalist dissent. whatever the proposal, it should have been absolutely the last word of concession. if a clear proposal of local option by counties without time-limit had been put before parliament and the electorate, i do not think our position in ireland would have been worse than it was made by the proposal of temporary exclusion, and it would have been greatly strengthened in parliament and in the united kingdom. all moderate men, and many pronounced unionists, were becoming uneasy under the perpetual menace of trouble. events which now followed rapidly turned the uneasiness into grave anxiety, but did not turn it to the profit of the government. the policy which was adopted in mr. asquith's proposal of march th was the policy which mr. churchill had pushed from the first introduction of the home rule bill, even when it was formally disavowed by the prime minister. contemptuous rejection of it by the ulstermen when it was proposed was not calculated to strengthen mr. churchill's personal position, or to soothe his temper, and on march th he made a speech at bradford which very greatly stirred public feeling. if ulster really rejects the offer, said mr. churchill, "it can only be because they prefer shooting to voting and the bullet to the ballot." should civil war break out in ulster, the issue would not be confined to ireland: the issue would be whether civil and parliamentary government in these realms was to be beaten down by the menace of armed force. bloodshed was lamentable, but there were worse things. if the law could not prevail, if the veto of violence was to replace the veto of privilege, then, said the orator, "let us go forward and put these grave matters to a proof." when mr. churchill next appeared in the house of commons, a great outburst of cheering showed what a volume of feeling had found expression in his speech. redmond came to the st. patrick's day banquet under the impression of that scene, and he spoke with a confidence which gives to his words a tragic irony to-day. he cited "the superb speech of mr. churchill" as evidence that "what is our last word is also the last word of the government." "if the opposition have spoken their last word," he said, "the bill will now proceed upon its natural course. it will proceed rapidly and irresistibly, and in a few short weeks become the law of the land." the weeks have lengthened into years, and so much has happened in them that i keep no clear memory of that evening, though i was present. but it represented the temper of the time, among home rulers, and more particularly among irish nationalists, who generally held the opinion that the military preparations in ulster were, as mr. devlin called them, "a hollow masquerade." we saw the other side of the picture on thursday, march th, when a vote of censure was moved. mr. bonar law launched on the house of commons a new and sinister suggestion. "what about the army? if it is only a question of disorder, the army i am sure will obey you, and i am sure that it ought to obey you; but if it really is a question of civil war, soldiers are citizens like the rest of us." sir edward rose immediately the prime minister had replied to mr. bonar law, and his speech was furious. "in consequence of the trifling with this subject by the prime minister and the provocation, which he has endorsed, by the first lord of the admiralty last saturday, i feel i ought not to be here but in belfast," he said; and he indicated his intention of proceeding there as soon as he had spoken. what he had to say chiefly concerned the army, and the preparations which were being made at the war office for the despatch of troops to ulster. he suggested that there was the intention to provoke an attack so that there might be "pretext for putting them down." "you will be all right. you will be no longer cowards. the cowardice will have been given up. you will have become men in entrenching yourselves behind the army. but under your direction they will have become assassins." with these words--memorable in connection with what happened later, but not in ulster--the ulster leader left the house, followed by captain craig. friday's papers were of course full of the debate. at noon on that day, march , , general sir arthur paget, commander-in-chief in ireland, held a meeting with the officers at the curragh and received the intimation that the majority of them would resign their commissions rather than go on duty which was likely to involve a collision with ulster. it seems only fair in dealing with this whole incident to print here an account of what happened, written from the soldier's point of view, by the man who was the spokesman and leader of the resigning officers--brigadier (now lieutenant) general sir hubert gough.[ ] '"i never refused to obey orders. on the contrary, i obeyed them. i was ordered to make a decision--namely, to leave the army or 'to undertake active operations against ulster.' these were the very words of the terms offered. as i was given a choice, i accepted it, and chose the first alternative, and as a matter of fact i have a letter in existence written the night before the offer was made by sir a. paget to my brother, saying: 'something is up' (we had been suddenly ordered to a conference). 'what is it? if i receive orders to march north, of course i will go.'" 'all the officers of the rd cavalry brigade took the same line' (continues the correspondent of the _manchester guardian_) 'and resigned. this decision seems not to have been expected by the authorities, and caused great perturbation. general gough was urged by sir arthur paget to withdraw the resignation. sir arthur paget told them that the operations against ulster were to be of a purely defensive nature. unfortunately, sir arthur paget based his appeal on expediency and private interest, and not sufficiently on the call of public duty. this failed to influence the officers. they persisted in their resignations, and only finally withdrew them on receiving a written undertaking from the war office that they would not be again presented with the alternative of resigning or attacking ulster.' the irish party had no guess at the inner aspect of the occurrence. naturally, but regrettably, we were the section of the house which had least touch with what was thought and felt in barrack-rooms and regimental messes. naturally, but most regrettably, the opinion of the army regarded us traditionally as a hostile body; and at this time every effort to accentuate that belief was made by the political party with which the army had most intercourse and connection. writing now, as i hope i may write without offence, of a state of things not far off in time, but divided from us of to-day by the marks of a vast upheaval, it can be said that the old professional army was a society governed in an extraordinary degree by tradition. part of that tradition was that the army had no politics; and as everyone knows, the man who says he has no politics is in practice almost invariably a conservative. in the army, usage was at its strongest--stronger even than at a public school; it was almost bad manners, "bad form," to hold political opinions differing from those of your mess. political discussion was sharply discouraged; but this never meant that a man might not express vehemently the prevailing opinion. on the broad facts it was inevitable that the prevailing opinion should be unfriendly to irish nationalists. irish nationalists had taken passionately the line of opposition to the south african war; they had been sharply critical of all the minor campaigns in which the army had been engaged for repression or for conquest during the whole period since parnell began his leadership. in ireland itself, every man who reflected for a moment saw at the curragh the very embodiment of that force which had maintained for over a hundred years a government which had not the consent of the governed; and unless he was one of those who regarded themselves as "england's faithful garrison in ireland," protestations of enthusiasm for the armed forces of the crown could not be the natural expression of his feelings. yet mingled with the nationalists' attitude of estrangement from the forces which upheld a detested system of government there was a deep-seated pride in the exploits of irish troops; and no man ever felt this more strongly than redmond. he seldom spoke of the distinguished men he met, but again and again i remember hearing him mention with pleasure some talk over a dinner-table with this or that famous soldier--sir john french (as he then was), for instance. it was happiness for him to find himself on friendly terms with the service to which so many sentiments bound him. the curragh incident was to him more than a grave political event; it pained him beyond measure that this opposition should be headed by a representative of one of the irish families most famous for their military record. in the debates which dealt with all this matter he said no word, and he kept our party silent--a wise course, and one to which every instinct prompted him. in its political aspect, this action of general gough and the fifty officers allied with him revealed a new and formidable impediment on the path to home rule; yet it was one of those barriers which rally forces rather than weaken them, and in surmounting which, or sweeping them aside, a new impetus may be gained. the incident was first discussed in the house on monday, march rd, and continued to dominate all other questions for several days. from the labour benches mr. john ward (now colonel), who had been a private soldier, gave the first indication of the volume of resentment. his speech, remarkable in its power both of phrasing and of thought, was delivered quite unexpectedly in a thin house; but its effect was electrical. later, mr. j.h. thomas spoke in the same strain. when a railway strike was threatened, the soldiers had been called out and had come without a murmur. was the army to be used against all movements except those under the patronage of the tory party? if so, he would tell his four hundred thousand railway men to equip themselves to defend their own interests. these speeches set people thinking very gravely, but their effect was to increase the confidence of home rulers--the more so as sir edward grey, in one of his rare moments of emphasis, declared his determination to go as far as either speaker if the case which they foreshadowed should arise. but new occurrences disquieted the public; the bungling which had characterized dealings with the officers at the curragh was not ended there. general gough received a document from colonel seely, secretary of state for war, countersigned by sir john french and sir spencer ewart, the military heads of the war office; and this document was in part disavowed by the cabinet. the two generals resigned and colonel seely followed their example. i have never seen the house of commons so completely surprised as on the afternoon when the prime minister announced that he himself would succeed to the vacant office. the surprise passed at once into a feeling of immense relief, very widely shared by all parties. the right thing had been done in the right way, and it was clear that mr. asquith possessed enormous authority, if he chose to assert it. the effect of all these happenings was immediately perceptible in the resumed discussion on the home rule bill. mr. dillon, speaking on the second day, said: "yesterday for the first time i heard this question debated in a spirit of reasonableness and conciliation and with an evident desire on both sides to reach an agreement." a proposal frequently put forward from the tory side suggested exclusion until a federal arrangement for the united kingdom could be completed. the official tory demand was for either a referendum or a general election. but, as redmond pointed out when he spoke on the fourth and last day of the debate, any proposal for a settlement must be a settlement which ulster would accept, and ulster declared that it would not be influenced by any vote of the british people or by any act of parliament. in a passage of very genuine feeling he indicated what ulster might do to assist him in securing for ulster the extremest limit of concession: "anything which would mean burying the hatchet, anything which would mean the consent of these ulstermen to shake hands frankly with their fellow-countrymen across the hateful memories of the past, would be welcomed with universal joy in ireland, and would be gladly purchased by very large sacrifices indeed. if the right honourable and learned gentleman (sir edward carson) would say to me, 'we are both irishmen; we both love our country; we both hate--and i am sure this is absolutely true of both of us--we both hate all the old sectarian animosities, all the old wrongs, all the old memories which have kept irishmen apart; let us come together and see what we can do for the welfare of our common country, so that we can hand down to those who come after us an ireland more free, more peaceful, more tolerant, an ireland less cursed by racial and religious differences'; if an appeal like that were made to me, i say without the smallest hesitation that there are no lengths that nationalist ireland would not be willing to go to assuage the fears, allay the anxieties, and remove the prejudices of their ulster fellow-countrymen. "but, alas! that is not the position. even the permanent exclusion of ulster is not put forward as the price of reconciliation; it is simply put forward as the one and sole condition upon which they will give up their avowed intention of levying war upon their fellow-countrymen." he dealt with the federal proposal, and once more avowed his desire for that solution. "i have been all my political life preaching in favour of federalism." but he could not consent that the exclusion of ulster should be prolonged indefinitely pending a settlement on federal lines, nor consent to any "watering down of the powers in the present home rule bill." what remained then, if ulster would not accept the offer? nothing but "to proceed calmly with the bill." threats of civil war he discounted. disturbances there would probably be; but when the first home rule bill was defeated, there were weeks of the most terrible riots in belfast. the house could not afford to be deterred from any course by threats of violence; and he was confident that the bill would pass into law and profoundly confident it would never be revoked. he gave his reasons for that confidence in a passage almost autobiographical in character--if only because it made the house realize how completely this man's whole adult life had been devoted to this one long service, and how far the labours of our party had achieved their purpose. "in a sense i may say i have lived my whole life within these walls. i came in here little more than a boy, and i have grown old in the house of commons, and in the long space of years which have passed since then i have witnessed the most extraordinary transformation of the whole public life of this country, and i have witnessed an almost miraculous change in the position and the prospects of the irish national cause. when i came to this house, irish nationalist members, in a sense, were almost outcasts. both the great british parties--there was no labour party then--divided on everything else, were united in hostility to the national movement and the national ideal. home rule seemed hopelessly out of the range of practical politics. there were only a handful of men in this whole house of commons besides us who were in favour of any measure of home rule for ireland. outside, the public opinion of this country was ignorant, and it was actively hostile, and we found it impossible to gain the ear of the democracy of england for the voice of ireland. all that has vanished into thin air. all that has radically changed. the change has been slow and gradual, but it has been continuous and sure. such a change as that can never be reversed. you might as well talk of the world going back to the days before electricity or petrol as hope to bring back the prejudices and the ignorance of the masses of the people in this country about ireland, as they existed in the past." his confidence was strong and it communicated itself to ireland. but whatever could be said to shake confidence was said by mr. o'brien and mr. healy, who denounced the bill as worthless when linked to the plan of even temporary partition, and declared that, whatever the government might say at present, we had not yet reached the end of their concessions. on the division they and their party abstained, so that the majority dropped to . up to this point it is still true to say that the nationalist party were constant to their faith in strictly constitutional action. but a new development was imminent. on the night of friday to saturday, april th- th, ulstermen brought off their first overt act of rebellion. they seized the ports of larne and donaghadee, cut off telephone and telegraph, landed a very large quantity of rifles and ammunition, and despatched them to every quarter of the province by means of a great fleet of motor-cars which had been mobilized for the occasion. it was a clean and excellent piece of staff work, planned by a capable soldier and carried out under military direction: and the tory press hailed it with no less enthusiasm than was elicited by the most important victories in the recent war. one coastguard, running to give the alarm, died of heart failure: otherwise there was no casualty. the police and customs officers were confronted with _force majeure_ and submitted without show of resistance. the prime minister, in answering a question as to the action which he proposed to take, used these words: "in view of this grave and unprecedented outrage the house may be assured that his majesty's government will take without delay appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law and protect officers and servants of the king and his majesty's subjects in the exercise of their legal rights." the opposition was noticeably silent, and next day some embarrassment was apparent when they proceeded with a previously arranged vote of censure on the government for the military and naval movements in connection with which the curragh incident had occurred. the sum of these movements amounted to despatching four companies to points in ulster at which very large stores of arms and ammunition were lying under very small guard--and at one of which there was a battery of field guns with no protecting infantry. it was regarded as at least possible that the stores might be rushed by "evil-disposed persons, not fully under the control of their leaders." it was also regarded as possible that the movement of these companies might be resisted and that much larger operations might be thereby involved. the stationing of the fleet opposite the belfast coast was part of the measures taken against this latter contingency. all this preparation was denounced as a conspiracy organized by mr. churchill with intent to provoke rebellion and put it down by a massacre. in view of the important military operation which ulster had just carried out against the crown, mr. churchill was not without justification in comparing the motion to a vote of censure by the criminal classes on the police. yet, after much hard hitting in speech, he once more led the way in retreat from the government's position. sir edward grey had declared, speaking for the government, that beyond the six years' limit they could not go. mr. churchill himself had declared the government's offer would be and should be their last word. yet now, avowedly on his own account, and not speaking for the cabinet, he proposed that a new negotiation should be opened with sir edward carson. this proposal elicited no response, and the debate continued that day in a line of violent recrimination. but next day sir edward carson rose and affirmed that he had previously declared his willingness to advise ulster to close with a proposal giving exclusion until a federal scheme had been considered, when the whole matter should be reviewed "in the light of the action of the irish parliament and how they got on." now he said: "i shall try to make an advance on what i said before. i will say this--and i hope the house will believe me, because, though i do not want to be introducing my own personality into it, i am myself a southerner in ireland--i would say this: that if home rule is to pass, much as i detest it, and little as i will take any responsibility for the passing of it, my earnest hope, and indeed i would say my most earnest prayer, would be that the government of ireland for the south and west would prove, and might prove, such a success in the future, notwithstanding all our anticipations, that it might be even for the interest of ulster itself to move towards that government, and come in under it and form one unit in relation to ireland. may i say something more than that? i would be glad to see such a state of things arising in ireland, in which you would find that mutual confidence and goodwill between all classes in ireland as would lead to a stronger ireland as an integral unit in the federal scheme. while i say all that, that depends upon goodwill, and never can be brought about by force." redmond remained silent; but months later it became known that he had taken action to foster this new spirit. he advised the prime minister not to proceed with the prosecution which had been threatened against the larne gun-runners. but at the same time he urged upon government that they should withdraw the proclamation against importing arms: and for this he had good reason. the larne affair had rendered the movement in support of the irish volunteers irresistible, and redmond had decided to throw himself in with it. the result was an amazing upward leap in the numbers of the volunteers. on june th a question brought out that they were estimated at , against , of the ulster force; but the nationalist body was increasing at the rate of , a week. by july th they were reckoned (on police information) at , , of whom nearly forty thousand were army reservists. these facts now dominated the situation. it was now abundantly clear that if passing home rule meant civil war, so also would the abandonment of home rule. on june th lord robert cecil raised a debate on the new danger. in that debate words were quoted from sir roger casement, one of the most active promoters of the movement: "when you are challenged on the field of force, it is upon that field you must reply." mr. dillon, who exulted in the "splendid demonstration of national sentiment shown in the uprising of the national volunteers," urged strongly that the growth of a rival body was not a menace to public order but an added security. the armed ulstermen would be "much slower to break the peace" when they realized the certainty of formidable resistance--and this, be it said, was no ungrounded observation. yet at the same time the very success of the volunteer movement was disquieting redmond. he was not in the same position as sir edward carson, who from the first had directed, presided over, and controlled the raising and equipment of his force; and unless the force were to be a menace to his leadership, he must secure control. as mr. bulmer hobson puts it in his _history of the irish volunteers_: "the volunteers had men in their ranks who were political followers of mr. redmond's, and men who were not, and who never had been. the latter were willing to help him if he had been ready to help them; they would have made terms with him, but were not prepared to be merely absorbed into his movement." the strength of redmond's position lay in the fact that the vast majority of the enrolled men looked to him as their leader: his weakness, in that the committees under which enrolment had taken place were largely composed of the extremist section. he now determined to unite the volunteers with the parliamentary party as the ulster volunteers were linked with sir edward carson and his civilian organization. the men with whom he had to deal were principally professor macneill and sir roger casement. his first proposal was to replace the existing provisional committee by another, consisting of nine members, with professor macneill, who was regarded as a general supporter of redmond's, in the chair. oddly enough, the negotiations broke down because redmond nominated michael davitt's son along with mr. devlin and his own brother to be representatives. the young davitt had at an early stage expressed dissent from the movement, and this, coming from his father's son, left bitter resentment. the existing committee now proposed to call a national convention of the volunteers. such a body would clearly have become a rival, and a powerful rival, to the national convention of a purely citizen type, and redmond felt himself forced to take drastic action. in a public letter dated june th he wrote: "i regret to observe the controversy which is now taking place in the press on the irish national volunteer movement. many of the writers convey the impression that the volunteer movement is, to some extent at all events, hostile to the objects and policy of the irish party. i desire to say emphatically that there is no foundation for this idea, and any attempts to create discord between the volunteer movement and the irish party are calculated in my opinion to ruin the volunteer movement, which, properly directed, may be of incalculable service to the national cause. "up to two months ago i felt that the volunteer movement was somewhat premature, but the effect of sir edward carson's threats upon public opinion in england, the house of commons, and the government; the occurrences at the curragh camp, and the successful gun-running in ulster, have vitally altered the position, and the irish party took steps about six weeks ago to inform their friends and supporters in the country that in their opinion it was desirable to support the volunteer movement, with the result that within the last six weeks the movement has spread like a prairie fire, and all the nationalists of ireland will shortly be enrolled. "within the last fortnight i have had communications from men in all parts of the country, inquiring as to the organization and control of the volunteer movement, and it has been strongly represented to me that the governing body should be reconstructed and placed on a thoroughly representative basis, so as to give confidence to all shades of national opinion." redmond's proposal was that to the existing committee there should be added twenty-five representative men from different parts of the country, nominated at the instance of the irish party and in sympathy with its policy and aims. failing this, he intimated that it would be "necessary to fall back on county control and government until the organization was sufficiently complete to make possible the election of a fully representative executive by the volunteers themselves." the intimation was not at once accepted. an order was issued calling on the volunteers to elect additional representatives by counties to be added to the committee. redmond at once publicly declared that this amounted to refusal of his offer, and he put the issue very plainly. the provisional committee was originally self-constituted and had been increased only by co-option. the majority of its members, he was informed, were not supporters of the irish party: of the rank and file at least per cent., he said, were supporters of the irish party and its policy. "this is a condition of things which plainly cannot continue. the rank and file of the volunteers and the responsible leaders of the irish people are entitled, and indeed are bound, to demand some security that an attempt shall not be made in the name of the volunteers to dictate policy to the national party who, as the elected representatives of the people, are charged with the responsibility of deciding upon the policy best calculated to bring the national movement to success. "moreover, a military organization is of its very nature so grave and serious an undertaking that every responsible nationalist in the country who supports it is entitled to the most substantial guarantees against any possible imprudence. the best guarantee to be found is clearly the presence on the governing body of men of proved judgment and steadiness." as a last word he renewed his threat of calling on his supporters to organize separate county committees independent of the dublin centre. this was carrying matters with a high hand, and the fact that he succeeded proves the greatness of his prestige at the moment. the committee in a published manifesto accepted his terms, but accepted them with declared regret, and eight of the original members seceded. among them was patrick pearse, with whom went three others who suffered death in easter week two years later. all this was a disastrous business, and the worst part of it lay in the public avowal of divided councils. moreover, a committee so constituted could not, and did not, operate efficiently. the original members were primarily interested in the volunteer force; the added ones primarily in the parliamentary movement. nearly all of the latter--selected for their "proved judgment and steadiness"--were men past middle age; and of the whole twenty-five willie redmond alone subsequently bore arms. there was indeed an underlying difference of principle. redmond knew well, and all parliamentarians with him, that under the terms of the home rule bill no army could be raised or maintained in ireland without the consent of the imperial parliament. the original volunteer committee laid it down as an axiom that the volunteer force should be permanent; they were, as casement put it, "the beginning of an irish army." sir edward carson's policy had produced a new mentality among irish nationalists, and it made many take redmond's constitutionalism for timidity. but in the eyes of the world and of ireland generally, redmond was just as much as sir edward carson the accredited and accepted leader of his volunteer organization, and to him the volunteers looked for provision of arms and equipment. one of his chief preoccupations in those months was with this matter, and it explains his desire to have the proclamation against the import of arms withdrawn. the larne exploit had proved the futility of it; articles by colonel repington in _the times_ testified to the completeness of the provision which had been made for ulster. but smuggling is always a costly business, and nationalists were hampered by the cost. more than that, there was ground for suspicion that the scales were not equally weighted as between ulster and the rest of the country. on june th redmond wrote a letter to the chief secretary repeating his case for withdrawal of the proclamation. it is all memorable, but especially the warning which concludes the following passages from it: "in the south and west of ireland, not only are the most active measures being taken against the importation of arms, but many owners of vessels are harassed unnecessarily. "the effect of this unequal working of the proclamation has been grave amongst our people, and has tended to increase both their exasperation and their apprehensions. "the apprehensions of our people are justified to the fullest. they find themselves, especially in the north, faced by a large, drilled, organized and armed body. furthermore, the incident at the curragh has given them the fixed idea that they cannot rely on the army for protection. the possession of arms by nationalists would, under these circumstances, be no provocation for disorder, but a means of preserving the peace by confronting one armed force with another, not helpless but, by being armed, fully able to defend themselves. "finally, we want to call your most serious attention to the grave and imminent danger of a collision between nationalists and the police in the effort to import arms. the police in the south and west might not be so passive as they were in the recent affair at larne, and there might be serious conflicts, and even loss of life, and from this day forward every day which the proclamation is enforced as strictly as it is now against the nationalists brings increased danger of disastrous collision between the police and the people." within a fortnight a minor incident illustrated the "unequal working" referred to in the first of these points. general richardson, who commanded the ulster force, had issued on july st an order authorizing all ulster volunteers to carry arms openly and to resist any attempt at interference. in ulster accordingly no search was ever attempted. but on july th mr. lawrence kettle, brother to professor kettle, who had from the first been a prominent official of the volunteers, was returning in his motor from the electric works at the pigeon house; he was stopped by the police and his car searched for arms. such an occurrence in ulster would have been held to justify immediate rebellion, and would have been carefully avoided. in dublin there was no such avoidance of provocation. yet the avoidance of anything which might precipitate strife was indeed in these days most desirable. june th saw the murder of the archduke at sarajevo. the european sky grew rapidly overcast. days passed, and the possibility of civil war was exchanged for the near probability of european war which might find the british empire divided against itself. it was necessary in the highest interests of state for the government to make an effort to compose the cause of so much violent faction, which might at any moment assume acute form. the amending bill, introduced in the house of lords with the government's offer embodied in it, had been altered by the peers in a manner which lord morley described as tantamount to rejection. in this shape it was to come before the house of commons on july th. but on that monday, when the house reassembled after the weekly holiday, the prime minister rose at once and announced in tones of no ordinary solemnity that the king had thought it right to summon representatives of parties both british and irish to a conference next day at buckingham palace, over which mr. speaker would preside. redmond in two brief sentences guarded his attitude. he disclaimed all responsibility for the policy of calling the conference and expressed no opinion as to its chances of success. the invitation had reached him and mr. dillon in the form of a command from the king, and as such they had accepted it. some may remember how radiantly fine were those far-off days in july which led us up to the brink of such undreamt-of happenings. on the tuesday night i was sitting alone on the terrace, when redmond came out. for once, he was in a mood to talk. his mind was full of the strangeness and interest of that first day's conference--a council, or parley, so momentous, so unprecedented. it touched what was very strong in him--the historic imagination. he told me how the king had received them all, stayed with them for some intercourse of welcome, and had been specially marked in his courtesy to redmond himself, who had of course never before been presented to him. then, he had accompanied them to the room set apart for their deliberations and had left them with their chairman, the speaker. when i think over redmond's description of the sovereign's personality, it seems to me that he was describing one so paralysed, as it were, by anxiety as to have lost the power of easy, genial and natural speech. but the dominant thought in his mind did not concern king george. one figure stood out--sir edward carson. "as an irishman," redmond said, "you could not help being proud to see how he towered above the others. they simply did not count. he took charge absolutely." as i gathered, the eight members sat four on each side of a long table, with the speaker at the head. the irish leaders were on his right and left, and the discussion was chiefly between them. it turned mainly on the question of the area to be excluded. enormous trouble had been taken, and redmond told me later that a great map in relief had been constructed, showing the distribution of protestant and catholic population. this brought out with astonishing vividness the contrast: the catholics were on the mountains and hill-tops, the protestants down along the valley lands. nothing could be more cordial, redmond said, than sir edward carson's manner to him. they met as old friends, and i believe that when they parted, one asked the other that they should have "one good shake-hands for the sake of old times on the munster circuit." but it was clearly recognized that there was a point beyond which neither of them could take his followers, and these points could not be brought to meet. even if adjustment had been possible on the question of time-limit, neither would give up the debatable counties, tyrone and fermanagh, in which the nationalists had a clear though small majority of the population, but in which the ulster volunteer organization was very strong. on friday, july th, mr. asquith announced the failure of the attempt. "the possibility of defining an area for exclusion from the operation of the government of ireland bill was considered, and the conference being unable to agree either in principle or in detail on such an area, it concluded." an incident which did not lack significance was that on the second day of these meetings redmond, returning with mr. dillon along birdcage walk to the house, was recognized by some irish guards in the barracks, who raised a cheer for the nationalist leaders which ran all along the barrack square. the army was not all disposed to take sides with ulster and against the nationalists. but parts of it were. the collision between forces of the crown and irish volunteers trying to land arms, which redmond had foretold and deprecated in his letter of june th, was fated to occur. on saturday, july th, five thousand ulster volunteers, fully armed, with four machine guns--in short, an infantry brigade equipped for active service--marched through the streets of belfast, no one interfering. on sunday, the th, a private yacht sailed into howth harbour with eleven hundred rifles on board and some boxes of ammunition. by preconcerted arrangement a body of some seven hundred irish volunteers had marched down to meet the yacht. these men took the rifles, and with them set out to march back in column of route to dublin. two thousand rounds of ammunition were with them in a truck-cart, but none was distributed. meanwhile the telephones had been busy. the assistant-commissioner of dublin police, mr. harrel, an energetic officer, was informed, and he acted instantly. the under-secretary, permanent official head of dublin castle, was at his lodge in the phoenix park some two miles distant: mr. harrel informed him of what was happening and was ordered to meet him at the castle. but mr. harrel was not content to delay. he called out what police he could muster, some hundred and eighty men, and judging that they would be insufficient, decided on his own authority to requisition the military. at the kildare street club he found the brigadier-general in command of the troops in dublin, and this officer immediately ordered out a company of the king's own scottish borderers. with this force of soldiers and police mr. harrel proceeded to a point on the road from howth to dublin and blocked the way. when the body of volunteers reached him, he demanded the surrender of their rifles. this was refused. he then ordered the police to disarm the men. a scuffle followed, in which nineteen rifles were seized. some of the volunteers without orders fired revolvers, and by this firing two soldiers were slightly wounded. one volunteer received a slight bayonet wound. then there was a stop and a parley, and the volunteer leaders threatened to distribute ammunition. while the parley lasted the volunteers in rear of the column dispersed, carrying their rifles, leaving only a couple of ranks drawn across the road in front, who blocked the view. when mr. harrel perceived what was happening, he ordered the soldiers to march back to dublin and took the police with him. by this time wild rumours had spread through the city, and on the way back the troops were mobbed. they were pelted with every kind of missile and many were hurt, though none seriously; and it understates the truth to say that they were in no danger. they had their bayonets, and from time to time made thrusts at their assailants. at last, on the quays, at a place called bachelor's walk, the company was halted, and the officer in command intended, if necessary, to give an order for a few individual men to fire over the heads of the crowd. but the troops had lost their temper, and without order given a considerable number fired into the crowd. three persons were killed and some thirty injured. the first that i knew of these events was on the monday, when i got the paper at a station in gloucestershire, on my way to the house. the railway-carriage was full of casual english people, and i have never heard so much indignant comment on any piece of news. "why should they shoot the people in dublin when they let the ulstermen do what they like?" that was the burden of it. it is easy to guess what was felt and thought and said in dublin and throughout ireland. what redmond said in the house of commons is characteristic of his attitude. he demanded that full judicial and military inquiry into the action of the troops should be held, and that proper punishment should be inflicted on those found guilty. "but," he said, "really the responsibility rests upon those who requisitioned the troops under these circumstances. so far as the troops are concerned, i deplore more than i can say that this has occurred--this incident calculated to breed bad blood between the irish people and the troops. i deplore that. i hope that our people will not be so unjust as to hold the troops generally responsible for what, no doubt, taking it at its worst, was the offence of a limited number of men." i do not think any soldier could have wished for a fairer or more friendly statement; and a chance assisted to realize his hope that the troops generally would not be held responsible. one of the killed was a woman whose son was a dublin fusilier. this man published a letter in the press calling on all dublin fusiliers and all soldiers who sympathized with him to attend the funeral. it was well that the populace should feel on such a matter as this that all the troops were not against them; and well that they should be counselled by the leader of their nation to be reasonable in the direction of their resentment. this whole incident should never be forgotten by those who are disposed to judge the irish harshly for what they did, and did not do, in the succeeding years. above all, it should be remembered that the news of it, terribly provocative in itself to any people, but tenfold provocative by reason of the contrast which it revealed as compared with the treatment of ulster, was published to the world less than ten days before redmond had to face the question, what should ireland do in the war? footnotes: [footnote : _manchester guardian_, february , ] chapter v war in europe i the week which began on monday, july th, was feverish and excited. formal discussion on the occurrences at clontarf and bachelor's walk was confined to the monday; but each day had a stormy scene during question-time arising out of it. the amending bill from the lords was to have been taken on tuesday, but mr. asquith postponed it till thursday, to get a calmer atmosphere. when thursday came, it was postponed again and indefinitely. "we meet," said the prime minister, "under conditions of gravity which are almost unparalleled in the experience of any one of us." it was therefore necessary to "present a united front and be able to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." to continue the home rule discussion must involve the house in acute controversy in regard to "domestic differences whose importance to ourselves no one in any quarter of the house is disposed to disparage or belittle." the leader of the opposition assented. two sentences in his speech have importance. the first laid it down that this postponement should not "in any way prejudice the interests of any of the parties to the controversy." the second indicated that he spoke not only for the unionist party but for ulster. it is very difficult now, after all that has crowded in upon us, jading the sensitive recipient surface of memory, to reconstitute the frame of mind in which we passed those days. one thing i clearly remember, perhaps worth noting for its significance. in a division lobby, probably on the wednesday night, i came in touch with a friend, then a subordinate member of the government, who had been among the keenest advocates of our cause. i asked how he thought things were going. my question had reference to our affairs, which had been for so many months the dominant issue; but he answered with reference to the european situation, as if that alone existed. looking back, it seems to me strange that one should have been so engrossed in any preoccupation as in reality to ignore the vast and imminent possibilities. yet, after all, i believe my case was typical of many. for us irish, this was the crucial point, the climax of a struggle which had been intense and continuous now for a period of four years--which in its wider sense had gone on, with ebb and flow, yet always in progress during the whole adult lifetime of our leader and his principal colleagues. for more than us, for scores of labour men and liberals, it had become almost a fixed belief that european war was only a nightmare of the imagination. war in the balkans, war possibly in the east of europe, we could think of; but war flinging the complex organization, so potent yet so delicate, of great and fully civilized states into the melting-pot--that we never really believed in. prophets of finance, prophets of the labour world, had told us the thing was impossible. even our most recent experience, the irruption of armed forces into the political arena, had contributed to fix in our minds the view that all armaments were merely _in terrorem_, part of a gigantic game of bluff. in a world organized as was europe in on the basis of universal military service, it is dangerous, not only materially but morally and intellectually, to be as the people of these islands were, segregated from all military experience. we were almost like children in a magazine of explosives: we knew, of course, that there were dangerous substances about us; but we did not realize how suddenly and irretrievably the whole thing might go off. i do not know how redmond gauged the situation. but he spent the end of the week in town, and must have been less unprepared than was one like myself, who during the saturday, sunday and the monday bank holiday was away in a most peaceful country-side, remote from news. even on the tuesday, the instant bearing on our own questions and our own lives of what we read in the newspapers was not clear to me. there was to be a debate, of course; but only when i saw the attendants setting chairs on the floor of the house itself--a thing which had not been done since gladstone introduced his second home rule bill--did i grasp the fact that something wholly unusual was expected. my strong impression is that the house as a whole was in great measure unprepared for what it had to face. you could feel surprise in the air as sir edward grey developed his wonderful speech. men, shaken away from all traditional attitudes, responded from the depths of themselves to an appeal which none of us had ever heard before. having failed to secure my place on the irish benches, i was sitting on one of the chairs close by the sergeant at arms, just inside the bar of the house, so that i saw at once both sides of the assembly: there were no parties that day. the foreign secretary's speech, intensely english, with all the quality that is finest in english tradition, clearly did not in its opening stages carry the house as a whole. passages struck home, here and there, to men not to parties, kindling individual sentiments. appeal to a common feeling for france did not elicit a general response; but here and there in every quarter there were those who leapt to their feet and cheered, waving the papers that were in their hands; and the two figures that stand out most vividly in my recollection were willie redmond, our leader's brother, and arthur lynch. we were in a very different atmosphere already from the days of the boer war. it was not until the speaker reached in his statement the outrage committed on belgian neutrality that feeling manifested itself universally. appeal was made to the sense of honour, of fair play, of respect for pledges, by a man as well fitted to make such an appeal as ever addressed any audience; and it was the case of belgium that made the house of commons unanimous. later in the evening speeches from the radical group made it clear that unanimity was not yet definitive. labour was hesitant; germany had still to complete sir edward grey's work. with this disposition in england itself, what was likely to be the feeling in ireland? nobody, i think, expected that anything would be said from our benches. there had been no consultation in our party, such as was customary and almost obligatory on important occasions. i have said before that redmond's position was by understanding and agreement that of chairman, not of leader. mr. dillon, by far the most important of his colleagues, was away in ireland. any action that redmond took he must take not merely in an unusual but in a new capacity, as leader, at a great moment, acting in his own right. neither had there been any consultation between him and the government. he knew only what the general public knew. parts of sir edward grey's speech were to him, as to the other members of the house, a surprise at many points. at one point it certainly was. after summing up the situation, first in relation to france, then in relation to belgium, the foreign secretary, speaking with the utmost gravity, foretold for great britain terrible suffering in this war, "whether we are in it or whether we stand aside." he made it clear that the island safety was not unchallengeable; there could be no pledge to send an expeditionary force outside the kingdom. then, with a sudden lift of his voice, he added: "one thing i would say: the one bright spot in the very dreadful situation is ireland. the position in ireland--and this i should like to be clearly understood abroad--is not a consideration among the things we have to take into account now." the history of this passage is strange. all who heard assumed that the speaker relied on definite promises. such a promise had been given, from one party. the ulster leader had, with the sure instinct for ulster's interest which guided him throughout, conveyed to the government through mr. bonar law an assurance that they could count on ulster's imperial patriotism. ulster, so far as pledges went, was the bright spot. where germany had counted on finding trouble for great britain, no trouble would be found. but sir edward grey at that moment of his career was lifted perhaps beyond himself, certainly to the utmost range of his statesmanship. he was a chief member of the ministry which had brought to the verge of complete statutory accomplishment the task which the liberal party inherited from gladstone. he knew--his words have been already quoted--what ireland's gratitude to gladstone had been even for the unfinished effort; and now, in this crucial hour, he counted upon ireland. from ulster, which had its bitter resentment, assurances were needed: but if ulster were contented to fall into line, then all was well with ireland. speaking as one who had done his part by ireland, with the confidence that counts upon full comradeship he assumed the generosity of ireland's response. that did not fail him, sudden and unforeseen though the challenge came--for it was an appeal and a challenge to ireland's generosity. when the notable words concerning ireland were spoken, redmond turned to the colleague who sat next him, one of his close personal friends, and one of his wisest, most moderate and most courageous counsellors. he said: "i'm thinking of saying something. do you think i ought to?" mr. hayden answered, "that depends on what you are going to say." redmond said: "i'm going to tell them they can take all their troops out of ireland and we will defend the country ourselves." "in that case," said mr. hayden, "you should certainly speak." redmond leant over to mr. t.p. o'connor, who sat immediately below him, and consulted him also. mr. o'connor was against it. though the war had no more enthusiastic supporter, he thought the risk too great. it was just a week and a day since redmond had moved an adjournment to consider the occasion when government forces were turned out to disarm irish volunteers, and when troops fired without order on a dublin crowd. ireland was still given over to a fury of resentment, issuing not alone in speeches but in active warlike preparation. on sunday, august st, memorial masses for the victims were held up and down the country. in belfast there was a parade of four thousand irish volunteers; and finally, at a point on the wicklow coast, some ten thousand rifles were landed and distributed in defiance of government and its troops. now, forty-eight hours after these demonstrations, would the irish leader ask his countrymen to blot from their minds and from their hearts so recent and so terrible a wound? would he attempt to change the whole direction of a nation's feeling? the boldest and the most generous might well have hesitated. redmond did not. this is not to say that he spoke without full reflection. he always thought far ahead; and in these tense days of waiting upon rumour, he must have pondered deeply upon all the possibilities--must have had intuition of what this opportunity, england's difficulty, might mean for ireland. other minds were on the same trail. in the dublin papers of that morning were two letters of moment--one of them from sir arthur conan doyle. "the chief point which has divided protestant ulster from the rest of ireland," he wrote, "is that nationalists were not loyal to the empire." then, recalling briefly the extent to which irish nationalists had helped in creating that empire, he went on: "there is no possible reason why a man should not be a loyal irishman and a loyal imperialist also.... a whole-hearted declaration of loyalty to the common ideal would at the present moment do much to allay the natural fears of ulster and to strengthen the position of ireland. such a chance is unlikely to recur. i pray that the irish leaders may understand its significance and put themselves in a position to take advantage of it." the other letter, written from a different standpoint, was signed by mr. m.j. judge, a most active irish volunteer who had been wounded in the scuffle on the way back from howth. "england," he said, "might inspire confidence by restoring it. she could bestow confidence by immediately arming and equipping the irish volunteers. the volunteers, properly armed and equipped, could preserve ireland from invasion, and england would be free to utilize her 'army of occupation' for the defence of her own shores." redmond could not have seen either of these letters, but those two trains of thought were blended in his speech--which was less a speech than a supreme action. it was the utterance of a man who has a vision and who, acting in the light of it, seeks to embody the vision in a living reality. mr. bonar law followed sir edward grey with a few brief sentences of whole-hearted support. then redmond rose, and a hush of expectation went over the house. i can see it now, the crowded benches and the erect, solid figure with the massive hawk-visaged head thrown back, standing squarely at the top of the gangway. while he spoke, as during sir edward grey's speech, the cheering broke out first intermittently and scattered over the house, then grew gradually universal. sitting about me were tory members whom i did not know; i heard their ejaculations of bewilderment, approval and delight. but in the main body of the unionists behind the front opposition bench papers were being waved, and when redmond sat down many of these men stood up to cheer him. in five minutes he had changed the whole atmosphere of domestic politics in regard to the main issue of controversy.--here is the speech: "i hope the house will not think me impertinent to intervene in the debate, but i am moved to do so a great deal by that sentence in the speech of the foreign secretary in which he said that the one bright spot in the situation was the changed feeling in ireland. sir, in past time, when this empire has been engaged in these terrible enterprises, it is true that it would be the utmost affectation and folly on my part to deny that the sympathies of nationalist ireland, for reasons deep down in the centuries of history, have been estranged from this country. but allow me to say that what has occurred in recent years has altered the situation completely. i must not touch upon any controversial topic, but this i may be allowed to say--that a wider knowledge of the real facts of irish history has altered the view of the democracy of this country towards the irish question, and i honestly believe that the democracy of ireland will turn with the utmost anxiety and sympathy to this country in every trial and danger with which she is faced. "there is a possibility of history repeating itself. the house will remember that in , at the end of the disastrous american war, when it might be said that the military force of this country was almost at its lowest ebb, the shores of ireland were threatened with invasion. then a hundred thousand irish volunteers sprang into existence for the purpose of defending those shores. at first, however--and how sad is the reading of the history of those days! no catholic was allowed to be enrolled in that body of volunteers; yet from the first day the catholics of the south and west subscribed their money and sent it for the army of their protestant fellow-countrymen. ideas widened as time went on, and finally the catholics of the south were armed and enrolled as brothers-in-arms with their fellow-countrymen. may history repeat itself! to-day there are in ireland two large bodies of volunteers, one of which has sprung into existence in the north and another in the south. i say to the government that they may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops from ireland. ireland will be defended by her armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose the armed catholics in the south will be only too glad to join arms with the armed protestant ulster men. is it too much to hope that out of this situation a result may spring which will be good, not merely for the empire, but for the future welfare and integrity of the irish nation? whilst irishmen are in favour of peace and would desire to save the democracy of this country from all the horrors of war, whilst we will make any possible sacrifice for that purpose, still, if the necessity is forced upon this country, we offer this to the government of the day: they may take their troops away, and if it is allowed to us, in comradeship with our brothers in the north, we will ourselves defend the shores of ireland." it needed no gift of prophecy to be certain that such a speech would be popular in the house of commons, and many unionists that day were almost aggrieved that sir edward carson had not risen at once to reply to the offer in the same spirit. they did not realize the difficulty of the ulster leader's position. to admit and welcome the unity of ireland was to give away ulster's case. to accept the nationalist leader's utterance as sincere, still more to assume that ireland as a whole would endorse it, was to weaken, if not to give away, ulster's best argument, and from that hour to the end of the war sir edward carson was most loyal to ulster's interests. further, it is conceivable that by some who cheered it the speech may have been misunderstood. yet it is not probable that many who heard redmond believed that in order to serve england he was flinging away ireland's national claim, to the successful furtherance of which his whole life had been devoted. the unionist party as a whole certainly understood that to accept redmond's offer in the spirit in which it was made meant accepting the principle of home rule: and on that afternoon in august they were not unready to accept it. they felt, for the speech made them feel, that a great thing had happened. yet they might well be pardoned for some scepticism as to how the utterance might be taken in ireland, and how it would issue in action. a famous nationalist said some ten days later: "when i read the speech in the paper, i was filled with dismay. now i recognize that it was a great stroke of statesmanship which i should never have had the courage to advise." redmond's instinct had been right. he trusted in the appeal to national pride and to the sense of national unity. ireland was perfectly willing, and he knew it, to give loyal friendship to england on the basis of freedom. but the test of freedom had now come to be the right to bear arms, and this was a proposal that ireland should undertake her own defence. ireland was sick of the talk of civil war, and this was a proposal that ulstermen and the rest should make common cause. it was an appeal addressed by an instinct, which was no less subtle than it was noble, to what was most responsive in the best qualities of irishmen. none the less it was a statesman's utterance addressed to a people politically quick-minded; ireland saw as well as redmond himself that what stood in the way of ireland's national aspiration was the opposition of one section of irishmen. to that extent, and to that extent only, was the speech political in its purpose. whatever made for common action made for unity; and whatever made for unity made for home rule. that is the key to redmond's attitude throughout the war--perhaps also to sir edward carson's. ii the response from nationalist ireland had not long to be waited for--although the inquest on the victims of the bachelor's walk tragedy was in progress on the very day when redmond's speech appeared in the press. waterford corporation instantly endorsed their member's utterance, and throughout the week similar resolutions were passed all over the country, unionist members of these bodies joining in to second the proposals. in cork, the city council had before it a resolution condemning the government for its attempt to disarm the irish volunteers, and calling for stringent penalties on the offenders in the bachelor's walk affair: the resolution was withdrawn and one of hearty support to redmond's attitude adopted. yet irish opinion did not go so far as mr. william o'brien, who proposed the complete dropping of the home rule bill till after the war, in order to bring about a genuine national unity. the action of the offaly corps of volunteers, for instance, was typical. they agreed to offer their services gladly on two conditions: first, that the home rule bill should go on the statute book; secondly, that the volunteers should be subsidized and equipped by government. but it was assumed in ireland that no question arose about the safety of the bill, and people gave themselves to the new emotion. troops were cheered everywhere at stations and on the quays: national volunteers and local bands turned out to see them off. even the battalion of king's own scottish borderers, which had been confined to barracks since the events of july th, was cheered like the rest as it marched down to the transports ready for it.[ ] this was the attitude of the general populace. broadly speaking, redmond's speech pleased the people. it was welcomed by generous-minded men in another class, who responded at once in the same spirit. lord monteagle wrote: "mr. redmond has risen nobly to the occasion"; lord bessborough, that he trusted all the unionists in the south would at once join the irish volunteers. the marquis of headfort, the earls of fingall and of desart, lord powerscourt, lord langford, all chimed in with offers of help. mr. george taaffe wrote: "i thank god from the bottom of my heart that to-day we stand united ireland." in county wexford sixty young protestants came in a body to join up, led by a very tory squire. it should be clearly noted that while redmond's aim was to make this ireland's war, in which irishmen should serve together without distinction of north or south, all that he asked of the land in his speech of august th was that the volunteers should undertake duties of home defence. this was precisely what sir edward carson had asked of ulster. on august th, in a letter to the press, the commander of a fermanagh battalion of ulster volunteers wrote: "no one will be asked to serve outside ulster until sir edward carson notifies that he is satisfied with the attitude of the government with regard to the home rule bill and ulster." redmond neither could nor did ask any man to serve outside ireland till he was satisfied with the government's attitude in regard to home rule. in the first days of the war, however, the critical question for him was to know how his offer of assistance from the volunteers would be accepted by the government, and at the outset all promised favourably. on august th a telegram was sent to the lord-lieutenant: "his majesty's government recognize with deep gratitude the loyal help which ireland has offered in this grave hour. they hope to announce as soon as possible arrangements by which this offer can be made use of to the fullest possible extent." that unquestionably represented the mind of mr. asquith and his civilian colleagues. but a new power had transformed the cabinet. lord kitchener, refusing to accept the post of commander in chief, had insisted on becoming secretary of state for war. no one is likely to underestimate lord kitchener's value at that hour. but probably no one now will dispute that the political control which this soldier obtained was excessive and was dangerous. years of fierce faction had shaken the public confidence in politicians, and a soldier was traditionally above and beyond politics. but in lord kitchener's case the soldier was certainly remote from and below the regions of statesmanship. narrow, domineering, and obstinate, he was a difficult colleague for anyone; and for a prime minister with so easy a temper as mr. asquith he was not a colleague but a master. he claimed to be supreme in all matters relating to the army, and in such a war this came near to covering the whole field of government. it most certainly covered the question of dealing with the irish volunteers and with the ulster volunteers, which meant in reality the whole question of ireland. immediately on lord kitchener's appointment redmond had an interview with him. redmond's report was that he had been most friendly--and most limited in his expectations. "get me five thousand men, and i will say 'thank you,'" he had said. "get me ten thousand, and i will take off my hat to you." yet the very smallness of the estimate should have been a note of warning to us; it indicated a cynical view of ireland's response to redmond's public declaration. on the question of the volunteers he made friendly promises. as the sirdar in egypt he had been used to giving fair words to native chiefs. there is not the least reason to suppose that lord kitchener would have felt bound to show redmond his real mind. the truth was that lord kitchener held in respect to ireland the traditional opinions of the british army. nobody could blame the professional soldier for dislike and distrust of irish nationalist politicians generally; but when at such a crisis a professional soldier, by no means conspicuous for breadth of mind, came to hold such a position as lord kitchener seized, the result was certain to be disastrous for irish policy unless liberal statesmanship exercised a strong control over him. neither mr. asquith nor mr. birrell was likely to do this. two views were taken of the proposal to encourage and utilize the irish volunteers. the first view was that volunteers of any kind were a superfluous encumbrance at a moment when the supreme need was for men in the actual fighting-line; that encouragement of volunteers gave an excuse for shirking war; and further, that volunteers outside the state's control were a danger; that the danger was increased when there were two rival volunteer forces which might fly at each other's throats; and that it was a matter for satisfaction that one of these forces should be very greatly inferior to the other in point of arms and equipment, so that considerations of prudence would lessen the chance of collision. this satisfaction was greatly heightened by the reflection that the armed force was thoroughly loyal to the empire and could be trusted to assist troops in the case of any attack upon the empire begun by the other--a contingency which should always be taken into account. this line of thought was certainly lord kitchener's. he had no distrust of irish soldiers in ordinary regiments; no professional soldier ever had. but he had a deep distrust of a purely irish military organization under irish control. at the back of lord kitchener's mind was the determination "i will not arm enemies." this was the very negation and the antithesis of the second view, which was redmond's. redmond's aim was to win the war, no less than lord kitchener's. but if lord kitchener realized more clearly than other men in power how far-reaching would be the need for troops, redmond realized also far more than the men in power how vital would be the need for america. he saw from the first, knowing the english-speaking world far more widely than perhaps any member of the government, that the irish trouble could not limit its influence to ireland only. greater forces could be conciliated for war purposes by reconciliation with ireland--by bringing ireland heart and soul into the war--than the equivalent of many regiments. yet even from the narrower aspect of finding men, he regarded the same policy as essential. he assumed that recruiting in ireland must always be voluntary--at any rate a matter for ireland's own decision: the question was how to get most troops. knowing ireland, he recognized how complete was the estrangement of its population from the idea of ordinary enlistment. the bulk of the population were on the land, and in ireland, as in great britain, "gone for a soldier" was a word of disgrace for a farmer's son. more than that, the political organization of which he was head had inculcated an attitude of aloofness from the army because it was the army which held ireland by force. enlistment had been discouraged, on the principle that from a military point of view ireland was regarded as a conquered country. a test case had arisen over the territorial act, which was not extended to ireland, any more than the volunteer acts had been. we had voted against lord haldane's bill on the express ground that it put ireland into this status of inferiority and withheld from irishmen that right to arm and drill which was pressed upon englishmen as a patriotic duty. we had explicitly declared then in that our influence should and must be used against enlistment. these facts of history had not merely produced in ireland an attitude of mind hostile to the idea, so to say, of the british army as an institution, though the individual soldier had always been at least as popular as anyone else. they had produced a population extraordinarily unfamiliar with the idea of armament. the old volunteers and the territorials had at least conveyed to all ranks of society in great britain the possibility of joining a military organization while remaining an ordinary citizen. in the imagination of ireland, either you were a soldier or you were not; and if you were a soldier, you belonged to an exceptional class, remote from ordinary existence. to cross that line was a far greater step to contemplate with us than in england. redmond reckoned, and reckoned rightly, that to bring irishmen together in military formations, learning the art of war, was the best way to combat this disinclination to enter the army--this feeling that enlistment meant doing something "out of the way," something contrary to usage and tradition. he reckoned that the attitude of nationalist ireland would alter towards a government which put arms in their hands on their own terms; and that with a great war on foot a temper of adventure and emulation would very soon draw young men flocking to the ranks in which they could see the reality of war. that was redmond's policy and it was the statesman's. nationalist ireland was perfectly ready to adopt the ideals which moved the british empire at home and overseas in the war: but first the british empire must show that it respected the ideals of nationalist ireland. the empire's statesmen did so: the british democracy did so: but lord kitchener stood in the way. from ulster, it was clear that immediate cordial co-operation could not be anticipated. yet redmond had implicit faith in the ultimate effect of comradeship in danger, and here we know he was right. he was to pay a heavy price in blood for the seal set upon that bond; but in the end the seal was set. for the moment, ulster as a whole was sullen and distrustful. feeling that to admit the good faith of nationalists jeopardized their own political cause, they belittled what in the interests of the common weal it would have been wise even to over-value. at the outset "an ulster volunteer" wrote to the papers "let us all unite as a solid nation"; but such an utterance was exceptional. hardly less exceptional was the line taken by "an officer of national volunteers" who wrote, "if the necessity arose to-morrow and the word went out from headquarters, the national volunteers would be prepared to fight to the very death in defending the homes and liberties of france and england." "for ireland only" was a motto much inculcated in those days among the irish volunteers. suspicion on the one side bred estrangement on the other; and every hour lost increased the mischief. moreover, in spite of the generous action taken by outstanding individuals, the general mass of unionist opinion was grudging and uncordial. a friend who was then closely in touch with it described to me the attitude of dublin clubs: "they were almost sorry redmond had done the right thing." such men were part of ireland, and all ireland was remote from war. for them, now as always, home rule was the paramount consideration, and none could deny that the prospects for home rule were immensely improved by redmond's action. in these days, when an end of the conflict was expected in three months, when every check to the germans was magnified out of all reason, there was no sense of the relative value of issues. everywhere in unionist society and in the irish unionist press there was ungenerous and unfriendly criticism which did much harm. two things could have checked these forces for evil. the first would have been an immediate decision to make home rule law. this would have put an end to the pestilent growth of suspicion among nationalists, and it would have enabled redmond to launch at once his appeal for soldiers. the other would have been a decision to make good the pledge contained in the government's message to lord aberdeen and to accept in some practical way the offered service of the volunteers. the latter of these courses involved no controversy with ulster, and to it redmond first addressed himself. he made constant appeals in private to ministers; he was angry and disappointed over the delay: and after a week he thought it necessary to raise the matter in the house. he asked the prime minister whether british territorials were to be sent to ireland to replace the troops which had been withdrawn--a step which would have been equivalent to a rejection of his offer. on this point he received satisfaction; territorials would not be sent. he asked then if the prime minister could not say at once what steps would be taken to arm and equip the volunteers. mr. asquith's reply emphasized the great difficulty which stood in the way. "i do not say," he added, "that it is insuperable." the first part was the voice of lord kitchener; the second, the voice of the government which had sent the telegram of august th. in the war office the desire to give the national volunteers as far as possible what they wanted did not exist, and the government, who had that desire, had not the determination to enforce it. such a position can never be for long concealed. let it be remembered, too, that all through these days there was proceeding in dublin a public inquiry into the events of the howth gun-running and the affray at bachelor's walk, and some measure of redmond's difficulties may be obtained. nevertheless, his policy was winning: and when parliament rose for an adjournment, he spent his first sunday in ireland motoring to maryborough, where he inspected a great muster of volunteers, and was able to speak to them with gladness of the response to his appeal. "from every part of ireland i have had assurances from the irish volunteers that they are ready to fulfil this duty: and from every part--perhaps better and happier still--evidences of a desire on the part of men who in the past have been divided from us to come in at this hour of danger." he told his audience how a battalion of that famous regiment, the inniskilling fusiliers, had been escorted through the town of enniskillen, in which orange and green have always been equally and sharply divided, by combined bodies of the irish and ulster volunteer forces. then turning to the question of equipment, and reminding them that the proclamation against importing arms had been withdrawn, he announced that he had secured several thousand rifles to distribute.[ ] he went on then to pledge himself--it must be said with characteristic overconfidence--as to the intentions of the government: "the government--which has withdrawn its troops from ireland and which has refused to send english territorials to take their place--is about to arm, equip and drill a large number of irish volunteers." very soon, he told them, every man in the force would have a rifle--and this involved a grave responsibility, and the need for discipline in the work which was laid upon them. "i wish them god-speed with their work. it is the holiest work that men can undertake, to maintain the freedom and the rights and to uphold the peace, the order and safety of their own nation. you ought to be proud--you, the sons and the grandsons of men who were shot down for daring to arm themselves--you ought to be proud that you have lived to see the day when with the good will of the democracy of england you are arming yourselves in the light of heaven." the note of exultation in this passage rings again and again through his utterances. he saw, or thought he saw, the symbol of achieved liberty in the muster of young men, ready to take up the sword, and no longer branded with the name of felons for so doing. nor was he alone in his rejoicing. the host at that meeting was a great irish landlord, colonel sir hutcheson poe. he, upon reading redmond's speech of august th had written to the press saying that since he was too old to serve he was taking steps to arm and equip a hundred national volunteers. now, in redmond's presence, addressing a body of the volunteers, he told them what he thought of redmond's action. "that five minutes' speech did more to compose our differences, to unite all irishmen in a bond of friendship and good will, than could have been accomplished by years of agitation or by a conference, however well-intentioned it might be." that was a notable tribute from one of the eight men who formed the historic land conference of ; and sir hutcheson poe was not the man to rest on complimentary expressions. he set to work at once to promote a memorial praying for joint action between ulster and the irish volunteers and for settlement of the political question which alone prevented such action. unhappily, this was not easy of accomplishment. when the house reassembled after its adjournment of a fortnight, negotiations were resumed, with the result that on august st the prime minister asked for a fresh adjournment for ten days, at the end of which time the government hoped to be able to produce satisfactory proposals as to the irish and welsh bills. redmond felt himself obliged to enter a protest. it had been agreed that the circumstances of the war should not be allowed to inflict political injury on any party in the house; and he would give the friendliest consideration to any proposal for giving to the opposition what they might have gained by a discussion on the amending bill. "but we must emphatically say that any proposal which would have the effect of depriving us of the enactment of the irish measure--and i presume i may say the same with reference to the welsh measure--an enactment to which we were entitled practically automatically when the circumstances of the war arose, would do infinite mischief, and would be warmly resented by us. "just let me say one word more. there has arisen in ireland the greatest opportunity that has ever arisen in the history of the connection between the two countries for a thorough reconciliation between the people of ireland and the people of this country. there is to-day, i venture to say, a feeling of friendliness to this country, and a desire to join hands in supporting the interests of this country such as were never to be found in the past; and i do say with all respect, that it would be not only a folly, but a crime, if that opportunity were in any degree marred or wasted by any action which this country might take. i ask this house--and i ask all sections of the house--to take such a course as will enable me to go back to ireland to translate into vigorous action the spirit of the words i used here a few days ago." an angry scene followed. mr. balfour asked whether "it was possible decently to introduce subjects of acute discussion in present circumstances"--in other words, whether all mention of home rule must not be postponed till after the war. this provoked hot debate, checked only by a strong appeal from the prime minister. but the general effect was not reassuring to ireland. the contrast with the tsar's prompt grant of autonomy to poland was sharply drawn. nobody rated high the chances of an amicable agreement. on september th sir edward carson outlined his views in belfast. home rule "will never be law in our country." but "in the interests of the state and of the empire we will postpone active measures." this indicated sufficiently that in his judgment the bill might become law, and that they would not be encouraged to set up immediate resistance. the prime minister, as chief minister of the nation, must be supported in the war at all costs. next day, renewing at coleraine his appeal for recruits, he said: "we are not going to abate one jot or tittle of our opposition to home rule, and when you come back from serving your country you will be just as determined as you will find us at home." this was the answer to redmond's proposal of fraternization. clearly sir edward carson had made up his mind that he could not prevent the passage of the bill, and he decided upon the strongest course, which was to advocate unlimited support to the war. any other course would have been ruinous to his cause, which depended always upon a profession of the extremest loyalty. yet only a strong man, confident in his leadership, could have taken this line at a moment when ulstermen were about to feel that all their preparations were wasted and that the game had been won against them by a paralysing chance. before the house reassembled there was a meeting at the carlton club; a report communicated to the press attributed these words to sir edward carson--they are typical of the tone of the time: "we asked for no terms and we got none. we did not object to go under the war office. we did not make speeches calculated to humbug or deceive while we meant to do nothing." on september th government announced its intentions. both bills were to be placed on the statute book, but their operation deferred till the end of twelve months, or, if the war were not then over, till the end of the war. during the suspensory period government would introduce an amending bill. mr. asquith made a flattering reference to sir edward carson's action in appealing to his organization for recruits, and admitted that "it might be said that the ulstermen had been put at a disadvantage by the loyal and patriotic action which they had undertaken."--this meant that their preparations for resistance to mr. asquith's government were disorganized.--he proceeded to promise that they should never have need of such preparations; they should get all the preparations aimed at without having to use them. "i say, speaking again on behalf of the government, that in our view, under the conditions which now exist--we must all recognize the atmosphere which this great patriotic spirit has created in the country--the employment of force, any kind of force, for what you call the coercion of ulster, is an absolutely unthinkable thing. so far as i am concerned, and so far as my colleagues are concerned--i speak for them, for i know their unanimous feeling--that is a thing we would never countenance or consent to." this utterance has dominated the situation from that day to this. ulster had organized to rebel, sooner than come under an irish parliament; and had refrained from rebellion because the great war was in progress. for this reason ulster should never be coerced, no matter what might happen. sir edward carson's line of action had secured an enormous concession: he might have gone back to his people and said, "we have won." but he was strong enough to represent it as a new outrage, which they for the sake of loyalty must in the hour of common danger submit to endure. by this course, risky for himself, he vastly improved their position in all future negotiation.--after a violent speech from mr. bonar law the tory party walked out of the house in a body. redmond rose at once. he denounced the view that ireland had gained an advantage, or desired to gain one. the prime minister had at every stage assured him that the bill would be put on the statute book in that session, and therefore it was unjust to say that his loyalty was only conditional; he had asked for nothing that was not won in advance. now, instead of an act to become immediately operative, ireland received one with at least a year's delay. yet this moratorium did not seem to him unreasonable. "when everybody is preoccupied by the war and when everyone is endeavouring--and the endeavour will be made as enthusiastically in ireland as anywhere else in the united kingdom--to bring about the creation of an army, the idea is absurd that under these circumstances a new government and a new parliament could be erected in ireland." further, it gave time for healing work. the two things that he cared for most "in this world of politics" were: first, that "not a single sod of irish soil and not a single citizen of the irish nation" should be excluded from the operation of irish self-government; secondly, that no coercion should be applied to any single county in ireland to force their submission. the latter of these ideals was cast up to him by many in ireland, first in private grumblings, afterwards with public iteration. he saw and admitted, what these critics urged, that the one aspiration made the other impossible of fulfilment, for the moment. would it be so, he asked, after an interval in which ulstermen and other irishmen, nationalist and unionist, would be found fighting and dying side by side on the battlefield on the continent, and at home, as he hoped and believed, drilling shoulder to shoulder for the defence of the shores of their own country? on that hint he renewed his appeal to the ulster volunteers for co-operation and regretted that he had got no response from them. more than that, he urged that his appeal to government had got no response. "if they had done something to arm, equip and drill a certain number at any rate of the national volunteers the recruiting probably would have been faster than it had been." alluding to the taunts at ireland's shirking which had been bandied about in interruptions during the debate, he recalled the stories which already had come back from france of irish valour; of the munster fusiliers who stood by their guns all day and in the end dragged them back to their lines themselves; the story told by wounded french soldiers who had seen the irish guards charge three german regiments with the bayonet, singing a strange song that the frenchmen had never heard before--"something about god saving ireland." "i saw these men," said redmond, "marching through london on their way to the station; they marched here past this building singing 'god save ireland!'" but he could not rest his claim, and had no intention of resting it, merely on the prowess of the irish regulars already in the army. "speaking personally for myself, i do not think it is an exaggeration to say that on hundreds of platforms in this country during the last few years i have publicly promised, not only for myself, but in the name of my country, that when the rights of ireland were admitted by the democracy of england, ireland would become the strongest arm in the defence of the empire. the test has come sooner than i, or anyone, expected. i tell the prime minister that this test will be honourably met. i say for myself that i would feel myself personally dishonoured if i did not say to my fellow-countrymen as i say to them here to-day, and as i will say from the public platform when i go back to ireland, that it is their duty, and should be their honour, to take their place in the fighting-line in this contest." that was a clear pledge. the home rule bill received the royal assent on september th. but before the seal was affixed redmond's manifesto to the irish people was in all the newspapers. it was his call to arms. footnotes: [footnote : this fact was verified for me oddly enough. when the th division went to france, it was put through the usual period of apprenticeship with trained troops, and our brigade was attached for training to the scottish fifteenth division. two companies of our battalion of the th connaught rangers were attached to the th and th k.o.s.b. i met two officers who had been in dublin on july th, and it was one of these who told me of the cheering. perhaps i may add that the relations between our connaught rangers and the scots were most friendly, and that we found probably a hundred irish catholics in that battalion--irishmen living in the north of england who had at once rushed to enlist in the nearest corps available.] [footnote : bought in belgium by john o'connor m.p., and t.m. kettle, after the germans had entered brussels.] chapter vi the raising of the irish brigades i at the ending of the long session of parliament in there was a curious scene in the house of commons, where members were crowded to assist at the formal passing of the irish and welsh bills. on the adjournment, mr. will crooks, from his seat on the front bench below the gangway, called out, "mr. speaker, would it be in order to sing 'god save the king'?" and without more ado uplifted his voice and the house chimed in. there must have been strange thoughts in the minds of redmond, of mr. dillon, and others of the irish, standing in the places where they had fought so long and bitter a battle, where they had been so often the object of fierce reproaches, whence they had hurled back so many taunts, now to find themselves the centre of congratulation, and joined with english members in singing on the floor of the house that national anthem which in ireland had been for decades a symbol of ascendancy, rigidly tabooed by every nationalist. when the singing ended, mr. crooks's genial voice rose again. "god save ireland!" he shouted. "and god save england too!" redmond answered. that exchange of words outside the period of debate is, contrary to usage but very properly, recorded in hansard. from this time forth redmond was on his trial. he had given pledges; he must make good to ireland and make good to great britain. for the first, since home rule could not be brought into operation, he must secure recognition of the national volunteers, must establish and regularize their status; for the second, he must obtain recruits as ireland's contribution to the war. the two proposals were in his view--and indeed were in reality--inseparably connected. for both, in order to succeed, he needed to have the cordial support of his fellow-countrymen; for both, he needed whole-hearted co-operation from the british government. it would be too much to say that ireland backed him cordially; but for the limitation of ireland's response the fault lay chiefly and primarily with the government, which failed him completely. the war office could not actually and directly oppose his effort to raise troops; what they could do was to hamper him by the adoption of wrong methods and the refusal of right ones. yet in that part of his task which involved making good to england, laying england and the empire under a debt of living gratitude, his appeal was made to ireland, and he succeeded so far that only ireland herself could have destroyed his work. but on the other point, which involved gaining satisfaction for ireland, the appeal was made to government and the refusal was complete. it was worse than absolute, for it was tainted with bad faith. mr. asquith as prime minister accepted the mutual covenant which redmond had proposed, and allowed lord kitchener to disallow fulfilment of it. redmond's view was not limited to ireland's interest. no man living in these islands felt more keenly for the great underlying principles at issue in the war. his mission, as he conceived it, was to lead ireland to serve those principles. but it was futile to suppose that he could secure for england all that england expected of ireland if he could obtain from england nothing of what ireland asked. redmond wanted recognition for the volunteers chiefly as a basis upon which ireland could feel that she was building an irish army worthy of her record in arms; and this army would be no mean assistance to the nations allied against germany's aggression. considering all the facts which have to be set out, the true cause for wonder is not the limitation but the extent of his success. there was neither delay nor uncertainty in his exposition of ireland's duty. quite literally, he seized the first chance that came to his hand. he left london on the evening when the act was signed, motored to holyhead, as he liked to do, in the big car which his friends had presented to him--it was the only material testimonial which he ever received--and crossed by the night boat, driving on in the morning to aughavanagh. when he reached the vale of ovoca he found a muster of the east wicklow volunteers. these were the nearest thing to him in all the force--his own friends and neighbours from the wicklow hills. aughrim, his post-town at the foot of his own particular valley, had its company, commanded by a friend of his, the local schoolmaster--typical of what was best in the volunteers, a keen gaelic leaguer, tireless in, work for the old language and old history. this man, well on in the forties, but mountain-bred and hardy, had thrown himself into the new movement--little guessing that a few months would see him a private in the british army, or that he would come with honour to command a company of a famous irish regiment on the battlefields of a european war. if it had been only for the sake of captain macsweeny (he was then, of course, only a captain of volunteers), i think redmond would have stopped. but it was a gathering of many friends, who pressed him to speak at a moment when his heart was full. grave results followed from what he said that day; but a week sooner or later he was bound to say these things, and the results were bound to follow. here is the pith of his utterance: "i know that you will make efficient soldiers. efficient for what? wicklow volunteers, in spite of the peaceful happiness and beauty of the scene in which we stand, remember this country at this moment is in a state of war, and the duty of the manhood of ireland is twofold. its duty is at all cost to defend the shores of ireland from foreign invasion. it has a duty more than that, of taking care that irish valour proves itself on the field of war as it has always proved itself in the past. the interests of ireland, of the whole of ireland, are at stake in this war. this war is undertaken in defence of the highest principles of religion and morality and right, and it would be a disgrace for ever to our country, a reproach to her manhood, and a denial of the lessons of her history, if young ireland confined their efforts to remaining at home to defend the shores of ireland from an unlikely invasion, or should shrink from the duty of proving on the field of battle that gallantry and courage which have distinguished their race all through all its history. i say to you, therefore, your duty is twofold. i am glad to see such magnificent material for soldiers around me, and i say to you: go on drilling and make yourselves efficient for the work, and then account for yourselves as men, not only in ireland itself, but wherever the firing-line extends, in defence of right and freedom and religion in this war." on the following thursday mr. asquith, as redmond had publicly urged him to do, came to dublin and spoke at the mansion house with the lord mayor in the chair. mr. dillon and mr. devlin, as well as redmond, were on the same platform and spoke also. the papers of september th, which reported the speeches of this notable gathering, contained also a manifesto from twenty members of the original committee of the volunteers, definitely breaking with redmond's policy and taking his speech to the wicklow volunteers as their cause of action. having recited a version of the facts which led up to the inclusion of redmond's nominees on the committee, it continued: "mr. redmond, addressing a body of irish volunteers on last sunday, has now announced for the irish volunteers a policy and programme fundamentally at variance with their own published and accepted aims and objects, but with which his nominees are, of course, identified. he has declared it to be the duty of the irish volunteers to take foreign service under a government which is not irish. he has made this announcement without consulting the provisional committee, the volunteers themselves, or the people of ireland, to whose service alone they are devoted." the next paragraph announced the expulsion of redmond's nominees and the reconstitution of the committee as it existed before their admission. six resolutions followed. it is noteworthy that the attitude taken up with regard to autonomy was simply "to oppose any diminution of the measure of irish self-government which now exists as a statute on paper," and to repudiate any "consent to the legislative dismemberment of ireland." there was no word of an irish republic and no explicit claim beyond immediate operation for the home rule act. ireland's attitude towards the war was defined by a resolution: "to declare that ireland cannot, with honour or safety, take part in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a national government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of irishmen and irishwomen to the service of the british empire while no national government which could speak and act for the people of ireland is allowed to exist." mr. asquith, when he spoke on thursday night, must have been informed that this split was imminent, and he spoke with a view to that situation. he said: "speaking here in dublin, i address myself for a moment particularly to the national volunteers, and i am going to ask them all over ireland--not only them, but i make the appeal to them particularly--to contribute with promptitude and enthusiasm a large and worthy contingent of recruits to the second new army of half a million which is now growing up, as it were, out of the ground. i should like to see, and we all want to see, an irish brigade--or, better still, an irish army corps. don't let them be afraid that by joining the colours they will lose their identity and become absorbed in some invertebrate mass, or what is perhaps equally repugnant, be artificially redistributed into units which have no national cohesion or character. "we shall, to the utmost limit that military expediency will allow, see that men who have been already associated in this or that district in training and in common exercises shall be kept together and continue to recognize the corporate bond which now unites them. one thing further. we are in urgent need of competent officers, and when the officers now engaged in training these men prove equal to the test, there is no fear that their services will not be gladly and gratefully retained. but, i repeat, gentlemen, the empire needs recruits and needs them at once. they may be fully trained and equipped in time to take their part in what may prove to be the decisive field in the greatest struggle of the history of the world. that is our immediate necessity, and no irishman in responding to it need be afraid he is jeopardizing the future of the volunteers. "i do not say, and i cannot say, under what precise form of organization it will be, but i trust and i believe--indeed, i am sure--that the volunteers will become a permanent, an integral and characteristic part of the defensive forces of the crown. "i have only one more word to say. though our need is great, your opportunity is also great. the call which i am making is backed by the sympathy of your fellow-irishmen in all parts of the empire and of the world.... there is no question of compulsion or bribery. what we want, what we ask, what we believe you are ready and eager to give, is the freewill offering of a free people." this was a double pledge as to redmond's two objects. it promised, first, that every inducement should be given to join a corps distinctively irish and having national cohesion and character; secondly, that the volunteers should obtain recognition as part of the defensive forces of the crown. over and above this was an assurance of enormous importance. there was to be no question of compulsion. nothing was asked, nothing would be asked, but "the freewill offering of a free people." lord meath followed, a representative figure of unionist ireland and a most zealous promoter of recruiting. then redmond spoke, and as usual dwelt on ireland's contribution to the forces of the regular army so far actually engaged, which was fully adequate in numbers. "as to quality, let sir john french answer for that, and let my friend and fellow-countryman admiral beatty from wexford speak from heligoland."--nothing gave him more pleasure at all times than to dwell on the personal achievement of irishmen; his voice kindled when he named such names.--he went on to give confident assurance, having in it the note of defiant answer to the revolt which had been raised: "i tell the prime minister he will get here plenty of recruits and of the best material. we will maintain here in ireland intact and inviolate our irish national volunteers, and in my judgment that body of volunteers will prove to be an inexhaustible source of strength to the new army corps and the new army that is being created." then, with disdainful reference to the "little handful of pro-germans" who had "raised their voices in ireland," he declared that it would be no less absurd to consider them representative than to take general beyers and not general botha as expressing the sentiments of south africa. yet, as we know, the danger in south africa was serious, and south africa possessed freedom, not the promise of freedom. general botha had what redmond was denied--power to act and act promptly. in ireland the menace was far less grave at this moment, but it was destined to become overpowering because redmond lacked the power to deal with the situation in his own way. already much had been lost. between the declaration of war and the passage of the home rule bill more than six weeks had been allowed to elapse in which nothing was done in response to redmond's proposal, except the purely negative decision that territorials should not be sent to garrison ireland. this inevitably strengthened the hand of those who never liked the offer he had made. from the first an accent of dissent from the new policy was plainly distinguishable in what came from the committee of the volunteers. mr. bulmer hobson says of the famous speech of august th: "this statement amounted to an unconditional offer of the services of the irish volunteers to the english government, and was made without any consultation with the volunteers themselves. the first that members of the provisional committee heard of their being offered to the government was when they read it in the newspapers, and mr. redmond's nominees on the committee were as much surprised as the older members. at the next meeting of the standing committee, held a couple of days later, the nominated members strove hard to induce us to endorse redmond's offer. the utmost they could get, however, notwithstanding their clear party majority, was a statement of 'the complete readiness of the irish volunteers to take joint action with the ulster volunteer force for the defence of ireland.' further than that the older members of the committee declined to go. this statement in reality committed, and was meant to commit, the volunteers to nothing, though it was interpreted by the press as a complete endorsement of mr. redmond's policy." at the beginning of the war, there were two strong currents of desire in the volunteer body and its backers. one sought that the volunteers should retain complete freedom of action and in no way be brought under the war office. the other craved to see them trained and armed with the least possible delay. colonel moore,[ ] who was the chief of their military staff at this time, says mr. hobson, saw no way of accomplishing the latter object without the assistance of the military authorities. other men, who had come in since redmond's speech, impressed on the public that without legal recognition from the crown no volunteer could act against the germans in case of a landing without exposing himself and others to the penalties which germany was inflicting in belgium wherever the civilian population fired a shot. as a result, negotiations were opened in august with the irish command, and colonel moore, in concert with general paget's staff, drew up a scheme for training the irish and ulster volunteers and for using them when trained for a short term of garrison duty in ireland. the scheme was submitted to the provisional committee, who added conditions designed to lead to rejection by the war office; and in the upshot colonel moore's proposals were refused by lord kitchener on one side and by the standing committee of volunteers on the other. redmond was of course aware of the failure of this scheme, and took up the matter personally. he wrote to the chief secretary: house of commons, _september , . private_. my dear mr. birrell, i am very anxious to put shortly before you on paper my views with reference to the volunteer question, which we discussed with the prime minister to-day. i take so strong a view on the subject that i think i must ask you to show him this letter and to urge upon him the importance of getting the war office to move. i know the influences that are at work in the war office throwing cold water on the volunteers and causing intense dissatisfaction in ireland by unnecessary delays. what i suggest should be done is this: there are two separate questions: ( ) recruits; and ( ) volunteers for home defence. the first absolutely depends upon the way in which the second is treated. if the existing volunteer organization is ignored and sneered at and made little of, recruiting in the country will not go ahead. on the other hand, if the volunteers are properly treated, i believe that recruiting will go ahead. now, my suggestion is this: that an announcement should be made immediately that the war office are taking steps to assist in the equipment and arming and instructing of a certain number of the irish volunteers for home defence, and that this will be done without interfering in any way with the character or organization of the existing volunteer force. carrying out this programme will really not stand in the way of the preparing of the new army. all that is required is a few thousand rifles, and there are plenty of them in the military stores in ireland at this moment which are not being used and will not be used, because they are too old, in the training of the recruits, but which would be quite suitable for making a beginning at any rate in the drilling of the volunteers. it might be stated that they would be replaced by better weapons gradually, as soon as the rush was over. a few instructors should be placed at the disposal of the volunteers.[ ] if this is done, intense satisfaction will be given all through the country, and the pride and sentiment of the volunteers will be touched, and the appeal for recruits generally through the country, and even in the ranks of the volunteers themselves, will, i am confident, be responded to. but, as i have said, if this course is not taken, inevitably recruiting will flag. i would earnestly beg of you to take this matter vigorously in hand, so that some satisfactory announcement may be made before i return to ireland next week. very truly yours, right hon. a. birrell, m.p. j.e. redmond. mr. asquith's speech on september th was at least an indication that the prime minister desired to act in the spirit of redmond's suggestions. the chief secretary was of the same disposition. but neither of them was able to control the imperious colleague who now had taken charge of the army, and who in the most critical moment thwarted effectually the designs of liberal statesmanship in ireland. after redmond's death an "appreciation" published in _the times_ (with the signature "a.b.,") by mr. birrell, contained this passage: "he felt to the very end, bitterly and intensely, the stupidity of the war office. had he been allowed to deflect the routine indifference and suspicion of the war office from its old ruts into the deep-cut channels of irish feelings and sentiments, he might have carried his countrymen with him, but he jumped first and tried to make his bargain afterwards and failed accordingly. english people, as their wont is, gushed over him as an irish patriot and flouted him as an irish statesman. had he and his brother been put in charge of the irish nationalist contingents, and an ulster man, or men, been put in a corresponding position over the irish protestant contingents, all might have gone well. lord kitchener, who was under the delusion that he was an irishman no less than redmond, was the main, though not the only obstacle in the path of good sense and good feeling." yet it is, to say the least, not clear why lord kitchener should have been allowed to be an obstacle. redmond was not fortunate in his allies. he had set an example of generous courage; it was not followed by british statesmen. from the very outset of his campaign in ireland he had two hostilities to meet. the first was that of the section which had always been opposed to him--the unionist party. into this block he had already driven a wedge. the _irish times_, its principal organ in the south and west, was now backing him heartily, and, as has been seen, not a few leading unionists were doing their utmost to assist. but the real opposition, that of ulster, was in no way conciliated. on september th, "covenant day," a great meeting was held at which the ulstermen denounced what they called the government's treachery, and declared their implacable determination never to submit to home rule. mr. bonar law for the british unionists proclaimed that whereas heretofore his party were willing to be bound by the verdict of a general election, they now withdrew that condition, and without any reservation would support ulster in whatever course it chose to adopt. in a purely partisan sense these speeches, and this attitude, did redmond no harm in his campaign with nationalists. when a certain section of home rulers were clamouring that he had been tricked and betrayed by the government, had given all and got nothing, it was a good rejoinder to point to the fact that in ulster's opinion the opportunity had been used to gain an unfair victory for home rule. but redmond from the outbreak of the war had no concern with party or partisan arguments. he wanted a real truce, an end of bitterness, in ireland. there was, moreover, a feature of the ulster propaganda in these days which disturbed him. general richardson, a retired indian officer, who had chief command of the ulster volunteer force, in appealing for recruits, urged the volunteers "to recollect the events of march last and what the navy and army did for ulster. they came to the help of ulster in the day of trouble, and would come again." he added his assurance to the volunteers that "when the war was over, and their ranks were reinforced by some , men, thoroughly well trained and with vast field experience, they would return to the attack and relegate home rule to the devil." it did not assist redmond in gaining recruits for the army that a general officer should represent the services as trusty and proven allies of gentlemen whose leading idea in life was to relegate home rule to such a destination the average nationalist civilian did not easily discriminate between what was said by a retired officer out of commission and what was said by officers in uniform. there was a tendency to regard general richardson as speaking of right for the army--for which nationalist recruits were desired. the liberal government could not help redmond to allay ulster or unionist hostility. one thing they could do; they could ensure that whatever concession or privilege was extended to those who followed sir edward carson should be equally accorded to those who followed redmond. this one thing which they could have done they did not do. they allowed the war office to increase the arrogance of the ulstermen and to weaken redmond's hand, giving ulster special privileges, which inevitably created jealousy and suspicion in nationalist ireland--as shall be shown in detail. but first it is necessary to indicate the other element of hostility--far more serious than that of ulster, because it challenged redmond's leadership. it was that of the extremist group, which rapidly began to welcome german successes, not for any love to germany but because it could not conceive of any hope for ireland except in the weakening or destruction of british power. these men, as been already seen, had acquired an influence in the volunteer force out of all proportion to their numbers, owing to the fact that the irish party had stood aloof from the movement in its early stages. professor macneill said later that but for the gaelic league and the gaelic athletic association there would have been no irish volunteers. the bulk of both these bodies was always antagonistic to the parliamentary movement. when their opposition openly declared itself, in consequence of the east wicklow speech, redmond was not sorry to have a clear issue raised, involving a formal breach. in a public letter to colonel moore he wrote that he read "this extraordinary manifesto with feelings of great relief," because communications from all parts of the country had forced him to the conclusion that so long as the signatories to this document remained members of the governing body, "no practical work could be done to put the volunteer organization on a real business basis." by a real "business basis" he meant that the volunteers should be made a defensive force to act in concert with the troops engaged in the war. that was the clear issue. you must be for the troops or against them. in these days the official attitude of those who signed the dissenting manifesto was that ireland should be neutral. but at such a crisis, as mr. dillon said in a telling phrase, a man who calls himself a neutral "is either an enemy or a coward." it became only too clear later that we had to do with a body of men who were enemies and were certainly not cowards. their number at this moment was difficult to determine. what immediately revealed itself was that the vast majority of the volunteers, when choice was forced on them, adhered to redmond. the case of my own constituency, galway city, may be given as typical, though rather of the towns than of the country. the country-side was apathetic; the towns were both for and against redmond's policy. in galway, sinn fein had a strong hold on the college of the national university, but, on the other hand, the depot of the connaught rangers was just outside the city at renmore, and that famous corps had many partisans; while in the fishing village of the claddagh nearly every man was a naval reservist. i came to galway on the day the home rule bill was signed and attended a couple of volunteer drills, where i noted the activity of some young men going round with a password: "for whom will you serve?" "for ireland only." after the publication of the dissenting manifesto a committee was called, and i obtained leave to be present. there was a sharp discussion, and at the finish the vote was a tie, whether to support redmond or the dissentients. this did not at all please me or my friends, so we determined to have a big general meeting to see on which side public support really lay. everybody was invited, and a great many people could not get into the hall; this mattered the less because the sinn feiners cut the electric wires leading to the building and plunged us in darkness; luckily, it was a fine night, and we took the meeting outside with great success. a couple of interruptions were drastically dealt with, and complete peace then prevailed. two of the four county members were among the many speakers, and the last man to address the meeting was a wounded connaught ranger back from the line. we cheered for the rangers, and then we cheered for the king; the local band was present, but unable, though quite willing, to assist at this point. "isn't it a pity," the chief bandsman said to me, "there was three of us knew the tune well, but they've all gone to the front, and not a one of us ever heard it." but as a net result the original volunteer organization was killed. the pick of the young and keen who were with us went off to the war; the young and keen who stayed kept up an organization with very different purposes. there was plenty of material in galway and everywhere else to build up a volunteer corps such as redmond desired to see; but the organizing spirits were in the opposite camp, and our friends did not interest themselves in what seemed to be a kind of play-acting when such serious business was afoot in the world. had they been set to duties of coast patrol, under officers who were available on the spot, and given clear recognition as part of the defensive forces, their body would have been alive and active; as it was, it atrophied and grew inert. broadly speaking, the same was true all over the country. redmond was willing to make bricks for the war office to build with; they insisted that he should make them without straw. facts directly connected with recruiting ultimately convinced the british public that the war office had spoilt a great opportunity in ireland. but the fundamental blunder, the deep-seated cause which undermined the force of redmond's appeal, was the refusal of recognition to the national volunteers and the failure to fulfil the promise held out in mr. asquith's dublin speech. ii the other respects in which the war office crippled the nationalist efforts after recruiting were matters of detail, not of principle. the first and best help which redmond might expect would have come from his colleagues in the party; and all the recruiting authorities in ireland should have been directed to secure that help locally. no such step was taken. no attempt was made to enlist nationalists of position as patrons of the recruiting campaign. in catholic nationalist districts it was the rule rather than the exception to select gentlemen of the protestant church, and of strong unionist opinions, as recruiting officers. if catholic nationalists had been selected as the official agents to assist in raising the ulster division, there would have been an outcry, and very rightly; it would have been contrary to common sense. but the war office, always even obsequiously ready to consider the ulstermen's point of view, completely lacked sympathy for that of the majority in ireland. in some cases the choice of a man locally unpopular on public grounds afforded--to speak plainly--an excuse for those leading nationalists who were loath to depart from all the tradition of their lifetime. some of redmond's colleagues held that they had been "extreme men" all their lives, and they thought it too hard that they should be expected to ask irishmen to join the english army. yet these same men would have worked enthusiastically for the volunteers, and by sympathy for their comrades who went out could have been led into a very different attitude. many of them, too, felt an honourable scruple about asking others to do what they could not do themselves. as a parliamentary group we were under a singular disability. in its early days the irish party had been, what sinn fein is now, a party of the young. but so strong was the tie of gratitude that service in its ranks became an inheritance, and in most cases a man once elected stayed on till he died or resigned. by , of all parties in the house we had by far the largest proportion of men over military age. i question whether three out of the seventy could have passed the standard then exacted--for two or three of the younger men were medically unfit. in these circumstances the war office would have been well advised to waive a regulation or two to facilitate matters; but the rigour of the rules was maintained. one of my colleagues, a man in the early forties, offered to join as a private; he was refused. in my own case a similar refusal was based on lord kitchener's personal opinion against that of the under-secretary for war, to whom, as a personal friend, i had written; it took nearly six months to get the decision altered; and by that time the value of example was much depreciated. the beginning was the chance to give a lead. far graver was the intolerable delay in forming a corps which should appeal definitely to irish national and nationalist sentiment. the first army included one irish division--the tenth, destined to a splendid history, under a popular commander, sir bryan mahon; but it had no specially nationalist colour, so to say, and no connection with the irish volunteers. redmond wanted the counterpart of what had been readily granted to sir edward carson; and this was what mr. asquith had outlined in his speech at dublin. the sixteenth division already existed; its commander was appointed on september th. but the first step to give it the desired character was not taken without long delay, and much heart-burning and confusion resulted. part of the confusion is attributable to the fact that redmond, in his desire to touch the historic memories connected with the famous corps which attained its crowning glory at fontenoy, always spoke of "a new irish brigade." but at the mansion house meeting mr. asquith spoke of something more than a brigade--an army corps; and redmond, following him, instantly accepted the idea. "i used the word 'brigade' in my ignorance--i meant an irish army corps." there was always present to his mind the hope that in some larger formation the ulster division might find itself shoulder to shoulder with other irish troops. yet intending recruits were puzzled, and lord meath, writing to redmond on october th that he had formed a recruiting committee in dublin "for the purpose of endeavouring to raise the irish army corps for which you spoke," reported that men came in asking to know where was the irish brigade, and refused to join anything else. lord meath suggested that redmond should obtain from lord kitchener "an official declaration sanctioning the enlistment of irishmen in an irish brigade, or irish army corps, consisting exclusively of irish officers and men." he wrote again on the th, asking that the prime minister himself should be approached, and on the th, in reply to some communication from redmond: "i hope you will insist on some official and unmistakable statement that your request has been granted." the tone of these letters, coming from no fire-eating nationalist but the staunchest of unionist peers, is sufficient proof that lord kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew ireland and had the best interests of ireland at heart. the _irish times_ wrote in the same sense; and on october th a formal attack was launched in the _daily chronicle_, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment accorded to ulster. "up to this hour," the writer said, "the irish division asked for by mr. redmond has been refused sanction by the war office." this was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time such a belief naturally prevailed, because the war office could not be induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given. moreover, although the concession had been made, it was made in a very different way from that used in dealing with sir edward carson. redmond had no voice whatever in the organization. the choice of a divisional commander was of infinite importance; and it fell upon lieutenant-general sir lawrence parsons, k.c.b., an artillery officer of great distinction, a man of wide general knowledge and culture and of strongly marked individuality. yet his individuality did not make him easy for redmond to work with. he was not simply a typical professional soldier of the old army; he was an idealist in his profession; and part of the professional soldier's idealism is to resent and despise political considerations. he recognized that redmond had spoken and acted with a statesman's vision; he failed to recognize that in many matters political tactics are necessary to carry out a statesman's plan. also, it was very difficult for him or for any other professional soldier to realize that recruiting, under such conditions as then prevailed, was a politician's task, not a soldier's, even in great britain; and that this was tenfold more true of ireland. the point requires to be emphasized, because it applies to a greater personage--lord kitchener himself. i believe that lord kitchener honestly desired the success of redmond's mission. to my personal knowledge he sent for one officer long known to him and took him from a command in which he was comfortably placed and sent him, against his will, to raise one of our battalions in a difficult area. the choice was absolutely sound, and success was achieved by methods which did not always follow strictly the letter of king's regulations. but these departures from rule were quite in accordance with the spirit of the old army, and lord kitchener was ready to stand over any of them. he would do the best he could for our division on the old lines. he would, i am certain, have said that he had done the best thing possible for it in appointing to the command an irishman who was a first-rate soldier and a first-rate man to supervise the training of troops. so far as my judgment is able to go, the credit for making the sixteenth division what it was when we went to france belongs chiefly to the divisional general under whom we trained. general parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war; and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself. but these were the qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which redmond had no contact. what redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie before me. running through them all is the tone of a soldier in authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential, well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian. there is no recognition of the fact that redmond was the accepted leader of a volunteer force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any perception that morally, and almost officially, redmond was the accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being raised--a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had just been accorded. the whole position was extraordinary. legally and theoretically, redmond was a simple member of parliament. practically and morally, he was the head of ireland, exactly as botha was of south africa; and he was trying to do without legal powers what botha was doing by means of them. he was far more than the leader of the opposition in great britain; for in ireland there really was no government. moral authority, which must proceed from consent of the governed, the irish government had not possessed for many a long day; but its legal status had been unimpeachable. now even that was gone; it was merely a stop-gap contrivance, carrying on till the act of parliament should receive fulfilment; and, as a bare matter of fact, it was powerless. no operative decision of any moment was taken or could be taken at this moment in ireland. everything was referred to the cabinet, and that body had no power to carry out a popular policy in ireland. redmond had put forward a policy which they had accepted in principle. it could only be carried out through him, and for success he must be consulted in detail. neither lord kitchener nor general parsons in fact recognized the status which this implied. they were prepared to listen to suggestions from him; they were not prepared to accept guidance, as they must have done had he been prime minister of the country. it was impossible that redmond's attitude in dealing with general parsons should not imply some sense of the position which he held; equally impossible, from the temper and mentality of the man, that there should not be in general parsons's letters an underlying assertion that in military matters the military must decide. the correspondence between the two men opened by a letter from sir lawrence parsons, who had just established his headquarters at mallow; and its chief purpose was to direct redmond's attention to the fact that an irish division was a much finer and nobler unit than an irish brigade. two points in it, however, are of interest. "i have been appointed by lord kitchener," said general parsons, "because i am an irishman and understand my countrymen." also, "i have had a considerable share in selecting the officers of the division, almost all irishmen of every political and religious creed." what lay behind the first of these sentences was a profound conviction that the writer thoroughly understood the necessities of the situation. that was a disastrous mistake. to understand ireland at such a moment was difficult for anyone, impossible for a man who had not been in close touch with the mental condition produced by all these extraordinary happenings. the effect of the preparations for rebellion in ulster, of the curragh incident, and of the collision between troops and people in dublin--the effect of the existence of a permitted nationalist volunteer force--the effect of redmond's appeal: these were three completely novel and conflicting currents in the stream of irish life. nobody could hope to estimate these developments from a general view, however intelligent, of irish history and character, nor even from the most intimate and sympathetic acquaintance with irish troops of the old army. a proof of the unhappy lack of comprehension is furnished by the second sentence i have quoted. general parsons had been most rightly allowed by the war office to assist in selecting officers for the division. but it had never occurred to either party to consult redmond on this critical matter. does anyone suppose that sir edward carson had no voice in the staffing of the ulster division? he had at all events received from the first a clear promise that all professional soldiers who had been officers in the ulster volunteers would be officers in the division, and that any who had been mobilized should be restored to their associates in the division. general parsons brought to this whole matter the fine principle that no man's religious or political beliefs should stand in his way. he omitted to consider the effect produced on the situation by the fact that the ulster division had been actually allowed to exclude all catholics, as such, and to accept no officer who was not politically in sympathy with unionist ulster. redmond had not the least wish to exclude either protestants or unionists; he wanted all irishmen on an equality. but he was bound by common sense and by a perception of realities to desire that protestants and unionists should not appear to monopolize the command. not one of the three brigadiers appointed was generally known in ireland, personally or by his connections. one was an englishman. of the officers originally appointed not one in five was a catholic. no catholic commanded a battalion, scarcely half a dozen were field officers. the only catholic field officer appointed to the division who had been prominently connected with the volunteers was lord fingall, and he had severed his connection with that body. all this was a terrible blunder. whether it was wise or unwise to allow the formation of a division having the peculiar character of the ulster division may be argued--but certainly redmond never took exception to it, and no man who ever saw these ulstermen in the field can regret its inception. but once it was formed, its existence created a situation which had to be recognized. an equivalent ought to have been given; but no genuine attempt to do this was made. in replying to sir lawrence parsons, redmond raised no controversy as to what had been done; he was, indeed, not cognizant of the facts. but he addressed himself from the first to making friendly suggestions. amongst other things he referred to an appeal which sir lawrence parsons had addressed to the women of ireland, that they should provide regimental colours for the battalions of the division. this appeal was promptly met, to redmond's great delight--delight which was soon changed into vexation, for the war office stepped in, declared the proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any temporary battalion. general parsons was obliged to publish an explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far to confirm the impression that the war office, with all its preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly eye on the nationalist recruiting effort. another trivial matter led to prolonged and irritating controversy. towards the end of october the belfast and dublin papers announced that the army council had approved of "an ulster badge similar to that worn by ulster volunteers" as a cap badge for all troops in the ulster division. it was pointed out that this would have the effect of preserving the identity of the ulster division. immediately, and not unnaturally, the demand for a similar concession was put forward on behalf of the sixteenth division. general parsons was opposed, as any old soldier would be, to a variation in the distinguishing marks of old and famous regiments. he did not allow for the fact that we needed to attract new soldiers in masses--men who as yet knew nothing of regimental tradition. still, he co-operated in forwarding redmond's desire, which was to meet a widely spread sentimental demand. now that the war is over, many soldiers argue that there is no reason in the nature of things why irish regiments should not have a clearly distinguishing uniform, as the scots or the colonials do. in the last months, when recruiting was a matter of urgency, colonel lynch induced the war office to consent to equipping an irish brigade with a completely distinctive dress; unhappily the pattern was (after several months) still under discussion when the war ended. i have little doubt that from the point of view of recruiting even the badge, to say nothing of a distinctive uniform, would have been an asset; i have no doubt at all that the refusal of it was a set-back, because it was a refusal given after a discussion and correspondence which lasted from november till february. the most interesting point, however, is that lord kitchener found time to occupy himself repeatedly with this question in the period between the first and second battles of ypres. if his intervention had been judicious, it would have been as impressive as the spectacle of a battery elephant stopping in action to pick up a pin with his trunk. on one point redmond's representations, heartily backed by general parsons, were successful. catholic chaplains, of whom no adequate number were at first provided for irish troops, were secured. it is pleasant to note that lord roberts, who before the war had been vehement on the ulster side, used his personal influence to support this application. a month or two later, when death came to the veteran, dramatically, among the troops in france, redmond told the house of commons how on that question lord roberts had met him in the friendliest way and endeavoured to arrange for attending the great meeting at the dublin mansion house. on another matter redmond was able to assist the equipment of the division. he suggested, and general parsons fully admitted the value of, regimental bands; but the war office made no grants for them. redmond drew upon a large sum which had been placed at his disposal by a private individual to further his campaign, and all our battalions were indebted to him for their fife and drum equipment. there was, in short, no detail in which he was not willing and anxious to assist the division and its commander. but the friction between the two men was unmistakable. the most serious cause of it was the line taken by general parsons about the appointment of officers. he laid down a rule, which i think would have had excellent results if enforced throughout the whole of the new armies, that no man should be recommended for a commission without previous military experience, and that candidates lacking that experience must put in a period of service in the ranks. he set apart a special company in one battalion, the th leinsters, to which such men should be sent, so that while drilling and exercising with the rest of the battalion, and enjoying no special privilege, they ate and slept and lived together in their own barrack rooms. yet the obstacle thus set up deterred a good many of the less zealous, who could not understand why that should be made a condition in the irish division which was not so in the ulster division--nor, indeed, so far as i know, anywhere else at that time. men who had been officers of ulster volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the officer of national volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet company. general parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment, and justified it by saying to redmond that in consequence of it he would be very sorry to change officers with the ulster division. one cannot refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have asked himself whether it was fair to impose a handicap on redmond's efforts. everything turned on getting representative young men from the volunteers, and from the correspondence it appears that few were coming from the south and west. from the north they poured in. in our th brigade, the th royal irish regiment was mainly composed of derry nationalists; the th leinsters and the th connaught rangers were almost to a man followers of mr. devlin from belfast. next after redmond, mr. devlin was the man to whom our division owed most. but the first and the main impetus came from redmond himself. he spoke on october th at wexford, the capital of his native county; on the th at waterford, his own constituency; on the th at kilkenny, the constituency of his close friend pat o'brien. a week later he was at belfast and in the glens of antrim, among the nationalists of ulster. then parliament kept him for a few weeks; in december he was back, and spoke at tuam and in limerick. everywhere the volunteers turned out in great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily addressed. at wexford he laid stress on mr. asquith's pledge that the volunteers should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. who should have authority over volunteers in a state? surely the elected and responsible government. but pending home rule, "the policy and control of the volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the country." more generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their plans. "nothing but an earthquake can now prevent home rule," he had said. "the outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have overwhelmed home rule. but we have survived it." and he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise. civil war between irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility. that impossibility was now universally admitted. in a passage of unusual heat he denounced the "so-called statesmen" who came over unasked to our country to inflame feelings--as mr. bonar law had done; and he appealed to all sections "to enable us to utilize the interval before a home rule parliament assembles to unite all irishmen under a home rule government." at waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he and his colleagues had made a bargain with the government to ship irish volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. this was the line on which opposition was developing, and it was assisted by articles in the english press, which laid it down that unless the irish furnished a sufficiency of recruits, home rule should be repealed. an extension of this argument, that redmond was buying home rule with the blood of young irishmen, raised the question whether home rule was worth the price. while the bill was not yet law, it was a flag, a symbol. once it became an act, men's attitude changed; they turned to criticizing what they had got; and one powerful newspaper, bitterly hostile to the parliamentary party, expended much ingenuity in exaggerating the limitations of what had been gained. while one set of critics endeavoured to show how miserable was the price obtained, another dwelt on the unrighteousness of making such a bargain without ireland's consent. in redmond's speech at kilkenny there was a note of resentment. he refused at any great crisis to consider "what might please the gallery or the crowd, or might spare him the insults of a handful of cornerboys." but the kernel of all his thought was put into one sentence by him at belfast. "the proper place to guard ireland is on the battlefields of france." it was from belfast after this meeting that the first striking demonstration of response came--organized and inspired by mr. devlin. on november th nearly a full battalion of recruits, many national volunteers, entrained for fermoy; a week later they were followed by another great detachment. the example spread; and when redmond spoke at limerick on december th, the _irish times_ in a friendly leading article admitted that "the national volunteers were now coming forward in large numbers and the irish brigade was going to be a credit to the country." this was a very different note from that which had come from unionist quarters at earlier stages. iii so far as recruiting went, redmond had won. he was sure of making good to england. but in what concerned making good to ireland, he had no progress to report. he stated that already nearly , men from the volunteers had joined the army, and he could not understand why government was so chary of giving assistance to train and equip this force. there was no doubt as to the mass of men available. figures supplied by the police to the chief secretary estimated that between september th, when the split took place, and october st, out of , volunteers, only a trifle over , adhered to professor macneill. but in dublin the opponents were nearly , out of , ; and two strong battalions went almost solid against redmond. these battalions, along with the citizens' army, were destined to alter the course of irish history. it was specially true of them, but true generally of all the minority who left redmond, that they were kept together by a resolute and determined group who had a clear purpose. the "irish volunteers," as the dissentients called themselves, were made to feel that they were a minority, and an unpopular minority in more than one instance. in galway, when they turned out to parade the streets, they were driven off with casualties--retaliation for their interference with our meeting in september. in dundalk there was a somewhat similar occurrence. but they got more than their own back one day in november by a bold _coup_--forerunner of many. ninety rifles belonging to the national volunteers were being moved in a cart from one place to another. half a dozen men armed with revolvers held up the cart and its driver and carried off the rifles. at their convention, held in the end of october, professor macneill said: "they would go on with the work of organizing, training and equipping a volunteer force for the service of ireland in ireland, and such a force might yet be the means of saving home rule from disaster, and of compelling the home rule government to keep faith with ireland without the exaction of a price in blood." that forecast has not as yet realized itself; and many of us think that the chief achievement of this section has been to turn to waste a heavy price that was paid in blood by other men for the sake of ireland. but unquestionably they were, though the minority, far more of a living reality than the mass of the original force--and for a simple reason. their purpose, whether good or bad, was within their own control. the purpose of the majority was to carry out redmond's policy--which was to make the volunteers part of an irish army of which the striking force was designed to defend ireland on the battlefields of flanders. but to carry out that policy the national volunteers must be accepted as a purely local irish military organization for home defence--controlled, in the absence of a popularly elected irish government, by the elected irish representatives. the war office thwarted that policy. lord kitchener would not accept it. he continued to be of the opinion that by equipping redmond's followers he would be arming enemies. it is worth noting that one of the ablest and most detached students of irish affairs was wholly on redmond's side. lord dunraven, appealing on behalf of "the new irish brigade," pointed out that both sides of redmond's policy must be accepted. "no scheme which fails to take some account of the national volunteer force can do justice to what ireland can give," he wrote. but was there everywhere a desire to do justice to what ireland could give--and was willing to give? redmond was warned in those days by an influential correspondent in england that a deliberate policy was being pursued by the opponents of home rule, who undoubtedly had strong backing in the war office. the national volunteers were to become the objects of derision and contempt, which would extend to himself. by keeping the volunteers out of active participation in war service, it could be proved that redmond did not speak for ireland or represent ireland; that the irish were raising unreal objections so as to keep an excuse for avoiding danger. it was urged on him that he should press for the extension of the territorial act to ireland and endeavour to bring his men in on this footing. there were two difficulties in the way of this scheme which nevertheless attracted him strongly. the first was that enlistment in the territorials for home service had been stopped--so that the proposal had little advantage, if any, over enlistment in the irish brigades. the second was due to the volunteers themselves, many of whom, though willing to serve in the war, were unwilling to take the oath of allegiance. there were limits to the length to which redmond felt himself able to go, and he never dealt with this objection by argument. the example which he set was plain to all. he joined in singing "god save the king," in drinking the king's health, and at aughavanagh now he flew the union jack beside the green flag. he was willing to take part in any demonstration which implied that nationalist ireland under its new legal status accepted its lot in the british empire fully and without reserve. it was superfluous for him to argue that nationalists might consistently take the oath of allegiance when nationalists were pledging their lives in the king's service beside every other kind of citizen in the british empire. over and above his own example was the example of his brother and his son. on november rd willie redmond addressed a great meeting in cork and told them, "i won't say to you go, but come with me." he was then fifty-three--and for most men it would have been "too late a week." but no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy. he was an officer in the wexford militia for a year or two, till politics drove him out of that service and drew him into another. now he went to the war gravely but joyfully. i think those days did not bring into relief any more picturesque or sympathetic figure. one thing ought to be said. mr. devlin wished to join also, but redmond held that he could not be spared from ireland, where his influence was enormous; and he was placed in a somewhat unfair position, even though everyone who knew him knew that his chief attribute was personal courage. but he was indispensable for the work which had to be done, of helping at this strange crisis to keep ireland peaceful and united at a time when government was at its lowest ebb of authority. trouble threatened. on october th, the anniversary of parnell's death, three bodies of volunteers turned out in dublin--the national volunteers, the irish volunteers, and the citizen army. a collision occurred which might easily have become serious. this passed off, but early in december the government suppressed three or four of the openly anti-british papers, which were, of course, still more virulent against redmond. they reappeared under other names. but a meeting of protest against the suppression was held outside liberty hall. mr. larkin had, by this time, gone to america. his chief colleague, mr. james connolly, who was the brain of the irish labour movement, presided, and at the close declared that the meeting had been held under the protection of an armed company of the citizen army posted in the windows and on the roof of liberty hall. had the police or military attempted to disperse the meeting, he said, "those rifles would not have been silent." ulster was not the only place where armed men thought themselves entitled to resist coercion. dublin was the more dangerous because the war, which created so much employment in great britain, brought no new trade to ireland, outside of belfast. agriculture prospered, but the towns knew only a rise of prices. redmond began with high hopes, which mr. lloyd george fostered, of rapidly-developing munition works, which would at the close of hostilities leave the foundation for industrial communities. here again, however, redmond's representations were in vain. when the heavy extra tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary budget, he opposed it angrily: "you are doing some shipbuilding at belfast, you are making a few explosives at arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on the war is being spent in england and in increasing the income of your country." this tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of the south and west of ireland, and he feared that it was the old story of crushing ireland's trade under the wheel of british interests. here again redmond could only plead with the irish government that they, in their turn, should plead with the imperial authorities. he should have been able to act in his own right as the head of an irish ministry, knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. he saw the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power. as compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank equivalent to his--with general botha, for instance--he was like a commander of those russian armies which had to take the field against germans with sticks and pikes. yet power he had--power over the heart and mind of ireland--the power which was given him by the response to his appeal. from january onwards the sixteenth division grew steadily and strongly. recruiting began to get on a better basis. the appointment of sir hedley le bas in charge of this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. appeals were used devised for ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the english article. heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play; and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed between the effort of redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men like lord meath. in january willie redmond was posted to his battalion, the th royal irish, at fermoy, where the th brigade had its headquarters. in his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the division was worth an immense deal. there was delay also about his younger namesake, john redmond's son--who was for a long time refused a commission in the division in whose formation his father had played so great a part. naturally, trained speakers who had joined the division were utilized for recruiting purposes. willie redmond did comparatively little of this work. it is no light job to take over command of a company, if you mean really to command it; and with him, from the moment he joined everything came second to his military duty. but private soldiers have a less exacting time, and there was scarcely one week of my three months in the th leinsters in which i did not spend the saturday and sunday on this business--generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking all in all, that i have ever heard. kettle, then a lieutenant in the battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as talker or as speaker he had few equals. he was the son of a veteran nationalist, who had taken a lead in parnell's day; but the farmer's son had become the most characteristic product of ireland's capital, which, rich or poor, squalid or splendid, is a metropolis--a centre of many interests, a forcing-house of many ideas. nothing in ireland is less english than dublin, and its tone differs from that of england in having active sympathy with the continental mind. kettle was always to some extent in revolt against the theories of the gaelic league, which he thought tended to make ireland insular morally as well as materially. he was a good european because he was a good irishman; and because he was both, he was, though largely educated in germany, a fierce partisan of france. more than all this, he had seen with his own eyes the actual martyrdom of belgium. sent out by redmond to purchase rifles, he was in the country when antwerp was occupied, and he wrote with passion of what he heard, of what he saw. louvain to him was more than a mere name. all the catholic in him, and all the irish catholic, for ireland's association with louvain was long and intimate, rose up in fury; he went through ireland carrying the fiery cross. everywhere we went we had friendly and even enthusiastic audiences; the only place where i met any suggestion of hostility was at killarney, and there it took the form of avoiding our meeting. we were cheered and encouraged--but we did not get many recruits, so to say, on the nail. yet they came, generally dribbling in afterwards. from one small meeting in county waterford we came away badly disappointed, having thought an effect was made, yet we did not take a single man. i heard later that within the next fortnight thirty men from that parish had come in by ones and twos to sign on--but at a town several miles away. local pressure, personal not political, was against us, especially that of the mothers; and there was a shyness about taking this plunge into the unknown. one exception stands out, in my mind, unlike the general run of these gatherings. it was the first field day of our brigade, when, dressed in the khaki that had at last been served out, we mustered on the race-course at fermoy, five thousand strong; and i went from the review to the train for waterford. there was no mistaking the temper of redmond's constituency; we got men there in hundreds, including a score or so of cadets--young men of education--for our special company of the leinsters, which was filling up fast. at that meeting we had one force with us which was not often active on our side. the bishop of waterford was strong for the war; the leading parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain, while one of the regulars, a carmelite friar, made a speech which was among the most eloquent that i have ever listened to. at the beginning of april i was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the th connaught rangers, and began to know the division from another aspect. broadly speaking, the men with whom i had been sharing a hut were nationalist by opinion and by tradition--though by no means all catholics. there were unionists, but they were few. in the society which i now joined--a joint mess of the royal irish and the rangers--matters were different. the personnel of the th royal irish was strongly characteristic of the old army. the commanding officer, curzon, was of irish descent, but of little irish association; his second in command was an irish protestant gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. the senior company commander was an englishman. as an offset, willie redmond had one company, and another was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the derry volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that general parsons gave him a captaincy straight off. in my own battalion, no catholic had then the rank of captain. the colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-known families in the north of ireland, deeply involved in covenanting politics. my own company commander was a very gallant little dublin barrister, who, before the war, had exerted on english platforms against home rule the gift of racy eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. not half a dozen of the subalterns would have described themselves as nationalists. it is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was represented, to the outside public of ireland. from the inside, one thing was clear. in our battalion every man desired the success of the division, and more particularly of the connaught rangers, absolutely with a whole heart. anything said or done that could have offended the men--practically all catholic and nationalist--would have drawn the most condign chastisement from our commanding officer. i never heard of any man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. there was very little political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question how far redmond might be held to speak for ireland. so far as redmond himself was concerned, i think there were few, if any, who did not count it an honour to meet him--and some who had never been won to him before were won to him for his brother's sake. looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself in that society. i do not know one survivor of those men who does not desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom they led. in not a few cases one might put the change higher; some opinions as to what was good for ireland were profoundly affected. yet this also is true. the atmosphere of the mess was one in which willie redmond found himself shy and a stranger. he had lived all his life in an intimate circle of nationalist belief. knowing the other side in the house of commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men he liked best (colonel lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which every one liked and respected willie redmond, but one in which he never really was himself. he was only himself with the men. in short, so far as the officers were concerned, our division was not a counterpart to the ulster division; it was not irish in the sense that the other was ulster. no attempt was made to make it so, and general parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal--though less fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man for his opinions or his creed. yet many persons without design, and some with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that catholics and nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the command of this catholic and nationalist division. the worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of the irish mind. at a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to nationalists that the home rule act was a covenant on which we were in honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded. the listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would come up privately and say: "are you sure now they aren't fooling us again?" the sinn féin propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the tory press that there should be no home rule because ireland had failed to come forward; or to point the moral of mr. bonar law's excursion to belfast, with its violent asseveration that ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to control by an irish parliament. ireland, always suspect, has learnt to be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which has most tendency to fulfil itself. in one part of the irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust had no operation. the irish in great britain, always outdoing all others in the keenness of their nationalism, were nearer the main current of the war, and were more in touch with the truth about english feeling. they had a double impulse, as redmond had; they saw how to serve their own cause in serving europe's freedom; and their response was magnificent. mr. t.p. o'connor probably raised more recruits by his personal appeal than any other man in england. a great part of redmond's correspondence in these months came from irishmen in england who were joining as irishmen, and who had great difficulty in making their way to our division. many thousands had already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the sixteenth division, and failed to get there. but there was one instance to which attention should be directed. in newcastle-on-tyne a movement was set on foot to raise tyneside battalions, including one of irish. mr. o'connor went down, and the upshot was that four irish battalions were raised. they were in existence by january , , when general parsons was already writing that unless irishmen could be found to fill up the division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by english recruits. the obvious answer was to annex the tyneside irish brigade. redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to train in ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the sixteenth division, would please the tyneside men--for a tremendous welcome would have greeted them in their own country--and would have an excellent effect on irish opinion generally. but the proposal was rigorously opposed by the war office. it was argued that these men had enlisted technically as northumberland fusiliers and northumberland fusiliers they must remain. in reality, as far as one can judge, the war office were penny wise and pound foolish. "we have got these men," they said, "and we have a promise from redmond to fill a division. why relieve him of one-third of his task?" redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. he had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. let it be remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the war about july. when i joined the rangers in april , our mess was full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a fight. we could not expect to move to france before august, and by that time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of occupation. rumour was rife, too, that the division would be broken up and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see france as a unit. all this talk came back to redmond and increased his anxiety to make the work complete. he held, and i think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to the sixteenth division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve battalion. knowing what we know, i cannot blame them; but the game was not fairly played. a man would come in and say he wanted to join the irish brigade. "which regiment?" often he might not realize that a brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for instance, "the dublins," he was more likely than not to be shipped off to the curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept, instead of to buttevant, where our dublins were in training. still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that april of ; recruits were coming in to the tune of , a week. then came a political crisis and the formation of a coalition government. redmond was asked to take a post in it. the letter in which the invitation was conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an irish office. redmond refused. he said to me afterwards that under no conditions did he think he could have accepted. but he added, "if i had been asquith and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, i should have offered a seat in the cabinet without portfolio and without salary." he was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that he had got his price for the blood of young irishmen and the betrayal of his principles. even apart from the question of salary, the tradition against acceptance of office under government till ireland's claim was satisfied would have been very hard to break. yet redmond saw fully how disastrous would be the effect on irish opinion if he were not in the government and sir edward carson was. knowing ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of sir edward carson as a colleague would be taken in ireland to imply that the government had abandoned its support of home rule. ireland would assume that the ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms. redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the prime minister to exclude both irish parties to the unresolved dispute. but sir edward carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in the house of commons and mr. asquith, as usual, followed the line of least resistance. the effect of the coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in ireland dropped from , in april-may to , in may-june. it stayed at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by efforts for which redmond was chiefly responsible. i do not know whether sir edward carson's presence in the attorney-general's office, or his absence from the opposition benches in debates, was worth ten thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in ireland by his inclusion. iv the formation of the coalition government marks the first stage in the history of redmond's defeat and the victory of sir edward carson and sinn féin. of what he felt upon this matter, redmond at the time said not a word in public. six months later, on november , , when a debate on the naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence--and his first words were an explanation of his silence. he had not intervened, he said, in any debate on the war since its inception. "we thought a loyal and as far as possible silent support to the government of the day was the best service we could render." this silence had been maintained "even after the formation of the coalition"--when the irish view had been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the liberal government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly modified. he claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself but for the whole of his country. "since the war commenced the voice of party controversy has disappeared in ireland." this was pushing generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the voice of party controversy had not been absent from the belfast press, nor had it spared him. but he was speaking then, and he desired that the house should feel that he spoke, as ireland's spokesman; he claimed credit for north and south alike in the absence of all labour troubles in war supply. "the spectacle of industrial unrest in great britain, the determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the press upon individual members of the government and in a special way upon the prime minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation in ireland," he said. "mr. asquith stands to-day, as before the war, high in the confidence of the irish people." the "persistent pessimism" had effected nothing except to help in some measure "that little fringe which exists in ireland as in england, of men who would if they could interfere with the success of recruiting." no doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all this. sir edward carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not spared the prime minister. but in essence redmond was relying on the plain truth. he had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his power, even at his peril. mr. birrell in the posthumous "appreciation" which has been already quoted has this passage: "although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very justly suspicious of english politicians, he could be trusted more implicitly than almost every other politician i have ever come in contact with. he was slow to pass his word, but when he had done so, you knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with certainty. he was constitutionally incapable of giving anybody away who had trusted him." nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone, against his desire and his judgment. in june, the sixteenth division was within , of completion. the shortage existed in one brigade--the th--which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas in ulster--two of the royal irish fusiliers, one of the inniskillings and one of the royal irish rifles. the conception had undoubtedly been to provide for the nationalists of ulster. but, as it proved, these men vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not associated with the avowedly unionist division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or other of these three regiments; and the th brigade was not nearly up to strength. the tenth division was now on the point of readiness for the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men was completed its ranks were , short. the war office decided to draw, not on both the other irish divisions, but on the sixteenth only, and only upon the deficient brigade. when the offer of immediate service was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the tenth division was completed; but the sixteenth was thrown back, and the discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a great impetus. redmond was very angry. he wrote to mr. tennant demanding that at least the division's deficiency should at once be made up, by giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in ireland. nothing of the kind was done to meet his request. it was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our purely irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly made--that credit was withheld from the achievements of irish troops. the main source of this grievance was the publication of admiral de robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at gallipoli. in the original document, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. as some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at "v" beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, and said in brief but emphatic phrase, "here the troops wrought miracles." the war office, in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not appear to whom the praise applied. certain things are unbelievable. no officer and no man that ever lived could from a partisan feeling against ireland have sought to rob regiments who had done and suffered such things as the dublins and munsters did and suffered at "v" beach of whatever credit could be given to them. yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could not long be secret: ireland had too many dead that day. what made the suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for admiral de robeck was an irishman, with his home some few miles from the regimental depot of the dublins. two things, however, should be said. if only in fairness to admiral de robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never given in full until he came before the dardanelles commission, many months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. and further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of every word that goes to the recognition of such service. the effect of omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen. even before the middle of august, when angry letters over this despatch were appearing in the irish press, other news began to come to ireland, ill calculated to help recruiting. the tenth division had come into action, but under the unluckiest conditions. when the great attempt was made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from anzac and by a new landing at suvla bay, the irish were among the reinforcements told off for that surprise. but from lack of room on the island bases it was considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one brigade, the th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the concerted movement on suvla. it was therefore sent separately to anzac, and joined in with the australians. broken up by regiments and not operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what the men did could go to ireland. the other two brigades, the th and st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were to attack on the left of the bay. but owing to some defect in exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were attached to the right-hand force. thus, in the actual operations sir bryan mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men. the remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general of the eleventh division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack to one of his brigadiers. it is sufficient to say that immediately after the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. the same fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the concerted movement was placed. in face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were badly handled. they suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was in large measure preventible. the attack was a failure. all the success achieved was the capture of chocolate hill, and the irish claim that success. it is disputed by other regiments. this much is certain: the irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall, when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the irish were left holding it. but they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were sacrificed in the hopeless effort to retrieve what had been lost when the surprise attack failed. the loss fell specially on a picked battalion, the th dublins, which had grown up about a footballers' company, the very flower of young irish manhood. grief and indignation were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through. but of all this redmond said no word in public. he threatened disclosure in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from mr. tennant--in whose friendliness, as in the prime minister's, he had confidence--he refrained. to this abstention he added the most practical proof of good will. lord wimborne, now lord-lieutenant, seriously concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any sign of recovery since the coalition government was formed, came to him with the proposal for a conference on the subject. in pursuance of this suggestion redmond went to london, where an interview took place between him and lord kitchener, mr. birrell and mr. tennant assisting. redmond put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected recruiting. the conference ultimately met at the viceregal lodge on october th. it included the primate of all ireland, lord londonderry, lord meath, lord powerscourt, sir nugent everard, the o'conor don and colonel sharman crawford, the lord mayors of dublin, belfast and cork, and redmond. the military were represented by major-general friend, commanding the troops in ireland, with whom redmond always had the most cordial relations. only those who understand something of irish tradition will realize how great a departure from established usage it was for parnell's lieutenant and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the viceregal lodge--or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. but redmond always had the logic of his convictions. as part of a compact, he was helping to the best of his power the government which must carry on till home rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of home rule had made possible a complete change in his attitude. among his papers is a very full note of what passed on this occasion. it is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of attitude as between redmond and the ulster representatives, and also the fact that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by redmond himself. they were the result of his interview with lord kitchener. recruiting in ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but a department should be formed corresponding to that over which lord derby had been appointed to preside in great britain; and the lord-lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head, and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to preside over the detail of organization. redmond pressed also that the country should be told definitely what lord wimborne had told the conference, that the need was for a total of about , recruits per week. he insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which lord kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. its last paragraph read: "the irish are entitled to their full share of the compliments paid to the rest of the united kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only reward in victory, the supply must be continued." over , recruits had been raised in ireland since the war started--a period of eighty-two weeks. viewed in comparison with lord kitchener's original anticipations, the result might well be called "magnificent." but it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four months the figure had been much below this. the result of the new campaign was to raise nearly , men in seven weeks. in the campaign thus launched, as redmond so keenly desired, under the joint auspices of ulstermen, southern unionists and nationalists, one circumstance attracted attention. it was proposed to hold a great meeting at newry, the frontier town where ulster marches with the south--a centre in which recruiting had been singularly keen and successful. the scheme was to unite on one platform the lord-lieutenant, redmond and sir edward carson. sir edward carson, however, "did not think the proposal would serve any useful purpose," and the meeting was held without him, in december . by this time the sixteenth division was under orders for france. we had been since september in training at blackdown, near aldershot; and here redmond was one of several distinguished visitors who came to see us and address the troops. he came down also unofficially more than once, for his brother had a pleasant house among the pine-trees--where he guarded, or was guarded by, the brigade's mascot, the largest of three enormous wolfhounds which, through john redmond, were presented to the irish division. towards the end of the year new rumours were afloat. the th brigade had never been made up to strength, and there were stories that a non-irish brigade was to be linked up with us. letters from two commanding officers of the th brigade illustrate the extent to which redmond had come by all ranks to be regarded as our tutelary genius; to him they appealed for redress, fearing that they would be turned into a reserve brigade. the matter was settled at last to his content and theirs by a decision that the two brigades which were ready should go out in advance, to be followed by the th; and we entrained accordingly on december th. sir lawrence parsons wrote to mr. birrell: "as the last train-load moved out of farnborough station the senior railway staff officer came up to me and said, 'well, general, that is the soberest, quietest, most amenable and best disciplined division that has left aldershot, and i have seen them all go.'" the compliment was well paid to general parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. major-general w.b. hickie, c.b., who had greatly distinguished himself in france, now took over command. it would be disingenuous to say that john redmond was not content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the hardship inflicted on a gallant soldier. the ulster division had preceded us by three months. all three irish divisions were now in the field, and reserve brigades were established to feed them. redmond could feel that in great measure his work was done, and that he could await the issue in confidence. he wrote at this time, in a preface contributed to mr. macdonagh's book _the irish at the front_, a passage of unusual emotion which tells what he thought and felt upon this matter. "it is these soldiers of ours, with their astonishing courage and their beautiful faith, with their natural military genius, carrying with them their green flags and their irish war-pipes, advancing to the charge, their fearless officers at their head, and followed by their beloved chaplains as great-hearted as themselves--bringing with them a quality all their own to the sordid modern battlefield--it is these soldiers of ours to whose keeping the cause of ireland has passed. it was never in holier, worthier keeping than with these boys offering up their supreme sacrifice of life with a smile on their lips because it was given for ireland." he wrote this when fresh from a sight of troops in the field. this visit took place in november , and he was full of the experience when he came down to say good-bye before we went out. nothing in all his life had approached it in interest, he said to me. the diary of his tour is prefixed to mr. s.p. ker's book, _what the irish regiments have done_--but it conveys little, except this dominant impression: "from the irish commander-in-chief himself right down through the army one meets irishmen wherever one goes." on that journey he got the same welcome from ulstermen as from his own nearest countrymen in the royal irish regiment. v one thing at least redmond gained, i think, from his visit to the front--the sense that with the british army in the field he was in a friendly country. he never had that sense with regard to the war office. running all through this critical year is the history of one long failure--his attempt to secure the creation of a home defence force in ireland. given that, he would be confident of possessing the foundation for the structure of an irish army--an army which would be regarded as ireland's own. without it, the whole fabric of his efforts must be insecure. he desired to build, as in england they built, upon the voluntary effort of a people in whom entire confidence was placed. in the war office undoubtedly men's minds were set upon finding a regular supply of irish troops by quite other methods--by the application of compulsion. redmond saw to the full the danger of attempting compulsion with an unwilling people; it was a peril which he sought to keep off, and while he lived did keep off, by securing a steady flow of recruits, by gaining a reasonable definition of ireland's quota, and by exerting that personal authority which the recognition of his efforts conferred upon him. i do not think he was without hope of a moment when ireland might come, as great britain had come by the end of this year, to recognize that the voluntary system levied an unfair toll on the willing, and that the community itself should accept the general necessity of binding its own members. but before this could be even dreamed of as practicable, the whole force of volunteers, north and south, must feel that they were trusted and recognized, a part in the general work. the practical organization of the great body at his disposal was under discussion between him and colonel moore from february onwards; and the idea was mooted that by introducing the territorial system ulster volunteers and national volunteers might be drawn into the same corps. this, however, was for the future; the immediate need was to extend the arming and training under their own organization. redmond learnt at once that lord kitchener was against this; that he pointed to the existence of another armed force in the north of ireland and argued that to create a second must mean civil war; that he believed revolutionary forces to exist in ireland which redmond could not control and perhaps did not even suspect. those who then thought with lord kitchener can say now that events have justified his view. they omit to consider how far those events proceeded from lord kitchener's refusal to accept redmond's judgment. of the danger redmond was fully aware. "i understand your position to be," mr. t.p. o'connor wrote to him in january , "that unless your plan as to the irish volunteers is adopted we are face to face with a most critical and dangerous situation in ireland." just as fully was he convinced of the way to meet it. in february, replying indignantly to sir reginald brade, who had complained that irish recruiting was "distinctly languid," he enumerated the points at which the war office had failed to act on his own advice, and urged once more, in the first instance, his original policy of employing both ulster and nationalist volunteers for home defence. "if the two bodies of volunteers were trusted with the defence of the country under proper military drill and discipline, the result would unquestionably be that a large number of them would volunteer for the front. recruiting can best be promoted by creating an atmosphere in which the patriotism of the younger men of the country can be evoked, and we have done a good deal already in this direction." on april th a display was made of the force available. a review was held in the phoenix park of , men--splendid material, but half of them with neither arms nor uniform. the unionist press was friendly in its comments upon the statement which redmond supplied after the parade, claiming that these men should be utilized for home defence. that day was easter sunday of . no one guessed then what the next easter was going to bring about. on april th i find him writing officially to mr. birrell, seeking the chief secretary's influence with the war office, and claiming, what was the truth, that the irish command shared his view. but at the moment recruiting was increasing weekly and the war office were in no mood to make further concessions than those by which the improvement had been brought about. then came the coalition, and the consequent reduction of recruiting from close on , to , a month; and in july the adjutant-general, sir henry sclater, of his own motion approached redmond. he suggested a meeting between redmond and the war office, with sir matthew nathan and general parsons in attendance. redmond agreed to the proposal, but formulated his views in a lengthy memorandum. the first three points dealt with matters directly concerning the sixteenth division, but in the fourth, weighty emphasis was laid on the suggestion of recruiting volunteers for home defence. sir henry sclater's reply omitted completely all reference to this last--an omission on which redmond commented sharply. he elicited the official answer that by urging men to join on a special enlistment for home service the numbers who would join for general service would be reduced. this was diametrically opposite to redmond's view, and he said so, and urged again that the irish command was of his opinion. the proposed conference resolved itself--to redmond's indignation--into a discussion of redmond's memorandum between the adjutant-general and sir lawrence parsons. only in september, when at lord wimborne's instance he interviewed lord kitchener, did he have the opportunity of raising the matter by direct speech. lord kitchener then declared himself willing to admit that on the question whether enlistment for home defence would promote or retard recruiting, redmond's judgment was probably more valuable than his own, and he promised to review the question of home defence again in the light of it. but of this promise nothing came. meantime redmond was being warned that the volunteer organization as it stood had exhausted its usefulness; its enthusiasm was gone--a natural result of having no purpose. a new opening seemed to be created by the bill which lord lincolnshire introduced to recognize a volunteer force in great britain which should perform military duties under the war office control. redmond hoped to see this carried with an extension of it to ireland, and this was the practical proposal with which he concluded his speech when, on november nd, for the first time in that year, he raised in debate the questions to which so much of his time and thought had been given. how was the irish recruiting problem to be dealt with? he declared himself absolutely against compulsion, to impose which would be "a folly and a crime" unless the country was "practically unanimous in favour of it." the voluntary system had never had fair play--at all events in ireland. "it is a fact, which has its origin in history, and which i need not refer to more closely--it is a fact that in the past recruiting for the british army was not popular with the mass of the irish people. but when the war broke out, my colleagues and i, quite regardless, let me say, of the political risks which stared us in the face, instantly made an appeal to those whom we represented in ireland, and told them that this was ireland's war as well as england's war, that it was a just war, and that the recent attitude of great britain to ireland had thrown upon us a great, grave duty of honour to the british empire. we then went back from this country, and we went all through ireland. i myself, within the space of about a month after that, made speeches at great public meetings in every one of the four provinces of ireland. we set ourselves to the task of creating in ireland--creating, mind you--an atmosphere favourable to recruiting, and of creating a sentiment in ireland favourable to recruiting. i say most solemnly, that in that task we were absolutely entitled to the sympathy and the assistance of the government and the war office. i am sorry to say we got neither." he disclaimed all imputation upon the prime minister or the under-secretary, mr. tennant--exceptions which pointed the reference to lord kitchener. "the fact remains that when we were faced with that difficult and formidable task, practically every suggestion that we made, based on the strength of our own knowledge of what was suitable for ireland and the conditions there, was put upon one side. the gentlemen who were responsible for that evidently believed that they knew what was suited to the necessities of ireland far better than we did. a score of times, at least, i put upon paper and sent to the government and the war office my suggestions and my remonstrances, but all in vain. often, almost in despair, i was tempted to rise in this house and publicly tell the house of commons the way in which we were hampered and thwarted in our work in ireland. i refrained from doing so from fear of doing mischief and from fear of doing harm. to-day i am very glad that i so refrained, because in spite of these discouragements, in spite of this thwarting and embarrassing, and in spite of the utterly faulty and ridiculous system of recruiting that was set on foot, we have succeeded, and have raised in ireland a body of men whose numbers lord kitchener, in his letter to the irish conference, declared were magnificent." he quoted the unionist _birmingham post_ for the saying that what had happened in ireland was "a miracle." from the national volunteers , men had joined the colours; from the ulster volunteers , . in both forces there must be many left who could not leave ireland, yet might be utilized in ireland. "it may be remembered that the very day the war broke out i rose in my place in this house and offered the volunteers to the government for home defence. i only spoke, of course, of the national volunteers. i was not entitled to speak for the ulster volunteers, but i suggested that they and we might work shoulder to shoulder. from that day to this the war office have persistently refused to have anything to say to these volunteers. the prime minister, a few days after i spoke, in answer to a question told me that the government were considering at that moment how best to utilize these volunteers. they have never been utilized since. a few days after i made my speech i went myself to the war office, and as a result of my interviews there i submitted to the government a scheme which would have provided them at once with , men. if that offer had been accepted, not , , not , , but , men would have been enlisted for home defence within the month. but no, it was obstinately refused. i hear that an hon. member below me is now apparently inclined to take the point that the war office took. the war office said that would interfere with recruiting in ireland. of course, we know ireland better than the hon. member. we know our difficulties in ireland. we do not believe that it would. on the contrary, we believe that it would have promoted recruiting. we believe that the enlistment of these men, their association in barracks and in camp, with the inevitable creation and fostering of a military spirit, would have led to a large number of volunteers for foreign service. our views counted for nought. in this instance they were not only our views. these views had the approval of the irish command, and from the purely military point of view the irish command was in favour of some such scheme as i had outlined, and the reason was plain. they have to provide, and are providing to this day, , to , men from the regular army for the defence of the coasts of ireland--guarding the coast, guarding piers, railways, bridges, and so forth. if these men of ours had been taken up, within two or three months of training and in camp they would have been able to do this work, and would have done it ever since, and would thereby have released from , to , men. that is the chief reason, i fancy, why the military command in ireland were in favour of this idea. but to this moment the refusal continues. i see that an unofficial bill was introduced by the marquess of lincolnshire into the house of lords doing, to a great measure, for england and wales what we have been asking should be done for ireland. i claim that that bill shall be extended to ireland." the volunteer bill came to the house of commons in a form making it applicable to ireland. there it was opposed by sir edward carson, who demanded that no man of military age should be accepted as a volunteer unless he consented to enlist for general service if called. this killed the bill. sir edward carson was of opinion that the necessities of the case demanded universal compulsory service; and conscription was already in sight. with that prospect redmond's anxiety became very grave. on november th he wrote his mind to the prime minister: house of commons, _november_ , . _private_. my dear mr. asquith, i have been in a state of great anxiety for some time on the question of a possible conscription bill, and i have discussed the matter fully with mr. birrell, who knows my views, and who, no doubt, has communicated them to you. i think it well, however, to shortly put, in writing, our position. in your dublin speech you asked the irish people for "a free offering from a free people," and the response has been, taking everything into account, in the words of lord kitchener, "magnificent." recruiting is now going on at a greater rate than ever in ireland, and it would be a terrible misfortune if we were driven into a position on the question of conscription which would alienate that public opinion which we have now got upon our side in ireland. the position would, indeed, be a cruel one, if conscription were enacted for england, and ireland excluded. on the other hand, i must tell you that the enforcement of conscription in ireland is an impossibility. faced with this dilemma, if a conscription bill be introduced, the irish party will be forced to oppose it as vigorously as possible at every stage. i regret having to write you in this way, but it is only right that i should be quite frank in the matter. very truly yours, j.e. redmond. rt. hon. h.h. asquith, m.p., _prime minister_, assurances reached him that the first tentative bill for compelling unmarried men to enlist would only be introduced to fulfil a pledge given by mr. asquith in connection with the derby scheme, and that as the derby scheme had not applied to ireland, the pledge also had no bearing there. by december st the matter was raised in the house of commons. redmond, after the prime minister had spoken, defined what he was careful to call "my personal view" on the question of compulsory service. "i am content to take the phrase used by the prime minister. i am prepared to say that i will stick at nothing--nothing which is necessary, nothing which is calculated to effect the purpose--in order to end this war." he added: "that is the view, i am certain, of the people of ireland." the whole question was presented by him as "one of expediency and necessity, not of principle." from that standpoint he declared himself unconvinced that the adoption of compulsion in any shape was either expedient or necessary. it was inexpedient because it would "break up the unity of the country"--unnecessary because they had already many more men than they could either train or equip. in ireland, a limited task had been defined, to keep up the necessary reserves for fifty-three battalions of infantry, and he pointed to the fact that so far the new organization of recruiting was producing the stipulated flow. on these grounds, he said, the irish party would oppose the measure, and on january th that opposition was offered, though ireland was excluded from the bill. but the first division showed a majority of more than ten to one for the proposal; and in face of that, when the house returned to the discussion, redmond declared that irish opposition must cease--especially in view of the support given by the responsible leaders of labour. sir edward carson, following, pressed him to go one step farther and accept the inclusion of ireland in the bill. nothing, he said, could do so much to conciliate ulster. this was the first time that any suggestion of this possibility had come from that quarter, and it came in backing a suggestion which redmond could not accept. i was not present at the debate, and it is hard to judge of such matters from the printed record, but the impression on my mind is that the suggestion was made without any desire to embarrass. a few days later, in the committee stage, an ulster member moved an amendment which would have included ireland. mr. bonar law, speaking for the government, advised against it--on the ground of expediency; it would not be an easy thing to put this measure into operation in ireland. sir edward carson spoke later and counselled the dropping of the amendment. with matters in this stage redmond spoke very fully to the house, recognizing the absence of all partisan tone in the speeches of ulster members. he had long felt, he said, that "if conscription came, ireland's whole attitude towards the war was likely to suffer cruel and unjust misrepresentation," because it must emphasize a difference between the two countries. conscription in ireland would be "impracticable, unworkable and impossible." instead of leading to the increase in the supply of men it would have the opposite effect. "it would most undoubtedly paralyse the efforts of myself and others who have worked unsparingly--and not unsuccessfully--since the commencement of the war, and would play right into the hands of those who are a contemptible minority among the nationalists of ireland, and who are trying--unsuccessfully trying--to prevent recruiting and to undermine thus the position and power of the irish party because of the attitude we have taken up." he complained once more of the government's failure to utilize the volunteers and of the damping effect which had resulted from the non-fulfilment of mr. asquith's words. yet ireland was doing all that was asked of it--maintaining the reserves of irishmen for irish regiments at the front.--this was true at the moment; but the sixteenth division had scarcely yet begun to come into the line and the ulster division, during its first few months, suffered slight casualties. in point of fact, however, the bare rumour of conscription had checked recruiting, and redmond was guarded in his terms. it was, he said, "on the whole very satisfactory, and in the towns amazing"; but he admitted that the country districts had not given an adequate response. but he made now an appeal to the house as a whole to lift the consideration of this whole matter on to broad lines, to view it on the plane of statesmanship. if five years earlier anyone had foretold that in a great war ireland would send , volunteer new recruits to fight by the side of england, would he not have been regarded as a lunatic? "the change in ireland has been so rapid that men are apt to forget its history." that was a true saying; his own success had created difficulties for him. once more he quoted the example of the other statesman in the empire whose position had most analogy with his own. "i honestly believe," he said, "that general botha's difficulties were small compared with those we had to confront in ireland.... it is true to say at this moment that the overwhelming sentiment of the irish people is with the empire for the first time." that was his claim, and in that month of january he was fully entitled to make it; and the house, i think, recognized his justification. his speech has in it the ring of confidence, of assurance that he would be taken at his word. "rest satisfied," he said; "do not try to drive ireland." wise words, and they were not unwisely listened to. there was no room for doubting this man's earnestness when he went on to tell how he himself had recently met irish troops in the field, and had then pledged himself to them to spare no effort in raising the necessary reserves for their ranks among their own countrymen. "trust us," he said to the house, indicating himself and his colleagues, "trust us to know, after all, the best methods. do not carp at irish effort, and do not belittle irish effort." then they might count on loyal and enduring support till the great struggle was ended. that speech, as i read it, marks the highwater-line of redmond's achievement. his statesmanship in the counsels of the empire had prevailed for his own country. the home rule act was on the statute book, and though not in legal operation it was present in all minds; and now on a supreme issue--the blood-tax--ireland's right to be treated as self-governing was recognized in fact. the argument which underlay implicitly redmond's whole contention was never set out; it was contentious, politically, and he wisely avoided it. he spoke for a nation to which autonomy had been accorded by statute; he preferred men to feel for themselves rather than be asked to admit that no self-governing nation will submit voluntarily to the imposition of the blood-tax without its own most formal consent. all that he said was, in effect: you have ireland with you for the first time, by our assistance; do not destroy our power to continue that assistance, do not alienate ireland. in the counsels of the empire his argument prevailed; and during the early months of the relations between great britain and ireland were better and happier than at any time of which history holds record. an utterance from one irishman, and the general response to it, showed this in extraordinary degree. our division, or rather two brigades of it, had detrained in france on the th of december; the first impression as we shook ourselves together for the march to strange billets was the sound of guns. scattered about in different villages lying round bethune, our battalions passed the next two months in the usual training before we should take up our own sector of the line, and we saw little or nothing of each other. march found us engaged, though still only attached by companies to more seasoned troops, in some rough crater-fighting on the ugly mine-riddled stretch between loos and hulluch. it was when we were marching out from broken houses about the minehead at annequin that we first met again our old stable companions, the royal irish--and that i first saw willie redmond in france at the head of his company. he was on foot as always, for he never could be persuaded to ride while the men were marching, and i never saw more geniality of greeting on any countenance than was on his when he came up with outstretched hand to where i was sitting by the roadside--for we had halted to see them go by. here was a man utterly in his element, radiant literally in the enthusiasm of his devotion. he refused to listen to our talk of the bad time we had been through in the place where they were to succeed us (and in two winters of that war i never saw worse); all his talk was of the good time which we should have in the billets we were going to, which they had just left. back there, in and about allouagne, they rejoined us; and i remember dining with him in his company mess and hearing his eulogies of the splendid fellows that his company officers were. then, about the time we moved up into trenches, our first leaves began and he got home in march. naturally, he looked in at the house of commons, and realized for the first time how uneasy well-informed persons in the lobbies were about the chances of the war. everybody who ever came home from the front must have experienced the effect of that strange transition from unquestioning confidence to worried anxiety; but willie redmond was the only man who ever adequately gave expression to it. it was on the eve of st. patrick's day, and the army estimates were under discussion in a very thin house--a wrangling, fault-finding debate. in the middle of it willie redmond got up, and said that as he was not likely to be there again, he had one or two things to say which he thought the house would be glad to know. speaking as one of the oldest members, who had all but completed his thirty-third year in parliament, he told them that every soul in the house should be proud of the troops--not of the irish troops, but of the troops generally--because more than anything else of the splendid spirit in which they were going through the privations and dangers,--which he described with passion. if he were to deliver a message from the troops, he knew well what it would be: "send us out the reinforcements which are necessary, and which are naturally necessary. send us out, as we admit you have been doing up to this, the necessary supplies, and when you do that, have trust in the men who are in the gap to conduct the war to the victory which everyone at the front is confident is bound to come. 'and when victory does come,' the message would run on, 'you in the house of commons, in the country, and in every newspaper in the country, can spend the rest of your lives in discussing as to whether the victory has been won on proper lines or whether it has not.' nothing in the world can depress the spirits of the men that i have seen at the front. i do not believe that there was ever enough germans born into this world to depress them. if it were possible to depress them at all, it can only be done by pursuing a course of embittered controversy in this country--as to which was the right way or the wrong way of conducting affairs at the front. when a man feels that his feet are freezing, when he is standing in heavy rain for a whole night with no shelter, and when next morning he tries to cook a piece of scanty food over the scanty flame of a brazier in the mud, he perhaps sits down for a few minutes in the day's dawn and takes up an old newspaper, and finds speeches and leading articles from time to time which tell him that apparently everything is going wrong, that the ministers who are at the head of affairs in this country, upon whom he is depending, are not really men with their hearts in the work, but are really more or less callous and calculating mercenaries, who are not directing affairs in the best way, but are simply anxious to maintain their own salaries. i say that when speeches and articles of that kind are found in the newspapers they are calculated, if anything is or can be so calculated, to depress the men who are at the front." then came a few words in praise of the irish troops and in deprecation of the failure to recognize some of their services; a confident assurance that, "whether they are remembered or not," the sixteenth division would do their duty, with an equal assurance that the ulster men would do as well as they--and he reached to his conclusion: "since i went out there i found that the common salutation in all circumstances is one of cheer. if things go pretty well and the men are fairly comfortable, they say 'cheer o!' if things go badly, and the snow falls and the rain comes through the roof of a billet in an impossible sort of cow-house, they say 'cheer o!' still more. all we want out there is that you shall adopt the same tone and say 'cheer o!' to us." it is not too much to say that this speech was received with a cry of gratitude all over the country and throughout the army. it said what badly needed to be said, and said it with a freshness and a dash that came superbly from a company commander in his fifty-fourth year. it was the best service that had yet been rendered to john redmond's policy. everybody quite naturally and simply accepted the nationalist irishman as the spokesman for all the troops who were actually in the line. mr. walter long, always a generous and candid human being, was quick to give voice to this feeling: "the honourable and gallant member for east clare has been in conflict, not only with one particular political party, but during the greater part of his career with every party in turn, and has engaged in bitter controversy with them. does anybody doubt the fact that when war was declared one great factor in the mind of the emperor responsible for this war was that dissension would paralyse the hands of great britain? ireland, whatever may have been our differences in the past, and whatever may be our differences in happier days again when we are at peace, everybody must feel by the action of her representatives, who have fought so bitterly in this house and in the country, has created a new claim for herself upon the affection, the gratitude, the respect of the people of the empire by the great and proud part that she has played in this great struggle." that was the position to which redmond's policy, backed by the irishmen who supported it with their lives, of whom his brother was the outstanding representative, had brought this great issue. the next thing which brought the name of ireland prominently before the world was the story of action taken by other irishmen, also at the risk of their lives, to reverse the strong current which was then carrying us forward with so hopeful augury. footnotes: [footnote : lieutenant-colonel maurice moore, c.b., an officer who had served with distinction in south africa, and whose father, george henry moore, had been a famous advocate in parliament of tenant right and repeal.] [footnote : rifles were really not available, nor competent instructors. but the essential was recognition. a grant towards equipment should have been given, and possibly other assistance. we secured several thousand rifles in belgium about this time. for instructors, any old crippled veterans paid by government would have conveyed the sense of recognition.] chapter vii the rebellion and its sequel i the facts of the irish rebellion are too generally familiar to need more than the briefest restatement--and perhaps too little known for an attempt at detailed analysis. broadly, a general parade of the irish volunteers all over the country was ordered for easter sunday. on the night before good friday a german ship with a cargo of rifles was off the irish coast. this ship, the _aud_, was a few hours later captured and taken in convoy by a british sloop, so that the arms were never landed. emissaries from the volunteers who had gone to kerry by motor-car to receive and arrange for distributing the arms were killed in a motor accident while hurrying back to get in touch with their headquarters. on saturday the general parade was cancelled by order of professor macneill, chief of the volunteer organization. on monday, against his wish, a portion of the volunteer force in dublin, including the battalion specially under command of pearse and macdonagh, with the citizen army under james connolly, paraded, scattered through the city and seized certain previously selected points, of which the most important was the post office. from it as headquarters they proclaimed an irish republic. slight attempts at rising took place in county wexford, where the town of enniscorthy was seized, in county galway, and in county louth. at galway, at wexford and at drogheda the national volunteers turned out to assist in suppressing the rising. except for a serious encounter with a police force in county dublin, the fighting was confined to the capital. it terminated by the unconditional surrender of the rebels on the saturday. the struggle was prolonged by the total lack of artillery in the early stages. riflemen established in houses could not be dislodged by direct assault of infantry without very heavy casualties to the attacking force. the purpose of this book is to show redmond's connection with this event and the succeeding developments from it. he failed to foresee the event; he failed to direct its developments into the course he desired. how far he is to be held responsible, or blameworthy, for these failures, readers may be assisted to decide. from the beginning of onwards the irish government was warned of danger. one of its members--the attorney-general, sir james campbell--advocated the seizure of arms from men parading with what were evidently stolen service rifles or bayonets. but the chief secretary refused to take any action which could be described as an attempt to suppress or disarm the irish volunteers until there was definite evidence of actual association with the enemy. proof of sympathy was not difficult to obtain, and the propaganda against recruiting had now reached the point of attempts to break up recruiting meetings. still, mr. birrell was in a difficulty. he had a logical mind, and he knew what had been permitted to ulster. the fact that the attorney-general himself had been a main adviser of the provisional government did not make it easier to follow his advice to disarm men who professed disaffection to the existing authority. mr. birrell knew that if he took such action he could be attacked in the official nationalist press for having one law in ulster and another in the south. further, redmond would certainly not have disavowed, and might even have endorsed, such a line of criticism. the reason was that redmond, as he had never believed in the reality of the ulster danger, so now did not believe in this one. later, when mr. birrell resigned his post after the insurrection was suppressed, redmond chivalrously took on himself a part of the responsibility. "i feel," he said, "that i have incurred some share of the blame which he has laid at his own door, because i entirely agreed with his view that the danger of an outbreak of the kind was not a real one, and in my conversations with him i have expressed that view, and for all i know that may have influenced him in his conduct and his management of irish affairs." a later debate--on july st--showed that his strong personal feeling for mr. birrell had moved him rather to overstate than to belittle his advisory responsibility. dublin castle had never consulted him as to policy. conferences had taken place with the under-secretary, sir matthew nathan, but these were concerned with considering and framing the machinery to be created for bringing the home rule act into operation, whenever the time came. "there was no conference at all about the state of the country or about sinn fein. when once or twice in casual consultation the matter came up--i hope the house will listen to this--i did not hesitate to say what in my opinion ought to be done in certain cases by the government. for example, i expressed a strong view to them as to how they should deal with seditious newspapers and with prosecutions. what i did suggest, they never did; what i said they ought not to do, they always did. and i want to say something further. they never gave me any information, bad or good, about the state of the country. from first to last i never saw one single confidential government report from the police or from any other source. i know nothing whatever about their secret confidential information." it is fair to add that the under-secretary was in communication from time to time with other members of the party, who were of course in touch with redmond. but the substantial accuracy of redmond's statement is sufficiently evidenced by one fact. everybody knew that sir roger casement was in berlin and had tried--most unsuccessfully--to recruit an irish brigade from among the irish prisoners. but neither redmond nor any irish member knew that from april th dublin castle had warning that a ship was on its way from germany with rifles. the navy was on the alert, and when the _aud_ came off fenit, in kerry, on good friday morning, she was promptly challenged.[ ] but in the dark hours of that morning she had landed sir roger casement and his two confederates, one of whom was arrested with him the same day. on saturday morning government decided to take action against what was now clearly a rebel organization. but as the chief secretary and the general commanding in chief were both in london, and as the available force of men in dublin was small, a postponement was decided on. no special precautions appear to have been taken against the contingency of an immediate rising. on monday a very large proportion of the officers from the curragh and the dublin garrison were at the fairyhouse races. in the castle itself there was only the ordinary guard. redmond at this date was also in london. his lack of apprehension is sufficiently indicated by the fact that his son and daughter were both at the races, and drove up unknowingly to an armed barricade. had he been in authority and known, as the government knew on saturday, that the irish volunteers expected and had arranged for the landing of a heavy cargo of arms on good friday, and that a general parade of their men had been ordered for easter, i hope that he would have either had troops in the utmost readiness to move, or have put strong guards in places of importance. but this is a futile speculation, for had he been in power the situation would never have arisen. the decisive thing which drove most of the relatively small number among the volunteers who broke away from redmond into their original hostility was government's failure to recognize them. their force stood in their own eyes for the assertion of ireland's nationality; and many of those who took active part in the rebellion were at the outset fully prepared to assert that nationality in jeopardy of their lives in the allied cause. redmond's policy, had effect been given to it by the government, still more had he himself been invested with the right to embody it in action, would have prevented the estrangement of all but a very few. once the estrangement took place, however, i think that he undervalued what was opposed to him, both in respect of its power and of its quality. he lacked appreciation and respect for the idealists whose ideals were not his own. he underrated their sincerity, and the danger of their sincerity. the beauty of sacrifice in the young men who went out to the war, carrying ireland's cause in their keeping, moved him profoundly; and he saw the practical bearing of their acts on the great practical problem of statesmanship to which his life had been given. he did not guess at the sway which might be exercised over men's minds by an almost mystical belief which disdained to count with practicalities, redmond for fifteen years had been the leader, and for thirty-five years had been a member, of a party which presented itself--with great justification--as the winner for ireland of many positive material advantages on the way to an ultimate goal. pearse, at a time when all the world was plunged in a prodigal welter of destruction, came forward, demanding from irishmen nothing but a sacrifice--promising nothing but the chance for young men to shed their blood sacramentally in the cause of ireland's freedom. redmond also was calling for the extreme risk, but on a sane and sound calculation, to ensure the full development of something already gained. pearse preached, mystically, the efficacious power simply of blood shed in the name of ireland. those whom he brought with him into the pass of danger were few, but they were touched with his own spirit; and even the very recklessness of their act touched the popular imagination. irish regiments, after all, could do only what other regiments were doing; their deeds were obscured in a chaos of war from which individual prowess could not emerge. pearse and his associates offered to irishmen a stage for themselves on which they could and did secure full personal recognition--the complete attention of ireland's mind. all this would have seemed vanity to redmond's solid, positive intelligence--vanity in all senses of the word. it would have moved him to nothing but angry contempt--anger against the spirit which was prepared to divide ireland's effort, contempt for the futility of the reasoning. but one aspect of the rising dominated all the others in his mind. he had neither tolerance nor pity for roger casement, who was in his eyes simply one who tried to seduce irish troops by threats and bribes into treason to their salt, one who made himself among the worst instruments of germany. at the re-assembly of parliament on april th he expressed the "feeling of detestation and horror" with which he and his colleagues had regarded the events in dublin; a feeling which he believed to be shared "by the overwhelming mass of the people of ireland." on may rd, in a statement to the press, he denounced fiercely "this wicked move" of men who "have tried to make ireland the cat's-paw of germany." "germany plotted it, germany organized it, germany paid for it." the men who were germany's agents "remained in the safe remoteness of american cities," while "misguided and insane young men in ireland had risked, and some of them had lost, their lives in an insane anti-patriotic movement." it was anti-patriotic, he urged, because ireland held to the choice she had made, to the opinion which thousands of irish soldiers had sealed with their blood. it was "not half so much treason to the cause of the allies as treason to the cause of home rule." on the day when that statement appeared the sequel had begun to unroll itself. in the house of commons mr. asquith announced the trial, sentence and shooting of three signatories to the republican proclamation--pearse, clarke and macdonagh. with the exception of james connolly, these were the men most directly answerable for launching an attempt which had cost five hundred lives and destroyed over two millions' worth of property, redmond accepted their doom as just. "this outbreak happily seems to be over. it has been dealt with with firmness, which was not only right, but it was the duty of the government so to deal with it." but now that example had been made, he held that other thoughts should guide those in authority. "as the rebellion, or the outbreak, call it what you like, has been put down with firmness, i do beg the government, and i speak from the very bottom of my heart and with all my earnestness, not to show undue hardship or severity to the great masses of those who are implicated, on whose shoulders there lies a guilt far different from that which lies upon the instigators and promoters of the outbreak. let them, in the name of god, not add this to the wretched, miserable memories of the irish people, to be stored up perhaps for generations, but let them deal with it in such a spirit of leniency as was recently exhibited in south africa by general botha, and in that way pave the way to the possibility ... that out of the ashes of this miserable tragedy there may spring up something which will redound to the future happiness of ireland and the future complete and absolute unity of this empire. i beg of the government, having put down this outbreak with firmness, to take only such action as will leave the least rankling bitterness in the minds of the irish people, both in ireland and elsewhere throughout the world." it is well to recall what he had in his mind. after the suppression of the south african rebellion in , one man only was put to death--an officer who changed sides during an action. no attempt was made to try accused persons before a jury; a special tribunal of judges was set up by the south african parliament. but their power of inflicting punishment was limited by the parliament to a sentence of three years. general de wet, the chief figure in the rebellion, was dismissed without punishment to his farm. that was the manner in which a strong native government, realizing the possibilities of future trouble, dealt with an insurrection infinitely more serious in a military sense than that which broke out in dublin. but in ireland there was no native government; and the announcement of mr. birrell's resignation meant in reality that mr. asquith's ministry had abdicated so far as ireland was concerned. quite properly, they had called in a competent soldier to deal with the military exigency. quite shamefully, they left him in sole authority to handle what was essentially the task of statesmanship. everybody saw that in such a case the need was to prevent a rebellious spirit from spreading. sir john maxwell took the simple view that the way to secure this was by plenty of executions. knowledge of irish history cannot be expected in an english minister, still less in an english soldier; but it could have taught him how often and how ineffectually that recipe had been applied. still less could it be hoped that a soldier, in no sense bound to the study of contemporary politics, should allow for the effect of two factors which must certainly influence irish judgment and irish feeling. the first of these was the precedent within the empire created by general botha's government. this, i think, english opinion generally, and particularly english imperialist opinion, wholly disregarded; but it was the point to which redmond had instantly directed attention. for him, the idea of an imperial commonwealth of states was a reality, and within one commonwealth there cannot be two standards of justice. the second factor was the licence accorded by a liberal government, and the sanction given by a tory opposition, to preparations for rebellion, and acts of rebellion, in ulster. this was generally recognized by public opinion, though i think deliberately set aside by sir john maxwell--who perhaps is not to be blamed. but the prime minister, who had been chiefly and ultimately responsible for the decision to let ulstermen do as they liked, was specially bound to consider and provide for the consequences of that line of policy in the past as it affected the present development. he was also, as the minister responsible alike for carrying a home rule act and for denying to it operation, specially bound in such a pass as this to be guided largely by the judgment of the man who but for that postponement would have been head of an irish government. but, under the various pressures of the moment, mr. asquith moved in a wholly different direction. redmond's appeal and advice went totally disregarded. yet redmond knew ireland as no englishman could know it; and his hands were clean of guilt for what had happened. mr. asquith by his past inaction, his tory colleagues by their action before the war, were deeply involved in responsibility. it is difficult, if not impossible, to find in mr. asquith's conduct any recognition of this cardinal fact. he judged rebels as if preparations for rebellion had never been palliated or approved. all that redmond could achieve was by incessant personal intervention to limit the list of executions, to put some stay on what he called later "the gross and panicky violence" with which measures of suppression were conceived and carried out. he could not prevent the amazing procedure of sending flying columns throughout the country into places where there had been no hint of disturbance, and making arrests by the hundred without reason given or evidence produced. in many cases, men who had been thoroughly disgusted by the outbreak found themselves in jail; and disaffection was manufactured hourly. on may rd, when redmond made his public appeal to mr. asquith, it was still not too late to prevent the mischief from spreading. by general consent, redmond was right when he said that the rising was thoroughly unpopular in ireland, and most of all in dublin. the troops on whom the insurgents fired were in the first instance irish troops. later in that year i was attached to one of these battalions (the th dublins), and asked them how they did their scouting work during the conflict. "we needed no scouts," was the answer; "the old women told us everything." the first volley which met a company of this battalion killed an officer; he was so strongly nationalist in his sympathy as to be almost a sinn féiner. others had been active leaders in the howth gun-running. it was not merely a case of irishmen firing on their fellow-countrymen: it was one section of the original volunteers firing on another. yet from the moment when english troops came on the scene, another strain of feeling began to make itself felt. a lady ordered tea to be made for one of the incoming regiments, halted outside her house on the line of march. the refreshment was long in coming, and she went down to see why. she found her cook up in arms: "is it me boil the kettle for englishmen coming in to shoot down irishmen?" yet that was still the voice of a minority. when i came home from france a few weeks later, a shrewd and prosperous nationalist man of business said to me with fury: "the fools! it was the first rebellion that ever had the country against it, and they turned the people round in a week." nothing could have prevented the halo of martyrdom from attaching itself to those who died by the law for the sake of irish freedom: the tradition was too deeply ingrained in ireland's history. yet redmond did not go beyond the measure of average irish opinion when he accepted the first three executions as just. people at least knew who these men were, and their signatures to the proclamation of an irish republic proved their leadership. they were given the death of rebels in arms, to which no dishonour attaches. but a fatal mistake was made in suppressing all report of the proceedings of the court-martial on them, and this mistake was to be repeated indefinitely. ireland was made to feel that this whole affair was taken completely out of the hands of irishmen--that no attempt even was made to enlist irish opinion on the side of law by a statement of the evidence on which law acted. day by day there was a new bald announcement that such and such men had been shot; and these were men whose names ireland at large had never heard of. then on top of all came the appalling admission that an officer suffering from insanity had taken out three prisoners and caused them to be shot without trial on his own responsibility, none of these men having any complicity with the rebellion. this incident would have inflamed public opinion in any community; in ireland its effect was beyond words poisonous. it revived the atmosphere of the bachelor's walk incident; and there was only too much justification for holding that the military authorities were indisposed to take the proper disciplinary action. its effect detracted from the excellent opinion which the troops generally had earned by their conduct: it instilled venom into the resentment of those few cases (and it was beyond hope that they should not occur) in which soldiers had either lost their heads or yielded to the temptation of revenge in its ugliest shapes. the result can be best expressed by recording the experience of one sinn féiner who was captured in the fighting. while the military escort was taking him through the streets to his place of confinement, a crowd gathered round and ran along, consisting of angry men and women who had seen bloodshed and known hunger during these days. they shouted to the soldiers to knock his brains out there and then. three weeks later he was again marched through the streets on his way to an english prison, and again a crowd mustered. but this time, to his amazement, they were shouting: "god save you! god have pity on you! keep your heart up! ireland's not dead yet!" these were the effects produced in ireland on the mind of common people by the action of government in enforcing the ultimate sanction of law which the members of that same government by their action and by their inaction had brought into contempt. in england, in the meanwhile, a new military service bill was going through the house, and naturally attempts to include ireland in its operation were renewed. sir edward carson, criticizing the government of ireland, said that (as redmond put it in replying) nationalists had held the power but not the responsibility. there was a note of angry protest in the irish leader's rejoinder. "i wish to say for myself that certainly since the coalition government came into operation, and before it, but certainly since then, i have had no power in the government of ireland. all my opinions have been overborne. my suggestions have been rejected, and my profound conviction is that if we had had the power and the responsibility for the government of our country during the past two years, recent occurrences in ireland would never have taken place." i think that view was at that moment very generally shared in england. the british press had shown by their attitude towards the events in dublin how deeply redmond had made his mark. almost without exception unionist papers refrained from any attempt to identify nationalist ireland generally with the rising: they did full justice to the valour and the sufferings of irish troops--who, indeed, at that very moment were passing through a cruel ordeal. in that easter week the sixteenth division was subjected to two attacks with poison gas of a concentration and violence till then unknown, and under weather conditions which prolonged the ordeal beyond endurance. the th and th brigades had very terrible losses. we of the th relieved them in the line. that was a long tour of trenches, some eighteen days beginning on the th of april, and throughout it papers came in with the irish news. i shall never forget the men's indignation. they felt they had been stabbed in the back. for myself, i thought that a situation had arisen in which irish members who were serving had a more imperative duty at home, and i went to discuss the matter with willie redmond, whose battalion was then holding the front line to the left of loos. i found him in the deep company commander's dug-out in the bay of line opposite puits bis, which will be known to many irish soldiers. we came up to the light to talk, and he agreed with me in my view. we arranged that each of us should discuss with his commanding officer the question of asking for special leave. mine advised me to go, and i have no earthly doubt that his would have said, or did say, the same; but willie redmond never brought himself to leave his men. next month, however, he was invalided back, very seriously ill. but in our talk that day, when we discussed the possibility of our having some special influence, he said this: "don't imagine that what you and i have done is going to make us popular with our people. on the contrary, we shall both be sent to the right about at the first general election." i think he was wrong, at least to this extent, that any man who served would not have lessened his chance by doing so. when the tide flowed strongest against us, in three provinces one nationalist only kept his seat--john redmond's son, major william archer redmond. ii already the tide had begun to turn in ireland. on may th mr. dillon--who had been in dublin during the rebellion--moved the adjournment of the house to demand that government should state whether they intended to have more executions upon the finding of secret tribunals, and to continue the searches and wholesale arrests which were going on through the country. the list of executions had now reached fourteen, and no word of evidence had been published. also the prime minister stated that he heard for the first time of the shooting of mr. sheehy-skeffington and others by captain bowen colthurst. unquestionably, discussion was urgently needed, and mr. dillon was fully justified in emphasizing the mischief done in ireland by alienating men's minds. but mr. dillon spoke as one who felt to the uttermost the passion of resentment which he depicted, and in his indignation against charges which had been brought against the insurgents, he was led to praise their conduct almost to the disparagement of soldiers in the field. even in print the speech seethes with growing passion; and its delivery, i am told, accentuated its bitterness and its anti-english tone. it would be futile to deny that this utterance had a great effect in ireland and in england, or to conceal redmond's view that the effect was most lamentable. but it had one notable result. mr. asquith, in replying, announced his intention to visit ireland and look into the situation for himself. within a fortnight--on may th--he reported to the house his impressions. "the first was the breakdown of the existing machinery of the irish government; and the next was the strength and depth, and i might almost say, i think without exaggeration, the universality of the feeling in ireland that we have now a unique opportunity for a new departure for the settlement of outstanding problems, and for a joint and combined effort to obtain agreement as to the way in which the government of ireland is for the future to be carried on." he indicated that an attempt would be made to renew negotiations for a settlement which would enable the home rule act to be brought into operation at once; and that mr. lloyd george had consented to undertake the task of reconciling parties. but he begged that there should be no debate upon this proposal or upon irish affairs at all. redmond, in accepting, said that the request for acceptance without discussion was putting the goodwill of nationalists to a very severe test.--a discussion would at once have produced this criticism: that ireland would say to-morrow, "the parliamentary party brought to ireland a post-dated order for home rule, liable to an indefinite series of postponements: sinn fein by a week's rebellion secures that home rule shall be brought into force at once." in truth, the rapid growth of sinn fein from may onwards is due largely to this reasoning; but also to resentment against the government's dealing with the rebellion, and against the irish party's silence in parliament in spite of the numerous actions of the military power which called for vigorous criticism. irish nationalist members realized the unpopularity of their silence and submitted to it, for the negotiations appeared to offer a real chance. we held that mr. lloyd george could not afford to fail, and had power enough to carry through a settlement. we did not know, and could not, that the minister of munitions had been called off from his regular work within five weeks before the beginning of the offensive on the somme, for which an unprecedented outlay of material had been undertaken. the negotiations proceeded, and were conducted on the principle of discussion through a go-between. the parties never met: mr. lloyd george submitted proposals to each side separately. redmond and his colleagues insisted on protecting themselves by securing a written document, so that, as it was hoped, there could be no understanding and the terms come to would be final. those of us who hoped for a completely new approach to the problem were doomed to disappointment. the affair was taken up where the buckingham palace conference left it. the terms to be arranged were terms of exclusion for ulster; and the two questions of defining the area and the period met the negotiators on the threshold. it has been shown above that redmond regarded as vital the distinction between temporary and permanent exclusion. his purpose was to stamp the whole of this proposed agreement with a provisional and transient character. it was to be simply a war measure, subject to re-arrangement at the close of hostilities; and it was to be adapted to a community still agitated by rebellion. an irish parliament with an executive responsible to it was to be set up at once. but no elections were to be held. the existing members for the existing constituencies were to be the provisional parliament till the war ended. the same considerations precluded the possibility of a referendum in ulster. nationalists accepted an area defined by agreement. it left out of "ulster" the three counties, donegal, cavan and monaghan, in whose eight constituencies no unionist had been returned since . but it left to the excluded area the counties of tyrone and fermanagh, each with a nationalist majority, and the boroughs of newry and londonderry, both represented by home rulers. this was a provision which no body of men could be expected to acquiesce in permanently as representing the equity of the case. it was accepted for the sake of peace, as a temporary expedient. a strong inducement was added by mr. lloyd george's proposal that at the close of the provisional period the whole matter should be referred to a council of the empire with the prime ministers of the dominions taking a hand in the settlement. but to guarantee and seal its provisional and transitory character an extraordinary clause was added. until a permanent settlement was reached, the irish membership at westminster was to remain at its original number of . the document embodying these conclusions was accepted in identical terms by each side, and each party of negotiators set out for ireland to endeavour to secure acceptance of it. but before he left london sir edward carson asked for an interpretation of the terms. did the agreement mean that none of the six excluded counties could be brought under a dublin parliament without an act of parliament? in other words, was the exclusion permanent until parliament should otherwise determine? he was answered that the prime minister accepted this interpretation, and would be prepared to say so when the matter came before parliament. knowledge of these communications was not conveyed to redmond. redmond's interpretation was that at the termination of the war this arrangement lapsed, and the home rule act, which was the law of the land, came into force. if ulster, or any part of it, were to be excluded, it must be by a new amending act. had the assurance given to sir edward carson been conveyed to redmond, either the negotiations must have been resumed or they must have been rendered abortive. on june th the ulster council accepted the terms, no doubt with great reluctance. the signatories to the covenant in the three western counties felt themselves betrayed. the whole body found itself committed to acceptance of home rule in principle for twenty-six counties. but the war necessity was pressed upon them and they submitted. the nationalist convention met ten days later in belfast. mr. devlin had been strenuous in his exertions throughout the province, but the whole force of the ecclesiastical power was thrown against him. apart from the detestation of partition, the catholic church conceived that the principle of denominational education would be lost in the severed counties, where the dominant presbyterian element was opposed to it. very many delegates came to the convention pledged in advance to resist the proposals: and the general anticipation was that redmond would be thrown over. the proceedings were secret. but in the result the nationalists of the north refused to be any party to denying the rest of ireland self-government. a division was taken, and consent to temporary exclusion was carried by a large majority. the victory was in the main due to mr. devlin's extraordinary personal gifts, exercised to carry a conclusion which inevitably must injure himself where he was most sensitive to a wound, in the hearts of those among whom he was born and bred. it must have been in the weeks immediately after this that redmond spoke to me, as i never heard him speak of any other man, his mind about mr. devlin. "joe's loyalty in all this business has been beyond words," he said. "i know what it has cost him to do as he has done." he knew well that the younger man's influence had been more efficacious than the threat of his own resignation--which was not withheld. a man of other nature might have been jealous of the young and growing power: but such an element as this was so foreign to redmond's whole being that even the thought of it never entered the most suspicious mind. the result of the belfast convention was communicated and discussed at a meeting of the irish party held at the mansion house on june th. it was one of the most hopeful moments in our experience; reaction from a depression approaching to despair gave confidence to the gloomiest among us. hope was in the air. the effect of mr. asquith's sentence upon the whole machinery of dublin castle had not yet worn off. no new government had been installed: the chief secretaryship remained vacant, the lord-lieutenant also had retired from his office. it seemed a certainty that we should enter, under whatever auguries, into the realization of a self-governing ireland. even those who were most enthusiastic for the birth of a new and glorious era that was to date from the stirring action of the rebels, and who were most open-mouthed in condemnation of redmond's futile efforts, in practice shared our view. i asked one such man how he counted on securing the necessary first step of establishing an irish government. "oh, i suppose," was his answer, "the irish party will manage that somehow." but soon delay began to hang coldly on this temper of anticipation, and to delay were added disquieting utterances. on june th lord lansdowne announced in the house of lords that the "consultations" which had been taking place were "certainly authorized" by the government but were not binding upon it; and that he, speaking for the unionist wing of the cabinet, had not accepted the proposals. this was disturbing. lord selborne had retired from the government before the negotiators went to ireland, because he knew of the proposals and was not prepared to sanction them. we assumed that other unionists who shared this view would have followed him in his frank action. now we perceived that lord lansdowne and his friends had frugally husbanded their force. it was expected by many that ireland would do the work for them. failing that, they had still the last stab to deliver. but we counted upon one thing: that mr. lloyd george, if not mr. asquith, would feel himself committed to see the deal through--and that his resignation would have to be faced as a part of the consequences if attempts were made to go back on the bargain. parliament reassembled and still nothing was said and nothing done: but the press was full of rumours. on july th redmond asked that a date should be fixed for the introduction of the proposed bill, and next day he renewed his demand, urging that the constant delays and postponements were "seriously jeopardizing the chance of settlement." this was only too true. a furious agitation against the proposal of even temporary partition was raging through ireland. once more, the tide had been missed: time had been given to inculcate all manner of doubts and suspicions--and once more the suspicions proved to be only too well justified. the whole story was revealed to the house on july th. redmond, in his speech, emphasized it that the proposals had come not from the nationalists, but from the government; they had, however, been accepted, after considerable negotiation and many changes in substance, as a plan which nationalists could recommend for acceptance. nationalists had been pressed to use the utmost despatch, had been told that every hour counted and that it was essential in the highest imperial interests, if ireland endorsed the agreement, that it should be put into operation at once. "that is two long months ago," he said. action had been taken; the unpopularity of the proposals, fully foreseen, had been faced, on a clear understanding. "the agreement was in the words of the prime minister himself, for what he called a provisional settlement which should last until the war was over, or until a final and permanent settlement was arrived at within a limited period after the war. this was the chief factor of this plan, and without it not one of my colleagues or myself would for a moment have considered it, much less have submitted it to our followers." the retention of irish members at westminster in full strength was covenanted for "as an indispensable safeguard of the temporary character of the whole arrangement." it was on this construction of the agreement that consent to it had been secured, in the face of very strong and organized opposition: and consent was secured to it as a final document. nevertheless, when redmond arrived in london he had been at once confronted with a demand for modifications--of which the first were unimportant. yet to consent to any alteration was a sacrifice of principle; but he was told that this concession would secure agreement in the cabinet. later, however, came a public statement from lord lansdowne that "permanent and enduring" structural alterations would be introduced into the home rule act. redmond had seen the draft bill in which the government's draftsmen embodied the terms of the agreement, and he had accepted this, as conforming to his covenant. in reply to lord lansdowne, he had pressed for the production of this bill, but could not get it. the end was that, after a cabinet held on july th, he was told that "a number of new proposals had been brought forward"; that the cabinet did not desire to consult him about these at all; and on the nd mr. lloyd george and mr. herbert samuel were instructed to convey to him the cabinet's decision, with an intimation that there would be no further discussion or consultation. that decision was to make the exclusion of six counties permanent, and to withdraw the provision for retaining irish members at full strength during the transitory period. redmond attacked no individual. his anger was beyond words. he said this, however: "some tragic fatality seems to dog the footsteps of this government in all their dealings with ireland. every step taken by them since the coalition was formed, and especially since the unfortunate outbreak in dublin, has been lamentable. they have disregarded every advice we tendered to them, and now in the end, having got us to induce our people to make a tremendous sacrifice and to agree to the temporary exclusion of these ulster counties, they throw this agreement to the winds, and they have taken the surest means to accentuate every possible danger and difficulty in the irish situation." that day really finished the constitutional party and overthrew redmond's power. we had incurred the very great odium of accepting even temporary partition--and a partition which, owing to this arbitrary extension of area, could not be justified on any ground of principle; we had involved with us many men who voted for that acceptance on the faith of redmond's assurance that the government were bound by their written word; and now we were thrown over. apart from the effect on redmond's position, the result was to engender in ireland a temper which made settlement almost impossible. no british minister's word would in future be accepted for anything; and any irishman who attempted to improve relations between the countries was certain to arouse anger and contempt in his countrymen. more particularly the relations between irish members and the most powerful members of the government were hopelessly embittered. mr. lloyd george put aside completely--probably he never for a moment entertained--the thought of seriously threatening resignation because his agreement with the irish was repudiated by his colleagues. he was entirely engrossed with the work of the war office, where he thought, and was justified in thinking, himself indispensable. mr. asquith, whose object was to keep unity in his government at all costs, when it came to a choice whether to quarrel with the irish who formed no part of it, or with the unionists who were his colleagues, had no hesitation which side to throw over. i have never seen the house of commons so thoroughly discontented and disgusted. there was much genuine sympathy with redmond. sir edward carson evidently shared it, and he made a conciliatory speech in which he proposed that he and the nationalist leader should shake hands on the floor of the house. that is a gesture which comes better from the loser than from the winner, and there was no doubt that sir edward carson had won. but he knew ireland well enough to realize the meaning of his victory, and his speech indicated disquiet and even horror at the prospect before us. he was quite avowedly anxious to see a start made with home rule, ulster standing apart. in a later debate, when the government announced its intention to fill again the vacant irish offices (appointing mr. duke as chief secretary), redmond referred hopefully to this utterance of the ulster leader and generally to "the new and improved atmosphere which has surrounded this irish question quite recently." the end of this speech dealt with one of the elements which had contributed most to the improvement. in the great battle of the somme, which opened on july st, the ulster division went for the first time into general action, and their achievement was the most glorious and the most unlucky of that day. they carried their assault through five lines of trenches, and, because a division on their flank was not equally successful, were obliged to fall back, adding terribly in this withdrawal to the desperate losses of their advance. side by side with them on the other flank was the fourth division, containing two battalions of dublin fusiliers, in one of which john redmond's son commanded a company; so that he and the ulstermen went over shoulder to shoulder. he came back unwounded; all other company commanders in the battalion were killed. the only thing in which redmond was entirely fortunate during these last years of his life was in his son's record during the war. another nationalist well known to the house of commons served also in the dublin fusiliers on the somme, with a different fortune. professor kettle, owing to conditions of health, had been unable to come to france with the sixteenth division, and had been mainly employed in recruiting. now in these summer months he pushed hard to get out to france, though he was not physically fit for the line. he got to france, and, as was easy to foresee, broke down and was sent to work at the base on records: but before he left his regiment he knew that it was under orders for a general action, and he insisted that he should have leave to rejoin for that day. he came back accordingly, found himself called on to take command of a company, and led it with great gallantry, and on the second day of action was shot dead. it was the fate that he expected; he, like so many, had a forerunning assurance of his end. so was lost to ireland the most variously-gifted intelligence that i have ever known. the sixteenth division were still on the sector about loos, and their casualties were heavy and continuous in the perpetual trench warfare. with the last days of august they were withdrawn--for a rest, as they believed at first; but their march was southwards to the somme. the purpose was to use them for an attack on ginchy; but a shift of arrangements brought the th brigade into line against guillemont and its quarries, which had on six occasions been unsuccessfully attacked. the irish carried them. three days later the whole division was launched against ginchy. they equalled the ulstermen's valour, and were luckier in the result. for these achievements praise was not stinted. colonel repington in _the times_ described the irish as the "best missile troops" in all the armies. iii the deeds of irish soldiers helped us greatly outside of ireland; in ireland, the news was received with mingled feelings. there was passionate resentment against the government, and the question was asked, for what were their men dying? redmond's answer could not be so confident as it would have been six months earlier. there were many who said that he dare not face the country. his answer to this was given at waterford, where on october , , his constituents received him with their old loyalty--though now for the first time there were hostile voices in the crowd. he spoke out very plainly, saying with justice that in all his life he had never played to the gallery and would not now. things had to be looked at squarely. "we have taken a leap back over generations of progress, and have actually had a rebellion, with its inevitable aftermath of brutalities, stupidities and inflamed passions." he would impugn no man's motives, least of all the motives of the dead; but those who had set this train of events in motion had been always the enemies of the constitutional movement. the constitutional movement must go on, he said; but it would be folly to pretend that it could go on as if nothing had happened. ireland must face its share in the responsibility. but the real responsibility rested with the british government. to establish this he entered on a review of the whole series of circumstances, not omitting ulster's preparations for civil war, and stressing heavily the mischief that was done when sir edward carson was chosen "by strange irony" to be the first law officer of the crown. passing from his review, he issued grave warning against the idea of conscription: it would be resisted in every village and its attempted enforcement would be a scandal which would ring through the world. for ireland also he had admonition. he had told them before that home rule was an impregnable position. but "no fortress is impregnable unless the garrison is faithful and united." this, alas! was already a counsel of perfection for a country so deeply divided in opinion as nationalist ireland had come to be. the old loyalties had gone--and he felt it. ending on a personal note, he referred to his age: he was over sixty; he had done thirty-five years of work which would have broken down any man less robust in constitution than it had been his luck to be born. he believed in youth, he said, and would gladly give way to younger men. "but one thing i will not do while i have breath in my body. i will not give way to the abuse and calumny and the falsehoods of men whom i have known for long years as the treacherous enemies of ireland." with all his reticence, he was a sensitive man; and for months now he could scarcely take up a newspaper, except his party's official organ, without finding himself accused of imbecility, of idle vanity, of corrupt bargaining, of every unworthy motive. worse than all, he realized the inherent weakness of his position. he told his hearers at waterford that the irish party would not vary its attitude upon the war, but that we should now become a regular and active opposition. he was far too experienced not to be aware that during a war--and such a war--he neither could nor would offer to the government in power opposition in the sense in which nationalist ireland would understand the word. but he took steps at once for raising the irish question by a direct vote of censure. on october th he moved: "that the system of government at present maintained in ireland is inconsistent with the principles for which the allies are fighting in europe, and has been mainly responsible for the recent unhappy events and for the present state of feeling in that country." his speech avoided all controversial reference to what had preceded the war, but it reviewed with great power the long series of blunders, beginning with the delay in putting the home rule bill on the statute book, and ending with the cabinet's destruction of the agreement entered into in june. now, as the end of all, dublin castle, after the prime minister's description of its hopeless breakdown, was set up again with a unionist chief secretary and a unionist attorney-general: with a universal system of martial law in force throughout the country, and with hundreds of interned men in prison on suspicion. he warned the government of the inevitable effect upon the flow of recruits for the irish divisions; and in a passage which showed how close his attention was to all this matter of recruitment, he pressed the war office for certain minor concessions to irish sentiment which would help us to maintain the division that had so greatly distinguished itself at guillemont and ginchy. but the real pith of his speech was political in the larger sense. he pressed upon the house the injury which england's interest was suffering through the alienation of american opinion, and through the reflection of irish discontent in australia; he pleaded for the withdrawal of martial law. nothing came of the debate, except a speech in which mr. lloyd george admitted the "stupidities, which sometimes almost look like malignancy," that were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in ireland. the labour men and a few liberals voted for our motion. but as a menace to the government it was negligible. i was in france during the period of intrigue which followed, leading up to the displacement of mr. asquith. when the change occurred, members of parliament who were serving were recalled by special summons. i found redmond in these days profoundly impressed with the strength of mr. lloyd george's personal position. he was convinced that the new premier could, if he chose, force a settlement of the irish difficulty, and was very hopeful of this happening. sir edward carson dared not, he thought, set himself in opposition; at this moment the ulster party was not popular, while there was in the house a widespread feeling that redmond in particular had been treated in a manner far other than his due. another of his brother's interventions in debate gave an impetus to this sympathy. again in a thin house, during some discussion on estimates, willie redmond got up and spoke out of the fullness of experiences which had profoundly affected his imagination. he told the house of what he had seen in flanders, where the two irish divisions had at last been brought into contact, so that the left of the ulster line in front of ploegstreet touched the right of ours in front of kemmel. it had always been said that the two factions would fly at each other's throats: by a score of happy detailed touches the soldier built up a picture of what had actually happened in the line and behind the line, and then summed it up in a conclusion: "they came together in the trenches and they were friends. get them together on the floor of an assembly, or where you will, in ireland, and a similar result will follow." then, from this theme, he passed to one even more moving--the fate of irish nationalists, who were confronted daily with evil news of their own land. "it is miserable to see men who went out with high hearts and hopes, who have acquitted themselves so well, filled with wretchedness because their country is in an unhappy condition." he appealed for a new and genuine attempt to set all this right; and he eulogized once more with warm eloquence the conduct of the troops, ulstermen and the rest alike. raw lads, who eighteen months before had never thought of seeing war, had come in before his eyes bringing prisoners by the hundreds from the most highly trained soldiery in europe. man after man, when willie redmond had ended, rose and thanked him; but the most notable words came from mr. bonar law: "his name and his action, in connection with that of the leader of his party, stand out as a landmark for all the people of this country as to what is being done by those who represent nationalist feeling." all this increased redmond's hopes of what might be expected from the new premier, the representative of another small nationality, whose early days in parliament had linked him almost more closely with irish nationalists than with british liberalism. i was on the upper bench when mr. lloyd george came in, amid loud cheering. "look at him," said willie redmond (his senior in the house by ten years), who sat beside me: "it seems only the other day he was sitting over here cheering like mad for the boers; and there he is now, prime minister." but mr. lloyd george's speech, which had been deferred for several days owing to illness, was long before it came to ireland, and then its tone was no way hopeful. he referred back to the negotiations of june and july, with their "atmosphere of nervous suspicion and distrust, pervasive, universal, of everything and everybody." "i was drenched with suspicion of irishmen by englishmen and of englishmen by irishmen and, worst of all, of irishmen by irishmen. it was a quagmire of distrust which clogged the footsteps and made progress impossible. that is the real enemy of ireland." no one could say that the transaction to which mr. lloyd george was referring had helped to destroy distrust: and in view of the opinion held by irishmen--and not by irishmen only--of ministers' dealing with ireland, it was natural that this passage should provoke the resentment which was evident in redmond when he rose. he followed mr. asquith, and made it clear that ireland did not keep its praises for the rising star. he commended in weighty words the patriotism, the reticence and the magnanimity of the dispossessed leader; he renewed ireland's expression of gratitude for the service done in the home rule act; then, turning to the new power, he told mr. lloyd george bluntly that his words would be received in ireland with the deepest disappointment. this was to be a ministry of quick and effective decisions; but so far as our question was concerned, they had shown every disposition to wait and see. was ireland only to be let drift? two courses might be taken--the statesman's, of real remedy; the politician's, of palliatives. even of the latter nothing had been said. martial law could be removed; untried men could be released from jail. yet there was no sign. the prime minister intervened angrily. he had been ill, he said. redmond was in no way inclined to accept the reason as sufficient, and again mr. lloyd george rose to say that it was "not merely unfair, but a trifle impolitic" not to give him a couple of days to consult with the chief secretary. still redmond maintained his tone of aggression. a radical reform was needed, and of those things that must be borne in mind the first was that time was of the essence of success. promptness was essential. secondly, government must take the initiative themselves; they must not seek to evade their responsibility by putting the blame on other shoulders (this was his rejoinder to the allegation of paralysing distrust); there was no use in resuming negotiations, going to this man and to that man to see what he would be willing to take. thirdly, the problem must be approached by a different method; it must be dealt with on lines of a united ireland. the time had gone by, in effect, for any proposals of partition, temporary or permanent. he added a caution that there must be no attempt to mix up the problem of an irish settlement with conditions about recruiting or conscription. "that question must be left to a change of heart in ireland." in conclusion he expressed to the house of commons--though in no sanguine accents--what he had expressed to me a fortnight earlier in private talk: his belief that the time was "ripe for drastic, decided and bold action" by the prime minister. powerful influences were at mr. lloyd george's back--in the press of all parties, in the opinion of leading men of all parties. three-quarters of the house of commons, redmond said, would welcome such action: the whole of the overseas dominions would be for it; and it would have "the sympathy of all men of good will in the empire." for the first time i noticed lack of cordiality in the response of the house--not from want of agreement, but from a profound depression. the old temper of bickering had revived, especially between some of our party and those who disagreed with them. one was glad to get back to france for christmas, even in that grim winter. when i was invalided back in february, i found that things had not stood still in ireland. redmond's suggested palliative had been applied, and the deported persons were let back home for christmas. but this produced little easing of the situation, and within a few weeks government rearrested several of them. one, however, count plunkett, was still in ireland when a vacancy occurred in roscommon. he was not in himself a likely man to appeal to that constituency. he had been an applicant for the under-secretaryship at dublin castle, and was therefore clearly not a person of extreme nationalist views. but one of his sons, a young poet, had been among the signatories to the proclamation of an irish republic, and had paid for it with his life; count plunkett stood really as the father of his son. he was returned by a very large majority. this was the first open defeat inflicted by the physical force men on the constitutional party since the beginning of parnell's day. in march, redmond desired to bring the irish question again before parliament, and mr. t.p. o'connor introduced a motion calling on the house "without further delay to confer upon ireland the free institutions long promised her." that debate will always be remembered by those who heard it for one speech. willie redmond was among the oldest members of the parliamentary party; not half a dozen men in all the house had been longer continuously members; he had always been one of the most popular figures at westminster and in ireland; and he had always spoken a great deal. yet he had never been in the front rank either as a speaker or as a politician. the humour and the wit which made him the joy of groups in the smoking-room on the occasions when he was in full vein of reminiscence never got into his set speeches--though no man oftener lit up debate with some telling interruption. he was often merely rhetorical; he had the name--though in my experience he never deserved it--for being indiscreetly vehement. his early reputation, which he had never lived down, is not unkindly represented by a story which he used to tell against himself. when the first home rule bill was introduced he had a great desire to speak in the debate, and went to parnell with his request. "will you promise," said parnell, "that you will write out what you are going to say, and show it to me, and say that and no more?" he promised, and handed in his manuscript. days went by and he heard nothing, so he went back to the chief. "ah yes," said parnell, "i have it in my pocket. an excellent speech, my dear willie. if i were you i shouldn't waste it on the house of commons. it's too good for them." later, in the days from onwards, with all his experience, it cannot be said that he ever affected opinion in the house. what he said was the common stuff of argument: it was all what someone else might have said--until the war came. then, he was a changed creature. he went through in the army the same experience as hundreds of other members of parliament; but he and he only seemed to have got the very soul out of it. he took to his soldier's duty as a religion: he saw all that concerned him in the light of it. it has been told already how his two speeches on almost casual occasions affected public feeling: but in them he was chiefly an irish member of parliament speaking about soldiers and about irish soldiers. in this debate he was an irish soldier pleading with parliament for ireland in the name of irish soldiers--who had responded to the call to arms because, as he said, they were led to believe that a new and better and brighter chapter was about to open in the relations of great britain and ireland. "i do not believe that there is a single member of any party in this house who is prepared to get up and say that in the past the government and treatment of ireland by great britain have been what they should have been. mistakes, dark, black, and bitter mistakes, have been made. a people denied justice, a people with many admitted grievances, the redress of which has been long delayed. on our side, perhaps, in the conflict and in the bitterness of contest, there may have been things said and done, offensive if you will, irritating if you will, to the people of this country; but what i want to ask, in all simplicity, is this, whether, in face of the tremendous conflict which is now raging, whether, in view of the fact that, apart from every other consideration, the irish people, south as well as north, are upon the side of the allies and against the german pretension to-day, it is not possible from this war to make a new start?--whether it is not possible on your side, and on ours as well, to let the dead past bury its dead, and to commence a brighter and a newer and a friendlier era between the two countries? why cannot we do it? is there an englishman representing any party who does not yearn for a better future between ireland and great britain? there is no irishman who is not anxious for it also. why cannot there be a settlement? why must it be that, when british soldiers and irish soldiers are suffering and dying side by side, this eternal old quarrel should go on?.... "if there ought to be an oblivion of the past between great britain and ireland generally, may i ask in god's name the first lord of the admiralty [sir edward carson] why there cannot be a similar oblivion of the past between the warring sections in ireland? all my life i have taken as strong and as strenuous a part on the nationalist side as my poor abilities would allow. i may have been as bitter and as strong in the heated atmosphere of party contests against my countrymen in the north as ever they have been against me, but i believe in my soul and heart here to-day that i represent the instinct and the desire of the whole irish catholic race when i say that there is nothing that they more passionately desire and long for than that there should be an end of this old struggle between the north and the south. "the followers of the right honourable gentleman the first lord of the admiralty should shake hands with the rest of their countrymen. i appeal to the right honourable gentleman here in the name of men against whom no finger of scorn can be pointed; in the name of men who are doing their duty; in the name of men who have died; in the name of men who may die, and who at this very moment may be dying, to rise to the demands of the situation. i ask him to meet his nationalist fellow-countrymen and accept the offer which they make to him and his followers, and on the basis of that self-government which has made, and which alone has made, the empire as strong as it is to-day, come to some arrangement for the better government of ireland in the future. "why does the right honourable gentleman opposite not meet us half way? i want to know what is the reason. it surely cannot be that the right honourable gentleman and his friends believe that under a system of self-government they would have anything to fear. nothing impressed me more than the opinion i heard expressed by a high-placed roman catholic officer who is in service with the ulster division, when he told me of his experience there, and when he said that although he was the only one of the catholic religion in that division, it had dawned upon him that they certainly were irishmen and were not englishmen or scotsmen.[ ] the right honourable gentleman knows perfectly well that it would not take so very much to bring his friends and our friends together, and i ask him why the attempt is not made? i ask him whether the circumstances of the time do not warrant that such an attempt should be made? i ask him whether he does not know in his inmost heart that it would bring to the common enemy more dismay and consternation than the destruction of a hundred of their submarines if they knew that england, scotland and ireland were really united, not merely within the confines of the shores of these islands, but united in every part of the world where the irish people are to be found? "what is it that stands in the way of ireland taking her place as a self-governing part of this empire? ireland is the only portion of the empire now fighting which is not self-governing. the australians whom i meet from time to time point to their government being free; the canadians and the new zealanders do the same, and we irishmen are the only units in france to-day taking our part in the war who are obliged to admit that the country we come from is denied those privileges which have made the empire the strong organization which it is to-day. if safeguards are necessary--i speak only for myself, and i do not speak for anybody else on these benches, because i have been away from this house so long that i have almost lost touch with things--as far as my own personal opinion goes, there is nothing i would not do, and there is no length to which i would not go, in order to meet the real objections or to secure the real confidence, friendship and affection of my countrymen in the north of ireland. "for my own part, i would gladly, if it would ease the situation, agree to an arrangement whereby it might be possible for his majesty the king, if he so desired, to call in someone at the starting of a new irish government, a gentleman representing the portion of the country and the section of the community which the first lord represents; and if a representative of that kind were placed with his hand upon the helm of the first irish parliament, i, at any rate, as far as i am concerned, would give him the loyal and the strong support which i have given to every leader i have supported in this house. after all, these are times of sacrifice, and every man is called upon to make some sacrifices. men and women and children alike have to do something in these days, and is it too much to appeal to the right honourable gentleman and his friends to sacrifice some part of their position in order to lead the majority of their countrymen and to bring about that which the whole english-speaking world desires, namely, a real reconciliation of ireland? i apologize for having detained the house so long, but this is a matter upon which i feel strongly, and i feel all the more strongly about it because i know that i am trying altogether too feebly, but as strongly as i can, to represent what i know to be the wishes nearest to the hearts of tens of thousands of irishmen who went with me and their colleagues to france, many of whom will never return, all of whom are suffering the privations and the hardship and the risk and the wellnigh intolerable circumstances of life in france. i want to speak for these men, and if they could all speak with one voice and with one accord, they would say to this house, to men in every part of it, to conservatives, liberals and labour men, to their nationalist countrymen and to their countrymen from the north of ireland: in the name of god, we here who are about to die, perhaps, ask you to do that which largely induced us to leave our homes; to do that which our fathers and mothers taught us to long for; to do that which is all we desire: make our country happy and contented, and enable us, when we meet the canadians and the australians and the new zealanders side by side in the common cause and the common field, to say to them, 'our country, just as yours, has self-government within the empire.'" i have given the speech almost in full as it stands in print after the opening paragraph. but i cannot give the effect of what was heard by a densely crowded house in absolute silence. it was not an argument; it was an appeal. there was not a cheer, not a murmur of agreement. they were not needed, they would have been felt an impertinence, so great was the respect and the sympathy. as the speaker stood there in war-stained khaki, his hair showed grey, his face was seamed with lines, but there was in every word the freshness and simplicity of a nature that age had not touched. in his usual place on the upper bench beside his brother, he poured out his words with the flow and passion of a bird's song. he was out of the sphere of argument; but the whole experience of a long and honourable lifetime was vibrant in that utterance. he spoke from his heart. all that had gone to make his faith, all the inmost convictions of his life were implicit--and throughout all ran the sense in the assembly who heard him, not only that he had risked, but that he was eager to give his life for proof. it was not strange that this should be so, for he was going on what he believed would be his last journey to france; and when he reached the supreme moment of his passion with the words "in the name of god, we here who are about to die, perhaps," the last word was little more than a concession to the conventions. it was a speech, in short, that made one believe in impossibilities; but in parliament no miracles happen. mr. lloyd george replied, as john redmond expected--declaring that the government were willing to give home rule at once to "the parts of ireland which unmistakably demand it," but would be no party to placing under nationalist rule people who were "as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook from the rest of ireland as the inhabitants of fife or aberdeen." no liberal minister had ever before so completely adopted the ulster theory of two nations. taxed with the refusal to allow ulster counties to declare by vote which group they belonged to, he declined to discuss "geographical limitations" at present, but indicated that if irish members could accept the principle of separate treatment for two peoples, there were "ways and means by which it could be worked out." suggestion of a conference of irishmen was thrown out, or of a commission to discuss the details of partition. redmond, in replying, answered to this that "after experience of the last negotiations he would enter into no more negotiations." he warned the government that the whole constitutional movement was in danger. there were in ireland "serious men, men of ability, men with command of money," who were bent on smashing it. "after fifty years of labour on constitutional lines we had practically banished the revolutionary party from ireland. now again, after fifty years, it has risen." the rest was a prophecy only too accurate: "if the constitutional movement disappears, the prime minister will find himself face to face with a revolutionary movement, and he will find it impossible to preserve any of the forms even of constitutionalism. he will have to govern ireland by the naked sword. i cannot picture to myself a condition of things in which the prime minister, with his record behind him, would be an instrument to carry out a government of that kind.... i say this plainly. no british statesman, no matter what his platonic affection for home rule may have been in the past, no matter what party he may belong to, who by his conduct once again teaches the irish people the lesson that any national leader who, taking his political life in his hands, endeavours to combine local and imperial patriotism--endeavours to combine loyalty to ireland's rights with loyalty to the empire--anyone who again teaches the lesson that such an one is certain to be let down and betrayed by this course, is guilty of treason, not only to the liberties of ireland but to the unity and strength and best interests of this empire." after these bitter words he called on his colleagues not "to continue a useless and humiliating debate," but to withdraw from the house: and we accordingly followed him into the lobby. in our absence the discussion continued, in a tone not flattering to the government. it was remarkable for one utterance from mr. healy, concerning redmond: "i wish to say at the outset that in my opinion this empire owes him a debt of gratitude which it can never repay, and i wish also to say of him as an opponent that in my opinion, if his advice had been taken by the war office, it is absolutely true, as he contends, that you would have marshalled in ireland from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand men, from whom large drafts could have been drawn; and i will further say i believe if his advice had been taken the elements of rebellion would have been appeased." it was plain that matters could not stay at this point; but our breach with the government was complete for the moment. redmond's demand was for a full and definite statement of policy, which should be made in the house of commons and there discussed. on may th mr. bonar law announced that the prime minister would make a communication to the leaders of irish parties. it was explained that this method of outlining the proposals would be only preliminary to discussion. on that evening a great banquet to general smuts was given in the house of lords by parliament. strong pressure was used with redmond to attend it, and he consented unwillingly. he was ill--physically ill, probably with the beginnings of his fatal disease--and morally sick at heart and out of hope. another irish election in south longford had been strenuously fought by the party and had been won by the sinn feiner; a decisive factor in the election was the issue of a letter from archbishop walsh which grossly misrepresented redmond's whole policy and action. he was in no humour for banquetings, and at this moment the irish party was nearly back at its old attitude, which dictated a refusal to have part or lot with the house on such ceremonial occasions.[ ] but redmond's feeling for south africa was specially strong, his feeling about the war was unchanged; and this was a recognition of a great south african statesman's services in the war. he let himself be persuaded into accepting. at the dinner he sat next to a liberal peer, a member of the late government, who talked with him of irish possibilities. redmond did not know what the government intended. he was told, now, that the government had written a letter to him and to sir edward carson setting out plainly an offer for the immediate introduction of home rule with the exclusion of the six counties. redmond said: "it is impossible that we should accept; nothing can come of it." he was asked then what hope he saw. he answered, as he had for some time been saying in private, that the only chance lay in a conference or convention of irishmen; but it must include everybody, and in no sense be limited to discussion between the irish party and the unionists. the liberal peer expressed great interest and proved it in action. next morning he was with redmond by ten o'clock, and got his view in writing that it might be placed before the cabinet, who were to meet at eleven to decide finally the terms of their letter. as a result of this intervention, the letter, instead of containing a single proposal, offered two alternatives: the second was so oddly tacked on that many at the time said it read like a postscript. so, in point of fact, it was. that was the genesis of the irish convention. his son, from whom i know this, said to me that more than once, when things were hopeful in the convention, redmond said to him, "what a lucky thing it was i went to that dinner!" footnotes: [footnote : the admiralty do not appear to have communicated their information to dublin castle.] [footnote : this might mislead. the exclusively protestant character of the ulster division was not maintained in france, and it came to include many catholic irishmen in the rank and file and not a few among the officers--all in equal comradeship.--s.g.] [footnote : we had never been parties, for instance, to receptions of prime ministers from the overseas dominions, even when they were our close friends and supporters.] chapter viii the convention and the end i the longford election had in reality been not merely a symptom, but an event of great importance. it was a notice of dismissal to the parliamentary party. there was no reason to suppose anything specially unfavourable to us in the local conditions. neither candidate made a special appeal to the electors; nor was the constituency in any sense a stronghold of sinn fein. the fact was that the country as a whole had ceased to believe in the parliamentary party as an efficient machine for obtaining the national ends. the organization of the united irish league had lost touch with the young; the main support we had lay in the ancient order of hibernians, which many nationalists disliked on principle because it was limited to catholics. what had riot yet disappeared up till july , though it was threatened, was belief in the principle of constitutional action as against revolutionary methods. willie redmond, who never lacked instinct, and whose separation from party politics by conditions of service gave him a vantage-ground of detachment, reached a shrewd view of the position before the longford vacancy occurred. he pressed upon his brother that we should all retire, saying plainly that we had been too long in possession, and should hand over the task of representing ireland at westminster to younger men. his association with the volunteer committee, brief though it was, had made him more aware than most of our colleagues how wide was the estrangement between us and the new ireland; but it also taught him to believe that many of the men whom he had met there would be willing to take up the task on constitutional lines. this proposal never came before the party. but after longford had given its decision, it was proposed that we should accept the verdict in general and resign in a body. those who put forward the suggestion felt that some drastic action was needed to force upon ireland the responsibility for a clear choice between the two courses, constitutional and unconstitutional. redmond, as chairman, advised strongly against this. he said that it would be a lack of courage: that one defeat or two defeats should not turn us from our course. but it is clear to me that he welcomed the convention as another and a better means of effecting the same end--of replacing the existing parliamentary party by another body of men. on may st mr. lloyd george's speech gave the go-by completely to the detailed proposal for a settlement on the basis of partition to which the cabinet--including sir edward carson--had consented. it dealt only with the alternative plan suggested in the conclusion of the published letter. the government had decided to invite irishmen to put forward their own proposals for the government of their country, he said. this invitation was directed to a convention not merely of political parties, although they must all be represented--the followers of redmond, of mr. o'brien, the ulster unionists, the southern unionists, "and he hoped also the sinn feiners as well." but in the main it was to consist of "representatives of the local governing bodies, of the churches, of the trade unions, of the commercial interests, of educational interests"; it was to be "a real representation of irish life and activity in all their leading branches." it was to be pledged in advance to no conclusions--except one, and that was only indicated by implication. "if substantial agreement should be reached as to the character and scope of the constitution for the future government of ireland within the empire" (these three words were the limitation), government would "accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable the imperial parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of the convention." a recommendation was added, amounting to a direction, that the convention should sit with closed doors and publish nothing of its proceedings till their conclusion. nothing was said to define the all-important words "substantial agreement." but the prime minister laid grave emphasis on the importance of a settlement for the purpose of the war. the limitation upon ulster's claim was plainly conceived by him to lie in ulster's sense of an imperial necessity. "the empire cannot afford uncured sores that sap its vigour. the entire strength of great britain and the whole-hearted support of ireland are essential to victory." he appealed "to irishmen of all faiths, political and religious, and especially to the patriotic spirit of ulster, to help by healing." redmond, in following him, assumed that there would be concurrence from all sections of irishmen. it must be "a free assembly"--no proposal must be barred in advance: it must be representative of "every class, creed and interest"--and in recapitulating these, he added the irish peers. in regard to political parties and bodies, as such, he desired a very limited representation. the united irish league, "the militant official organization of the irish party," should be unrepresented, and he advised the same in regard to other purely political organizations and societies. for the irish party itself he asked a representation only equal in number to that given to irish unionists. the cork independents must have what they considered a full and adequate number; and for sinn fein he asked "a generous representation." then he added: "so anxious am i that no wreckers, mere wreckers, should go on that body--i do not believe any men would go on as wreckers, but any men who would be regarded by their opponents as going on it as wreckers--that on the question of personalities, i would be very glad, if there are protagonists on one side or the other who during the last twenty or thirty years or more have been engaged in the struggle and who--there have been faults on both sides--have done things and said things which have left bitter memories, i should be very glad that such men should be left off. if there were any feeling that i am such a man myself, i would be only too willing and happy to stand down" (he was interrupted by cries of "no, no") "if by doing so i could promote harmony." in this there was a genuine expression of the desire which governed his whole conduct in the convention, to get away from the old lines with their old traditional antagonisms, and refer the solution not to irish politicians but to ireland as a whole. what followed in his speech gave positive development to the self-denying ordinance which he had proposed for the party machines. he asked for a nominated element--first, to make sure that men obviously suitable, who none the less might not happen to be elected, should find a place: and secondly, to increase still further the unionist representation. he added once more a plea for quick action; dilatoriness had had much to do, he said, with the government's late failures in ireland. but, if prompt steps were taken on the path outlined, he would, in spite of all that had come and gone, face the new venture with good heart. yet even in his confidence there was the pathetic accent of one who feels need to bid defiance to despair. "although i know i lay myself open perhaps to ridicule as too sanguine a prophet, i have some assured hope that the result may be blessed for ireland as for the empire. ... the life of a politician, especially of an irish politician, is one long series of postponements and compromises and disappointments and disillusions.... many of our cherished ideals, our ideals of complete, speedy and almost immediate triumph of our policy and of our cause, have faded, some of them almost disappeared. and we know that it is a serious consideration for those of us who have spent forty years at this work and now are growing old, if we have to face further postponements. for my part, i feel we must not shrink from compromise. if by this convention which is now proposed we can secure substantial agreement amongst our people in ireland, it will be worth all the heartburnings and postponements and disappointments and disillusions of the last thirty or forty years." the omens were not favourable to this storm-beaten courage. when he sat down, sir john lonsdale rose to reiterate on behalf of the ulster unionists that they "could not and would not be driven into a home rule parliament"--and that they relied absolutely on the pledges that they should not be coerced. mr. william o'brien followed. after years of advocating settlement by conference among irishmen, he condemned this proposal as coming six or seven years too late, and as defective in its machinery, in that it proposed a large body of men: "a dozen irishmen of the right stamp" would be the proper conference; and the proposal of partition should be barred out in advance. if the experiment were tried now and failed, the failure would "kill any reasonable hope in our time of reconstructing the constitutional movement upon honest lines." ireland is always fruitful in cassandras who do not lack power to assist in the fulfilment, of their ill-bodings, and this speech foreshadowed mr. o'brien's intention to abstain. sir edward carson and mr. devlin gave the debate a more promising tone: but it was difficult for anybody to be sanguine. preparation, discussion, went on in private and in public. it was soon indicated that sinn fein would take no part, on the double ground, first, that the convention was not elective in any democratic sense, for all the representatives of local bodies had been elected before the war, before the rebellion, before the new movement took hold in ireland; and secondly, that it was committed in advance to a settlement within the empire. on the other hand, redmond was flooded with correspondence concerning candidates for membership of the new body. there was also the question of a meeting-place. the royal college of surgeons offered its building with its theatre, possessing admirable facilities. but trinity college offered the regent house. the conveniences here were in all ways inferior; but trinity was the nearest place to the old parliament house; much more than that, it was the most historic institution in ireland. its political associations of the past and the present were strangely blended and redmond liked it none the less for that. he decided to press for acceptance of this offer. then across the current of all our thought came the news of the battle of messines. troops had been massing for some time on the sector of line which the irish divisions had now held since the previous october; and the day was plainly in sight which had been expected since spring, when they were to try and carry positions in front of which so much blood had been vainly shed. on june th, at the clearing of light, all was in readiness: the ulstermen and ours still in the centre of the attack from spanbroekmolen to wytschaete. just before the moment fixed, men could see clearly: in half a minute all was blotted out. the eighteen huge land-mines in whose shafts our second line had been so often billeted were now at last exploded and the sky was full of powdered earth, with god knows what other fragments. in that darkness the troops went over. for once staff-work and execution harmonized perfectly; the success was complete, and the sacrifice small. the irish raced for their positions, and no one could say who was first on the goal. news of the victory quickly reached london--great news for ireland. australians and new zealanders had their full share in it, but the shoulder to shoulder advance of the two irish divisions caught everyone's imagination: it was ireland's day. then came through the message that willie redmond had fallen. ever since his illness in the previous summer he had been taken away from his work as company commander; at his age--fifty-six--he was probably the oldest man in any capacity with the division. a post was found for him on general hickie's divisional staff which made him specially responsible for the comforts of the men, in trenches and out of trenches. in the battles on the somme he entreated hard to be let rejoin his battalion, but general hickie issued peremptory orders which did not allow him to pass the first dressing-station. here, indeed, he was under terrible shell fire and saw many of his comrades struck down; but he was not content. for this new battle he insisted that he must be in the actual advance. if he were refused leave, he said he would break all discipline and take it. he was permitted to be with the third attacking wave; but he slipped forward and joined the first, on the right, where the line touched the ulstermen. so it happened that when he fell, struck by two rifle bullets, the stretcher-bearers who helped him and carried him down to the dressing-station were those of an ulster regiment. he was brought back to the hospital in the convent at locre, familiar to all of us by many memories; for the nuns kept a restaurant for officers in the refectory, and he and i had dined there more than once with leading men of the ulster division. his wounds were not grave; but he had overtaxed himself, and in a few hours he succumbed to shock. it was the death that he had foreseen, that he had almost desired--a death that many might have envied him. he had said more than once since the rebellion that he thought he could best serve ireland by dying; and in the sequel, so deep was the impression left by his death that it seemed at times as if his thought had been true. yet one aspect of it was overlooked by many--the loss inflicted on his brother, the irish leader. it was not merely that redmond lost the sole near kinsman of his generation; he lost in him the closest of those comrades who had been allied with him in all the stages of his life's fight. the veterans of the old party had been vanishing rapidly from the scene; name succeeded name quickly on our death-roll. this death left redmond lonely, and sorely stricken in his affections. but it did more. it deprived him of a counsellor, and perhaps the only counsellor he had who temperamentally shared his own point of view. more especially now in the war, when the leader's wisdom in giving the lead which he had given began to be gravely questioned even by his own supporters, it was invaluable for him to have backing from one who had taken the war as part of his life's creed--who knew no hesitancies, no reserves in his conviction that the right course had been followed, for the right thing was to do the right. finally and chiefly, willie redmond was the only man who could break through his brother's constitutional reserve and could force him into discussion. in the months that were to come such a man was badly needed. the loss of him meant to john redmond a loss of personal efficiency. sorrow gave a strong grip to depression on a brooding mind which had always a proneness to melancholy, which was now linked with a sick body, and which lived among disappointments and grief and the sense of rancorous dislike in men who once thought it a privilege to cheer him on his passing. add to all this that redmond's one hope for ireland now lay in the convention, and that he collated with good reason on his soldier brother's influence there--as no man could fail to do who had seen the effect which his last speech produced upon the house of commons. no doubt, however, part of the service which willie redmond rendered to ireland in dying lay in the sympathy which he conciliated to his leader--in whom men saw, rightly, not only his nearest kinsman, but the representative of the principles for which the soldier-politician died. the sympathy was genuine and it was widespread; yet so reserved was john redmond that few, i think, guessed how deeply the blow had struck home. still less did they realize how much was meant by the bereavement which followed immediately. pat o'brien, who had been through all vicissitudes the faithful and devoted helper of his friend and leader, was suddenly prostrated by a stroke. he came down to the house again; he could not keep away from the place of his duty, where for a quarter of a century he had scarcely missed one division in a hundred, where he had kept watch for redmond like the most trusty sheep-dog; but death was written over him and it came in a few days. he was the one friend, i believe, whom redmond would have taken with him to aughavanagh after willie redmond's death. now, aughavanagh, which had been a place of rest, was a place of intense loneliness. yet to aughavanagh redmond had withdrawn himself, like a wounded creature; and from aughavanagh he came to dublin for pat o'brien's funeral in glasnevin. then, and then only in his lifetime people saw him publicly break down; he had to be led away from the grave. meanwhile, he was beset by ceaseless correspondence concerning the numbers and composition of the assembly to which the british government on his suggestion had decided to entrust so great a charge. but a startling political event indicated only too plainly how much belated that decision had been. directly the proposal for a convention had been disclosed, with its attempt to create a new atmosphere, it was put to the government that sinn fein could not be expected to take part in the convention while its leaders were in jail or under detention as suspects. this representation came from several quarters, and it was soon publicly pleaded by the nationalist party; but it was, to my knowledge, immediately put forward by english members of parliament, the prime mover being a unionist soldier, major j.w. hills, m.p. as usual, the advantage of prompt action was urged; and as visual, the concession was delayed till it had lost its grace and seemed to be extracted. sinn fein's opinion in all these days was hardening against the convention, which was represented as a mere trick to gain time and to conciliate american good will by an unreal offer. when the prisoners were released, a new personage immediately came into the public eye. it was certain that one of them would be nominated to contest the vacancy in east clare left by willie redmond's death; the choice fell on mr. de valera; and the world learnt that in these months while the imprisoned sinn feiners had been discussing their plans for the future--for the right of association as political prisoners had been conceded to them--this young man had been recognized by his fellows as the leading spirit. ireland as a whole knew nothing of him. he was the son of a southern american and a county limerick woman; scholarly, a keen gaelic leaguer, by profession a teacher of mathematics. in the rebellion he had held boland's bakery, a large building covering the approaches to dublin from kingstown by rail; he had been the last of the leaders to surrender, and had earned high opinions by his conduct in these operations. this was the sinn fein candidate for east clare--a county where "extreme" men had always been numerous. the view was expressed that he should have been opposed by one who took up the cause where willie redmond left it--by a soldier who was a strong nationalist and strongly identified with the parnellite tradition. it was decided that we should stand a better chance if constitutional nationalism were represented by a dublin lawyer with close personal ties to the constituency. how it would have gone had a soldier been put up, no man can say; but it could not have gone worse. mr. de valera won by a majority of five thousand. he was a stranger, but he stood for an ideal. the alternative ideal--which was john redmond's and willie redmond's--had never been put before the electors. the election was, rightly, taken as a repudiation of redmond's policy; but in it redmond's policy had gone undefended. the newly elected sinn fein leader was very prominent in these days, and a good deal of his eloquence was spent in ridicule of the convention. that body was certainly starting its task under the most unpromising auspices. ii the first meeting was fixed for july . on the evening before, redmond came up and there was an informal discussion between the nationalist members of parliament and the catholic bishops. there were four of each group. five members had been allowed to the party and as many to the ulstermen. redmond was not present at the meeting when selection was made, but he recommended a list, consisting in addition to himself of mr. dillon, mr. devlin, and mr. clancy, k.c.--the latter having been always his most trusted adviser in all points of draftsmanship and constitutional law. my name was added in the place which should have been his brother's, as representing irish troops. mr. dillon, however, thought it better not to serve, though redmond pressed him very strongly to do so. he considered he could best help the convention from outside its ranks. mr. o'brien and mr. healy had, on different grounds, come to the same conclusion, so that we lacked the assistance of three commanding personalities in irish life, though we were thereby freed from some dangers of personal friction. a vacant place was thus left in our five, and since the ulster party had decided to put in only two members of parliament, filling the other places with local men, it was thought well that we should take a similar representative, mr. harbison, who spoke for the county of tyrone. of the four representatives of the hierarchy, archbishop harty of cashel had always been a downright outspoken supporter of the parliamentary party. he had publicly denounced the rebellion both on civil and on moral grounds. but he had never been prominently concerned with political affairs as such; nor had the bishop of down and connor, dr. macrory, a man young for his office and not long in it. he had been chosen, no doubt, to guard the special interests of catholicism in the north-east corner. the others were of a very different stamp; no two in ireland had a better right to the name of statesmen. dr. o'donnell, the bishop of raphoe, had been for many years officially one of the treasurers of the united irish league. since the foundation of the congested districts board, he had been one of its members, and served on the dudley commission which inquired into these regions. his native donegal could show the traces of his influence in applying remedial measures to what was once its terrible poverty. dr. kelly, the bishop of ross, came from the extreme south of the same western coast-line; a keen student of finance and economics, he had been a member of the primrose committee on financial relations, and, before that, of lord george hamilton's commission on the poor law. his repute was great in his own order and outside his own order. in any assembly these two brains would have been distinguished. the question which was discussed among us chiefly on that evening concerned the choice of a chairman. government had originally proposed to nominate this all-important officer, but having failed to solve the interminable difficulties, had left it to the assembly. much trouble was anticipated by the public. on the whole, our conclusion pointed, but not decisively, to the choice which was eventually made. redmond swept aside peremptorily the suggestion of himself. next day we assembled--some ninety persons. the main bulk consisted of local representatives--thirty-one chairmen of county councils, one only having declined to serve. two of these, mr. o'dowd and mr. fitzgibbon, were members of our party. there were eight representatives of the urban councils, over and above the lord mayors of dublin, belfast and cork and the mayor of derry. labour had seven representatives, one of whom, mr. lundon, representing the agricultural labourers' union of the south, was an irish member of parliament. one was a railway operative from dublin; one a catholic trade-unionist leader from derry; the remaining four came from belfast. organized labour in dublin and the southern towns had endorsed sinn féin's attitude and declined to recognize the convention. the southern unionist group was led by lord midleton; with him were lords mayo and oranmore, representing the irish peers. the irish unionist alliance had sent mr. stewart, a great land-agent, and mr. andrew jameson (whose name, as someone said, was "a household word written in letters of gold throughout ireland"). the chambers of commerce had their representatives from dublin, belfast and cork. in the ulster group, mr. barrie, m.p., acted as leader, lord londonderry as secretary. of the rest, sir george clark, chairman of workman and clark's great shipbuilding yard, had been known to us in parliament. a scot by birth, with a life of thirty years spent in belfast, during which time he had seen his business grow from two hundred hands to ten thousand, he knew nothing of ireland but belfast, and had no trace of irish feeling. in this he stood alone; but unhappily no man carried more weight in belfast--with the possible exception of one whom few of us outside ulster knew before we came to that body. mr. alexander mcdowell was a solicitor by profession, the adviser of policy to all the business men of belfast. from the first day of our meeting he stood out by sheer weight of brain and personality. he was to some of us the surprise of that assembly, and made us realize how little part we had in ulster when the existence of such a man could be an unknown factor to us. mr. pollock, president of the belfast chamber of commerce, was also new to us, and was destined to play a prominent part in our affairs. with the catholic prelates sat the two archbishops of the church of ireland--dr. crozier and dr. bernard--to both of whom the democratic constitution of their church had given great experience in management of business and discussion. dr. macdermott, moderator of the presbyterian general assembly, was the official head of his church for the year only and had not equal knowledge of administration. an orator, with a touch of the enthusiast in his temperament, he was a simple and sympathetic figure; vehement in his political faith, yet responsive to all the human charities and deeply a lover of his country. there was no better representative there of ulster, of the ulster difficulty--at once so separate from and so akin to the rest of ireland. the government nominees included, as was only natural, the most personally distinguished group. first of them should be named the provost of trinity, dr. mahaffy, under whose aegis we assembled--a great scholar and a great irishman. he brought with him an element of independent unregimented political thought--often freakish in expression, but based on a vast knowledge of men and countries. in a more practical sense, lord macdonnell and lord dunraven were our chief political theorists, devisers by temperament of constitutional machinery. lord macdonnell's repute as an administrator, lord dunraven's as a leading figure in the land conference, gave weight to whatever came from them. lord granard, who sat with them, was a catholic peer who had commanded a battalion of the royal irish regiment in the tenth division and had held offices in mr. asquith's government. he had now the brilliant idea of reopening for the period of the convention one of the most beautiful eighteenth-century dwellings, ely house, and making it a centre of hospitality and a meeting-place for friendly outside intercourse. few more useful assistances were rendered to our purpose, and certainly none more pleasant. lord desart, a distinguished lawyer, acted closely with lord midleton. sir bertram windle, president of university college, was another of government's choices--a man of science who was also very much a man of affairs. another, far less of a debater, far more of a power, was mr. william martin murphy, chairman of the dublin tramways, a powerful employer of labour who had headed the fight against larkin in , and had been mainly responsible for the character of the employers' victory. he was the owner of the most widely circulated irish paper, the _irish independent_--which stood in journalism for what mr. healy represented in parliament--an envenomed nationalist opposition to the parliamentary party. mr. edward lysaght, the son of a great manufacturer in south wales, combined like his father an aptitude for literature and for business; he wrote books, he was concerned in a publishing venture, but he was chiefly interested in his farm in county clare--where he had voted for de valera. he had been chosen deliberately as a link with sinn fein. it stamped an aspect of the convention that he was the youngest man there--for he would not have been noticeably young in the house of commons. we were a middle-aged assembly. another link, though not so explicit, with republican ireland was mr. george russell, "a.e.," poet, writer on co-operative economics, a mystic, with all a mystic's shrewdness, an orator with much personal magnetism. lastly, there was sir horace plunkett, perhaps the only member of the convention except redmond whose name would have occurred to every irishman as indispensably necessary. two other personages should be noted. mr. walter macmurrough kavanagh, chairman of the carlow county council, was by tradition and training a strong unionist, by inheritance the representative of one of the old irish princely families. he had been elected to the vice-chairmanship of his county council while still a unionist; later, he adhered to lord dunraven's proposals of devolution, but finding no rest in a half-way house, came into full support of redmond and for some time was a member of our party; by temperament deeply conservative, he was in no way separated by that from many of the ablest nationalists, lay and ecclesiastic. as a speaker he had few equals in the convention; no man there, indeed, except redmond, could throw equal passion into the plea of urgency for a settlement, for i think no other man felt it with such earnestness. captain doran, chairman of the louth council, was on his way back to france when the summons to the convention stopped him. a methodist, he was divided by religion from his neighbours in county louth: but that did not stop them from putting this prosperous and capable farmer, working his land on the most modern methods, into the chair of their county council. before the war, when the larne gun-running took place, he decided that matters looked serious, called his friends together and formed a company of volunteers, who might be needed to protect themselves or to protect other nationalists across the adjacent ulster border. after the war had broken out and the home rule act was passed, and redmond had launched his appeal, this country farmer, then aged fifty, made his way to mallow and asked general parsons to accept him as a recruit. he was accepted, and very shortly given a commission in the dublin fusiliers. out of his local volunteers he took seventy-five into the army with him. he was with the sixteenth division from its landing in france till after the day of messines, commanding his company. all this gave him an authority in an assembly where all voices were in support of the war, and more particularly in an appeal to ulster; and with this advantage went an unusual gift of frank and eloquent speech, linked with a fine idealism. these were the main personal elements in the group that came together on july th--mr. duke, the chief secretary, acting as temporary chairman and sir francis hopwood (soon to become lord southborough) having been brought over as secretary. mr. duke having addressed us with an earnest suavity, we were told to select a chairman: and on the motion of the primate, archbishop crozier, this embarrassing task was delegated to a committee of ten, rapidly told off. we adjourned for lunch, and on reassembling found that a unanimous recommendation named sir horace plunkett. the ulstermen had expressed a willingness to accept redmond. this he refused to discuss; but he was put into the chair of the selecting committee. there was a recommendation also that sir francis hopwood should be secretary to the convention. both these proposals were welcomed, and we dispersed feeling that we had done a good day's work. there was, however, one set-off to it. when the selection committee had done its work, its members went off singly, and outside the gate of college a small group of ardent patriots were waiting, who mobbed redmond on the way to his hotel. they were young, no doubt; but the republican party claimed specially the youth of ireland; and these lads expressed with a simple eloquence very much what was said by older and more articulate voices, uttering the same thought in print. it is worth while to illustrate here the attitude taken towards redmond by much of nationalist ireland, for it profoundly influenced redmond's attitude and action in the convention. i take, not casual and partisan journalism, but a passage from a book published by a distinguished irish writer who had never publicly attached himself to any party. mr. james stephens was in dublin during the insurrection; he wrote a book about his own personal observation of it, which as a record of observation is admirable. but when mr. stephens comes to emit opinions, here is what he has to say: "why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly. it happened because the leader of the irish party misrepresented his people in the english house of parliament. on the day of the declaration of war between england and germany he took the irish case, weighty with eight centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the window. he pledged ireland to a particular course of action, and he had no authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would be met. the ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional nature betrayed him and us and england. he swore ireland to loyalty as if he had ireland in his pocket and could answer for her. ireland has never been disloyal to england, not even at this epoch, _because she has never been loyal to england_, and the profession of her national faith has been unwavering, has been known to every english person alive, and has been clamant to all the world beside. "is it that he wanted to be cheered? he could very easily have stated ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality (if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this country. he would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have gotten home rule in return for irish soldiers. he would have received politically whatever england could have safely given him. but, alas! these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. they were not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to ireland or to england, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even one national rag to cover herself with. "after a lie, truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and serene goddess we knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral syphilis, and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been purged. mr. redmond told the lie, and he is answerable to england for the violence she had to be guilty of, and to ireland for the desolation to which we have had to submit. without his lie there had been no insurrection, without it there had been at this moment, and for a year past, an end to the 'irish question.' ireland must in ages gone have been guilty of abominable crimes, or she could not at this juncture have been afflicted with a john redmond." politicians everywhere need to grow tough skins; but redmond, though he was a veteran in politics, had no special gift that way. it was not pleasant for the nationalist leader, when an assembly of irishmen were called together to attempt the framing of a constitution, to find himself the object, and the sole object, of public insult; it was not pleasant for him to feel that he might at any time be subjected to a renewal of this experience in the streets of ireland's capital, where he had been acclaimed as a hero so few years ago. it was not pleasant for him to feel that whenever he took up a book or paper dealing with ireland he was liable to come upon some outburst such as the one which i have quoted. these things were pin-pricks, yet pin-pricks administered in public; and the mere effort to endure such things without wincing saps a man's vitality. behind them lay the definite repudiation of his policy in election after election--for kilkenny city followed the example of clare and replaced pat o'brien by a sinn feiner. he was repudiated in the eye of the world, and repudiated with every circumstance of contumely. plainly in the convention he could no longer claim to speak for ireland; that limited gravely his power to serve. i think, however, that deep in his heart a resentment, all the more rankling because he gave it no voice, prompted him to be on his guard against lending the least colour of justification to any plea that in the convention he had sought to pledge ireland without due mandate or had committed anyone but himself. all that was personal in his resources--his labour, his experience, his judgment, his eloquence--all this he put unreservedly at the convention's service: but he abstained, and i think not only out of policy but as the result of silent anger, from making the least use of that authority which he still possessed and which he might easily have augmented. if in the result he took too little upon him, lest anyone should ever say he had taken too much, and if because he left too much to others ireland was the loser, ireland must bear not the loss only but the blame. many even of those who most agreed with his action had, under the influence and events of these years and of public comments on these events, lost confidence in him. some weeks after the convention assembled, a very able priest said to me that he regarded redmond as "a worn-out man." the genuineness of his regret was proved by the delight with which he heard what i could tell him. never in my life did i find so much cause for admiration of redmond as in the early stages--which were in many ways the most important--of our meetings. never at any time did i know him exert so successfully his charm of public manner. at the second day's meeting, when the new chairman took up his place and function, there were several small points to be settled, each capable of creating friction; and it has to be admitted that in the technical aspect of his duty sir horace plunkett did not shine: business quickly became involved. fortunately he was of a temper to welcome help, and it was quickly to hand. archbishop crozier showed himself to be accomplished, resourceful, and most tactful on all points of procedure: and redmond then for the first time did with extraordinary skill what he had to do at many stages later. by a series of questions to the chair he suggested rather than recommended a way of clearing the involved issue; and all this was done with a precision of phrase which was none the less exact because it was easy, and with a dignity which was none the less impressive because it had no pretence to effect. his mastery both of the form and substance of procedure was conspicuous. one of the ablest among the southern unionists said to me in these days: "he is superb: he does not seem able to put a word wrong." i think that the secret of his happiness of manner lay simply in this, that within the convention he was happy. there was a note in it that i never felt in the house of commons, even when he was at his best. there he always spoke as if almost a foreigner, no matter among how familiar faces. here he was among his own countrymen, and for the first time in his life in an assembly in no way sectional. for from the first it was plain that, by whatever means, there had been gathered a compendium of normal, ordinary irish life: farmer, artisan, peer, prelate, landlord, tenant, shopkeeper, manufacturer--all were there in pleasantly familiar types. the atmosphere was unlike that of a political gathering; it resembled rather some casual assemblage where all sorts of men had met by accident and conversed without prejudice. everybody met somebody whom he had known in some quite different relation of life and with whom he had never looked to be associated in any such task as the framing of a constitution. it was all oddly haphazard, full of interest and surprises; all of us were a little out of our bearings, but much disposed to reconnoitre in the spirit of friendly advance. after the first day of sir horace plunkett's chairmanship there was an adjournment of something like a fortnight to give the chairman and secretariat time for preparation: and in this interval a plan of action was formed. the object in view was to avoid the danger of an immediate break and to give play to the reconciling influences. it was decided to begin by a prolonged process of general discussion, in which men could express their minds freely without the necessity of coming to an operative decision on any of the controversial points, until the value of each could be assessed in relation to the possibility of a general agreement. the plan adopted was to discuss, without division taken, the schemes which had been submitted by members of the convention and by others. members would propose and expound their own projects: for the exposition of the others some member must make himself responsible. at this "presentation stage" and at all stages, redmond absolutely declined to put forward a plan in his own name. this was not only from temperamental reasons: there was an official obstacle. he was an individual member of the convention: but he was chairman of the irish party, pledged not to bind it without its consent. he felt, no doubt, that any detailed proposal from him would be taken as binding the party, whom he could not consult without bringing them into the secrets of the convention. but this attitude of self-abnegation was pushed very far by him, and perhaps too far. in his early utterances he deprecated all official recognition of sections. yet from the moment when committees came to be appointed this recognition was claimed; and from the first the ulster group maintained a compact organization. they had their own chairman, mr. barrie, and their secretary; they secured a committee-room for their own purposes; they voted solidly as one man. all this, though we did not know it at first, was dictated by the conditions of their attendance. they were pledged to act simply as delegates, who must submit every question of importance to an advisory committee in belfast--behind which again was the ulster unionist council. they had therefore no freedom of action and were of necessity extremely guarded in speech. the southern unionists, including the representatives of the irish peers, were also organized as a group; but they came to the convention with much fuller powers. they felt themselves bound to consider, and in certain conditions to consult, those whom they represented; but they were free to originate suggestions, and individually each man expressed his own view. but they too had their meeting-place and their frequent consultations. the handful of labour men also met and discussed action, though they were not organized as a group and did not feel pledged to a joint course. each, according to his own lights, represented the interests of labour. still, they met. the only group which had no common centre of reunion was that of the nationalists--a majority of the whole assembly. this included the representatives of the irish party and the county and urban councillors, all of whom had been returned as its supporters. it included also the four representatives of the hierarchy, every one of whom had been either actually or potentially a part of nationalist conventions, and of whom three had been most prominent supporters of the general organization. but a difficulty existed in the presence of other personages who were in general support of us, but who outside the convention belonged to a different category. lord dunraven was a home ruler, but had been no supporter of the irish party. lord macdonnell stood much nearer to us, but was a power in his own right and had never been a party politician. mr. lysaght had voted against us in clare. mr. russell had very often attacked the party on aspects of its general action. above all, there was mr. w.m. murphy, who, like mr. healy, had been at one time a member of the irish party, and whose paper had for long been in nominal support of its purposes, but who had throughout recent years done more than all forces together to discredit and weaken its influence. all of these five men were government nominees, as were also lord granard and sir bertram windle, who in different ways gave redmond complete and most useful backing. it would have been possible to call together a group consisting of men who had been members of the national organization which would have excluded all these and included the bishops;[ ] but redmond probably felt it would be ungracious to do this. his chief desire was to avoid all recognition of party and still more of partisan machinery. his conclusion was to do nothing; and it was a conclusion to which he was prone at all times when he did not see his way clear. this temperamental disinclination to take any action which might create difficulties was in these days at its height with him. since the spring his usually perfect health had been failing; he suffered from the physical inertia which accompanies the growth of a fatal disease; and sorrow upon sorrow, rebuff upon rebuff, had weakened the resilience of his mind. it was not that he lacked courage or confidence in his own judgment; but he was bound as a statesman to make allowance for the estimate which others, his followers, would put upon that judgment when he declared it. sensitive by nature, he was deeply aware of failure which had resulted from the most disparaging of causes--not flat rejection, but belated, half-hearted and blundering adoption, of whatever course he had proposed. he overrated, i am sure, the extent to which his personal position had been depreciated in the minds of those who were there. it was true, as the event was to prove, that he could no longer count on unquestioning support of any policy simply on the ground that he advocated it; but any opinion which he presented would have been commended not only by the cogency of his argument but by an old esteem for his wisdom, and, above and beyond this, by a personal feeling men would have inclined to his side not for the argument's sake only, but for his sake. there was felt, too, precisely at the moment when it mattered most, the defect in his quality as leader. he lacked the personal touch. it was not that he would not, but that he could not, put himself into contact with the individual minds of men. he owed it, i think, to the rank and file to give them more of his guidance than they actually received. he was a genial presence when they met; but of confidential discussion upon details i am sure that nothing passed. had he called the group together, had he spoken his mind to them collectively, in confidence, things would in all ways have been better. but there was ingrained in him a sort of shyness, a repugnance to force his view on others by argument, an indisposition to controversy, which was his limitation; and all this was at this time accentuated by the hurt sense that there would be always in men's minds a memory, not of the hundred times when his wisdom had amply justified itself, but of recent occasions when he had advised them and the result was not what he foretold. to sum up, then, this criticism--what he said and did publicly in the convention could hardly by stretch of imagination have been bettered. but outside its sessions he did not handle his team. on the balance, probably, he thought it better to leave them to their own devices; but his temperament weighed in that decision. as a result, the county councillors and other local representatives used to hold meetings of their own. they were shrewd and capable men; but in the matters with which we had to deal the most skilled direction was necessary; and there was never a man more capable of giving them guidance out of a lifetime's experience than was redmond, nor one from whom they would have more willingly accepted instruction. discussion in the convention itself was not of great value for the education of opinion, because men naturally were reluctant to get up and state precisely their individual difficulties, which in a confidential interchange of views might have been shown to proceed from some defect in comprehension. the chief value in the debates lay in what they revealed rather than what they imparted. one fact was salient. no nationalist was prepared to recommend acceptance of the home rule act as it stood, though some of its most vehement assailants adopted great parts of its framework. broadly speaking, nationalists wanted for ireland the powers which were possessed by a self-governing dominion, but were content to leave all control of defence to the imperial authority and did not press any demand for a local militia. on the other hand, there was strong insistence on the right of an irish parliament to have complete power of taxation within its jurisdiction. it was manifest that the financial clauses of the existing act would no longer apply. they were framed in view of a situation which found ireland contributing ten millions in taxation and costing twelve to administer. now, less than half the taxation paid the cost of all irish services and the balance went towards the war. it was also evident that nationalists were prepared to make concessions to the minority quite inconsistent with the current democratic view of what a constitution should be. the bishop of raphoe, for instance, expressed willingness to have the irish peers as an upper house. lord midleton, however, for the southern unionists, insisted that those whom he spoke for must have a voice in the house of commons--however they got it; and there was general desire to give it them, even by methods which no one could justify for general application. in short, it became increasingly clear as the debates proceeded that we could come to an arrangement with unionists if lord midleton represented unionism. but he did not. ulster was there; and the ulster men made it plain that their business was to hear suggestions, not to put them forward. two facts, however, emerged about ulster's attitude. the first was that in coming to the convention the ulstermen had expected to negotiate on the basis of taking the home rule act as the maximum nationalist demand. the only compromise which they had contemplated was a mean term between the provisions of that act and ulster's demand for a continuance of the legislative union so far as ulster was concerned. the second was that belfast regarded as ruinous to its interests any possibility of a tariff war with great britain, and believed that if ireland were given the power to fix its own customs duties the dominant farming interest would seek to find revenue by new taxation on imports. hence, the proposal to give ireland full fiscal powers could not be acceptable to ulster. here lay the main rock in our course. as the discussion proceeded, one category of proposals was summarily dealt with--those which contemplated the setting up of some provincial authority intermediate between the central parliament, which all postulated, and the existing local bodies in the counties. this policy did not lack advocates. but the county councillors were solid against it: evidently their private meeting discussed and decided against an expedient which they held would detract from the dignity of the central parliament and from the dignity of the county councils. those who defended it as a plan which might meet ulster's difficulty got no backing from ulster; that group said neither for nor against it. in the rest of the assembly there was a strong feeling against anything that looked like partition or might in public be called partition. several of us had thought in advance that this was the most likely path to the solution; and looking back, i think it ought to have been much more fully explored. but encouragement was lacking. another anticipation proved illusory. we all realized that in the circumstances ireland could come to a financial arrangement with great britain on easier terms than at any time in her history; that to settle at once would be highly profitable; and more particularly, that we could probably secure the completion of land purchase as part of the bargain. it was thought that this argument would appeal to the commercial sense of ulster. we were met by a resolute reiteration that ulster considered it ulster's duty and ireland's duty to take a full share, equally with the rest of the united kingdom, in all the consequences of the war--even if it cost them their last shilling; and ulster speakers denounced our argument as a bribe. some nationalists were inclined to discount these protestations, yet i see no reason to doubt their sincerity. at all events, no one disputed that it was to ireland's interest financially that a settlement should be made. it is quite unnecessary to summarize here in any detail the course of these general discussions in full convention, which began on august st. one thing, however, resulted from them on which too much emphasis cannot be laid. in the process of "exploring each other's minds," as the phrase went, we came to know and to like one another. later in the year, a friend of mine, high placed in the ulster division, but not an ulsterman by upbringing or sympathy, came home from france. he told me that the main impression on the minds of ulster delegates had been made by the nationalist county councillors. they had expected noisy demagogues; they had found solid, substantial business men, many of them with large and prosperous concerns, all of them rather too silent than too vocal, and all of them most good-humoured in their tolerance of dissent. what willie redmond had foretold in his last speech was coming true: irishmen brought into contact with one another in the convention, as other irishmen had been brought into contact in the trenches, and no longer kept apart by those unhappy severances which run through ordinary irish life, came under the influence of that fundamental fellowship, deeper than all divergence of politics or creed, which draws our people into a sense of a common bond. the desire to bring delegates together in friendly social intercourse had shown itself in many quarters. the viceregal lodge pressed invitations on us, and redmond, though in the circumstances he himself would go to no entertainment anywhere, expressed his wish that nationalists should alter their traditional attitude and accept what was offered in so friendly a spirit. but the first place where we met as a body with informal ease was at the mansion house as guests of the lord mayor--a popular figure in our assembly. next day the lord mayor of belfast rose at the adjournment to express all our thanks, and to insist that there should be a session in belfast, where he could return the compliment. immediately, there came another proposal for a similar visit to the south of ireland. we went to belfast at the beginning of september, and the attitude of the ulster members, which had till then been somewhat guarded and aloof, changed into that of the traditional irish hospitality. they showed us their great linen mills and other huge manufactories; they showed us the shipyards, in which the frames of monster ships lay cradled in gigantic gantries, works of architecture as wonderful in their vast symmetry as any cathedral, and having the beauty which goes with any perfect design combining lightness and strength. perhaps the most impressive sight of all was the disbandment of workmen from the yards. endless lines of empty tramcars drawn up on the quay awaited the turn-out of some ten thousand artisans, who streamed past where we stood assembled; and as the crowds swept along, all these eyes, curious, but not unfriendly, scrutinized us, and one word was in all their mouths as they came up--"which is redmond? where's john redmond?" a fortnight later cork completed what belfast had begun; and, perhaps because cork is less strenuous, the whole atmosphere there was even friendlier. it had almost the quality of a holiday excursion, for we assisted at the ancient ceremony by which the lord mayor of cork asserts his jurisdiction over the harbour waters--proceeding outside the protecting headlands and flinging from him a ceremonial dart outwards to the sea. this day, however, we accomplished the ceremony well within the limits; we passed the narrow gateway in the chain of mines, but outside that, submarines were a very real menace, and the admiralty cut short our steamer's voyage. we were none the less festive on board. it was not all mere holiday in cork. one speech in particular at this meeting impressed the whole convention. a southern delegate illustrated from his personal knowledge how cumbrous and uneconomic were the dealings of a government at westminster with the meat supply from ireland; and a mass of complicated and important trade detail was skilfully linked to the larger issue of war interest and imperial interest; there was genuine eloquence as well as commercial shrewdness in this discourse. a short speech, too, from one of the ulster county councillors indicated by its tone, what was in my opinion the general sentiment, that as a result of these preliminary discussions almost everybody in the assembly expected and desired an effective agreement. at least for the purposes of this book, and perhaps many purposes, the trend of our debates can be best summarized by reproducing redmond's main contribution to them. he intervened on the first day when mr. murphy's scheme was proposed, on august st, but only with a few welcoming words, and to emphasize his view that we were all there to accept whatever commanded most support. but at belfast on september th he spoke fully; and i do not think his speech would have been materially different had he delivered it three weeks later in cork. what i print here is based on the unusually full notes made by him, so full that they admit of being treated like a press telegram, and read clearly when small and obvious words are added. the manuscript is scored with underlining, single, double and treble, to guide the voice in reading from it; it has interest as illustrating the technical devices which a great orator employed for a special occasion; and for this speech he spared no effort. i thought, then as always, that he was less impressive and less effective in so fully prepared an oration than when he was putting his thought into the form which immediately came to him. but as a document it represents beyond doubt his considered opinion and his most deliberate advice. dealing briefly at first with the contention that the system of the union had been a success and should not be touched, he outlined the familiar arguments. but, as he said, the existence of the convention was the final answer. the head of a coalition ministry had declared, without dissent from any of his unionist colleagues, that dublin castle had hopelessly broken down. the prime minister of another coalition, mainly unionist in its composition, had set up this assembly, charging it to find another and better system of government. beneficent legislation had been quoted. yes, but how was it attained? "in any constitutionally governed country, once public opinion is converted to some great reform, it naturally passes, surely and easily, though perhaps slowly, into law. in ireland, after irish public opinion has made up its mind, the reformer has to convert the public opinion of another country which is profoundly ignorant or apathetic, and unhappily it is uncontrovertible that scarcely a single piece of beneficent legislation on land, or anything else, has been passed since the union except by long, violent, semi-revolutionary agitation. "are we to go on for ever upon this path? are we to go back into the region of perpetual and violent agitation in order to get the reforms we need? are we never to be allowed to have peace in our country?" he passed then to the complaint that ulster's special case had not been sufficiently considered. "the man who would hope to settle this great problem without special consideration of the special case of ulster would indeed be a fool. only for the special case of ulster we should not be here at all. our chief business is to endeavour to satisfy that special case. "for myself, i am one of those nationalists to whom mr. barrie referred, who believe that the co-operation of ulstermen is necessary for a prosperous and free ireland, and there are no lengths consistent with common sense and reason to which i would not go to satisfy their fears and doubts and objections. "the special case of ulster as put before us was this: 'we are contented under the union, we have prospered under the union. therefore from our particular standpoint we have no reason to ask for a change.' but they declare themselves not only ulstermen but irishmen. they admit that the rest of ireland is not prosperous as they are, and is not contented; and, that being so, they have come here in a spirit of true patriotism to see what is proposed as a remedy; and, as i understand it, they only stipulate that in any scheme of reform their rights and interests and sentiments shall be safeguarded and respected. that is a reasonable and patriotic attitude, and i wish most heartily and most sincerely to respond to it. "now let me say what are the main objections to these schemes which have emerged from the debate. some may be regarded as more particularly affecting ulster, others as more particularly affecting the southern unionists, but all of them taken together make up what i may call the unionist objection. "the archbishop of dublin grouped these objections under three heads: . imperial security. . fiscal security. . security for minorities. "on the question of imperial security, objection is taken to what is called an 'independent' parliament. "it is supposed that what is called dominion home rule implies an 'independent' parliament. this is a complete delusion. there is only one sovereign and independent parliament in the empire--the imperial parliament; its supremacy is indefeasible and inalienable. every other parliament in the empire is subordinate, and an irish parliament must be subordinate. "the imperial parliament has created many parliaments and given to them power to deal in general as they wish with local affairs, but it never parted with its own overriding authority--it has no power to do so--and in several of the colonies it has exercised that overriding authority from time to time. "gladstone spoke of the irish parliament which he proposed to set up as 'practically independent in the exercise of its statutory functions.' but the overriding authority of the imperial parliament would always be there in the background to arrest injustice or oppression, just as it is in regard to every dominion parliament in the empire to-day. "that position was specifically laid down and accepted by parnell in . "lord midleton demands that the rights and authority of the crown shall be preserved and safeguarded. there is no difference whatever between us on this, and no difficulty can arise upon it. "as to the control of army and navy, no one suggests any interference with the imperial authority over the army and the navy. i include in that such naval control of harbours as is necessary for security. "captain gwynn has proposed that ireland should have power to raise a force for home defence. in other words, to pass a territorial act for ireland. my policy about the volunteers is known: i proposed at the beginning of the war that the government should utilize the existing volunteer forces; and had this proposal been acted on in there would have been no rebellion in . if i understand captain gwynn, he did not suggest that irish territorials should be under an irish war office and an irish minister for war, but that in his opinion a system of irish territorials was desirable, and inasmuch as the english territorial acts are not suitable to us, the irish parliament should be given the power to raise under imperial authority a force for itself and on its own lines. "if this is his view, i agree with it. but this is a matter on which no one would think of breaking off. "speaking generally, i think the archbishop of dublin and those who agree with him may take it for granted that upon all those questions which he grouped under the heading of imperial security there would be little difficulty in arriving at an agreement with, at any rate, men like myself. "now let me deal with the second group of subjects put forward by the archbishop of dublin under the heading of fiscal security--or a reasonable prospect of national prosperity. "the first objection is to what is called fiscal autonomy, although, after listening most carefully to his speeches, it seems to me that the real objection is not so much an objection to fiscal autonomy as establishing the full power of the irish parliament over the collection and imposition of irish taxes, as an objection to giving that parliament power to set up a tariff against great britain." he referred then at length to the report of the primrose committee on irish finance, dated october .[ ] that committee had for its chairman a great english civil servant; three of its members were famous english financiers; another was the professor of political economy at oxford. of the two names associated closely with ireland, one was lord pirrie, whose fortune had been made in belfast, and the only irish nationalist was the bishop of ross. they had reported unanimously for giving to ireland full fiscal powers. "we tried hard," redmond said, "to get the principle of their report adopted in framing the bill of ." government insisted on adhering to the plan of "contract finance" which their own non-partisan committee of experts had explicitly condemned. he quoted several passages from the weighty argument by which the committee had justified its conclusions, especially those dealing with the contention that the power would be used to set up a tariff against british goods. "ireland is not a nation of fools. "if in framing a new constitution you go on the assumption that every power you confer will be abused, it would be far better to desist from your task altogether, and instead of increasing the powers of a people dead to all sense of responsibility and manifestly unfit for political freedom, you had better disestablish all existing forms of constitutional government and advocate the government of ireland as a crown colony. but none of us so distrust our people. "dr. o'donnell has proposed a solution of the difficulty about imposing a tariff against england by means of a conference between the two nations. other suggestions will be made. protection may be found for ulster by giving to them disproportionate representation. it may be found in the power of the senate, it may be found in the power to suspend. if we are agreed somewhat on the general lines of the primrose report, the outstanding difficulty will be capable of adjustment. "sir crawford mccullagh rightly pointed out the terrible burden of war taxation, which is at present over twenty millions, and he said we cannot go on on those lines, and we must get back to pre-war burdens or the country will be ruined. how are we to get back? "if nothing is done by us, and the war goes on, as it may, for some years, we may easily be paying thirty, forty, or fifty millions, and generations to come will have to bear a crushing load. the income tax is certain to be raised, and excess profits also, and no part of ireland will suffer more than ulster, and especially belfast. "the highest interest of ulster, therefore, is a speedy settlement whereby the increase of war taxation will cease and ireland's contribution to imperial purposes will either disappear or, to put it at the very lowest, be limited and stereotyped. "mr. knight raised the question of land purchase. i agree with every word he said, but what is the difficulty? the difficulty is in providing the additional money needed at a low rate of interest. as part of a settlement i feel quite sure we could obtain the completion of land purchase on satisfactory terms. indeed, i have the highest authority for the statement that this question would be regarded as an essential portion of a settlement, and that a most generous arrangement would be made. but if there is no settlement, do you imagine the treasury will do anything to help us? no. i fear the british government will be more occupied in endeavouring to deal with the state of open anarchy in ireland than in making great financial concessions on land purchase. mr. knight, if he wants purchase completed, had better help us to an agreement. "the third group of objections mentioned by the archbishop of dublin deals with security for minorities. "on this, it is impossible for the convention to break down, because we are all in favour of the object in view. it is a mere question of the best machinery to carry out our unanimous desire and intention. "ulster may clearly claim a representation out of proportion to her numbers, not only, i admit, in the senate, but in the lower chamber. safeguards of the most stringent character would be accepted, at any rate by me, in the machinery of the constitution to prevent the possibility of ulster's interest, ulster's prosperity and ulster's sentiments being injured or over-ridden. "for southern unionists, the case is unanswerable. they _must_ get proper representation in both houses. "some suggestions have been made: proportional representation; mr. murphy's proposal of a special representation for property; special representation for creeds, and finally a nominated element in the house of commons. i have an open mind on them all. it may be none of these will be found wholly satisfactory. but where there is a will there is a way. we are all agreed it must be done, and therefore it can and will be done. "in none of these objections, and they are the chief ones that have emerged on imperial security, fiscal security, and security of minorities, is there in my mind any difficulty in coming to an agreement, if we are really animated by the desire every speaker has professed to answer the appeal of the empire in this hour of her dire extremity by removing one of her greatest weaknesses and dangers. "we were told by lord midleton to play for safety. what is safety for us? what is safety for the empire? i strongly say the only safety is a settlement of this question. "what will be the certain effect of a breakdown? no one could fail to have been impressed by the serious and solemn note upon which the archbishop of dublin concluded his speech. he reminded you this was not a question of ulster and the rest of ireland, not of catholic and protestant, or unionist and nationalist: it was a question of the necessity for all men of good will, all men of responsibility, all men who know that the foundation of freedom is the maintenance of order, to join hands to protect their common country from anarchy and chaos. "the archbishop spoke of mr. lysaght's speech as a threat. no one here will be moved by threats, but let us not be mad enough to shut our eyes to the facts. is there a man in this room who can contemplate without horror the immediate future of ireland if this convention fails? for my part, i see clearly a future following on our failure in which on one side there will be an angered, if you like, a maddened people, with no responsible control, and on the other, government ruling by the point of the bayonet. between these two forces there will be no place for a constitutional party or for men like myself. "that would be the effect in ireland. what would be the effect throughout the empire? "i have close relations with statesmen of all parties in all the dominions, and i am informed that twenty-five per cent, of their troops are of irish birth or of irish parents, and that they have practically joined because they believed the irish problem was as good as settled. "what has happened about ireland has caused untold difficulties in every dominion. mr. holman, the prime minister of new south wales, said that conscription was defeated by the irish vote. mr. hughes said the same. two hundred thousand troops have been lost to the empire by the feeling of disgust at the failure to settle the irish question. it has been the same in canada. everywhere a breakdown will be regarded with dismay. "what will be the effect in america? the position of america is grave and dangerous. i have close relations with many americans of high position and influence, and they all tell me the same. this is a secret session, and i can repeat what they say. there is little or no enthusiasm for the war. mind, i am speaking of americans, not irish americans. the apathy is largely due to distrust of england. they distrust her posing as the champion of small nations while here at her doors the irish question is unsettled. lord midleton says the americans are uninformed. perhaps so as to details. perhaps they only see the broad effect. but how does that help us? the fact remains. ireland is the only, or the chief, cause of american apathy to-day. this is of vital importance. could we hope to win the war if america dropped out? russia has gone. the president of the united states has many pacifist men around him. their movement is strong. germany is abstaining from outrages that would raise american feeling. i say, the danger of peace proposals which we could not accept being offered to america and accepted by her is a real and a very serious one. "hence it is that the government, the diplomatic service, and all connected with our foreign affairs are feverishly anxious as to the result of our deliberations. if we break down in despair and helplessness, god only knows how terrible and far-reaching may be the consequence. "far better for us and for the empire never to have met than to have met and failed of an agreement. "finally, what would be the effect of a breakdown at the front? "we are called upon on all sides of this ancient quarrel to make what people call sacrifices--sacrifices of inherited predilections, of old-world ideas, and of ancient shibboleths, of perhaps ingrained prejudice. i would be ashamed to speak of the surrender of such things as sacrifices, when i remember the kind of sacrifices our brave boys have made and are making this very hour while we are safe at home talking. i cannot trust myself to speak upon this matter. only the other day, once again the ulster division and the sixteenth irish division, shoulder to shoulder, have fought and died for ireland. the full story is not yet known, but it is full of tragedy, of heroism and of glory. surely they deserve some encouragement. no set of men living would be prouder and happier than they if we can send them the news of a settlement of this question which will relieve them from the daily shame they feel, every time they meet their allies, in the consciousness that their country, ireland, for which they are facing death, is distracted and disunited and a source of reproach. "no, we must come to a settlement. we must rise to the occasion--if only to save ourselves from a lifelong remorse for wrecking this venture--for what the historian of the future would describe as a crime against the empire in her hour of deadliest peril, and a crime against the peace and happiness of our own beloved and long-suffering country." one result of this speech was seen at once in an utterance from mr. andrew jameson, a leading figure among the southern unionists. he said at once that redmond had convinced him that all the difficulties as to maintaining the imperial connection and providing safeguards for minorities could and would be met. the fiscal difficulty remained. he pressed the ulster group to come to our assistance and depart from their attitude of silence. this speech went further towards our desire than any unionist had previously gone. in a later debate mr. pollock outlined two essentials of the ulster demand. the united kingdom must remain a fiscal unit; and ireland must be represented at westminster. if these points were conceded, agreement, he thought, should be possible. on the whole, as discussion grew franker and more business-like, relations improved. there were small passages at arms, but these only served to show how strong was the general desire for harmony. one of my colleagues said that he did not know what to make of a political assembly where everyone applauded when you got up, and applauded when you sat down, and never interrupted you. another said that the convention was the only society in ireland from which one always came away cheered up: and this was so generally felt that an ulster speaker reminded us that the atmosphere of our proceedings was pleasant but exceptional. he warned us to remember that, even if we agreed, either side might be repudiated. yet there was a marked feeling that the convention, and the tone which prevailed in the convention, had done good in the country. this was admitted by the grand master of the orange order, colonel wallace, in a speech which led to an important illustration of the mutual process of education, for it raised with great frankness the issue of religious differences and alluded specially to the recent papal decrees over which so much controversy had raged. the bishop of raphoe rose to reply and expounded, as an ex-professor of canon law, the true bearing of these documents. his speech was a masterpiece; its candour and its lucidity commended itself to all hearers, but most of all to the ulstermen, who applauded at once lord oranmore's comment that the _odium theologicum_ had been replaced by _divina caritas_; and at a very late stage in our proceedings, mr. barrie referred back to this speech of the bishop's as one of the things which they would never forget. the primate, who in this month of september was one of the hopeful hearts ("my confidence has grown daily," he said), used words which met with widespread response: "we can never leave this hall and speak of men whom we have met here as we have spoken of them in the past." there was good will in the air--good will to each other and to the enterprise. at the close of the proceedings in cork the lord mayor of belfast moved a vote of thanks to the citizens through their lord mayor, and he closed on a note of hope--anticipating "something in store for ireland." yet already these anticipations were overcast. during this week, while all seemed going so well, one of the endless unhappy and preventible things happened. it was from redmond that i first heard the news. one of the sinn fein leaders who had been rearrested on suspicion after the amnesty took part in a hunger-strike as a protest against being subjected to the conditions imposed on a convicted felon. he was forcibly fed and died under the process, owing to heart-failure. redmond told me with fury how he had urged again and again on the chief secretary the possibility of some such calamity, and had urged that these men should receive the treatment proper in any case to political prisoners, but above all to men who had been neither convicted nor tried. the result was immediately seen in some hostile demonstrations in cork, chiefly against mr. devlin and redmond. but this was only the beginning. on the following sunday the body of the dead man, thomas ashe, was carried through the streets of dublin at the head of a vast procession, in which large bodies of volunteers, openly defying government's proclamation, marched in uniform; and he was buried with military honours and volleys fired over his grave. with all this breach of the law government dared not interfere. they had put themselves in the wrong; whether they prevented the demonstration or permitted it, mischief was bound to follow. a new incitement was given to the enthusiasm for sinn fein, a new martyr was provided, and new hostility was raised against the convention, for whose success government was notoriously anxious. on the other hand, ulster unionist opinion was violently offended; they were scandalized by the disregard for law and the impotence of constitutional authority. this attitude, however open to comments based on their own recent history, did not render them any easier to deal with. above all, the ashe incident emphasized the presence in ireland of a great force over which redmond had no control and which had no representative in the convention. how, men asked, even if a bargain could be made with constitutional nationalists, should that covenant be carried into effect? iii the cork visit marks the close of the first stage in the history of the convention. at the opening of our session there it was decided to appoint a grand committee of twenty, whose task should be, "if possible, to prepare a scheme for submission to the convention, which would meet the views and difficulties expressed by the different speeches during the course of the debate." the convention itself, after its deliberations of that week, would adjourn until the committee was in a position to report. this second stage, purely of committee work, was to last much longer than anyone anticipated: the convention did not reassemble till the week before christmas. if that length of adjournment had been foreseen, the committee would never have been appointed. mr. lysaght in his first address to the convention had pressed upon us the view that sinn féin could be won. but he warned us also (with such emphasis that some speakers afterwards resented it as a threat) that if the convention produced no result, or an unacceptable result, or provoked suspicion by delay, the result would be a revolution. already impatience was growing. we could publish no account of our proceedings: but it became known inevitably that we had not as yet reached one operative conclusion in our task of constitution building. at cork, sir horace plunkett made an encouraging speech at the public luncheon; he announced the appointment of our committee, which certainly looked like business. but only when we got to detail did men fully realize the difficulties and the embarrassing nature of the position. the ashe affair had done more harm than we knew. when the primate was making the hopeful speech from which a few words have already been quoted, he spoke also of our experience as having been a process of mutual education, which we needed to extend beyond our own assembly. he promised his help in this, and it was felt that ulstermen generally were on their honour to report well of what they commended in our presence. they were, it seems, at least as good as their word; the committee behind them was favourably impressed, and when we went to cork--so i have been informed--the question of giving the delegates full powers to negotiate was under discussion. but this mood was dissipated by the angry temper in all sections which arose out of the imprisonments, the hunger-strikes, the penalties imposed, and the successive concessions to violent resistance. to this was added a new cause of quarrel. the franchise bill was now coming before the house of commons; and under the provisions agreed to by the speaker's conference, extension of the franchise was to be applied in ireland, but there was to be no redistribution. this proposal was not unreasonable, since the home rule act was now a statute and under it new and properly distributed constituencies were scheduled; while over and above this the convention was in existence to occupy itself with the matter. on the other hand, the existing distribution of seats was hard on unionist ulster: the great mass of population in and about belfast was under-represented. ulstermen said that while nationalists professed great desire to give favour to minorities, in reality they persisted in keeping their political opponents at an unfair disadvantage. there was no more question of enlarging the delegates' authority in convention: the advisory committee hardened their attitude, and it was our task to convince a body which could not hear our arguments at first hand. decisions lay with ulstermen in belfast, not in the convention--that is to say, not subject to the daily, hourly, prompting to remember that they were not only ulstermen but irishmen, which arose from friendly intercourse with their fellow-delegates. the grand committee of twenty, representing all groups, met on october th. sir horace plunkett had in advance begged redmond to undertake the presentation of a scheme which would serve as a basis for discussion. redmond declined, on the ground that the initiative should come from someone who was not there as a politician; but he admitted that the onus of making a proposal was on home rulers. dr. o'donnell, though an office-bearer in the united irish league, was present as a representative of the hierarchy; he was charged with the task. he had been throughout a strong advocate of claiming for ireland all the powers possessed by any of the dominions, with limitations on the military side; he had also been forward in his desire to give wholly exceptional rights of representation to minorities. but when we got into committee one man immediately took the lead. sir alexander mcdowell[ ] had not spoken in any debate; there is reason to believe that he was glad not to commit himself in advance before the moment when his special gift might come into play. all his life he had been carrying through agreements between conflicting interests: he was a great mediator and negotiator. now, he advocated what was, in strictness, an irregularity. a task had been delegated to us: he asked us to delegate it again to a smaller group. the whole case, he said, had been fully opened up; further debate would be no use; we all knew all the arguments. he deprecated formal procedure; it was plainly a family quarrel, and we should treat it in that spirit. honestly, he said, he should be sorry if the convention failed. ulster had no fault to find with the union; but they were living next door to a house already in flames. that was the general tone, but it would be difficult to convey the impression of experience and authority which his manner left: and redmond supported him. it was plain that the two men would understand each other. in the upshot their view prevailed; redmond, mr. barrie and lord midleton were instructed to suggest names, and after an interval they came back with a list of nine. lord midleton was for the southern unionists; mr. barrie, lord londonderry and sir alexander mcdowell for the northern; redmond, mr. devlin and bishop o'donnell represented the parliamentary nationalists, and to them were added mr. w.m. murphy and mr. george russell. this left eleven of us unemployed, and some days later we were formed into three sub-committees, the first dealing with the question of electoral reform and the composition of an irish parliament; the second with land purchase, and the third with a possible territorial force and the police. but the marrow of the business rested with the original sub-committee of nine. they, however, could not get rapidly to work; other affairs pulled them in different directions. redmond was forced to go to westminster, where the franchise bill was coming on; moreover, the irish party felt that it must raise the question of irish administration. as our leader, he was obliged to speak on both matters. his reply to the ulster amendment proposing to extend redistribution to ireland was that this departed from the compromise reached at the speaker's conference, and moreover ignored the existence of the convention. he spoke with studied brevity and avoidance of party spirit: but the debate became a wrangle. mr. barrie brought back into it some of the convention's friendlier atmosphere; but his argument was that in the interests of the convention this concession should be made. the second debate, on october rd, was inevitably contentious: it deplored the policy being pursued by the irish executive and the irish military authorities "at a time when the highest interests of ireland and the empire demand the creation of an atmosphere favourable to the convention." redmond had an easy task in convicting the government's action of incoherence and of blundering provocation--but to do this was of no advantage to his main purpose, which he served as best he could by a side-wind, eulogizing the temper of the convention and specially the "sincere desire for a reasonable settlement" shown by the ulster delegates. still, at the best, it was impossible for him not to feel that the reaction of a debate which could not be kept in the tone on which he started it must be unfavourable to the meetings of the nine which were about to take place. he was to go in to negotiate a settlement for his country while the voices of faction were yelping at his heels all over ireland, and all the forces of reconciliation which he had brought into play were neutralized and sterilized. a debate of these days gave him a happier occasion to intervene than the domestic bickerings in which he had been forced to take part; yet even in this the note of sadness predominated. on october th, when a vote of thanks was proposed to the navy, army and mercantile marine, he joined his voice to that of other leaders of parties, to emphasize, as he said, that they spoke from an absolutely unanimous house of commons. he recalled the exploits of irish troops and dwelt again on the presence of a large irish element in the canadian and anzac divisions. but his reference was chiefly to those nationalist irish brigades, who had remained true, he said, to the old motto of the brigade of fontenoy, _semper et ubique fidelis_. these men had known in the midst of their privations and sufferings a new and poignant feeling of anguish: they had seen "a section at any rate of their countrymen" repudiate the view that in serving as they served they were fighting for ireland, for her happiness, for her prosperity and her liberty. "i wish it were possible for me to speak a word to every one of those men. if my words could reach them, i would say to every one of them that they need have no misgiving, that they were right from the first, that time will vindicate them, that time will show that while fighting for liberty and civilization in europe they are also fighting for civilization and liberty in their own land. i would like to say to every one of them, in addition, that even at this moment, when ephemeral causes have confused and disturbed irish opinion, they are regarded with feelings of the deepest pride and gratitude by the great bulk of the irish race and by all that is best in every creed and class in ireland." the irish divisions had once and again been engaged shoulder to shoulder, but this time with very different fortune, in the third battle of ypres; yet, win or lose, they won or lost together. in that same fighting redmond's own son had earned special honour; the distinguished service order was bestowed on him for holding up a broken line with his company of the irish guards. at a happier time this news would have been received with enthusiasm all over ireland; now, the most one could say was that it delighted the convention. it would be quite wrong, however, to regard redmond's attitude in these days as unhopeful. the first meetings of the nine were fruitful of much agreement--conditional at all points on general ratification. but the true spirit of compromise was there. so far as concerned the provision to give minorities more than their numerical weight, it was agreed that there should be two houses, with powers of joint session, and with control over money bills conceded to the upper house. in the lower house unionists should (somehow) get forty per cent, of the representation: so that in the joint session the influences would be equally balanced. the hitch came over finance. nationalists wanted complete powers of taxation, but would agree to a treaty establishing free trade between the two countries for a long period. ulster wanted a common fiscal control for great britain and ireland. by november st a complete deadlock had been reached. on that date the grand committee met to take stock informally of the position, especially in regard to the procedure of the more detailed sub-committees, and to face the fact that a grave misfortune had befallen us. sir alexander mcdowell had been prevented by illness from attending any of the meetings. he had no further part in the convention's work, and died before it ended. redmond in a confidential talk spoke of his absence as lamentable. the two had arranged--on the belfast man's proposal--to meet for private interviews before the nine came together. neither had control of the forces for which he spoke; but both stood out, by everyone's consent, from the rest of the assembly. it is impossible to say how much they might have achieved had they come to an understanding; but assuredly no other representative of the north spoke with the same self-confidence or the same weight of personality as sir alexander mcdowell. my own feeling about him--if it be worth while to record a personal impression--was that he was a man with the instinct for carrying big things through--that the problem tempted him, as a task which called for the exertion of powers which he was conscious of possessing. in losing him we lost certainly the strongest will in his group, perhaps the strongest in the convention; and it was a will for settlement. it was, too, a will less hampered by regard for public opinion than that of any popularly elected representative man can be. he had, i think, also eminently the persuasive gift which is not only inclined to give and take but can impart that disposition to others. mr. pollock, who replaced him, was an able man, but singularly lacking in this quality. he held his own views clearly and strongly, but his method of exposition accentuated differences: it had always a note of asperity, though this was certainly not deliberate. one of the pleasant memories which remains with me is of a day when debate grew acrimonious and hot words were used. mr. pollock refused to reply to some phrases which might have been regarded as taunts, because, he said, "i have made friendships here which i never expected to make, and i value them too much to risk the loss of them." that friendly temper, combined with his ability, made him a valuable member of this convention: but for the critical work of bringing men's minds together, of sifting the essential from the unessential, he was a bad exchange for sir alexander mcdowell. redmond said to me that he had found mr. barrie much more conciliatory than in the earlier and public stages. he was delighted with lord midleton, who was, he said, "showing an irish spirit which i never expected";--standing up for the claims of an irish parliament if there was to be one. in the discussion, however, one man, bishop o'donnell, had been "head and shoulders above everyone else." argument had ranged about the question of customs and excise. this was the dividing line. but when at last a deadlock was definitely reached, the ulster position was stated in a letter which refused to concede to an irish parliament the control of either direct or indirect taxation. it was to be a parliament with no taxing power at all. on the other hand, in the corresponding document from the nationalist side, the importance of immediate and full fiscal control had been put very high. "self-government does not exist," it said, "where those nominally entrusted with affairs of government have not control of fiscal and economic policy. no nation with self-respect could accept the idea that while its citizens were regarded as capable of creating wealth they were regarded as incompetent to regulate the manner in which taxation of that wealth should be arranged, and that another country should have the power of levying and collecting taxes, the taxed country being placed in the position of a person of infirm mind whose affairs are regulated by trustees. no finality could be looked for in such an arrangement, not even a temporary satisfaction." the genesis of this passage should be told, for it had importance in the history of the convention; and also it conveys an idea of the limits to which redmond carried self-effacement. it is important because it acted on ulster like a red rag shown to a bull. obviously, if this were the nationalist view, then the home rule act could not be said to give self-government--for under its system of contract finance ireland certainly had not control of her fiscal and economic policy. a measure accepted with enthusiasm in was now regarded as impossible of giving "even a temporary satisfaction." what had happened was this. the chairman in his tireless efforts to bring about agreement had addressed two sets of questions, to the nationalists and to the ulstermen respectively, by answering which he hoped they might clear the air. the direct answers for the nationalists were drafted by mr. russell, but were shown to redmond, mr. devlin and the bishop of raphoe. it was, however, suggested that as an addendum a summary should be added. redmond did not ask to see this addition, and it was not shown to him. it led off with the paragraph which has been quoted. the fact that he allowed anything in any stage of such a negotiation to go out in his name without his own revision marks the loosening of grip--a tired man. his exertions for the past years, the past ten years at least, had been tremendous: they had been redoubled from to . towards the end, one resource had been failing him--the chief of all. a leader when he is well followed gives and takes; there is interchange of energy. for more than a year now redmond had lacked the moral support, the almost physical stimulus, which comes from the ready response of followers. labour at no time came easy to him, there was much inertia in his temperament; and the part which he had laid out for himself in the convention as merely an individual member did not impose on him the same unremitting vigilance as if he acted as leader. yet, the leadership was his; if he did not exercise it, no one else could; and this incident shows that his abnegation of leadership was not a mere phrase. on november nd the grand committee reassembled to hear the report from the nine. lord southborough, who had presided at all their meetings, detailed the conclusions which had been reached or the point on which they had broken down. then followed a discussion lasting some three days, in which ulstermen and nationalists reaffirmed their positions. archbishop bernard, the primate, and lord macdonnell all attempted mediation. finally, lord midleton, who described the position as "a stone wall on each side," announced that he and his group would put before the grand committee certain proposals as a _via media_. these in effect conceded to an irish parliament all that nationalists claimed, subject only to the reservation that customs must be fixed by the imperial parliament and the produce of them retained as ireland's contribution to imperial services. at this point our work was interrupted by the reemergence of the redistribution question. redmond and the other irish members were obliged to go to london and assist for two days at a debate in the worst traditions of the house of commons. the change of atmosphere was extraordinary--and the accusations of bad faith were not limited to what passed at westminster. one virulent speech declared that the convention had no prospects, never had any, and was never intended to have any. this was accompanied by an attack on the action of the ulster group--based, of course, on hearsay. those of us who felt that at any rate the convention offered a better hope for ireland than any which now could be based on action at westminster pleaded for the acceptance of a proposal which redmond put forward as a compromise--that the proposed irish clauses should be dropped from the main bill and the irish matter dealt with in a separate statute. it was so agreed at last, and a conference between irish members, with the speaker presiding, was set up, and quickly did its work. but if all this had been agreed to in october or earlier, much friction would have been saved and a cause of quarrel with the ulster that was not in the convention might have been avoided. still, peace was achieved, and the proposal to cut down irish representation was once more defeated. grand committee met for another session, but was chiefly concerned with getting ready for the reassembling of convention--fixed for tuesday, december th. it was decided that a group meeting of nationalists for informal discussion should be held on the monday night--the first occasion on which this had been done. ill-luck, however, seemed to dog us. dr. kelly, the bishop of ross, who was much closer in his point of view to redmond than any of the other bishops, was gravely ill. this was foreseen. but on the monday a heavy snowstorm fell; redmond, shut up in his hills at aughavanagh, could not reach dublin. the roads were not open till the thursday, and then he thought it too late to come. he was in truth already too ill to face any unusual exertion. the convention had been summoned, not to receive a final report from the grand committee, but to face a new situation. an offer had been put forward by one group which altered the whole complexion of the controversy. grand committee had abstained from deciding whether to counsel acceptance or rejection. but for the first time an influential body of irish unionists had agreed, not as individuals but as representatives, to accept home rule, in a wider measure than had been proffered by the bills of and or by the act of . limitations which were imposed in all these had been struck out by lord midleton's proposals. on the other hand, it was certain that the ulster group would reject the scheme. conversation among nationalists made it plain that if ulster would agree with lord midleton we should all join them. for the sake of an agreement reached between all sections of irishmen, but for nothing less conclusive, dr. o'donnell and mr. russell were content to waive the claim to full fiscal independence. such an agreement, they held, would be accepted by parliament in its integrity. but if ulster stood out, there would be no "substantial agreement," and the terms which nationalists and southern unionists might combine to propose would be treated as a bargaining offer, certain to be chipped down by government towards conformity with the ulster demand. in the result there would be an uprising of opinion in ireland against a measure so framed; the fiasco of july, , would repeat itself. against this, and prompting us to acceptance, was the view very strongly held by redmond, that government urgently needed a settlement for the sake of the war, and would use to the utmost any leverage which helped them to this end. an agreement with lord midleton would mean a home rule proposal proceeding from a leading unionist statesman who spoke for the interest in ireland, which, if any, had reason to fear nationalist government. this would mean necessarily a profound change in the attitude of the house of lords and of all those social influences whose power we had felt so painfully. government could undoubtedly, if it chose, carry a measure giving effect to this compact. further, weighing greatly with the instincts of the rank and file was the motive which prompted irish nationalists to welcome the advance made by those whom lord midleton represented. the southern unionists were the old landowning and professional class, friendly in all ways of intercourse, but politically severed and sundered from the mass of the population. now, they came forward with an offer to help in attaining our desire--quite frankly, against their own declared conviction that the union was the best plan, but with an equally frank recognition that the majority was the majority and was honest in its intent. the personality of the men reinforced the effect of this: lord oranmore, for instance, whom most of them had only known by anti-home rule speeches in the house of lords, revealed himself as the friendliest of irishmen, with the irish love for a witty phrase. this temperamental attitude was of help to lord midleton when on december th he expounded the position of himself and his friends in a very powerful argument, the more persuasive because the good will in his audience softened his habitual touch of contentiousness. it had seemed to them, he said, that both in the nationalist and northern unionist camp there was a tendency to consider dispositions out of doors and to conciliate certain antagonisms without considering whether they excited others. he and his friends had determined to fix their minds solely on the convention itself, and to pursue the purpose for which they were summoned of endeavouring after agreement within that body. they were unionists; but they had asked themselves what could be removed from the present system without disturbing the essence of union; and in that effort they would go to the extremest limit in their power, without thought of conciliating opinions outside, and without any attempt to bargain. on one point only he indicated that their scheme was tentative. defence was by consent of all left to the imperial parliament. this implied, he held, an adequate contribution, and the yield of customs to be collected by the imperial parliament seemed roughly to meet the case, for the period of the war. but this was not absolutely a hard-and-fast proposal. in any case, after the war, the amount should be the subject of inquiry by a joint commission. apart from this, the offer was their last word. it conceded to ireland the control of all purely irish services. this included the fixation of excise, because excise on commodities produced in ireland did not touch the treaty-making power. customs touched that power, and therefore customs, like defence, must be left to the imperial parliament. but, he argued, irish nationalists were not asked to give up anything which had been conceded to them by any previous home rule proposal. to all unionists he said: these proposals keep the power of the crown over all imperial services undiminished; they keep representation at westminster--a corollary from leaving the imperial parliament powers over irish taxation; and by accepting the suggestions already agreed to, they give a generous representation to unionists in an irish parliament. this special representation of minorities was, he thought, sufficient to give a guarantee of "sane legislation" while it lasted; and he suggested that the period should be fifteen years. these concessions, in his opinion, sufficiently protected southern unionists. to ulster he said, "we share every danger threatening you--we have many dangers you need not fear. yet, we have no sinister anticipations. are you still determined to stand out?" on the other hand, when so much of the full demand was conceded, were nationalists insistent, he asked, on demanding what they had never asked in the discussions upon any home rule bill? nationalist leaders had now the chance of leading a combination of all sane elements in the landowning and land-cultivating classes. no irish leader had ever before been able to present such an appeal to unionist opinion as would come from the man who represented a convention party. it was a speech which redmond, if present, must have replied to, and could not have replied to without indicating profound sympathy--for he was in agreement with its main lines; and his expression of opinion upon it must have influenced strongly the views of the rank and file at the moment when they were most open to suggestion. in his absence, men's minds were greatly affected by the fear that if we adopted these proposals, our decision would be exposed to attack from a combination of three forces--sinn féin, which would at least officially condemn anything less than complete separation, and would furiously assail a proposal that denied full taxing powers; the roman catholic church, which would take its lead from bishop o'donnell, who set out in an able memorandum the reasons why ireland must have full control of taxation; and finally, the powerful newspaper whose proprietor, mr. murphy, at once gave signs of his hostility by putting on the paper an amendment to lord midleton's resolution which amounted to a direct negative. the reassembly of the convention was fixed for wednesday, january nd. redmond came to dublin on the monday. he told me that he was inclined to move that while we thanked lord midleton for his substantial contribution towards our purpose, we could not accept his proposal, unless it opened the way to a settlement. what he meant by this was not merely that if ulster agreed, we should accept; for that would certainly open the way. but he had also in his mind the possibility of a guarantee from government that an arrangement come to, as this might be, by four-fifths of the convention, and repudiated only by the pledge-bound ulster block, would be regarded as substantial agreement, and taken as a basis for legislation. in that case, also, the way would be open; but he had no written assurance of such an understanding, though i gathered that he was urging the government to give it. we were, however, told on good authority in these days that if the southern unionists' proposal was accepted by the nationalists and other elements outside of ulster, the prime minister would use his whole influence with his colleagues to secure acceptance of the compact and immediate legislation upon it. this would mean, we were also assured, that the whole thing would be done before easter. on january nd the resumed debate for the first time brought the convention face to face with concrete proposals for a settlement. in tone and in substance it would have done credit to any parliament that ever sat. i shall not try to summarize the arguments, but simply to note certain outstanding facts. lord midleton modified his original proposal that collection of customs should be an imperial service throughout. he agreed that collection might be done by the irish civil service. moreover, he admitted that ireland must have full means of checking the account for these taxes, great part of which must necessarily be collected at english ports, since tea, tobacco and the other dutiable articles were seldom shipped direct to ireland. but he made it plain that the essential of his proposal was the maintenance of a common customs system, leaving the fixation of customs to the imperial parliament for great britain and ireland. if this was denied, as it would be by the acceptance of mr. murphy's amendment, all unionists would be driven once more into the same lobby; all chance of uniting elements heretofore divided would disappear. this was the fact against which we were brought up. insistence on the full nationalist demand as it had been outlined in the convention meant the refusal of a new and powerful alliance which now offered itself, and the destruction of anything which could be called an agreement. in the close, lord midleton reinforced his appeal by a solid material argument. the sub-committee presided over by lord macdonnell had reached unanimous conclusions embodying proposals for the completion of land purchase within a very brief period. landlords, agents, tenants, representatives for ulster as well as from the south and west, were parties to this plan. lord midleton now looked back on the past as one who had been in the fight since mr. gladstone's first home rule bill. every fresh settlement had been wrecked, he said, by standing for the last shred of the demand. in , if gladstone had abandoned the identity of democratic franchise for both countries and had made to the irish minority such concessions as this convention was willing to make, he would have carried the liberal unionist element with him. then, as now, a great land purchase scheme depended on the solution of the main problem. to-day land purchase stood or fell with the convention. he was backed by lord dunraven--who waived his preference for his own original proposal--and by lord desart, in most able argument: the latter declaring that the proposal to give ireland a separate customs system could never be carried in england. but the speech of the day came from mr. kavanagh, who, speaking as a nationalist who had been a unionist, ended a most moving appeal for agreement with a declaration that he at all events would vote for the compromise. there was no mistaking the effect produced by the earnestness of this speaker, who knew as much of ireland and was as well fitted to judge of its true interests as any man in the room. that effect was felt, i think, in the tone of a private meeting of nationalists held the same night. redmond, with the art of which he was a master, indicated support for the proposal without forcing a conclusion. he dwelt on the fact that if we did not agree we not only lost our chance of immediate and complete land purchase but left ourselves subjected to the entire burden of war taxation. other speakers pointed out that we ought not to let ourselves be lured into driving the southern unionists and the ulstermen together against us. mr. clancy said in his downright manner that he would not as yet express his view publicly: but that he was not going to reject this offer for the sake of fixing taxes on tea and tobacco, and that when the right time came, he would say so. the strongest arguments used against this view were that in surrendering control of customs we lost our management of the taxes which pressed upon the poor; and further, that even if we agreed, no one knew what would result. we had no guarantee that the compact would be expressed in legislation. but on the whole the tone showed a disposition to accept, and especially to support redmond--who had spoken of his political career as a thing ended. next day the debate in convention continued. archbishop bernard, speaking as a unionist, said that the proposal was a venture beset with risks, but the greatest danger of all was to do nothing. it would be a grave responsibility for ulster to wreck the chance of a settlement. lord oranmore dwelt on the composition of the proposed legislature power was to be entrusted to a very different parliament from that which they had feared. he and his like were to get what they desired--an opportunity of taking part in the government of the country. it looked to him as if the only possible irish government under this scheme must be unionist in its complexion. perhaps there was an echo of this in redmond's speech, by far the greatest he made in the convention, when at last he intervened on january th--the friday which ended that session. he dealt at once with mr. barrie's often repeated view that the proper object of our endeavours was to find a compromise between the act of and the proposal for partition put forward by ulster. on that basis the convention could never have been brought together. the prime minister's letter of may th which proposed the convention suggested that irishmen should meet "for the purpose of drafting a constitution for their own country." on may nd mr. lloyd george had said, "we propose that ireland should try her own hand at hammering out an instrument of government for her people." the only limitation was that it should be a constitution "for the future government of ireland within the empire." then he turned to the argument that all the sacrifices were asked from unionists. let us weigh them, he said. what sacrifices had been made by the irish nationalists, since this chain of events began?--then followed a passage which i recapitulate, not necessarily in full, but in phrases which he actually used, and i noted down: "personal loss i set aside. my position--our position--before the war was that we possessed the confidence of nearly the entire country. i took a risk--we took it--with eyes open. i have--we have--not merely taken the risk but made the sacrifice. if the choice were to be made to-morrow, i would do it all over again. "i have had my surfeit of public life. my modest ambition would be to serve in some quite humble capacity under the first unionist prime minister of ireland." as to other sacrifices, in the way of concessions, he recited the list of what had been agreed to--proposals so strangely undemocratic--the nomination of members of parliament, the disproportionate powers given to a minority. "shall we not be denounced for making them?" he asked. on the other hand, what sacrifices had been made by the southern unionists? these were the men who had had the hardest battle to fight in the struggle over home rule. they were not, like ulster unionists, "entrenched in a ring-fence," but the scattered few, who had suffered most and who might naturally have entertained most bitterness. yet lord midleton's speech had been instinct with an admirable spirit. the speech of the archbishop of dublin had touched him deeply. "between these men and us there never again can be the differences of the past. they have put behind them all bitter memories. they have agreed to the framework of a bill better than any offered to us in , or ." as for us nationalists--he emphasized that each man came here free, untrammelled. "i speak only for myself. but even if i stand alone, i will not allow myself, because i cannot get the full measure of my demand, to be drawn to reject the proffered hand of friendship held out to us. in my opinion we should be political fools if we did not endeavour to cement an alliance with these men." as concerned the labour men, mr. whitley, who had always been a unionist, had declared willingness to agree. but the ulster unionists--what sacrifice had they made? "the last thing i desire is to attack mr. barrie and his friends. but they are not free agents. i was shocked when i heard that a section here openly avowed the need to refer back to some outside body. if we had been told we were going into a body which would consist of two orders of members, it would have been difficult to get us here." on the essential point ulster had made no concession. what did mr. barrie say in his formal document? 'we are satisfied that for ireland and for great britain a common system of finances with one exchequer is a fundamental necessity.' if they denied the taxing power to ireland, any proposal on these lines must give ireland less than any proposal for home rule ever put forward. this was ulster's original position and they had not budged an inch. "this is their response to the empire's s.o.s. is it worthy of ulster's imperial loyalty? i don't believe it is their last word." lord londonderry, however, in replying, did not add any ground of hope. the last speech of the day announced that of six trade unionists five would support the compromise. redmond that evening put on the notice paper a motion adopting lord midleton's proposals provided that they "be adopted by his majesty's government as a settlement of the irish question and legislative effect be given to them forthwith." on the day before this motion was tabled, a party was given at lord granard's house which everybody attended, and which marked the most festive moment of our comradeship. when we separated on the friday most men were absolutely confident of an agreement covering four-fifths of the convention. unhappily, the motion could not come under consideration for a period of ten days. in the following week lord midleton thought it necessary to attend the house of lords. it was settled that we should spend the interval discussing the land purchase report, for which his presence was not essential. redmond, whose health was still bad, did not come up to dublin. all this gave time for agitation, and agitation was at work. still, during that week there was no sign of any change in tone. members of the local bodies who had gone to their homes at the week's end came back just as much inclined to settle as before. i met redmond on the night of monday, january th. he had seen no one in these ten days. he told me that he was still uncertain what would happen, but asked me to get one of the leading county councillors to second his motion. next morning i came in half an hour before the meeting to find the man i wanted. when i met him he was full of excitement, and said, "something has gone wrong; the men are all saying they must vote against redmond." then it was evident that propaganda had been busy to some purpose. when redmond came in to his place, i said, "it's all right. martin mcdonogh will second your motion." he answered with a characteristic brusqueness, "he needn't trouble. i'm not going to move it; devlin and the bishops are voting against me." he rose immediately the chairman was in his place. "the amendment which i have on the paper," he said, "embodies the deliberate advice i give to the convention. "i consulted no one--and could not do so, being ill. it stands on record on my sole responsibility. "since entering the building i have heard that some very important nationalist representatives are against this course--the catholic bishops, mr. devlin--and others. i must face the situation--at which i am surprised; and i regret it. "if i proceeded i should probably carry my point on a division, but the nationalists would be divided. such a division could not carry out the objects i have in view. "therefore, i must avoid pressing my motion. but i leave it standing on the paper. the others will give their advice. i feel that i can be of no further service to the convention and will therefore not move."[ ] there was a pause of consternation. the chairman intervened and the debate proceeded, and was carried on through the week. during its course a letter to the chairman from the bishop of ross was circulated to us, most dexterous in exposition, most affecting in the tone of its conclusion. it can be read in the report of the convention and it cannot with justice be quoted except at full length--so admirable is the linking of argument. it need only be said here that it was an appeal "to my fellow-nationalists who have already made great concessions" to yield, for the sake of a settlement, this further point, and that the appeal was signed "from my sick-bed, not far removed from my death-bed." that eloquent voice and subtle brain could ill be spared from our assembly: but the letter came too late. it is plain that the writer had no inkling of what would happen till it was actually taking place. no one can overstate the effect of this episode. redmond's personal ascendancy in the convention had become very great. i am certain there was not a man there but would have said, "if there is to be an irish parliament, redmond must be prime minister, and his personality will give that parliament its best possible chance." the ulstermen had more than once expressed their view that if home rule were sure to mean redmond's rule, their objections to it would be materially lessened. now, they saw redmond thrown over, and by a combination in which the clerical influence, so much distrusted by them, was paramount. iv a new stage in the history of the convention now opens. in the interval between the meeting which began by redmond's withdrawal of his amendment and that of the following week, sir horace plunkett went to london and laid the situation before the prime minister. redmond had also written to mr. lloyd george stating that no progress could be made unless government would declare its intentions as to legislation. the chairman came back with the following letter in his pocket: downing street, whitehall, s.w. , _january_ , . dear sir horace plunkett, in our conversation on saturday you told me that the situation in the convention has now reached a very critical stage. the issues are so grave that i feel the convention should not come to a definite break without the government having an opportunity of full consultation with the leaders of the different sections. if, and when, therefore, a point is reached at which the convention finds that it can make no further progress towards an agreed settlement, i would ask that representatives should be sent to confer with the cabinet. the government are agreed and determined that a solution must be found. but they are firmly convinced that the best hope of a settlement lies within the convention, and they are prepared to do anything in their power to assist the convention finally to reach a basis of agreement which would enable a new irish constitution to come into operation with the consent of all parties. yours sincerely, d. lloyd george. before acting on this, sir horace plunkett allowed the debate to continue during two days. since no movement towards agreement manifested itself, but only evidence of widespread and various divergence, he laid the prime minister's invitation before the convention. there was considerable difference of opinion before a decision was reached for acceptance. groups separated to select their representatives on the delegation. it was agreed in private conference that only one view should be presented from the nationalist side, and that the view of what was at this point clearly the majority. redmond, in agreeing to act as a delegate, agreed to set aside his own judgment and to press the claim for full fiscal responsibility--which, like other nationalists, he regarded as in the abstract ireland's right. but illness prevented him from attending when at last the delegates were received by the prime minister on february th. on the th he had asked a question in parliament--the last he was to ask there. it concerned the starting of a factory for the manufacture of aircraft in dublin--one of the things for which he was pressing in his ceaseless effort to bring ireland some industrial advantage from the war. i saw him towards the end of that month in his room at the house, and he commented bitterly upon a raid carried out by sinn féiners, in which some newly erected buildings were destroyed at one of the aerodromes near dublin which he had helped to establish. but the main thing he had to say concerned the course of the convention. everything, in his judgment, was wrecked; he saw nothing ahead for his country but ruin and chaos. he spoke of his health. a bout of sickness which had prostrated him at christmas in dublin had left him uneasy. he was at the time, i thought, unduly alarmed about himself, and i believed that the continuance of this frame of mind was simply characteristic of a man who had very little experience of ill-health. i left him with profound compassion for his trouble of spirit, but without any serious apprehension for his state of body. the convention reassembled on february th to consider the result of the delegation, which was summed up in a letter from mr. lloyd george. this well-known document begins with a definite pledge of action. on receiving the report of the convention the government would give it immediate attention and would "proceed with the least possible delay to submit legislative proposals to parliament."--the date of this pledge was february , .--mr. lloyd george pressed, however, for a settlement "in and through the convention"; and he declared his conviction that "in view of previous attempts at settlement and of the deliberations of the convention itself, the only hope of agreement lies in a solution which on the one side provides for the unity of ireland by a single legislature, with adequate safeguards for the interests of ulster and of the southern unionists, and, on the other, secures the well-being of the empire and the fundamental unity of the united kingdom." ireland's strong claim to some control of indirect taxation was admitted; but it was laid down that till two years after the war the fixation and collection of customs and excise should be left to the imperial parliament: and that at the end of the war a royal commission should report on ireland's contribution to imperial expenditure and should submit proposals as to the fiscal relations of the two countries. for the war period, ireland was to contribute "an agreed proportion of the imperial expenditure," but was to receive the full proceeds of irish revenue from customs and excise, less the agreed contribution. the police and postal services were to be reserved also as war services. these provisions were laid down as essentials. a suggestion was made of an ulster committee within the irish parliament, having power to modify or veto measures, whether of legislation or administration, in their application to ulster. lastly, government expressed their willingness to accept and finance the convention's scheme for land purchase and to give a large grant for urban housing. the question now before the convention was whether it should or should not accept this offer, which differed from the midleton proposals in that it withheld the control of excise as well as of customs, and that it retained control of police and post office for the war period. it also adumbrated an ulster committee, which had been an unpopular suggestion when put forward in the presentation stages. on the other hand, it offered great material inducements in the proposed expenditure for land purchase and for housing. some of the county councillors who had been most vehement in their opposition to the midleton compromise were now disposed to think this too good an offer to let go, but believed it could be obtained without their taking the responsibility of voting for it. it was necessary to point out that the irish party could not lower a standard of national demand set up by the nationalists in the convention, and that if they did so they would be hooted out of existence. the main argument of those who advised against acceptance was that ministers had pledged themselves to act in any case. let them. we could best help by enunciating our own programme. then they would know the real facts of the irish situation. if a majority of the convention accepted the proposals of the prime minister's letter, there was no pledge that the bill would be on those lines. we needed to keep a bargaining margin in what we put forward. it was even suggested that the government proposals would be more likely to attract support in ireland if put forward as a generous offer from a largely unionist government than if published as a compromise to which nationalists had condescended. our reply was that the essential thing was to make a beginning with self-government, and that by refusing to accept the government's offer, on which alone we could combine with an influential unionist section, we gravely increased the difficulties in the way of carrying home rule. if, as we held, the main need was to unite ireland, the last thing on which we should insist was the concession of complete financial powers. when the lack of those powers began to prove itself injurious to ireland's material interests, ireland would certainly become united in a demand for the concession of them; and the history of the british empire since the loss of america showed that every such demand had been granted to a self-governing state. at this moment interest centred on the discussion in private councils of nationalists. the debates in full convention were animated, but somewhat unreal by comparison. lord midleton's motion had been dropped, by consent, for a series of resolutions tabled by lord macdonnell which were in substance an acceptance of government's proposal. but neither in the private councils nor in the public debates had we redmond's presence. his illness had grown serious; an operation was necessary; it passed over hopefully, and on tuesday, march th, when the debate resumed, mr. clancy had a telegram saying that he was practically out of danger. it was plain in these days that we were nearing a most critical decision, and nationalist opinion was profoundly uneasy. many men were drifting back to redmond's view, and recoiled from the prospect of dividing the convention once more into its original component parts--nationalists on the one side, unionists on the other. it was proposed that on the wednesday nationalists should meet and, if possible, concert joint action; if not, determine definitely each to go our own ways; for a painful part of the situation was that all of us had been used to act together, and none now felt himself free of some obligation. this had to be cleared up when we came down to trinity college that morning, the news met us that redmond was dead. the convention adjourned its work, although time pressed most seriously, till after the interment. ireland is a country where a public man can always count on a good funeral. the body was brought to kingstown, and thence by special train to wexford, where he had expressed the wish to be laid, in the burying-place of his own people and in the town with which he had been most closely associated. hundreds of men came from distant parts to mark their sorrow and respect: what remained of him was carried in long and imposing procession through the streets. over the grave mr. dillon, who had been chosen to succeed him in the chair of the irish party, spoke eloquent and fitting words. some day, no doubt, a monument to his memory will be set up in the streets of wexford, where his great uncle's statue stands, and where will be placed the memorial to his gallant brother, subscribed for from all parts of the kingdom and from all irish regiments in the army. but i say without hesitation that the first and most striking endeavour to put in lasting shape a tribute to john redmond was made in the convention, not by great men, but by the ordinary rank and file of irish nationalists, who went back from the graveside to the work which his death had interrupted. those who had been inclined before to accept his advice--still standing on our minutes--were now more than ever determined to follow it. that advice was not to refuse the hand of friendship which offered itself from men who by alliance with us could take away from the home rule demand all sectarian character: who could bring for the first time a great and representative body of irish landlord opinion and irish protestant opinion into line with the opinion of irish tenants and irish catholics. in order to act upon this advice men needed to face a powerful combination of forces and much threatened unpopularity: they had to encounter the hostility of an able and vindictively conducted newspaper; they had to separate themselves politically from the united voice of their own hierarchy; they had to break away from the politician who for many years now had equalled redmond in his influence in ireland and surpassed him in popularity. all of them were representative of constituents, all were living among those whom they represented; not a man of them but knew he would worsen his personal and political position by what he did. yet, for that is the true way to state it, they stood to their dead leader's policy. it needs not to follow out in any detail the steps by which we reached the end of our labours. in the upshot, the ulster group of nineteen dissented from everything and joined in a report which renewed the demand for partition. the primate and the provost signed a separate note declaring that a federal scheme based on the swiss or canadian system offered the only solution which could avoid the alternative choice between the coercion of ulster and the partition of ireland. the remaining members, sixty-six in all, accepted one common scheme.[ ] their number included ten southern unionists, five labour representatives (three of whom were protestant artisans from belfast), with lords granard, macdonnell and dunraven, sir bertram windle and the representatives of the dublin and cork chambers of commerce. the scheme on which we concurred recommended the immediate establishment of self-government by an irish ministry responsible to a parliament consisting of two houses, composed on highly artificial lines. for a period of fifteen years southern unionists were to be represented by nominated members, while ulster was to have extra members elected by special constituencies representing commercial and agricultural interests. the parliament was to have full control of internal legislation, administration and direct taxation. the fixation of customs and excise was to be from westminster, but the proceeds of these taxes to be paid into the irish exchequer. there was to be a contribution to the cost of imperial defences, and representation at westminster, but a representation of the irish parliament rather than of the constituencies. all of this was agreed to at our last meeting, and nothing could have been more pleasant than the atmosphere of good will which prevailed. but this was after a critical division--the most critical in which i have ever voted--in which those of us nationalists who were for accepting the government proposals voted with the southern unionists and those who were against with the ulster group. the combination of ulstermen and extreme nationalists was thirty-four strong; those who adopted redmond's policy and lord midleton's were thirty-eight. we had in our lobby sixteen of the nationalist county and urban councillors; they had eleven. if that vote had gone otherwise, we were told plainly that the southern unionists would be no parties to the rest of the compromise. they were willing to recommend self-government only if the convention recommended the reservation of customs to the imperial parliament. this point had become in their minds important even more as a symbol of the close union between the two kingdoms than by reason of the economic advantages which they attributed to it. once the sticking-point was passed, the divided nationalists recombined, and we were all at one in our mutual felicitations on the harmony which prevailed at the close. but as one of our rank and file said in my ear, "if we had not given the vote we did, where would be all this talk of harmony? and mind you now, it was not easy to give it." he was right, and within six months it cost him the chairmanship of his county council. others paid the same penalty, i am sure, without grudging it, for most of us were prouder of that action than of any other in our political lives. it may be well to set down the names of the local representatives and labour men who voted as redmond would have advised on that first crucial division. they were: w. broderick, youghal urban council; j.j. coen, westmeath county council; d. condren, wicklow county council; j. dooly, kings county county council; captain doran, louth county council; t. fallon, leitrim county council; j. fitzgibbon, roscommon county council; captain gwynn, irish party; t. halligan, meath county council; w. kavanagh, carlow county council; j. mccarron, labour; m. mcdonogh, galway urban council; j. mcdonnell, galway county council; c. mckay, labour; j. murphy, labour; j. o'dowd, sligo county council; c.p. o'neill, pembroke urban council; dr. o'sullivan, mayor of waterford; t. power, waterford county council; sir s.b. quin, mayor of limerick; d. reilly, cavan county council; m. slattery, tipperary (s. riding); h.t. whitley, labour.[ ] in so far as we were led by anyone, mr. clancy, fulfilling in public what he had privately spoken, was our leader and spokesman. we were along with the southern unionists and our natural allies, lords granard and macdonnell and sir bertram windle. archbishop bernard and dr. mahaffy voted with us in that pinch, so that both the late provost of trinity and the present one did their part to secure an agreement. in the other list, the archbishop of armagh and the moderator were grouped with the archbishop of cashel and the bishops of raphoe and down and connor; the lord mayor of cork and lord mayor of belfast were together; mr. devlin was with mr. barrie. this list represented no unity except a common refusal to agree to any compromise. those who voted in it followed one or other of two trains of cogent reasoning; but the reasonings led to opposite conclusions. these men were beyond doubt as honest in their convictions as those who went the other way; but they took the easier course, whether they were nationalist or unionist: they swam with the tide. the troubles which nationalists brought on themselves by supporting lord midleton were answered by the troubles which his group met for supporting nationalist demands. the men who refused to make the compromise possible have the laugh of us. neither section of us who voted for agreement achieved anything by facing the risk of unpopularity. we had followed redmond's policy and we shared redmond's fate. we had done our best to help the british government and that government itself defeated us. by the prime minister's letter government was pledged to legislate for the better government of ireland, not upon condition of our reaching substantial agreement, but in any event. yet the letter emphasized the "urgent importance of getting a settlement in and through the convention." we had secured a report for a scheme in which sixty-six out of eighty-seven concurred in the broad lines; and of the twenty-one dissentients, nineteen were a group sent to the assembly with a pledge which they construed as giving them a special position, in that no legislation affecting them was to be passed without their concurrence. the agreement which we had reached enabled the government, when it undertook legislation, to quote unionist authority on the one hand and nationalist authority on the other for many wise provisions which otherwise a coalition ministry might have found it most difficult to propose. but no legislation followed. once more an irish issue became involved in the wheels of the english political machine. we have ourselves in part to thank for it. we might in january have taken redmond's advice, and lord midleton's declared view that legislation would follow might have proved correct. yet, what use are might-have-beens? history is concerned with what happened, and our work in the convention dragged itself on till the great german offensive had been launched and the allied line pushed back to the very gates of paris, and government was at its wits' end for men. it is hard to blame a ministry for what harm was done in the frantic rush to cope with perhaps the most critical instant in all history; but what was done produced infinite mischief and no good result. immediately after the convention's report (signed upon april th) had been received, government proposed to apply conscription to ireland. it is said, and it is not difficult to believe, that without making this proposal they dare not have come upon the british people with so extreme demands for compulsory service as were made. but by making it ministers tore up and scattered in fragments whatever results the convention had to show for its labours, and by legislating for conscription in ireland they gained not one man. the proposal, as redmond had always told them, proved impossible to carry out. i do not believe that if redmond had lived this would ever have happened. his record in the war gave him an authority in parliament which no other irishman could possibly claim. it would have been impossible for mr. lloyd george to take such a step without giving him notice; and once that notice came, redmond could have insisted upon the significance of the report of the convention's sub-committee on questions of defence. this committee consisted of two civilians and three soldiers. lord desart, a unionist, was in the chair; mr. powell, k.c., a unionist (afterwards irish solicitor-general and now a judge), was the other civilian; the soldiers were the duke of abercorn, an ulster covenanter, with captain doran and myself, nationalists from the sixteenth division. we found unanimously that if an irish parliament existed, whatever might be the claims of the imperial authority, it would be impracticable to impose conscription without the irish parliament's consent. this unanimous finding was bound to influence the view of any ministry, no matter how hard pressed. but, as debate revealed, mr. lloyd george had never heard of it. i believe that redmond could have persuaded mr. lloyd george to adopt in april the course on which--but after the harm was done--he fell back in june, when lord french asked for a large, but limited, number of recruits to refill the irish divisions within a specified time--at the end of which time, failing the production of the volunteers, other measures must be taken. here, however, we are back in the region of speculation. conscription was proposed and anarchy let loose in ireland. redmond's words, "better for us never to have met than to have met and failed," stand as the final sentence on this notable episode in irish history. that is the convention's epitaph as, i think, he would have written it. how shall we write his own? no attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to represent him as a hero. but there are certain attributes which malice itself can scarcely deny him. all his ideals were generous. his love of country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or tribal or partisan. his was a policy forward-looking and constructive; without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of ireland into the hands of irishmen, not greatly caring what irishmen they were--indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to ireland, not caring at all. in this spirit he grasped masterfully at the chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his fellow-countrymen in the irish convention. and not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. his love of ireland was free from all attendant hates. his resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour. he spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism. his experience of political life and of english ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men. the friend who knew him best in convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: "he was always an optimist." the speaker did not mean--he could not have meant--that in those last months redmond was sanguine. he meant, i think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of ireland. if he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment of other men, too open-handed a policy. perhaps, too, he may have erred--it was his characteristic defect--in not pressing his policy upon others with more vehemence. he had not the temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect. there was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. ambition he had none--none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which i have known him. as for vanity, i never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. his modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. a man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. a man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the mass of his following. the way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful to him. i do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty. all this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. but he was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. without the least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. his tastes, whether in literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which he himself established. without subtlety of interpretation, his judgments cut deep into the heart of things. you could not hear him speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his personality. a statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts in counsel and by his power of guiding action. as a counsellor, he was supreme. he had that faculty for anticipating the future, that broad, far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that momentary outcry. in these qualities of insight and foresight i have only seen one man approach him, the late sir henry campbell-bannerman, to whose credit stands the greatest work of imperial reconciliation accomplished in our day. but redmond had supremely what the wise old scotsman lacked--the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for his wisdom and his vision. he could persuade, but he could not compel. his was not the magnetism which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason--the power which was possessed by his first and only leader, parnell. redmond's appeal was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie deepest and most potent in the heart of man. that was the limitation to his greatness. he could lead only by convincing men that he was right. if in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but by those who desired the same end. yet admit that he failed and that he fell from power. no man holds power for ever, and during seventeen continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far more than all the personal ascendancy of a prime minister in one of the oversea dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which control of administration and patronage bestows. he left his people improved in their material circumstances to an almost incredible degree, as compared with their state when he began his work. yet ireland counts his life a failure, and he most assuredly accepted that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. his action upon the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it had failed to achieve its end. by that action let us judge him, for all else is trivial in comparison beside it. it is said by his critics that he bargained badly. if reply were made that he believed the allied cause to be right and desired to lead his country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered that he was in charge of his country's interests, not of her morals; and he would have admitted an element of truth in this. yet, as in the boer war he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now assuredly he would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that ireland's honour was to be served as well as her advantage. but when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had to bargain with. no one in august anticipated the course of the war. no one foresaw the need for the last man available. it was more than a year before great britain could even equip the men who pressed themselves forward for service. all that he really had in his hand to give or to withhold was the value of ireland's moral support. could he by waiting his time have made a better bargain? when that critical hour came, redmond knew in his, bones the weight of ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly tend to assert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong counter-emotion. he knew that if ireland said nothing and did nothing at the crisis, things would be said of ireland which would rapidly engender rising passion; and with the growth of that passion all possibility, not of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries would be gone. in plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only chance for action would have been in heading an ireland hostile to england. in this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset, he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. but apart from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be served. ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of. how could he hope for an ulster united to ireland, if ulster were divided from ireland on the war? everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. he might have left the sole offer of service from ireland to lie with sir edward carson. what he did actually was to offer instantly all that the ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in ireland itself. it was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually present with him--the essential unity of ireland. to set irishmen working together at such a crisis in the common name of ireland was an object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right for three-fourths of his countrymen. and, when he is called a failure, let it be remembered that in this he did not fail. this fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. had ireland from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the strong yet divergent strains that make up ireland itself. but as the mists of passion clear and deeds rather than words come into sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand irishmen who risked their lives to defeat redmond's effort there were fifty thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and faced dangers far more terrible. by them we take our stand--we who followed redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. we wish no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and generous-hearted irishman in the supreme period of his life. in his defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for no irish heart. tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the end freedom and prosperity come to a united ireland, they will be found to proceed--however deeply overlaid by years and by events may be the chain of causation--from the action which john redmond took in august , and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal of his blood. to have served long and faithfully without reward--to have given all of life to one high purpose--to have faced a great crisis greatly--these are claims enough for redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and followers may be justified when it is judged. the grave has closed over him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead. footnotes: [footnote : when ultimately we did meet, these were the elements which assembled.] [footnote : his notes here are only references to quotations. i supplement on this page by my own notes.--s.g.] [footnote : he was knighted for his work in connection with the war.] [footnote : these are my notes, jotted as he spoke.--s.g.] [footnote : subject to the publication of a report signed by bishop o'donnell, and these in agreement with him reaffirmed their view.] [footnote : the following, though unavoidably absent at the critical moment, joined with us: m.k. barry, cork county council; j. butler, kilkenny county council; patrick dempsey, belfast; m. governey, carlow urban council; m.j. minch, kildare county council.] index agar-robartes, mr., - ancient order of hibernians, army-- irish brigades raised for the war-- sixteenth division, staffing of, , - ; development of opinions in, ; th division made up from, - ; proceeds to france, - ; in action, , ; messines, - ; ypres, tenth division, tyneside battalions, ulster division, ; on the somme, ; messines, - ; ypres, irish nationalist attitude to, - irish recruiting-- redmond's efforts, - , , - , , - , , , , ; efforts handicapped by government, , - , , - , ; letter to birrell, ; sinn féin propaganda against, irish regulars' achievements, ; in gallipoli, ff. ulster sympathies of, , , ff.; the curragh incident, - ashe, thomas, - asquith, h.h., struggle of, with house of lords, - , ; on indivisibility of ireland, , ; ladybank speech, (oct., ), war minister, response to redmond's national defence offer, , on ulster preparations for resisting home rule, fails redmond, , recruiting speech in dublin, - the coalition, redmond's letter to, against conscription, - the rebellion, reports on his visit to ireland, breaks faith with redmond, - displaced, estimate of, , mentioned, , , , , , aughavanagh, - , balfour, a.j., - balfour, g., barrie, mr., , , , beatty, admiral, bernard, dr., abp. of dublin, , , three points of, ff. biggar, joseph, birrell, a., redmond's letter to, on the volunteers, on kitchener's attitude to irish national volunteers, _appreciation_ of redmond quoted, , the rebellion, - mentioned, , , , blake, e., brade, sir r., budget of - , , butler, sir w., butt, isaac, campbell, sir james, campbell-bannerman, sir h., , carson, sir e., the covenant demonstrations, ; moves exclusion of ulster, ; on ulster and the army, ; on possibility of persuading ulster, ; the speaker's conference, ; attitude to home rule enactment, - ; joins the coalition, - ; interpretation of exclusion proposals, ; refuses joint platform at newry, ; kills volunteer bill, ; on conscription for ireland, , ; final victory against redmond, ; temperamental attitude to home rule, - ; quoted, , , - , , ; appeal on ulster's claim, - ; mentioned, , , , casement, sir roger, , , ; quoted, , castletown, lord, cecil, lord hugh, cecil, lord robert, chamberlain, austen, churchill, winston, belfast speech of ( ), , ; devolution proposal, ; bradford speech ( ), - ; the larne gun-running, ; mentioned, , citizen army, the, , ; the rebellion, clark, sir george, - clarke, ----, execution of, clancy, j.j., , , coalition formed, - coercion, - , , colthurst, capt., , commons, house of, parnell's obstruction in, ff.; payment of members, ; scene after passing home rule bill, ; disgust of, at redmond's defeat, ; redmond's estimate of, ; his familiarity with, congested districts board, connolly, james, ; the rebellion, , conscription, redmond's opposition to, ff., , - ; application of, to ireland, convention, _see_ irish convention craig, capt., , , ; quoted, crooks, will, crozier, dr., abp. of armagh, , , , , , , curragh incident, - curzon, col., dalton, miss (mrs. john redmond), , davitt, michael, , davitt (young), de robeck, admiral, despatch of, - de valera, e., , desart, lord, , devlin, j., in redmond's "inner cabinet," , ; his supporters' disappointment on compromise, ; recruiting successes of, , ; indispensable in ireland, ; carries belfast convention for exclusion proposals, ; on the irish convention, , , , ; estimate of, ; redmond's estimate of, ; mentioned, , , , devolution, , dillon, john, relations with redmond, , ; on coercion, ; an irish volunteer movement, ; speech on suppression of the rebellion, ; declines to serve on the irish convention, ; mentioned, , , , , , doran, capt., - doyle, sir a. conan, cited, - dublin strike ( ), , duke, sir. h.e., , dunraven, lord, , , ; on the convention, , , - , ewart, sir s., field, william, financial relations commission, , fingall, lord, forster, w.e., franchise bill ( ), , - , french, sir john, , friend, general, gallipoli, irish troops in, ff. general elections-- , (jan.), - (dec.), , george v, king, george, d. lloyd, non-irish preoccupations of, - ; conciliation mission after the rebellion, ; agreement with the irish, ; agreement thrown over, ; redmond's hopes from, as premier, - ; on irish distrust, ; supports the "two nations" theory, ; the convention, ; letter to plunkett, ; conference with convention representatives, ; proposals to the convention, ff.; quoted on ulster, gladstone, w.e., , , , , ; breach with parnell, - ; retirement, gladstone, w.g.c., gough, gen., quoted, ff. government, delays of, , - , , ; general attitude to redmond, _see under_ redmond granard, lord, , grey, earl, grey, lord (sir edward), ulster proposals of, , ; speech on outbreak of war, - ; quoted, ; mentioned, , harbison, mr., harty, abp. of cashel, hayden, mr., , - hazleton, mr., healy, t.m., returned for wexford, - ; attacks on redmond and nationalist party, , ; opposition to county option, , - ; declines to serve on convention, ; quoted, ; mentioned, , , , hickie, maj.-gen, w.b., , hulk, maj.-gen., hobson, bulmer, quoted, , home rule bill ( ), demonstrations for and against, ; national convention, , ; ulster's attitude, , ff.; exclusion proposals, , , , ; devolution proposals, ; unionist converts, ; in committee, , ; financial arrangements under, - ; report stage, ; third reading, ; in the lords, ff.; third introduction ( ), ; inadequate private discussion of, by irish party, - ; the amending bill, , ; the speaker's conference, ff.; amending bill postponed, ; operation of, to be deferred, - ; royal assent, ; asquith's move towards securing immediate operation of, after the rebellion, ; o'connor's demand for, hopwood, sir francis, industrial depression in ireland under the war, _irish at the front, the_, quoted, irish brigades, _see under_ army irish convention-- committee of nine, , , financial considerations, , , - , , ; lord midleton's proposals, - ; lloyd george's proposals, - first meeting of, fraternization between representatives, - grand committee of twenty, , , , inception of, , intermediate authority proposal, - land purchase sub-committee, , personnel of, ff. preliminaries, procedure adopted, reports presented by, sinn féin attitude to, - , - spirit of, - ulster representatives, attitude of, ; attitude to redmond, ; report presented by, irish council bill ( ), ff., _irish independent_, , irish party, discipline of, - ; personnel of, ; redmond's relations with, - irish relations with england most cordial ( ), irish suspicion, - irish volunteers, redmond's policy repudiated by, - ; collisions with national volunteers, ; rebellion of , ff. (_see also_ national volunteers) jameson, andrew, , judge, m.j., cited, kavanagh, w.m., , kelley, dr., bp. of ross, , , , kenny, dr., ker, s.p., quoted, kettle, prof., t.m., , ; recruiting work of, ; killed in action, ; estimate of, kitchener, earl, attitude of, to irish volunteers, - , , , , , ; redmond's interview with, on recruiting, - , ; letter on irish recruiting, ; estimate of, knight, mr., - labour party, , , land act ( ), land league, land purchase, , - lang, dr., abp. of york, on ulster, - lansdowne, marquis of, , , larkin, james, , , larne gun-running, - law, a. bonar, speeches of, on ulster, , ; ulster policy, , , , , ; protest against enactment of home rule, ; quoted on major willie redmond, ; estimate of, ; mentioned, , liberal party, , lincolnshire, marquis of, volunteer bill of, , liquor trade in ireland, local government act ( ), long, w., quoted, longford election, , lonsdale, sir john, lords, house of, veto controversy, ff., , , ; conference, loreburn, lord, lynch, arthur, lysaght, edward, , , , - mccarthy, justin, ; quoted, mccullagh, sir c., macdermott, dr., macdonagh, ; the rebellion, , macdonnell, sir anthony, devolution scheme of, - ; supports home rule bill, ; in the convention, , , , mcdowell, sir alexander, , - , - macneill, prof., promotes nationalist arming, ; volunteer following of, ; the rebellion, ; cited, , - ; mentioned, , macrory, dr., bp. of down and connor, macsweeney, capt., mahaffy, dr., provost of trinity, , maxwell, sir john, - meath, lord, , midleton, lord, , , , , , ; customs proposals, ff. mooney, j.j., , moore, lt.-col. m., - , murphy, w.m., , , , , , nathan, sir m., national volunteers, establishment of, - , - , ; redmond's adhesion to, ; formidable character of, - ; committee difficulties, ff.; bachelor's walk affair, - ; redmond's offer of, for national defence, ff., ff.; general response, - ; demand for recognition, , - , - ; refused, , , , , , - , ; secession of irish volunteers from, ; asquith's pledge regarding, ; review of, in phoenix park, ; bulmer hobson's _history_ of, quoted, , o'brien, patrick, , o'brien, william, attacks by, on redmond and national party, ; opposition to budget ( ), , ; to home rule bill ( ), ; to county option, , - ; to the convention, ; declines to serve, o'cathasaigh, mr., cited, o'connor, "long john," o'connor, t.p., canadian tour , ; recruiting successes of, ; motion for immediate horns rule, ; cited, ; mentioned, , , - o'donnell, dr., bp. of raphoe, , , , , , , , , ; speech on papal decrees, - oranmore, lord, , paget, gen. sir arthur, ff. parliament, _see_ commons _and_ lords parnell, c.s., - , - , ; property of, , ; power of, ; anecdote of willie redmond and house of commons, parnellites, - , - ; fusion of, with anti-parnellites, parsons, lt.-gen. sir l., ff., - , - pearse, patrick, speech of, in dublin, - ; limerick speech, quoted, ; secedes from national volunteers, ; the rebellion, , - ; execution, _phoenix_ park murders, pigott, pirrie, lord, plunket, count, plunkett, lord (sir horace), conference scheme of ( ), ; the convention, , , ; as chairman, ; lloyd george's letter to, poe, col. sir hutcheson, pollock, mr., , , primate, the, _see_ crozier primrose, neil, - primrose committee, , - protestant ascendency, , , raymond le gros, - rebellion, redmond's attitude to, rebellion of , - , , ; denounced by redmond, - ; suppression of, - ; government's fomentation of _disaffection_, - ; comparison with south african rebellion ( ), recruiting, _see under_ army redmond, john edward, redmond, john-- ancestry and family of, - career-- education, ; clerkship in the house, ; returned for new ross, ; parliamentary _debut_, - ; australian and american mission, ; marriage, ; second american mission, ; imprisoned ( ), ; chosen leader of parnellites, ; returned for waterford, ; attitude to roman catholic church, : widowed, ; second marriage, - ; work with plunkett, - ; on commission on financial relations, ; chairman of united irish party, , ; his inner cabinet, , , ; attitude to irish council bill, - ; campaign for home rule ( ), - ; house of lords controversy, - , ; "dollar dictator," ; the nottingham meeting ( ), ; home rule campaign ( ) following carson, ; on proposed exclusion of ulster, - ; attitude to national volunteers, ; speeches on the ulster position, , , , - ; the ulster gun-running, ; relations with national volunteers thereafter, ff.; the speaker's conference, - ; speech on outbreak of war, ff.; offers the volunteers for national defence, ff; recruiting manifesto, ; refuses office in coalition government, ; interview with kitchener on recruiting, , ; conference at viceregal lodge, - ; visits irish troops at the front, - ; opposes conscription for ireland, ff. letter to asquith, rebellion of , ff. government breach of faith, - ; moves vote of censure, ; criticizes lloyd george, ; renewed opposition to conscription, ; the smuts dinner, ; the convention, , - ; death of his brother, ; death of pat o'brien, ; in the convention, - ; relations with nationalist representatives, - ; speech in belfast, ff.; at westminster, ; speech on vote of thanks to the forces, - ; meetings of committee of nine, ff.; ill-health, , , , ; attitude to lord midleton's proposals, , - ; tables motion conditionally accepting, ; withdraws owing to nationalist opposition, - ; illness, ; operation, ; death, characteristics-- ambition, lack of, , caution, courtesy, , eloquence, , lucidity, , , moderation, , modesty, , optimism, peaceable temperament and tolerance, , , , , rest, love of, reticence, romantic strain, self-abnegation, , sensitiveness, , tact, trustworthiness, comparison of, with campbell-bannerman, ; with parnell, ; position compared, with that of botha, , , , , estimate of, ; birrell's estimate, ; healy's tribute, ; estimate as leader, - , , , ; estimate of his work, - government slighting of, and disregard of his advice, , , , - , - , , , , - ; instances of bad faith, , - , ; recruiting efforts handicapped, , - , , - , house of commons life of, imperialism of, irishmen, attitude towards, , military sympathies of, - oratorical style of, recruiting efforts of, _see under_ army status of, in ireland, - social isolation of, stephens' attack on, - war policy of, , redmond, major "willie," australian mission and marriage, ; imprisoned ( ), ; returned for east clare, ; war service, - , , - , ; position in his regiment, - ; speeches in the house quoted, - , ; advises resignation of parliamentary party, ; last speech in the house, - ; killed in action, , ; estimate of, ; mentioned, , , , , , redmond, major william archer, , ; on the somme, ; wins d.s.o., ; returned as nationalist in election, redmond, william archer, , , richardson, gen., roberts, lord, roman catholic church, , russell, george ("a.e."), in the convention, , , , , sclater, sir henry, - selborne, lord, seely, col., - sexton, th., , shaw, mr., sheehy-skeffington, mr., , sinn féin-- convention ignored by, - , - demonstration by, at funeral of thomas ashe, electoral successes of, , , , growth of, from may , propaganda, suspicion fostered by, rebellion of , _see that heading_ smith, f.e., quoted, south african war, stephens, james, quoted, - taylor, capt., j.s., tennant, h.j., , thomas, j.h., _times_ forgeries, ulster-- administrative autonomy proposal, , arms importation by, , ; larne gun-running, - asquith's moratorium concession to, belfast convention ( ), churchill's speech ( ), convention, the ( ), representatives at, - , ; their attitude and procedure, , county option proposals, , , ff.; difficulties of the scheme, covenant, the, ; military covenanters, exclusion proposals, , , , - ; embodied in the bill, ; time limit discussions, - ; council of accepts exclusion proposals, favouritism applied to, , , , , , , , friendly relations with nationalists, home rule, resistance to, , ff.; parliamentary majority for, ; distribution of home rulers, inseparability of, , - , lloyd george's scheme, protestant ascendency, , , provisional government formed, , rebellion preparations of, redmond's efforts to conciliate, - , - , war, attitude on outbreak of, mistrustful of irish volunteers, united irish league, , , university act ( ), vatican decrees, wallace, col., walsh, abp., war-- outbreak, ff. redmond's policy regarding, , ; nationalist criticism of, - (_see also_ army, recruiting) ulster's attitude, , ward, col. john, waterford, wexford, _what the irish regiments have done_ quoted, white, capt., j.r., - whitley, h.t., wicklow surroundings, - wimborne, lord, , , windle, sir b., , wyndham, g., - shall a man understand, he shall know bitterness because his kind, being perplexed of mind, hold issues even that are nothing mated. and he shall give counsel out of his wisdom that none shall hear and steadfast in vain persuasion must he live, and unabated shall his temptation be. john drinkwater, in _abraham lincoln_. proofreading team. ireland since parnell by captain d.d. sheehan barrister-at-law late m.p. for mid-cork london daniel o'connor great russell street, w.c. contents foreword chapter i. a leader appears ii. a leader is dethroned! iii. the death of a leader iv. an appreciation of parnell v. the wreck and ruin of a party vi. towards light and leading vii. forces of regeneration and their effect viii. the birth of a movement and what it came to ix. the land question and its settlement x. land purchase and a determined campaign to kill it xi. the movement for devolution and its defeat xii. the later irish party--its character and composition xiii. a tale of bad leadership and bad faith xiv. land and labour xv. some further salvage from the wreckage xvi. reunion and treachery xvii. a new power arises in ireland xviii. a campaign of extermination and its consequences xix. a general election that leads to a "home rule" bill! xx. the rise of sir edward carson xxi. sinn fein--its original meaning and purpose xxii. labour becomes a power in irish life xxiii. carson, ulster and other considerations xxiv. formation of irish volunteers and outbreak of war xxv. the easter week rebellion and afterwards xxvi. the irish convention and the conscription of ireland xxvii. "the times" and irish settlement xxviii. the issues now at stake foreword the writer of this work first saw the light on a modest farmstead in the parish of droumtariffe, north cork. he came of a stock long settled there, whose roots were firmly fixed in the soil, whose love of motherland was passionate and intense, and who were ready "in other times," when fenianism won true hearts and daring spirits to its side, to risk their all in yet one more desperate battle for "the old cause." his father was a fenian, and so was every relative of his, even unto the womenfolk. he heard around the fireside, in his younger days, the stirring stories of all the preparations which were then made for striking yet another blow for ireland, and he too sighed and sorrowed for the disappointments that fell upon noble hearts and ardent souls with the failure of "the rising." he was not more than seven years of age when the terrible tribulation of eviction came to his family. he remembers, as if the events were but of yesterday, the poignant despair of his mother in leaving the home into which her dowry was brought and where her children were born, and the more silent resignation, but none the less deeply felt bitterness, of his father--a man of strong character and little given to expressing his emotions. he recalls that, a day or two before the eviction, he was taken away in a cart, known in this part of the country as "a crib," with some of the household belongings, to seek a temporary shelter with some friends. may god be good to them for their loving-kindness and warm hospitality! he wondered, then, why there should be so much suffering and sorrow as he saw expressed around him, in the world, and he was told that there was nothing for it--that the lease of the farm had expired, that the landlord wanted it for himself, and that though his father was willing to pay an increased rent, still out he had to go--and, what was worse, to have all his improvements confiscated, to have the fruits of the blood and sweat and energy of his forefathers appropriated by a man who had no right under heaven to them, save such as the iniquitous laws of those days gave him. it was something in the nature of poetic justice that the lad whose family was cast thus ruthlessly on the roadside in the summer of , should, after the passage of the land act of , have, in the providence of things, the opportunity and the power for negotiating, in fair and friendly and conciliatory fashion, for the expropriation for evermore from all ownership in the land of the class who cast him and his people adrift in earlier years. the writer has it proudly to his credit that, acting on behalf of the tenants of county cork, he individually negotiated the sales of more landed estates than any other man, or combination of men, in ireland, and that with the good will and, indeed, with the gratitude of the landlords and their agents, and by reason of the fact that he applied the policy of conference, conciliation and consent to this practical concern of men's lives, he secured for the tenants of county cork a margin of from one and a half to two years' purchase better terms than the average rate prevailing elsewhere. for the rest he devoted himself during the better part of a quarter of a century to the housing and the social betterment of the workers in town and country, with results which are reflected in their present vastly improved condition. but his greatest effort, and what he would wish most to be remembered for is that, with a faithful few and against overwhelming odds, he took his stand for mr william o'brien's policy of national reconciliation, which all thoughtful men now admit would have saved ireland from countless horrors and england from a series of most appalling political blunders if only it had been given fair play and a fair trial. it is no use, however, in a very sordid and material world, sighing for the might-have-beens. what the writer seeks in the present work is to give, fairly and dispassionately, a narrative of what has happened in ireland since parnell appeared upon the irish scene and the curtain was rung down upon the tragedy that brought the career of the one and only "uncrowned king of ireland" to a close--and until, in turn, the downfall of parliamentarianism was accomplished by means which will, in due course, appear in these pages. ireland since parnell chapter i a leader appears there are some who would dispute the greatness of parnell--who would deny him the stature and the dignity of a leader of men. there are others who would aver that parnell was made by his lieutenants--that he owed all his success in the political arena to their ability and fighting qualities and that he was essentially a man of mediocre talents himself. it might be enough to answer to these critics that parnell could never hold the place he does in history, that he could never have overawed the house of commons as he did, nor could he have emerged so triumphantly from the ordeal of _the times_ commission were he not superabundantly endowed with all the elements and qualities of greatness. but apart from this no dispassionate student of the parnell period can deny that it was fruitful in massive achievement for ireland. when parnell appeared on the scene it might well be said of the country, what had been truly said of it in another generation, that it was "as a corpse on the dissecting-table." it was he, and the gallant band which his indomitable purpose gathered round him, that galvanised the corpse into life and breathed into it a dauntless spirit of resolve which carried it to the very threshold of its sublimest aspirations. to isaac butt is ascribed the merit of having conceived and given form to the constitutional movement for irish liberty. he is also credited with having invented the title "home rule"--a title which, whilst it was a magnificent rallying cry for a cause, in the circumstances of the time when it was first used, was probably as mischievous in its ultimate results as any unfortunate nomenclature well could be, since all parties in ireland and out of it became tied to its use when any other designation for the irish demand might have made it more palatable with the british masses. winston churchill is reported to have said, in his radical days, to a prominent irish leader: "i cannot understand why you irishmen are so stupidly wedded to the name 'home rule.' if only you would call it anything else in the world, you would have no difficulty in getting the english to agree to it." but although isaac butt was a fine intellect and an earnest patriot he never succeeded in rousing ireland to any great pitch of enthusiasm for his policy. it was still sick, and weary, and despondent after the fenian failure, and the revolutionary leaders were not prone to tolerate or countenance what they regarded as a parliamentary imposture. a considerable body of the irish landed class supported the butt movement, because they had nothing to fear for their own interests from it. they were members of his parliamentary party, not to help him on his way, but rather with the object of weakening and retarding his efforts. it was at this stage that parnell arrived. the country was stricken with famine--the hand of the lord, in the shape of the landlord, was heavy upon it. after a season of unexampled agricultural prosperity the lean years had come to the irish farmer and he was ripe for agitation and resistance. butt had the irish gentry on his side. with the sure instinct of the born leader parnell set out to fight them. he had popular feeling with him. it was no difficult matter to rouse the democracy of the country against a class at whose doors they laid the blame for all their woes and troubles and manifold miseries. butt was likewise too old for his generation. he was a constitutional statesman who made noble appeal to the honesty and honour of british statesmen. parnell, too, claimed to be a constitutional leader, but of another type. with the help of men like michael davitt and john devoy he was able to muster the full strength of the revolutionary forces behind him and he adopted other methods in parliament than lackadaisical appeals to the british sense of right and justice. the time came when the older statesman had perforce to make way for the younger leader. the man with a noble genius for statesman-like design--and this must be conceded to isaac butt--had to yield place and power to the men whose genius consisted in making themselves amazingly disagreeable to the british government, both in ireland and at westminster. "the policy of exasperation" was the epithet applied by butt to the purpose of parnell, in the belief that he was uttering the weightiest reproach in his power against it. but this was the description of all others which recommended it to the irish race--for it was, in truth, the only policy which could compel british statesmen to give ear to the wretched story of ireland's grievances and to legislate in regard to them. it is sad to have to write it of butt, as of so many other irish leaders, that he died of a broken heart. those who would labour for "dark rosaleen" have a rough and thorny road to travel, and they are happy if the end of their journey is not to be found in despair, disappointment and bitter tragedy. parnell, once firmly seated in the saddle, lost no time in asserting his power and authority. mr william o'brien, who writes with a quite unique personal authority on the events of this time, tells us that there is some doubt whether "joe" biggar, as he was familiarly known from one end of ireland to the other, was not the actual inventor of parliamentary obstruction. his own opinion is that it was biggar who first discovered it but it was parnell who perceived that the new weapon was capable of dislocating the entire machinery of government at will and consequently gave to a disarmed ireland a more formidable power against her enemies than if she could have risen in armed insurrection, so that a parliament which wanted to hear nothing of ireland heard of practically nothing else every night of their lives. let it be, however, clearly understood that there was an irish party before parnell's advent on the scene. it was never a very effective instrument of popular right, but after butt's death it became a decrepit old thing--without cohesion, purpose or, except in rare instances, any genuine personal patriotism. it viewed the rise of parnell and his limited body of supporters with disgust and dismay. it had no sympathy with his pertinacious campaign against all the cherished forms and traditions of "the house," and it gave him no support. rather it virulently opposed him and his small group, who were without money and even without any organisation at their back. parnell had also to contend with the principal nationalist newspaper of the time--_the freeman's journal_--as well as such remnants as remained of butt's home rule league. about this time, however, a movement--not for the first or the last time--came out of the west. a meeting had been held at irishtown, county mayo, which made history. it was here that the demand of "the land for the people" first took concrete form. previously mr parnell and his lieutenants had been addressing meetings in many parts of the country, at which they advocated peasant proprietorship in substitution for landlordism, but now instead of sporadic speeches they had to their hand an organisation which supplied them with a tremendous dynamic force and gave a new edge to their parliamentary performances. and not the least value of the new movement was that it immediately won over to active co-operation in its work the most powerful men in the old revolutionary organisation. i remember being present, as a very little lad indeed, at a land league meeting at kiskeam, cork county, where scrolls spanned the village street bearing the legend: "ireland for the irish and the land for the people." the country people were present from far and near. cavalcades of horsemen thronged in from many a distant place, wearing proudly the fenian sash of orange and green over their shoulder, and it struck my youthful imagination what a dashing body of cavalry these would have made in the fight for ireland. michael davitt was the founder and mainspring of the land league and it is within my memory that in the hearts and the talks of the people around their fireside hearths he was at this time only second to parnell in their hope and love. i am told that mr john devoy shared with him the honour of co-founder of the land league, but i confess i heard little of mr devoy, probably because he was compulsorily exiled about this time.[ ] in those days parnell's following consisted of only seven men out of one hundred and three irish members. when the general election of was declared he was utterly unprepared to meet all its emergencies. for lack of candidates he had to allow himself to be nominated for three constituencies, yet with marvellous and almost incredible energy he fought on to the last polling-booth. the result was astounding. he increased his following to thirty-five, not, perhaps, overwhelming in point of numbers, but remarkable for the high intellectual standard of the young men who composed it, for their varied capacities, for their fine patriotism, and their invincible determination to face all risks and invite all dangers. it has been said of parnell that he was an intolerant autocrat in the selection of candidates for and membership of the party, and that he imposed his will ruthlessly upon them once they were elected. i am told by those who were best in a position to form a judgment, and whose veracity i would stake my life upon, that nothing could be farther from the truth. parnell had little to say with the choosing of his lieutenants. indeed, he was singularly indifferent about it, as instances could be quoted to prove. undoubtedly he held them together firmly, because he had the gift of developing all that was best in a staff of brilliant talents and varied gifts, and so jealousies and personal idiosyncrasies had not the room wherein to develop their poisonous growths. i pass rapidly over the achievements of parnell in the years that followed. he gave the country some watchwords that can never be forgotten, as when he told the farmers to "keep a firm grip of your homesteads!" followed by the equally energetic exhortation: "hold the harvest!" they were his orders of the day to his irish army. then came the no-rent manifesto, the suppression of the land league after only twelve months' existence, kilmainham and its treaty, and the land act of , which i can speak of, from my own knowledge, as the first great forward step in the emancipation of the irish tenant farmer. mr dillon differed with parnell as to the efficacy of this act, but he was as hopelessly wrong in his attitude then as he was twenty-two years later in connection with the land act of . in the national league came into being, giving a broader programme and a deeper depth of meaning to the aims of parnell. at this time the parliamentary policy of the party under his leadership was an absolute independence of all british parties, and therein lay all its strength and savour. there was also the pledge of the members to sit, act and vote together, which owed its wholesome force not so much to anything inherent in the pledge itself as to the positive terror of a public opinion in ireland which would tolerate no tampering with it. furthermore, a rigid rule obtained against members of the party seeking office or preferment for themselves or their friends on the sound principle that the member of parliament who sought ministerial favours could not possibly be an impeccable and independent patriot. but the greatest achievement of parnell was the fact that he had both the great english parties bidding for his support. we know that the tory party entered into negotiations with him on the home rule issue. meanwhile, however, there was the more notable conversion of gladstone, a triumph of unparalleled magnitude for parnell and in itself the most convincing testimony to the positive strength and absolute greatness of the man. a wave of enthusiasm went up on both sides of the irish sea for the alliance which seemed to symbolise the ending of the age-long struggle between the two nations. true, this alliance has since been strangely underrated in its effects, but there can be no doubt that it evoked at the time a genuine outburst of friendliness on the part of the irish masses to england. and at the general election of parnell returned from ireland with a solid phalanx of eighty-four members--eager, invincible, enthusiastic, bound unbreakably together in loyalty to their country and in devotion to their leader. from to there was a general forgiving and forgetting of historic wrongs and ancient feuds. the irish nationalists were willing to clasp hands across the sea in a brotherhood of friendship and even of affection, but there stood apart, in open and flaming disaffection, the protestant minority in ireland, who were in a state of stark terror that the home rule bill of meant the end of everything for them--the end of their brutal ascendancy and probably also the confiscation of their property and the ruin of their social position. then, as on a more recent occasion, preparations for civil war were going on in ulster, largely of english party manufacture, and more with an eye to british party purposes than because of any sincere convictions on the rights of the ascendancy element. still the grand old man carried on his indomitable campaign for justice to ireland, notwithstanding the unfortunate cleavage which had taken place in the ranks of his own party, and it does not require any special gift of prevision to assert, nor is it any unwarrantable assumption on the facts to say, that the alliance between the liberal and irish parties would inevitably have triumphed as soon as a general election came had not the appalling misunderstanding as to gladstone's "nullity of leadership" letter flung everything into chaos and irretrievably ruined the hopes of ireland for more than a generation. and this brings me to what i regard as the greatest of irish tragedies--the deposition and the dethronement of parnell under circumstances which will remain for all time a sadness and a sorrow to the irish race. footnotes: [footnote : devoy, although banished, did turn up secretly in mayo when the land league was being organised, and his orders were supreme with the secret societies.] chapter ii a leader is dethroned! in the cabin, in the shieling, in the home of the "fattest" farmer, as well as around the open hearth of the most lowly peasant, in town and country, wherever there were hearts that hoped for irish liberty and that throbbed to the martial music of "the old cause," the name of parnell was revered with a devotion such as was scarcely ever rendered to any leader who had gone before him. a halo of romance had woven itself around his figure and all the poetry and passion of the mystic celtic spirit went forth to him in the homage of a great loyalty and regard. the title of "the uncrowned king of ireland" was no frothy exuberance as applied to him--for he was in truth a kingly man, robed in dignity, panoplied in power, with a grand and haughty bearing towards the enemies of his people--in all things a worthy chieftain of a noble race. the one and only time in life i saw him was when he was a broken and a hunted man and when the pallor of death was upon his cheeks, but even then i was impressed by the majesty of his bearing, the dignity of his poise, the indescribably magnetic glance of his wondrous eyes, and the lineaments of power in every gesture, every tone and every movement. he awed and he attracted at the same time. he stood strikingly out from all others at that meeting at tralee, where i was one of a deputation from killarney who presented him with an address of loyalty and confidence, which, by the way, i, as a youthful journalist starting on my own adventurous career, had drafted. it was one of his last public appearances, and the pity of it all that it should be so, when we now know, with the fuller light and knowledge that has been thrown upon that bitterest chapter of our tribulations, that with the display of a little more reason and a juster accommodation of temper, parnell might have been saved for his country, and the whole history of ireland since then--if not, indeed, of the world--changed for the better. but these are vain regrets and it avails not to indulge them, though it is permissible to say that the desertion of parnell brought its own swift retribution to the people for whom he had laboured so potently and well. i have read all the authentic literature i could lay hold of bearing upon the parnell imbroglio, and it leaves me with the firm conviction that if there had not been an almost unbelievable concatenation of errors and misunderstandings and stupid blunderings, parnell need never have been sacrificed. and the fact stands out with clearness that the passage in gladstone's "nullity of leadership" letter, which was the root cause of all the trouble that followed, would never have been published were it not that the political hacks, through motives of party expediency, insisted on its inclusion. that plant of tender growth--the english nonconformist conscience--it was that decreed the fall of the mighty irish leader. it is only in recent years that the full facts of what happened during what is known as "the parnell split" have been made public, and these facts make it quite clear that neither during the divorce court proceedings nor subsequently had parnell had a fair fighting chance. let it be remembered that no leader was ever pursued by such malignant methods of defamation as parnell, and it is questionable how far the divorce court proceedings were not intended by his enemies as part of this unscrupulous campaign. replying to a letter of william o'brien before the trial, parnell wrote: "you may rest quite sure that if this proceeding ever comes to trial (which i very much doubt) it is not i who will quit the court with discredit." and when the whole mischief was done, and the storm raged ruthlessly around him, parnell told o'brien, during the boulogne negotiations, that he all but came to blows with sir frank lockwood (the respondent's counsel) when insisting that he should be himself examined in the divorce court, and he intimated that if he had prevailed the political complications that followed could never have arisen. on which declaration mr o'brien has this footnote: "the genial giant sir frank lockwood confessed to me in after years: 'parnell was cruelly wronged all round. there is a great reaction in england in his favour. i am not altogether without remorse myself.'" not all at once were the flood-gates of vituperation let loose upon parnell. not all at once did the question of his continued leadership arise. he had led his people, with an incomparable skill and intrepidity, not unequally matched with the genius of gladstone himself, from a position of impotence and contempt to the supreme point where success was within their reach. a general election, big with the fate of ireland, was not far off. was the matchless leader who had led his people so far and so well to disappear and to leave his country the prey of warring factions--he who had established a national unity such as ireland had never known before? "for myself," writes william o'brien, "i should no more have voted parnell's displacement on the divorce court proceedings alone than england would have thought of changing the command on the eve of the battle of trafalgar in a holy horror of the frailties of lady hamilton and her lover." the liberal nonconformists, however, shrieked for his head in a real or assumed outburst of moral frenzy, and the choice thrust upon the irish people and their representatives was as to whether they should remain faithful to the alliance with the liberal party, to which the irish nation unquestionably stood pledged, or to the leader who had won so much for them and who might win yet more if he had a united ireland behind him, unseduced and unterrified by the clamour of english puritan moralists. o'brien and dillon and other leading irishmen were in america whilst passions were being excited and events marching to destruction over here. "the knives were out," as one fiery protagonist of the day rather savagely declared. it is, as i have already inferred, now made abundantly clear that gladstone would not have included in his letter the famous "nullity of leadership" passage if other counsels had not overborne his own better judgment. it was this letter of gladstone which set the ball rolling against parnell. up till then the members of the irish party and the irish people were solidly and, indeed, defiantly with him. no doubt michael davitt joined with such zealots as the rev. mr price hughes and w.t. stead in demanding the deposition of parnell, but one need not be uncharitable in saying that davitt had his quarrels with parnell--and serious ones at that--on the land question and other items of the national demand, and he was, besides, a man of impetuous temperament, not overmuch given to counting the consequences of his actions. then there came the famous, or infamous, according as it be viewed, struggle in committee room of the house of commons, when, by a majority of to , it was finally decided to declare the chair vacant, after a battle of unusual ferocity and personal bitterness. and now a new element of complication was added to the already sufficiently poignant tragedy by the entry of the irish catholic bishops on the scene. hitherto they had refrained, with admirable restraint, from interference, and they had done nothing to intensify the agonies of the moment. it will always remain a matter for regret that they did not avail themselves of a great opportunity, and their own unparalleled power with the people, to mediate in the interests of peace--whilst their mediation might still avail. but unfortunately, with one notable exception, they united in staking the entire power of the church on the dethronement of parnell. the effect was twofold. it added fresh fury to the attacks of those who were howling for the head of their erstwhile chieftain and who were glad to add the thunderbolts of the church to their own feebler weapons of assault; but the more permanent effect, and, indeed, the more disastrous, was the doubt it left on the minds of thousands of the best irishmen whether there was not some malign plot in which the church was associated with the ban-dogs of the liberal party for dishing home rule by overthrowing parnell. it was recalled that the catholic priesthood, with a few glorious exceptions, stood apart from parnell when he was struggling to give life and force to the irish movement, and thus it came to pass that for many a bitter year the part of the irish priest in politics was freely criticised by catholics whose loyalty to the church was indisputable. even still--if only the temporary withdrawal of parnell were secured--all might have been well. and it was to this end that the boulogne negotiations were set on foot. mr william o'brien has, perhaps, left us the most complete record of what transpired in the course of those fateful conversations. parnell naturally desired to get out of a delicate situation with all possible credit and honour, and his magnificent services entitled him to the utmost consideration in this respect. he insisted on demanding guarantees from mr gladstone on home rule and the land question, and these given he expressed his willingness to retire from the position of chairman of the party. at first he insisted on mr william o'brien being his successor, but o'brien peremptorily dismissed this for reasons which were to him unalterable. mr dillon was then agreed to, and a settlement was on the point of achievement when a maladroit remark of this gentleman about the administration of the paris funds so grievously wounded the pride of parnell that the serenity of the negotiations was irreparably disturbed, and from that moment the movement for peace was merely an empty show. chaos had come again upon the irish cause, and the irish people, who were so near the goal of success, wasted many years, that might have been better spent, in futile and fratricidal strife, in which all the baser passions of politics ran riot and played havoc with the finer purposes of men engaged in a struggle for liberty and right. chapter iii the death of a leader there is no irishman who can study the incidents leading up to parnell's downfall and the wretched controversies connected with it without feelings of shame that such a needless sacrifice of greatness should have been made. parnell broke off the boulogne negotiations ostensibly on the ground that the assurances of mr gladstone on the home rule question were not sufficient and that if he was to be "thrown to the english wolves," to use his own term, the irish people were not getting their price in return. but giving the best thought possible to all the available materials it would seem that mr dillon's reflection on parnell's _bona fides_ was really at the root of the ultimate break-away. mr barry o'brien, in his _life of parnell_, thus describes the incident: "parnell went to calais and met mr o'brien and mr dillon. the liberal assurances were then submitted to him and he considered them unsatisfactory; but this was not the only trouble. mr o'brien had looked forward with hope to the meeting between parnell and mr dillon. he believed the meeting would make for peace. he was awfully disappointed. mr dillon succeeded completely in getting parnell's back up, adding seriously to the difficulties of the situation. he seemed specially to have offended parnell by proposing that he (mr dillon) should have the decisive voice in the distribution of the paris funds.... mr dillon proposed that the funds might be drawn without the intervention of parnell; that, in fact, mr dillon should take the place parnell had hitherto held.[ ] parnell scornfully brushed aside this proposal and broke off relations with mr dillon altogether, though to the end he remained on friendly terms with mr o'brien." it is a vivid memory with me how closely we in ireland hung upon the varying fortunes and vicissitudes of the boulogne pourparlers, and how earnest was the hope in every honest irish heart that a way out might be found which would not involve our incomparable leader in further humiliations. but alas for our hopes! the hemlock had to be drained to the last bitter drop. meanwhile parnell never rested day or night. he rushed from one end of the country to the other, addressing meetings, fighting elections, stimulating his followers, answering his defamers and all the time exhausting the scant reserves of strength that were left him. considering all the causes of his downfall in the light of later events the alliance of the irish party with english liberalism was, in my judgment, the primary factor. were it not for this entanglement or obligation--call it what you will--the gladstone letter would never have been written. and even that letter was no sufficient justification for throwing parnell overboard. if it were a question of the defeat of the home rule cause and the withdrawal of mr gladstone from the leadership of the liberal party, something may be said for it, but the words actually used by mr gladstone were: "the continuance of parnell's leadership would render my retention of the leadership of the liberal party almost a nullity." be it observed, gladstone did not say he was going to retire from leadership; nor did he say he was going to abandon home rule--to forsake a principle founded on justice and for which he had divided the liberal party and risked his own reputation as a statesman. to think that gladstone meant this is not alone inconceivable, but preposterous. and, indeed, it has been recently made abundantly clear in lord morley's book of personal reminiscences that the parnell split need never have taken place at all had steps been taken by any responsible body of intermediaries to obtain gladstone's real views. we now know it for absolute fact that gladstone had had actually struck out of his letter as prepared by him for publication the fatal and fateful passage and that it was only reinserted at mr john morley's dictation. mr morley's own narrative of the circumstances deserves quotation: "at to dinner in stratton street. i sat next to granville and next to him was mr g. we were all gay enough and as unlike as possible to a marooned crew. towards the end of the feast mr g. handed to me, at the back of granville's chair, the draft of the famous letter in an unsealed envelope. while he read the queen's speech to the rest i perused and reperused the letter. granville also read it. i said to mr g. across granville: 'but you have not put in the very thing that would be most likely of all things to move him,' referring to the statement in the original draft, that parnell's retention would mean the nullity of gladstone's leadership. harcourt again regretted that it was addressed to me and not to p. and agreed with me that it ought to be strengthened as i had indicated if it was meant really to affect p.'s mind. mr g. rose, went to the writing-table and with me standing by wrote, on a sheet of arnold m.'s grey paper, the important insertion. i marked then and there under his eyes the point at which the insertion was to be made and put the whole into my pocket. nobody else besides h. was consulted about it, or saw it." thus the fate of a great man and, to a very considerable extent also, the destiny of an ancient nation was decided by one of those unaccountable mischances which are the weapons of fate in an inscrutable world. i think that to-day ireland generally mourns it that parnell should ever have been deposed in obedience to a british mandate--or perhaps, as those who conscientiously opposed mr parnell at the time might prefer to term it, because of their fidelity to a compact honestly entered into with the liberal party--an alliance which they no doubt believed to be essential to the grant of home rule. we have since learned, through much travail and disappointment, what little faith can be reposed in the most emphatic pledges of british parties or leaders, and we had been wiser in if we had taken sides with parnell against the whole world had the need arisen. as it was, fought on front and flank, with the thunders of the church, and the ribaldry of malicious tongues to scatter their venomed darts abroad, parnell was a doomed man. not that he lacked indomitable courage or loyal support. but his frail body was not equal to the demands of the undaunted spirit upon it, and so he went to his grave broken but not beaten--great even in that last desperate stand he had made for his own position, as he was great in all that he had undertaken, suffered and achieved for his country. it was a hushed and heart-broken ireland that heard of his death. it was as if a pall had fallen over the land on that grey october morning in when the news of his passing was flashed across from the england that he scorned to the ireland that he loved. it may be that those who had reviled him and cast the wounding word against him had then their moment of regret and the wish that what had been heatedly spoken might be unsaid, but those who loved him and who were loyal to the end found no consolation beyond this, that they had stood, with leal hearts and true, beside the man who had found ireland broken, maimed and dispirited and who had lifted her to the proud position of conscious strength and self-reliant nationhood. footnotes: [footnote : this is not exact. what dillon proposed was that parnell, mccarthy and dillon himself should be the trustees, the majority to be sufficient to sign cheques. when parnell objected to a third being added, dillon made the observation which ruined everything: "yes, indeed, and the first time i was in trouble to leave me without a pound to pay the men" (o'brien's _an olive branch in ireland_).] chapter iv an appreciation of parnell with the death of parnell a cloud of despair seemed to settle upon the land. chaos had come again; indeed, it had come before, ever since the war of faction was set on foot and men devoted themselves to the satisfaction of savage passions rather than constructive endeavour for national ideals. we could have no greater tribute to parnell's power than this--that when he disappeared the party he had created was rent into at least three warring sections, intent for the most part on their own miserable rivalries, wasting their energies on small intrigues and wretched personalities and by their futilities bringing shame and disaster upon the irish cause. there followed what mr william o'brien describes in his _evening memories_ as "eight years of unredeemed blackness and horror, upon which no irishman of any of the three contending factions can look back without shame and few english liberals without remorse." and thus ireland parted with "the greatest of her captains" and reaped a full crop of failures as her reward. too late there were flashing testimonials to his greatness. too late it became a commonplace observation in ireland, when the impotence of the sordid sections was apparent: "how different it would all be if parnell were alive." too late did we have tributes to parnell's capacity from friend and foe which magnified his gifts of leadership beyond reach of the envious. even the man who was more than any other responsible for his fall said of parnell (mr barry o'brien's _life of parnell_): "parnell was the most remarkable man i ever met. i do not say the ablest man; i say the most remarkable and the most interesting. he was an intellectual phenomenon. he was unlike anyone i had ever met. he did things and said things unlike other men. his ascendancy over his party was extraordinary. there has never been anything like it in my experience in the house of commons. he succeeded in surrounding himself with very clever men, with men exactly suited for his purpose. they have changed since--i don't know why. everything seems to have changed. but in his time he had a most efficient party, an extraordinary party. i do not say extraordinary as an opposition but extraordinary as a government. the absolute obedience, the strict discipline, the military discipline in which he held them was unlike anything i have ever seen. they were always there, they were always ready, they were always united, they never shirked the combat and parnell was supreme all the time." "parnell was supreme all the time." this is the complete answer to those--and some of them are alive still--who said in the days of "the split" that it was his party which made him and not he who made the party. in this connection i might quote also the following brief extract from a letter written by mr william o'brien to archbishop croke during the boulogne negotiations: "we have a dozen excellent front bench men in our party but there is no other parnell. they all mean well but it is not the same thing. the stuff talked of parnell's being a sham leader, sucking the brains of his chief men, is the most pitiful rubbish." time proved, only too tragically, the correctness of mr o'brien's judgment. when the guiding and governing hand of parnell was withdrawn the party went to pieces. in the words of gladstone: "they had changed since then"--and i may add that at no subsequent period did they gain the same cohesion, purpose or power as a party. it may be well when dealing with parnell's position in irish history to quote the considered opinion of an independent writer of neutral nationality. m. paul dubois, a well-known french author, in his masterly work, _contemporary ireland_, thus gives his estimate of parnell: "parnell shares with o'connell the glory of being the greatest of irish leaders. like o'connell he was a landlord and his family traditions were those of an aristocrat. like him, too, he was overbearing, even despotic in temperament. but in all else parnell was the very opposite of the 'liberator.' the protestant leader of a catholic people, he won popularity in ireland without being at all times either understood or personally liked. in outward appearance he had nothing of the irishman, nothing of the celt about him. he was cold, distant and unexpansive in manner and had more followers than friends. his speech was not that of a great orator. yet he was singularly powerful and penetrating, with here and there brilliant flashes that showed profound wisdom. a man of few words, of strength rather than breadth of mind--his political ideals were often uncertain and confused--he was better fitted to be a combatant than a constructive politician. beyond all else he was a parliamentary fighter of extraordinary ability, perfectly self-controlled, cold and bitter, powerful at hitting back. it was precisely these english qualities that enabled him to attain such remarkable success in his struggle with the english. pride was perhaps a stronger motive with him than patriotism or faith." we have here the opinions of those who knew parnell in parliament--the one as his opponent, the other as, perhaps, his most intimate friend--and of an independent outsider who had no part or lot in irish controversies. it may be perhaps not amiss if i conclude this appreciation of parnell with the views of an irishman of the latest school of irish thought. mr r. mitchell henry, in his work, _the evolution of sinn fein_, writes: "the pathetic and humiliating performance (of the butt 'home rulers') was ended by the appearance of charles stewart parnell, who infused into the forms of parliamentary action the sacred fury of battle. he determined that ireland, refused the right of managing her own destinies, should at least hamper the english in the government of their own house; he struck at the dignity of parliament and wounded the susceptibilities of englishmen by his assault upon the institution of which they are most justly proud. his policy of parliamentary obstruction went hand in hand with an advanced land agitation at home. the remnant of the fenian party rallied to his cause and suspended for the time, in his interests and in furtherance of his policy, their revolutionary activities. for parnell appealed to them by his honest declaration of his intentions; he made it plain both to ireland and to the irish in america that his policy was no mere attempt at a readjustment of details in anglo-irish relations but the first step on the road to national independence. he was strong enough both to announce his ultimate intentions and to define with precision the limit which must be placed upon the immediate measures to be taken.... he is remembered, not as the leader who helped to force a liberal government to produce two home rule bills but as the leader who said 'no man can set bounds to the march of a nation....' to him the british empire was an abstraction in which ireland had no spiritual concern; it formed part of the order of the material world in which ireland found a place; it had, like the climatic conditions of europe, or the gulf stream, a real and preponderating influence on the destinies of ireland. but the irish claim was, to him, the claim of a nation to its inherent rights, not the claim of a portion of an empire to its share in the benefits which the constitution of that empire bestowed upon its more favoured parts." judged by the most varied standards and opinions the greatness of parnell as the leader of a nation is universally conceded. the question may be asked: but what did parnell actually accomplish to entitle him to this distinction? i will attempt briefly to summarise his achievements. he found a nation of serfs, and if he did not actually make a nation of freemen of them he set them on the high road to freedom, he gave them a measure of their power when united and disciplined, and he taught them how to resist and combat the arrogance, the greed and the inbred cruelty of landlordism. he struck at england through its most vulnerable point--through its irish garrison, with its cohorts of unscrupulous mercenaries and hangers-on. he struck at it in the very citadel of its own vaunted liberties--in the parliament whose prestige was its proudest possession and which he made it his aim to shatter, to ridicule and to destroy. he converted an irish party of complaisant time-servers, whigs and office-seekers into a party of irreproachable incorruptibility, unbreakable unity, iron discipline and a magnificently disinterested patriotism. he formulated the demand for irish nationhood with clearness and precision. he knew how to bargain with the wiliest and subtlest statesman of his age, and great and powerful as gladstone was he met in parnell a man equally conscious of his own strength and equally tenacious of his principles. in fact, on every encounter the ultimate advantage rested with parnell. he won on the land question, he won on the labourer's demands, he won on the home rule issue and he showed what a potent weapon the balance of power could be in the hands of a capable and determined irish leader. not alone did he create an impregnable irish party; he established a united irish race throughout the world. his sway was acknowledged with the same implicit confidence among the exiled irish in america and australia as it was by the home-folk in ireland. he was the great cementing influence of an irish solidarity such as was never before attempted or realised. he did a great deal to arrest the outflow of the nation's best blood by emigration, and, if he had no strong or striking policy on matters educational and industrial, he gave manhood to the people, he developed character in them, he gave them security in their lands and homes, and, if the unhappy cataclysm of his later days had not be-fallen, he would unquestionably have given them a measure of self-government from which they could march onward to the fullest emancipation that the status of nationhood demands. there was never stagnation, nor stupidity, nor blundering in the handling of irish affairs whilst his hand was on the helm. it was only later that the creeping paralysis of inefficiency and incompetence exhibited itself and that a people deprived of his genius for direction and control sank into unimagined depths of apathy, indifference and gloom. he thwarted and defeated what appeared to be the settled policy of england--namely, to palter and toy with irish problems, to postpone their settlement, to engage in savage repressions and ruthless oppressions until, the race being decimated by emigration or, what remained, being destroyed in their ancient faiths by a ruthless method of anglicisation, the irish question would settle itself by a process of gradual attenuation unto final disappearance. it was parnell who practically put an end to evictions in ireland--those "sentences of death" under which, from to , there were no less than , peasant families turned out of their homes and driven out of their country. it was his policy which invested the tenants with solid legal rights and gave them unquestioned guarantees against landlord lawlessness. he and his lieutenants had their bouts with dublin castle, and they proved what a very vulnerable institution it was when courageously assailed. taken all in all, he brought a new life into ireland. he left it for ever under manifold obligations to him, and whilst grass grows and water runs and the celtic race endures, ireland will revere the name of parnell and rank him amongst the noblest of her leaders. chapter v the wreck and ruin of a party the blight that had come upon irish politics did not abate with the death of parnell. neither side seemed to spare enough charity from its childish disputations to make an honest and sincere effort at settlement. there was no softening of the asperities of public life on the part of the parnellites--they claimed that their leader had been hounded to his death, and they were not going to join hands in a blessed forgiveness of the bitter years that had passed with those who had lost to ireland her greatest champion. on the other hand, the anti-parnellites showed no better disposition. it had been one of their main contentions that parnell was not an indispensable leader and that he could be very well done without. they were to prove by their own conduct and incapacity what a hollow mockery this was and how feeble was even the best of them without the guidance of the master mind. they cut a pitiful figure in parliament, where their internal bickerings and miserable squabbles reduced them to positive impotence. for years the "antis," as they were termed, were divided into two almost equal sections, one upholding the claims of john dillon and the other faithful to the flag of t.m. healy. meanwhile justin mccarthy, a man of excellent intention but of feeble grasp, occupied the chair of the party, but did nothing to direct its policy. he was a decent figurehead, but not much else. william o'brien lent all the support of his powerful personality to mr dillon in the hope that, by establishing his leadership and keeping the door open for reconciliation with the parnellite minority, he could restore the party to some of its former efficiency and make it once again the spear-head of the constitutional fight for ireland's liberties. mr healy, whose boldness of attack upon parnell had won him the enthusiastic regard of the clergy as well as the title of "the man in the gap," was also well supported within the party--in fact, there were times when he carried a majority of the party with him. after parnell's overthrow a committee was elected by the anti-parnellites to debate and decide policy, but it was in truth left to decide very little, for the agile intellect of mr healy invariably transferred the fight from it to the party, which had now become a veritable hell of incompatibilities and disagreements. at this time also indications came from outside that all was not well within the liberal ranks. some of the most prominent members of this party began to think that the g.o.m. was getting too old for active leadership and should be sent to the house of lords. justin mccarthy also reported an interview he had with gladstone, in which the g.o.m. plainly hinted that, so far as home rule was concerned, he could no longer hope to be in at the finish, and that there was a strong feeling among his own friends that irish legislation should be shelved for a few years so that place might be yielded to british affairs. the general election of had taken place not, as may be imagined, under the best set of circumstances for the liberals. the nationalist members were still faithful to their alliance, which had cost ireland so much, and which was to cost her yet more, and this enabled the liberals to remain in office with a shifting and insecure majority of about when all their hosts were reckoned up. it is claimed for the home rule bill of that it satisfied all mr parnell's stipulations. however this may be, mr redmond and his friends seemed to think otherwise, for they raised many points and pressed several amendments to a division on one occasion, reducing the government majority to on the question of the irish representation at westminster, which the parnellites insisted should remain at . how the mind of nationalist ireland has changed since then! mr thomas sexton was one of the brilliant intellects of the party at this period, a consummate orator, a reputed master of all the intricacies of international finance, and in every sense of the word a first-rate house of commons man. but he had in some way or other aroused the implacable ire of mr t.m. healy, whose sardonic invective he could not stand. a politician has no right to possess a sensitive skin, but somehow mr sexton did, with the result that he allowed himself to be driven from public life rather than endure the continual stabs of a tongue that could be very terrible at times--though i would say myself of its owner that he possesses a heart as warm as ever beat in irish breast. the fate of the home rule bill of was already assured long before it left the house of commons. like the bill of it came to grief on the fear of the english unionists for the unity of the empire. home rule was conquered by imperialism, and the ulster opposition was merely used as a powerful and effective argument in the campaign. ireland had sunk meanwhile into a hopeless stupor. the attitude of the irish masses appeared to be one of despairing indifference to all the parties whose several newspapers were daily engaged in the delectable task of hurling anathemas at each other's heads. interest in the national cause had almost completely ebbed away. a liberal chief secretary, in the person of mr john morley, reigned in dublin castle, but all that he is remembered for now is that he started the innovation of placing nationalist and catholic justices of the peace on the bench, who became known in time as "the morley magistrates." otherwise he left dublin castle as formidable a fortress of ascendancy authority as it had ever been. under conditions as they were then, or as they are now, no chief secretary can hope to fundamentally alter the power of the castle. "imagine," writes m. paul dubois in _contemporary ireland_: "the situation of a chief secretary newly appointed to his most difficult office. he comes to ireland full of prejudices and preconceptions, and, like most englishmen, excessively ignorant of irish conditions.... it does not take him long to discover that he is completely in the hands of his functionaries. his parliamentary duties keep him in london for six or eight months of the year, and he is forced to accept his information on current affairs in ireland from the permanent officials of the castle, without having even an opportunity of verifying it, and to rely on their recommendations in making appointments. the representative of ireland in england and of england in ireland he is 'an embarrassed phantom' doomed to be swept away by the first gust of political change. the last twenty years, indeed, have seen thirteen chief secretaries come and go! with or against his will he is a close prisoner of the irresponsible coterie which forms the inner circle of irish administration. even a change of government in england is not a change of government in ireland. the chief secretary goes, but the permanent officials remain. the case of the clock is changed, but the mechanism continues as before.... the irish oligarchy has retained its supremacy in the castle. dislodged elsewhere it still holds the central fortress of irish administration and will continue to hold it until the concession of autonomy to ireland enables the country to re-mould its administrative system on national and democratic lines." when it came to gladstone surrendering the sceptre he had so long and brilliantly wielded, i do not remember that the event excited any overpowering interest in ireland. outside the ranks of the politicians the people had almost ceased to speculate on these matters. a period of utter stagnation had supervened and it came as no surprise or shock to nationalist sentiment when home rule was formally abandoned by gladstone's successor, lord rosebery. "home rule is as dead as queen anne," declared mr chamberlain. these are the kind of declarations usually made in the exuberance of a personal or political triumph, but the passing of the years has a curious knack of giving them emphatic refutation. divided as they were and torn with dissensions, the nationalists were not in a position where they could effectively demand guarantees from lord rosebery or enter into any definite arrangement with him. they kept up their squalid squabble and indulged their personal rivalries, but a disgusted country had practically withdrawn all support from them, and an irish race which in the heyday of parnell was so proud to contribute to their war-chest, now buttoned up its pockets and in the most practical manner told them it wanted none of them. in this state of dereliction and despair did the general election of surprise them. the parnellites had their old organisation--the national league--and the anti-parnellites had established in opposition to this the national federation, so that ireland had a sufficiency of leagues but no concrete programme beyond a disreputable policy of hacking each other all round. as a matter of fact, we had in cork city the curious and almost incredible spectacle of the dillonites and healyites joining forces to crush the parnellite candidate, whilst elsewhere they were tearing one another to tatters, as it would almost appear, for the mere love of the thing. there was one pathetic figure in all this wretched business--that of the hon. edward blake, who had been prime minister of canada and who had surrendered a position of commanding eminence in the political, legal and social life of the dominion to give the benefit of his splendid talents to the service of ireland. it was a service rendered all in vain, though, to the end of his life, with a noble fidelity, he devoted himself to his chosen cause, thus completing a sacrifice which deserved a worthier reward. at this period the home rule cause seemed to be buried in the same grave with parnell. it may be remarked that there were countless bodies of the irish peasantry who still believed that parnell had not died, that the sad pageant of his funeral and burial was a prearranged show to deceive his enemies, and that the time would soon come when the mighty leader would emerge from his seclusion to captain the hosts of irish nationality in the final battle for independence. this idea lately found expression in a powerful play by mr lennox robinson, entitled _the lost leader_. but, alas! for the belief, the chieftain had only too surely passed away, and when the general election of was over it was a battered, broken and bitterly divided irish party which returned to westminster--a party which had lost all faith in itself and which was a byword and a reproach alike for its helpless inefficiency and its petty intestine quarrels. chapter vi towards light and leading whilst the slow corruption of the party had been going on in ireland, the cause of home rule had been going down to inevitable ruin. the warnings on which parnell founded his refusal to be expelled from the leadership by dictation from england were more than justified in the event. and later circumstances only too bitterly confirmed it, that any blind dependence upon the liberal party was to be paid for in disappointment, if not in positive betrayal of irish interests. a tory party had now come into power with a large majority, and the people were treated alternately or concurrently to doses of coercion and proposals initiated with the avowed object of killing home rule with kindness. this had been the declared policy of mr arthur balfour when his attempt to inaugurate his uncle lord salisbury's policy of twenty years of resolute government had failed, and when, with considerable constructive foresight, he established the congested districts board in as a sort of opposition show--and not too unsuccessful at that--to the plan of campaign and the home rule agitation. with the developments that followed the irish party had practically no connection. they were neither their authors nor instruments, though they had the sublime audacity in a later generation to claim to be the legitimate inheritors of all these accomplishments. mr dillon had now arrived at the summit of his parliamentary ambition--he was the leader of "the majority" party, but his success seemed to bring him no comfort, and certainly discovered no golden vein of statesmanship in his composition. the quarrels and recriminations of the three sectional organisations--the national federation of the dillonites, the national league of the parnellites, and the people's rights association of the healyites--continued unabated. but beyond the capacity for vulgar abuse they possessed none other. parliamentarianism was dying on its legs and constitutionalism appeared to have received its death-blow. the country had lost all respect for its "members," and young and old were sick unto death of a movement which offered no immediate prospects of action and no hope for the future. a generation of sceptics and scoffers was being created, and even if the idealists, who are always to be found in large number in ireland, still remained unconquerable in their faith that a resurgent and regenerated ireland must arise some time, and somehow, they were remarkably silent in the expression of their convictions. mr william o'brien thus describes the unspeakable depths to which the party had fallen in those days: "the invariable last word to all our consultations was the pathetic one, 'give me a fund and i see my way to doing anything.' and so we had travelled drearily for years in the vicious circle that there could be no creative energy in the party without funds, and that there could be no possibility for funds for a party thus ingloriously inactive. although myself removed from parliament my aid had been constantly invoked by mr dillon on the eve of any important meeting of the party in london, or of the council of the national federation in dublin, for there was not one of them that was not haunted by the anticipation of some surprise from mr healy's fertile ingenuity. there is an unutterable discomfort in the recollections of the invariable course of procedure on these occasions--first, the dozens of beseeching letters to be written to our friends, imploring their attendance at meetings at which, if mr healy found us in full strength, all was uneventful and they had an expensive journey for their pains; next, the consultations far into the night preceding every trial of strength; the painful ticking off, man by man, of the friends, foes, and doubtfuls on the party list, the careful collection of information as to the latest frame of mind of this or that man of the four or five waverers who might turn the scale; the resolution, after endless debates, to take strong action to force the party to a manful choice at long last between mr dillon and his tormentors, and to give somebody or anybody authority enough to effect something; and then almost invariably the next day the discovery that all the labour had been wasted and the strong action resolved upon had been dropped in deference to some drivelling hesitation of some of the four or five doubtfuls who had become _de facto_ the real leaders of the party." i venture to say that a confession of more amazing impotency, indecision and inefficiency it would be impossible to make. it brings before the mind as nothing else could the utter degradation of a party which only a few brief years before was the terror of the british parliament and the pride of the irish race. one occasion there was between the parnell split and the subsequent reunion in when the warring factions might have been induced to compose their differences and to reform their ranks. a convention of the irish race was summoned in which was carefully organised and which in its character and representative authority was in every way a very unique and remarkable gathering. i attended it myself in my journalistic capacity, and i was deeply impressed by the fact that here was an assembly which might very well mark the opening of a fresh epoch in irish history, for there had come together for counsel and deliberation men from the united states, canada, australia, new zealand, south africa, newfoundland, the argentine, as well as from all parts of great britain and ireland--men who, by reason of their eminence, public worth, sympathies and patriotism, were calculated to give a new direction and an inspiring stimulus to the irish movement. they were men lifted high above the passions and rivalries which had wrought distraction and division amongst the people at home, and it needs no great argument to show what a powerful and impartial tribunal they might have been made into for the restoration of peace and the re-establishment of a new order in irish political affairs. but this great opportunity was lost. the factions had not yet fought themselves to a standstill. mr redmond and mr healy resisted the most pressing entreaties of the american and australian delegates to join the convention, and, beyond a series of laudable speeches and resolutions, a convention which might have been constituted the happy harbinger of unity left no enduring mark on the life of the people or the fate of parties. when mr gerald balfour became chief secretary for ireland after the home rule debacle of he determined to continue the policy, inaugurated by his more famous brother, of appeasement by considerable internal reforms, which have made his administration for ever memorable. there have ever been in irish life certain narrow coteries of thought which believed that with every advance of prosperity secured by the people, and every step taken by them in individual independence, there would be a corresponding weakness in their desire and demand for a full measure of national freedom. a more fatal or foolish conviction there could not be. the whole history of nations and peoples battling for the right is against it. the more a people get upon their feet, the more they secure a grip upon themselves and their inheritance, the more they are established in security and well-being, the more earnestly, indefatigably and unalterably are they determined to get all that is due to them. they will make every height they attain a fortress from which to fight for the ultimate pinnacle of their rights. the more prosperous they become, the better are they able to demand that the complete parchments and title-deeds of their liberty and independence shall be engrossed. hence the broader-minded type of irish nationalist saw nothing to fear from mr balfour's attempts to improve the material condition of the people. unfortunately for his reputation, mr dillon always uniformly opposed any proposals which were calculated to take the yoke of landlordism from off the necks of the farmers. he seemed to think that a settlement of the land and national questions should go hand in hand, for the reason that if the land question were once disposed of the farmers would then settle down to a quiescent existence and have no further interest in the national struggle. accordingly mr balfour's good intentions were fought and frustrated from two opposing sources. his land act of and his local government (ireland) act, , were furiously opposed by the irish unionists and the dillonites alike. the land bill was by no means a heroic measure, and made no serious effort to deal with the land problem in a big or comprehensive fashion. the local government bill, on the other hand, was a most far-reaching measure, one of national scope and importance, full of the most tremendous opportunities and possibilities, and how any irish leader in his senses could have been so short-sighted as to oppose it will for ever remain one of the mysteries of political life. this bill broke for ever the back of landlord power in irish administration. it gave into the hands of the people for the first time the absolute control of their own local affairs. it enfranchised the workers in town and country, enabling them to vote for the man of their choice at all local elections. it put an end to the pernicious power of the landed gentry, who hitherto raised the rates for all local services, dispersed patronage and were guilty of many misdeeds and malversations, as well of being prolific in every conceivable form of abuse which a rotten and corrupt system could lend itself to. to this the local government act of put a violent and abrupt end. the grand juries and the presentment sessions were abolished. elected councils took their place. the franchise was extended to embrace every householder and even a considerable body of women. it was the exit of "the garrison" and the entrance of the people--the triumph of the democratic principle and the end of aristocratic power in local life. next to the grant of home rule there could not be a more remarkable concession to popular right and feeling. yet mr dillon had to find fault with it because its provisions, to use his own words, included "blackmail to the landlords" and arranged for "a flagitious waste of public funds"--the foundation on which these charges rested being that, following an unvarying tradition, the unionist government bribed the landlords into acceptance of the bill by relieving them of half their payment for poor rate, whilst it gave a corresponding relief of half the county dues to the tenants. he also ventured the prediction, easily falsified in the results, that the tenants' portion of the rate relief would be transferred to the landlords in the shape of increased rents. as a matter of fact, the second term judicial rents, subsequently fixed, were down by an average of per cent. mr redmond, wiser than mr dillon, saw that the bill had magnificent possibilities; he welcomed it, and he promised that the influence of his friends and himself would be directed to obtain for the principles it contained a fair and successful working. but, with a surprising lack of political acumen, he likewise expressed his determination to preserve in the new councils the presence and power of the landlord and _ex-officio_ element. this was, in the circumstances, with the land question unsettled and landlordism still an insidious power, a rather gratuitous surrender to the privileged classes. before the local government act was sent on its heaven-born mission of national amelioration another considerable happening had taken place: the financial relations commission appointed to inquire into the financial relations between ireland and great britain having tendered its report in . financial experts had long contended that ireland was grievously overtaxed, and that there could be no just dealing between the two countries until the amount of this overtaxation was accurately and scientifically ascertained and a proper balance drawn. it was provided in the act of union that the two countries should retain their separate budgets and should each remain charged with their respective past debts, and a relative proportion of contribution to imperial expenses was fixed. but the british parliament did not long respect this provision. in it decreed a financial union between the two countries, amalgamated their budgets and exchequers, and ordered that henceforth all the receipts and expenditure of the united kingdom should be consolidated into one single fund, which was henceforward to be known as the consolidated fund. it was not long before we had cumulative examples of the truth of dr johnson's dictum that england would unite with us only that she may rob us. successive english chancellors imposed additional burdens upon our poor and impoverished country, until it was in truth almost taxed out of existence. the weakest points in the gladstonian home rule bills were admittedly those dealing with finance. the publication of the report of the financial relations commission, which had been taking evidence for two years, created a formidable outcry in ireland. we had long protested against our taxes being levied by an external power; now we knew also that we were being robbed of very large amounts annually. the joint report of the commission, signed by eleven out of thirteen members, decided that the act of union placed on the shoulders of ireland a burden impossible for her to bear; that the increase of taxation laid on her in the middle of the nineteenth century could not be justified, and, finally, that the existing taxable capacity of ireland did not exceed one-twentieth part of that of great britain (and was perhaps far less), whereas ireland paid in taxes one-eleventh of the amount paid by great britain. furthermore, the actual amount taken each year in the shape of overtaxation was variously estimated to be between two and three quarters and three millions. instantly ireland was up in arms against this monstrous exaction. for a time the country was roused from its torpor and anything seemed possible. all classes and creeds were united in denouncing the flagrant theft of the nation's substance by the predominant partner. by force and fraud the act of union was passed: by force and fraud we were kept in a state of beggary for well-nigh one hundred years and our poverty flaunted abroad as proof of our idleness and incapacity. what wonder that we felt ourselves outraged and wronged and bullied? huge demonstrations of protest were held in all parts of the country. these were attended by men of all sects and of every political hue. nationalist and unionist, landlord and tenant, protestant and catholic stood on the same platform and vied with each other in denunciation of the common robber. at cork lord castletown recalled the boston tea riots. at limerick lord dunraven presided at a meeting which was addressed by the most rev. dr o'dwyer, the catholic bishop of the diocese, and by mr john daly, a fenian who had spent almost a lifetime in prison to expiate his nationality. there was a general forgetfulness of quarrels and differences whilst this ferment of truly national indignation lasted. but the cohesive materials were not sound enough to make it a lasting union of the whole people. there were still class fights to be fought to their appointed end, and so the agitation gradually filtered out, and ireland remains to-day still groaning under the intolerable burden of overtaxation, not lessened, but enormously increased, by a war which ireland claims was none of her business. the subsidence of the political fever from to was not without its compensations in other directions. ireland had time to think of other things, to enter into a sort of spiritual retreat--to wonder whether if, after all, politics were everything, whether the exclusive pursuit of them did not mean that other vital factors in the national life were forgotten, and whether the attainment of material ambitions might not be purchased at too great a sacrifice--at the loss of those spiritual and moral forces without which no nation can be either great or good in the best sense. there was much to be done in this direction. the iron of slavery had very nearly entered our souls. centuries of landlord oppression, of starvation, duplicity and anglicisation had very nearly destroyed whatever there was of moral virtue and moral worth in our nature. the irish language--our distinctive badge of nationhood--had almost died upon the lips of the people. the old gaelic traditions and pastimes were fast fading away. had these gone we might, indeed, win home rule, but we would have lost things immeasurably greater, for "not by bread alone doth man live"--we would have lost that independence of the soul, that moral grandeur, that intellectual distinction, that spiritual strength without which all the charters of liberty which any foreign parliament could confer would be only so many "scraps of paper," assuring us it may be of fine clothes and well-filled stomachs and self-satisfied minds, but conferring none of those glories whose shining illumines the dark ways of life and leads us towards that light which surpasseth all understanding. thanks to the workings of an inscrutable providence it was, however, whilst the worst form of political stagnation had settled on the land that other deeper depths were stirring and that the people were of themselves moving towards a truer light and a higher leading. chapter vii forces of regeneration and their effect "george a. birmingham" (who in private life is canon hannay), in his admirable book, _an irishman looks at his world_, tells us: "the most important educational work in ireland during the last twenty years has been done independently of universities or schools," and in this statement i entirely agree with him. and i may add that in this work canon hannay himself bore no inconsiderable part. during a political campaign in mayo in i had some delightful conversations with canon hannay in my hotel at westport, and his views expressed in the volume from which i quote are only a development of those which he then outlined. both as to the vexed questions then disturbing north and south ireland and as to the lines along which national growth ought to take place we had much in common. we agreed that nationality means much more than mere political independence--that it is founded on the character and intellect of the people, that it lives and is expressed in its culture, customs and traditions, in its literature, its songs and its arts. we saw hope for ireland because she was remaking and remoulding herself from within--the only sure way in which she could work out her eventual salvation, whatever political parties or combinations may come or go. this process of regeneration took firm root when the parties were exhausting themselves in mournful internal strife. through the whole of the nineteenth century it had been the malign purpose of england to destroy the spirit of nationality through its control of the schools. just as in the previous century it sought to reduce ireland to a state of servitude through the operations of the penal laws, so it now sought to continue its malefic purpose by a system of education "so bad that if england had wished to kill ireland's soul when she imposed it on the sister isle she could not have discovered a better means of doing so" (m. paul dubois). and the same authority ascribes the fatalism, the lethargy, the moral inertia and intellectual passivity, the general absence of energy and character which prevailed in ireland ten or twelve years ago to the fact that england struck at ireland through her brain and sought to demoralise and ruin the national mind. thank god for it that the effort failed, but it failed mainly owing to the fact that a new generation of prophets had arisen in ireland who saw that in the revival and reform of national education rested the best hope for the future. they recalled the gospel of thomas davis and the other noble minds of the young ireland era that we needs must educate in order that we may be free. they sought to give form and effect to the splendid ideals of the young irelanders. a new spirit was abroad, and not in matters educational alone. the doctrine of self-help and self-reliance was being preached and, what was better, practised. the gaelic league, founded in by a few enthusiastic irish spirits, was formed to effect an irish renascence in matters of the mind and spirit. it was non-sectarian and non-political. its purpose was purely psychological and educational--it sought the preservation of the irish language from a fast-threatening decay, it encouraged the study of ancient irish literature and it promoted the cultivation of a modern literature in the irish language. its beginnings were modest, and its founders were practically three unknown young men whose only special equipment for leadership of a new movement were boundless enthusiasm and the possession of the scholastic temperament. douglas hyde, the son of a protestant clergyman, dwelt far away in an unimportant parish in connaught, and, while still a boy, became devoted to the study of the irish language. father o'growney was a product of maynooth culture, whose love of the irish tongue became the best part of his nature, and john macneill (now so well known as a sinn fein leader) was born in antrim, educated in a belfast school and acquired his love for irish in the aran islands. it is marvellous to consider how the programme of the new league "caught on." some movements make their appeal to a class or a cult--to the young, the middle-aged or the old. but the gaelic league, perhaps because of the very simplicity and directness of its objects, made an appeal to all. it numbered its adherents in every walk of life; it drew its membership from all political parties; it gathered the sects within its folds, and the greatest tribute that can be paid it is that it taught all its disciples a new way of looking at ireland and gave them a new pride in their country. ireland became national and independent in a sense it had not learnt before--it realised that "the essential mark of nationhood is the intellectual, social and moral patrimony which the past bequeaths to the present, which, amplified, or at least preserved, the present must bequeath to the future, and that it is this which makes the strength and individuality of a people." its branches spread rapidly throughout ireland, and the movement was taken up abroad with equal enthusiasm. irish language classes were organised, irish history of the native--as distinct from the british--brand was taught. lessons in dancing and singing were given and the old national airs were revived and became the popular music of the day. it would take too much of my space to recount all the varied activities of the league, all that it did to preserve ancient irish culture, to make the past live again in the lives of the people, to foster national sports and recreations, to organise gaelic festivals of the kind that flourished in ireland's artistic past, to create an irish ireland and to arrest the decadence of manners and the anglicisation which had almost eaten into the souls of the people and destroyed their true celtic character. mr p.h. pearse truly said of it: "the gaelic league will be recognised in history as the most revolutionary influence that ever came into ireland." it saved the soul of ireland when it was in imminent danger of being lost, and its triumph was in great measure due to the fact that it held rigidly aloof from the professedly political parties, although it may be said for it that it undoubtedly laid the foundations of that school of thought which made all the later developments of nationality possible. and the amazing thing is that the priest and the parson, the gentry and the middle classes, equally with the peasantry, vied with each other in extending the influence and power of the movement. one of its strongest supporters was a leader of the belfast orangemen, the late dr kane, who observed that though he was a unionist and a protestant he did not forget that he had sprung from the clan o'cahan. the stimulation given to national thought and purpose spread in many directions. a new race of irish priests was being educated on more thoroughly irish lines, and they went forth to their duties with the inspiration, as it were, of a new call. a crusade was started against emigration, which was fast draining the country of its reserves of brain, brawn and beauty. the dullness of the country-side, an important factor in forcing the young and adventurous abroad, was relieved by the new enthusiasm for irish games and pastimes and recreations--for the _seanchus_, the _sgoruidheacht_, the _ceilidhe_ and the _feiseanna_. in giving to the young especially a new pride in their country and in their own, great and distinctive national heritage, it did a great deal to strengthen the national character and to make it more independent and self-reliant. it started the great work of rooting out the slavery which centuries of dependency and subjection had bred into the marrow of the race. mr arthur griffith has admitted that the present generation could never have effected this work had not parnell and his generation done their brave labour before them, but considered in themselves the achievements of the gaelic league can only be described as mighty both in the actual revolution it wrought in the moral, intellectual and spiritual sphere, in the reaction it created against the coarser materialism of imported modes and manners, and in the new spirit which it breathed into the entire people. coincident with the foundation of the gaelic league, other regenerative influences were also at work. these aimed at the economic reconstruction and the industrial development of the country by the inculcation of the principles of self-help, self-reliance and co-operation, and by the wider dissemination of technical instruction and agricultural education. ireland, by reason, i suppose, of its condition, its arrested development and its psychology, is a country much given to "new movements," most of which have a very brief existence. they are born but to breathe and then expire. in the ease, however, of the gaelic league, and the movements for co-operation amongst the farmers, and for technical instruction in the arts and crafts most suitable to the country, these movements were conceived and created strongly to endure. and to the credit of their authors and, be it said also, of the country for whose upliftment and betterment they were intended, they have endured greatly, and greatly fulfilled their purpose. it is conceded by all who have any knowledge of the subject that the economic decadence of ireland is not due to any lack of natural resources; neither is it due to insufficiency of capital or absence of workers. it is due to want of initiative, want of enterprise, want of business method, want of confidence, and want of education on the right lines. the education which should have been fashioned to fit the youth of ireland for a life of work and industry and usefulness in their own land was invented with the express object of making of them "happy english children." there are possibly a few hundred millions sterling of irish money, belonging in the main to the farmers and well-to-do shopkeepers, lying idle in irish banks, and the irony of it is that these savings of the irish are invested in british enterprises. they help to enrich the british plutocrat and to provide employment for the british worker, whilst the vast natural resources of ireland remain undeveloped and the cream of ireland's productive power, in the shape of its workers, betake themselves to other lands to assist in strengthening the structure and stability of other nations, when they should be engaged in raising the fabric of a prosperous commonwealth at home. those, however, who would blame ireland for its present position of industrial stagnation forget that it was not always thus--they do not bear it in mind that ireland had a great commercial past, that it had its own mercantile marine doing direct trade with foreign countries, that it had flourishing industries and factories and mills all over the country, but that all these were killed and destroyed and driven out of existence by the cruel trade policy of england, which decreed the death of every irish industry or manufacture which stood in the way of its own industrial progress. those who sought the economic reconstruction of the country had accordingly to contend against a very evil inheritance. the commercial spirit had been destroyed; it should be educated anew. the desire to foster home products and manufactures had ceased to exist; it should be re-born and a patriotic preference for home manufactures instilled into the people. pride in one's labour--the very essence of efficiency--had gone out of the country. it should be aroused again. economic reform should proceed first on educational lines before it could be hoped to establish new industries with any hope of success. the pioneer in this work was the hon. (now sir) horace plunkett who returned to ireland after some ranching experiences in the united states and set himself the task of effecting the economic regeneration of rural ireland by preaching the gospel of self-help and co-operation. it is no part of my purpose to inquire into the secret motives of sir horace plunkett, if he ever had any, or to allege, as a certain writer (m. paul dubois) has done, that sir horace promoted the movement for economic reform in the hope of reconciling ireland to the union and to imperialism. i may lament it, as i do, that sir horace, who now believes himself to be the discoverer of dominion home rule, did not raise his voice either for the agrarian settlement or for home rule during all the years while he was a real power in the country. i am not however going to allow my views on these questions to deflect my judgment from the real merit of the work performed by sir horace and his associates in the irish agricultural organisation society, which in the teeth of considerable difficulties and obstacles succeeded in propagating through ireland the principles of self-help and co-operation. from the first, the society had many and powerful enemies, most of the opposition springing from interested and malevolent parties. but there is, perhaps, no man in all the world so quick to see what is really for his advantage as the irish farmer, and so the movement gradually found favour, and co-operative associations began to be formed in all parts of ireland. the agricultural labourer has all along regarded the creamery side of co-operation with absolute dislike. he declares that it is fast denuding the land of labour, that it tends to decrease tillage, and is one of the most active causes of emigration. they say, and there is ocular evidence of the fact, that a donkey and a little boy or girl to drive him to the creamery now do the work of dairymaids and farm hands. but, whilst this is a criticism justified by existing conditions, it does not mean that co-operation is a thing bad in itself, or that there is anything inherently vicious in it to cause or create the employment of less labour. what it does mean is that the education of the farmer is still far from complete, that he does not yet know how to make the best use of his land, and that he does not till and cultivate it as he ought to make it really fruitful. besides the creamery system there are other forms of co-operation which have exercised a most beneficent influence amongst the peasantry. these include agricultural societies for the improvement of the breed of cattle, a number of country banks, mostly of the raiffeisen type, co-operative associations of rural industries, principally lace, and societies for the sale of eggs and fowls, the dressing of flax, and general agriculture. a direct outcome of the co-operative movement was the creation by act of parliament in of the department of agriculture and technical instruction in ireland--a department which, though it possesses many faults of administration and of policy, has nevertheless had a distinctly wholesome influence on irish life. in relation to the co-operative movement the judgment of mr dillon was once again signally at fault. he gave it vehement opposition at every point and threw the whole weight of his personal following into the effort to arrest its growth and expansion. happily, however, the practical good sense of the people saved them from becoming the dupes of parties who had axes of their own, political or personal, to grind, and thus co-operation and self-help have won, in spite of all obstacles and objections, a very fair measure of success. meanwhile a remarkable development was taking place in the matter of bringing popular and educative literature within reach of the masses. public and parish libraries and village halls were widely established. these were supplementary to the greater movements to which reference has been made, but they were indicative of the steady bent of the national mind towards enlightenment and education, and of a desire in all things appertaining to the national life for more and better instruction. another important movement there was to which little reference is made in publications dealing with the period--namely, the organisation of the town and country labourers for their political and social improvement. it was first known as the irish democratic trade and labour federation, but this went to pieces in the general confusion of the split. it was resurrected subsequently under the title of the irish land and labour association. i mention it here as an additional instance of the regenerative agencies that were at work in every domain of irish life, and among all classes, at a time when the politicians were tearing themselves to pieces and providing a roman holiday for their saxon friends. chapter viii the birth of a movement and what it came to whilst ireland was thus finding her soul and mr gerald balfour pursuing his beneficent schemes for "killing home rule with kindness," the country had sickened unto death of the "parties" and their disgusting vagaries. mr william o'brien, although giving loyal support and, what is more, very material assistance to mr dillon and his friends, was not himself a member of parliament, but was doing far better work as a citizen, studying, from his quiet retreat on the shores of clew bay, the shocking conditions of the western peasantry, who were compelled to eke out an existence of starvation and misery amid the crags and moors and fastnesses of the west, whilst almost from their very doorsteps there stretched away mile upon mile of the rich green pastures from which their fathers were evicted during the clearances that followed the great famine of , and which m. paul dubois describes as "the greatest legalised crime that humanity has ever accomplished against humanity." "to look over the fence of the famine-stricken village and see the rich green solitudes, which might yield full and plenty, spread out at the very doorsteps of the ragged and hungry peasants, was to fill a stranger with a sacred rage and make it an unshirkable duty to strive towards undoing the unnatural divorce between the people and the land" (william o'brien in an _olive branch in ireland_). mr arthur balfour had established the congested districts board in to deal with the western problem, where "the beasts have eaten up the men," and when mr o'brien settled down at mallow cottage he devoted himself energetically to assisting the board in various projects of local development. but his experiences proved that these minor reforms were at the best only palliatives, "sending men ruffles who wanted shirts," and that there could be only one really satisfactory solution--to restore to the people the land that had been theirs in bygone time, to root out the bullocks and the sheep and to root in the people into their ancient inheritance. it was only after years of patient effort that he at last succeeded in persuading the congested districts board to make its first experiment in land purchase for the purpose of enlarging the people's holdings and making them the owners of their own fields.[ ] the scene was clare island, "the romantic dominion of granya uaile, the 'queen of men,'" who for many years brought elizabeth's best captains to grief among her wild islands. the lordship of this island of acres, with its ninety-five families, had passed into the hands of a land-jobber, "with bowels of iron," who sought to extract his cent. per cent. from the unfortunate islanders by a series of police expeditions in a gunboat, with a crop of resulting evictions, bayonet charges and imprisonments. the result of the experiment was, beyond expectation, happy. after many delays the congested districts board handed over the island to its new peasant proprietors, now secure for ever more in their own homesteads, but this transfer was not completed until the archbishop of tuam and mr o'brien had guaranteed the payment of the purchase instalments for the first seven years--a guarantee which to the islanders' immortal credit never cost the guarantors a farthing. fired to enthusiasm by the success of this experiment mr o'brien conceived the idea of a virile agitation for the replantation of the whole of connaught, so that the people should be transplanted from their starvation plots to the abundant green patrimony around them. he avows that no political objects entered into his first conceptions of this movement in the west. but the approach of the centenary of the insurrection of , with its inspiring memories of the united irishmen, furnished him with the idea, and the happy title for a new organisation which, in his own words, "drawing an irresistible strength and reality from the conditions in the west, would also throw open to the free air of a new national spirit those caverns and tabernacles of faction in which good men of all political persuasions had been suffocating for the previous eight years." accordingly the united irish league was born into the world at westport on the th january , to achieve results which, if they be not greater--though great, indeed, they are--the fault assuredly rests not with the founder of the league, but with those others who malevolently thwarted his purposes. the occasion was opportune. the three several movements of the dillonites, redmondites and healyites were in ruins, and ireland went its way unheeding of them. the young men were busy with their ' and wolfe tone clubs. they drank deep of the doctrines of a heroic age. centenary celebrations were held throughout the country, at which men were exhorted to study the history of an era when men were proud to die for the land they loved. for a space we listened to the martial music of other days, and our hearts throbbed to its stirring notes. the soul of the nation was uplifted above the squalid rivalries of the "'ites" and the "'isms." it awaited a unifying influence and a programme which would disregard the factions and leave a wide-open door for all nationalists to come in, no matter what sides they had previously taken or whether they had taken any at all. this wide-open door and this broad-based programme the united irish league offered. mr dillon attended the inaugural meeting, but from what mr o'brien tells us he did not seem to grasp the full potentialities of the occasion, "and he made his own speech without any indication that any unusual results were expected to follow." mr timothy harrington, one of the leading and most levelheaded of the parnellite members, also attended, in defiance of bitter attack from his own side, showing a moral courage sadly lacking in our public men, either then or later. by what i cannot help thinking was a most fortuitous circumstance for the league, at a moment when its existence was not known outside three or four parishes, mr gerald balfour determined to swoop down upon it and to crush it with the whole might of the crown forces. two resident magistrates and the assistant inspector-general of constabulary, with a small army corps of special police, were sent to westport. result--the inevitable conflict between the police and people took place, prosecutions followed, extra police taxes were put on and a store of popular resentment was aroused, the league getting an advertisement which was worth scores of organisers and monster meetings. i am myself satisfied that it was the ferocity of the crown attack upon the league which gave it its surest passport to popular favour. whilst the united irish league was struggling into life in the west i was engaged in the south in an attempt to lead the labourers out of the bondage and misery that encompassed them--their own sad legacy of generations of servitude and subjection--but i am nevertheless pleased to recall now that, as the editor of a not unimportant provincial newspaper in cork, i followed the early struggles of the new league with sympathy and gave it cordial welcome when it travelled our way. as a mere statement of indisputable fact, it is but just to say that the entire burden of organising the league fell upon the shoulders of mr o'brien. when it was yet an infant, so to speak, in swaddling-clothes, and indeed for long after, when it grew to lustier life, he had to bear the whole brunt of the battle for its existence, without any political party to support him, without any great newspaper to espouse his cause and without any public funds to supply campaign expenses. nay, far worse, he had to face the bitter hostility of the redmondites and healyites "and the scarcely less depressing neutrality" of the dillonites, whilst under an incessant fire of shot and shell from a coercion government. after mr dillon's one appearance at westport he was not seen on the league platform for many a day. at westport he had exhorted the crowd to "be ready at the call of their captain by day or night," but having delivered this incitement he left to others the duty of facing the consequences, candidly declaring that he had made up his mind never to go to jail again. mr harrington, however, remained the steadfast friend of the league, and mr davitt also gave it his personal benediction, all the more generous and praiseworthy in that his views of national policy seldom agreed with those of mr o'brien. confounding all predictions of its early eclipse, and notwithstanding a thousand difficulties and discouragements, the league continued to make headway, and after eighteen months' herculean labours mr o'brien and his friends were in a position to summon a provincial convention at claremorris, in the autumn of , to settle the constitution of the organisation for connaught. two nights before the convention mr dillon and mr davitt visited mr o'brien at mallow cottage to discuss his draft constitution. it is instructive, having in mind what has happened since, that mr dillon took exception to the very first clause, defining the national claim to be "the largest measure of national self-government which circumstances may put it in our power to obtain." this was the logical continuance of parnell's position that no man had a right to set bounds to the march of a nation, but mr dillon seemed to have descried in it some sinister purpose on the part of mr o'brien and mr davitt to abandon the constitutional home rule demand in the interest of the physical force movement. eventually a compromise was agreed on, but in regard to other points of the constitution--particularly that which made the constituencies autonomous and self-governing--mr dillon was obstinately opposed to democratic innovation. it would appear to me that in these days was sown the seeds of those differences of opinion between those close friends of many years' standing which were later to develop into a feeling of personal hostility which, on the part of one of them (mr dillon) at least, was black and bitter in its unforgivingness. the claremorris convention was such a success its "dimensions and character almost took my own breath away with wonder; all other feelings vanished from the minds of us all except one of thankfulness and rapture in presence of this incredible spectacle of the foes of ten years' bitter wars now marching all one way 'in mutual and beseeming ranks,' radiant with the life and hope of a national resurgence" (mr o'brien). the first test of the strength and power of the league was shortly to come. mr davitt resigned his seat for south mayo and proceeded to south africa to give what aid he could to the boers in their desperate struggle for freedom. a peculiar situation arose over the parliamentary vacancy that was thus created. the enemies of the united irish league hit upon the astute political device of nominating major m'bride, himself a mayo man, who was at the moment fighting in the ranks of the irish brigade in the boer service. mr o'brien was naturally confronted with a cruel dilemma. to allow the seat to go uncontested was to confess a failure and to give joy to another brigade--the crowbar brigade--who wished for nothing better than the early overthrow of the league, which was the only serious menace to their power in the country. to contest the seat was to have the accusation hurled at his head that he was lacking in enthusiasm for the boer cause, which nationalist ireland to a man devotedly espoused. the question mr o'brien had to ask himself was what was his duty to ireland and to the oppressed peasantry of the west. it could not affect the boer cause by a hair's-breadth who was to be future member for south mayo, but it meant everything to irish interests whether the united irish league was to make headway and to gain a grip on the imagination and sympathies of the people. and, influenced by the only consideration which could be decisive in a situation of such difficulty, mr o'brien offered to the electors of south mayo mr john o'donnell, the first secretary and organiser of the league, who was then lying in castlebar jail as the result of a coercion prosecution. after a contest, in which all the odds seemed to lie on the side of the south african candidate, mr o'donnell was returned by an overwhelming majority. the south mayo election meant the end of one chapter of irish history and the opening of another in which the political imbecility and madness which had distorted and disgraced the years since the parnell split could no longer continue their vicious courses. the return of mr o'donnell had focussed the attention of all ireland on the programme and policy of the league. branches multiplied amazingly, until it would be no exaggeration to say that they spread through the country like wildfire. the heather was ablaze with the joy of a resurgent people who had already almost forgotten the weary wars that had sundered them and who blissfully joined hands in one more grand united endeavour for the old land. having in several pitched battles defeated the forces of the rent-offices and the politicians and disposed of some of the vilest conspiracies which the police emissaries of the castle could hatch against it, the league had to engage in more desperate encounters before it could claim its cause won. i have already remarked that when the local government bill was receiving the benediction of all parties in parliament, except mr dillon, mr redmond promised that his influence would be extended to an effort to return the landlord and ascendancy class to the new councils. the united irish league determined to take issue with him on this. when the elections under the new act were announced, mr redmond, honestly enough, proceeded to give effect to his promise. mr o'brien decided, and very rightly and properly in my judgment, that it would be a fatal policy, and a weak one, to surrender to the enemy, whilst he was still unconquered and unrepentant, any of those new councils which could be made citadels of national strength and a new fighting arm of the constitutional movement. it meant that having driven the landlords forth from the fortresses from which they had so long oppressed the people, they should be immediately readmitted to them, having made no submissions and given no guarantees as to their future good behaviour. mr redmond and his followers made brave appeal from the landlord platforms to their supporters "not to be bitten by the unity dog." mr healy's newspaper and influence took a similar bent. mr dillon's majority, as usual helpless and indecisive, promulgated no particular policy. for mr o'brien and the united irish league there could be no such balancings or doubts. it is good also to be able to say of mr davitt that he assisted in fighting the insidious attempt to denationalize the county and district councils. the league and its supporters won all along the line. the few reverses they sustained were negligible when compared with the mighty victories they obtained all over ireland, and when the elections were over the league was established in an impregnable position as the organisation of disinterested and genuine nationality. the parliamentarians, seeing how matters stood, and no doubt with a wise thought of their own future, now proceeded to compose their quarrels. they saw themselves forgotten of the people, but they were resolved apparently that the people should not forget them. they took their cue from a country no longer divided over sombre futilities, and unable to make up their minds for themselves they accepted the judgment of the country once they were aware that it was irrevocably come to. mr dillon after his re-election to the chair of his section in immediately announced his resignation of the office, and being, as we are assured on the authority of mr o'brien, always sincerely solicitous for peace with the parnellites, he caused a resolution to be passed binding the majority party in case of reunion to elect as their chairman a member of the parnellite party, which numbered merely nine. naturally mr redmond and his friends did not hesitate to close with this piece of good fortune, which opened an honourable passage from a position of comparative isolation to one of triumph and power. the healyites, whose quarrel appeared to be wholly with mr dillon, to whom mr healy in sardonic mood had attached the sobriquet of "a melancholy humbug," made no difficulty about falling in with the new arrangement, and the three parties forthwith met and signed and sealed a pact for reunification without the country in the least expecting it or, indeed, caring about it. probably the near approach of a general election had more to do with this hastily-made pact than any of the nobler promptings of patriotism. i believe myself the country would have done much better had the united irish league gone on with its own blessed work of appeasement and national healing unhampered by what, as after knowledge conclusively proved to me, was nothing but a hypocritical unity for selfish salvation's sake. mr o'brien puts the whole position in a nutshell when he says: "the party was reunified rather than reformed." the treaty of peace they entered into was a treaty to preserve their own vested interests in their parliamentary seats. but a generous and forgiving nation was only too delighted to have an end of the bickerings and divisions which had wrought such harm to the cause of the people, and accordingly it hailed with gratification the spectacle of a reunited irish party. it is probable, nevertheless, that had the process of educating the people into a knowledge of their own power gone on a little further the united irish league would have been able at the general election to secure a national representation which would more truly reflect national dignity, duty and purpose. the first result of the parliamentary treaty was the election of mr john e. redmond to the chair. in the circumstances, the majority party having pledged themselves to elect a parnellite, no other choice was possible. mr redmond possessed many of the most eminent qualifications for leadership. he had an unsurpassed knowledge of parliamentary procedure and seemed intended by nature for a great parliamentary career. he was uniformly dignified in bearing, had a distinguished presence, a voice of splendid quality, resonant and impressive in tone, and an eloquence that always charmed his hearers. had he possessed will power and strength of character in any degree corresponding to his other great gifts, there were no heights of leadership to which he might not have reached. as it was, he lacked just that leavening of inflexibility of purpose and principle which was required for positive greatness as distinct from moderately-successful leadership. at any rate, he was the only possible selection, yet once again mr dillon exhibited a disposition to show the cloven hoof. for some inscrutable reason he made up his mind to oppose mr redmond's election to the chair, but when mr o'brien and mr davitt (who had returned from the transvaal) got word of the plot they wired urgent messages to their friends in parliament that mr redmond's selection was the only one that could give the leadership anything better than a farcical character. result--mr redmond was elected by a very considerable majority, and mr dillon had further reason for having his knife in his former friend and comrade, mr o'brien. the three sectional organisations--the national federation, the national league and the people's rights association thereafter died a natural death. there were no ceremonial obsequies and none to sing their requiem. the first national convention of the reunited country was then summoned by a joint committee consisting of representatives of the united irish league and the party in equal numbers, and it gave the league a constitution which made it possible for the constituencies to control the organisation, to select their own parliamentary representatives and generally to direct national affairs within their borders. the conception of the constitution was sound and democratic. but in any organisation it is not the constitution that counts, but the men who control the movement. and the time came all too soon when this was sadly true of the united irish league. footnotes: [footnote : to dr robert ambrose belongs the credit for having first introduced, as a private member, in , a bill to confer upon the congested districts compulsory powers for land purchase. this was subsequently adopted as an irish party measure. dr ambrose was also the author of a measure empowering the county councils to acquire waste lands for reclamation. he was one of the pioneers of the industrial development movement and wrote and lectured largely on the subject. he was, with the late bishop clancy, prominent in promoting "the all-red route," which would have given ireland a great terminal port on its western coast at blacksod bay. he, at considerable professional sacrifice, entered the party, at the request of mr dillon and mr o'brien, as member for west mayo. the reward he received for all his patriotic services was to find himself opposed in by the dillonite caucus because of his independent action on irish questions. mr dillon had no toleration for the person of independent mind, and thus a man who had given distinguished service to public causes was ruthlessly driven out of public life.] chapter ix the land question and its settlement the general election of witnessed a wonderful revival of national interest in ireland. doubtless if the constituencies had been left to their own devices they would have returned members responsive to the magnificent resolves of the people. but the parliamentarians were astute manipulators of the political machine: they had for the most part wormed themselves into the good graces of the local leaders, and arranged for their own re-election when the time came. but there was nevertheless a considerable leavening of new members--young, enthusiastic and uncontaminated by the feuds and paltry personalities of an older generation. they brought, as it were, a whiff of the free, democratic air of the country to parliament with them, and gave an example of fine unselfishness and devotion to duty which did not fail to have their influence on their elder and more cynical brethren. the feud between the dillonites and healyites had not, however, been ended with the general treaty of peace. mr redmond did not want mr healy fought, but in the interests of internal peace mr dillon, mr davitt and mr o'brien appear to have come to the conclusion that they could not have mr healy in the new party. accordingly, mr healy and his friends were fought wherever they allowed themselves to be nominated, and mr healy himself was the only one to survive after a desperate contest full of exciting incidents in north louth. i made my first bid for parliamentary honours in the election, when i had my name put forward as labour candidate at the south cork convention. i was not very strongly supported then, but the following may, on the death of dr tanner, i was nominated again as labour candidate for mid-cork, and after a memorable tussle at the divisional convention i headed the poll by a substantial majority. hence i write from now onward with what i may claim to be an intimate inside knowledge of affairs. the first few years after the election saw us a solidly united opposition in parliament for the first time for ten years. question time was a positive joy to us younger members, who developed almost diabolical capacity for heckling ministers on every conceivable topic under the sun. our hostility to the boer war also brought us into perennial conflict with the government. the irish members in a very literal sense once more occupied "the floor of the house," and there were some fierce passages-at-arms, resulting on one occasion in the forcible ejection of a large body of nationalists by the police--an incident which had no relish for those who were jealous of the prestige and fair fame of the mother of parliaments. in ireland the fight for constitutional reform went on with unabated energy. all the old engines of oppression and repression were at work, and the people proved that they had lost none of their wit or resource in the struggle with the forces of the crown. mr george wyndham, whom i like to look back upon as one of the most courtly and graceful figures in the public life of the past generation, was installed in dublin castle as chief secretary. i can imagine that nothing could have been more distasteful to his generous spirit than to be obliged to use the hackneyed weapons of brute force in the pursuance of british policy. as an answer to the agitation for compulsory land purchase and a settlement of the western problem mr wyndham introduced in a land purchase bill which fell deplorably short of the necessities of the situation. it would have deprived the tenants of all free will in the matter of the price they would be obliged to sell at, and left them wholly at the mercy of two landlord nominees on the estates commissioners, whilst it did not even pretend to find any remedy for the two most crying national scandals of the western "congests" and the homeless evicted tenants. no doubt there were many good and well-meaning men in the party, and out of it, who thought this bill should have been accepted as "an instalment of justice." but there are times when to be moderate is to be criminally weak, and this was one of them. it is as certain as anything in life or politics can be that if the bill of had been accepted, the irish tenants would be still going gaily on under the old rent-paying conditions. the united irish league was still in the first blush of its pristine vigour, and when the delegates of the national directory came up from the country to dublin they soon showed the mettle they were made of. they wanted no paltry compromises, and it was then and there decided to enter upon a virile campaign against rack-renters, grazing monopolists and land-grabbers such as would convince the government in a single winter how grossly they had under-estimated the requirements of the country. some of the older men of the party were pessimistic about the new campaign. messrs dillon, davitt and t.p. o'connor wrote a letter to mr o'brien remonstrating with him, in a tone of gentle courtesy, on the extreme character of his speeches and actions. but mr o'brien was not to be deflected from his purpose by any friendly pipings of this kind. the country was with him. the country was roused to a pitch of passionate resistance to the wyndham bill, and the government, seeing which way the wind blew, and realising that the time for half-measures was past, withdrew their precious purchase bill. then followed a fierce conflict along the old lines. the government sought to suppress the popular agitation by the usual antiquated methods. proclamation followed proclamation, until two-thirds of the irish counties, and the cities of dublin, cork and limerick, were proclaimed under the coercion act and the ordinary tribunals of justice abolished. public meetings were suppressed. the leaders of the people were thrown into prison: at one time no less than ten members of parliament were in jail. the country was seething with turmoil and discontent and there was no knowing where the matter would end. the landlords, feeling the necessity for counter-action of some kind, organised a land trust of £ , to prosecute messrs redmond, davitt, dillon and o'brien for conspiracy. the united irish league replied by starting a defence fund and arranging that messrs redmond, davitt and dillon should go to the united states to make an appeal in its support. all the elements of social convulsion were gathering their strength, when an unknown country gentleman wrote a letter to the irish newspapers dated nd september , in the following terms:-- "for the last two hundred years the land war in this country has raged fiercely and continuously, bearing in its train stagnation of trade, paralysis of commercial business and enterprise and producing hatred and bitterness between the various sections and classes of the community. to-day the united irish league is confronted by the irish land trust, and we see both combinations eager and ready to renew the unending conflict. i do not believe there is an irishman, whatever his political feeling, creed or position, who does not yearn to see a true settlement of the present chaotic, disastrous and ruinous struggle. in the best interests, therefore, of ireland and my countrymen i beg most earnestly to invite the duke of abercorn, mr john redmond, m.p., lord barrymore, colonel saunderson, m.p., the lord mayor of dublin, the o'conor don, mr william o'brien, m.p., and mr t.w. russell, m.p., to a conference to be held in dublin within one month from this date. an honest, simple and practical suggestion will be submitted and i am confident that a settlement will be arrived at." the country rubbed its eyes to see who it was that had put forward this audacious but not entirely original proposal. (it had been suggested by archbishop walsh fifteen years before.) captain john shawe-taylor's name suggested nothing to the nationalist leaders. they had never heard of him before. in the landlord camp he stood for nothing and had no authority--he was simply the young son of a galway squire, with entire unselfishness and boundless patience, who conceived that he had a mission to settle this tremendous problem that had been rendered only the more keen by forty-two acts of the imperial parliament that had been vainly passed for its settlement. it is surely one of the strangest chances of history that where generations of statesmen and parliaments had failed the _via media_ for a final arrangement should have been made by an unknown officer who prosecuted his purpose to such effect that he forced his way into the counsels of the american clan-na-gael, and even, as we are told, "beyond the ante-chambers of royalty itself." it is probable that captain shawe-taylor's invitation would have been regarded as the usual press squib had it not been followed two days later by a public communication from mr wyndham in the following terms:-- "no government can settle the irish land question. it must be settled by the parties interested. the extent of useful action on the part of any government is limited to providing facilities, in so far as that may be possible, for giving effect to any settlement arrived at by the parties. it is not for the government to express an opinion on the opportuneness of the moment chosen for holding a conference or on the selection of the persons invited to attend. those who come together will do so on their own initiative and responsibility. any conference is a step in the right direction if it brings the prospect of a settlement between the parties near, and as far as it enlarges the probable scope of operations under such a settlement." this official declaration gave an importance and a significance to captain shawe-taylor's letter which otherwise would never have attached to it. the confession that "no government can settle the irish land question" was in itself a most momentous admission. it was the most ample justification of nationalism, which held that a foreign parliament was incompetent to legislate for irish affairs, and now the accredited mouthpiece of the government in ireland had formally subscribed to this doctrine. this admission was in itself and in its outflowing an event comparable only to gladstone's conversion to home rule. it amounted to a challenge to irishmen to prove their competence to settle the most sorely-beset difficulty that afflicted their country. not only were irishmen invited to settle this particularly irish question, but they were given what was practically an official assurance that the unionist party would sponsor their agreement, within the limits of reason. immediately captain shawe-taylor's proposal became canvassed of the newspapers and the politicians. mr dillon seemed to be sceptical of it, as a transparent landlord dodge. it was, however, enthusiastically welcomed by the _freeman_, whilst _the daily express_, the organ of the more unbending of the territorialists, denounced it mercilessly, and no sooner did the duke of abercorn, lord barrymore, the o'conor don and colonel saunderson learn that mr redmond, the lord mayor of dublin, mr t.w. russell and mr o'brien were willing to join the conference than they wrote to captain shawe-taylor declining his invitation. the landowners convention, the official landlord organisation, also by an overwhelming majority decided against any peace parley with the tenants' representatives. but the forces in favour of a conference were daily gaining force even amongst the landlord class; whilst on the tenants' side a meeting of the irish catholic hierarchy, attended by three archbishops and twenty-four bishops, with cardinal logue in the chair, cordially approved the land conference project and put on record their earnest hope "that all those on whose co-operation the success of this most important movement depends may approach the consideration of it in the spirit of conciliation in which it has been initiated." the irish party, on the motion of mr dillon, also unanimously adopted a resolution approving of the action taken by messrs redmond, o'brien and harrington in expressing their willingness to meet the landlord representatives. the mass of the landlords were so far from submitting to the veto of the landowners' convention that, headed by men of such commanding position and ability as the earl of dunraven, lord castletown, the earl of meath, lord powerscourt, the earl of mayo, colonel hutcheson-poë and mr lindsay talbot crosbie, they formed a conciliation committee of their own to test the opinion of the landlords over the heads of the landowners convention. the plebiscite taken by this committee more than justified them. by a vote of to the landlords of ireland declared themselves in favour of a conference, and empowered the conciliation committee to nominate representatives on their behalf. thus the first stage of the struggle for a settlement by consent was victoriously carried. the next stage was the discussion of the terms upon which the landlords would allow themselves to be expropriated throughout the length and breadth of the land. here there were, unfortunately, violent divergences of opinion on the tenants' side. mr o'brien postulated, as an essential ingredient of any settlement that could hope for success, that the state should step in with a liberal bonus to bridge over the difference between what the tenants could afford to give and the landlords afford to take. when this proposal was first mooted it was regarded as a counsel of perfection, and mr o'brien was looked upon as a genial visionary or a well-meaning optimist. but nobody thought it was a demand that the government or parliament would agree to. happily, however, for the foresight of mr o'brien, it was his much-derided bonus scheme which became the very pivot of the land conference report. meanwhile events were moving rapidly behind the scenes. it was conveyed to messrs redmond, davitt, dillon and o'brien that mr wyndham had offered the under-secretaryship for ireland to sir antony macdonnell, who had lately retired from the position of governor of bengal. they were told by his brother, dr mark antony macdonnell, who was one of the nationalist members, that sir antony was hesitating much as to his decision. sir antony conveyed that he had made it clear to mr wyndham that, as he was an irish nationalist and a believer in self-government, he could not think of going to ireland to administer a coercion regime, and, further, that he favoured a bold and generous settlement of the university difficulty. mr wyndham, it was understood, had given the necessary assurances, and sir antony now wished it to be conveyed to the irish leaders that he would not accept the post against their will or without a certain measure, at least, of benevolent toleration on their part. all these happenings foreshadowed a joyous transformation of the political scene, to the incalculable advantage of those who had made such a magnificent stand for irish rights; but the irish party was determined that until rumours had crystallised into realities they were going to relax none of their extra-constitutional pressure upon the government. it was, for instance, resolved to begin the autumn session with a resounding protest against coercion and to carry on the conflict in the country more determinedly than ever. the just and reasonable demand for a day to debate the administration was unaccountably avoided by the government, whose reply was that a day would be granted if the demand came from the official liberal opposition. the nationalists could not submit to this degradation of their independent position in parliament, and when they attempted to secure their end by a motion for the adjournment of the house they found that two irish unionists had "blocked" them by placing on the order paper certain omnibus resolutions on the state of ireland. since the days of parnellite obstruction such scenes were not witnessed as those that followed. the party defied all rules of law and order, worried the government by all sort of lawless interruptions and irrelevant questions, flagrantly flouted the authority of the chair and, finally, after a week of parliamentary anarchy, it was determined that even more extreme courses would be adopted unless the constitutional right of ireland to be heard in the chamber was conceded. hint of this was conveyed to mr speaker gully, who, regardful of the honour of the house, used his good offices with the government to such effect that the blocking motions were incontinently withdrawn and the discussion in due course took place. whilst these developments were taking place mr o'brien had taken every possible precaution to guard himself against any charge of autocracy in the direction of the movement, whether in parliament or in the country. at the request of his colleagues on the land conference he had drafted a memorandum containing the basis of settlement which would be acceptable to nationalist opinion. this was submitted to messrs redmond, davitt and sexton, with an urgent entreaty for their freest criticism or any supplementary suggestions of their own. none of these could, therefore, complain that mr o'brien was attempting to do anything over their heads. and impartial judgment will declare that if either mr sexton, mr dillon or mr davitt had views of their own, or had any vital disagreements with mr o'brien's suggestions, now was the time to declare them. far from committing himself to any dissent, when mr o'brien, after a fortnight, wrote to mr sexton for the return of his memorandum, mr sexton wrote: "i have read the memo. carefully two or three times and now return it to you as you want to use it and have no other copy. it will take some time to look into your proposals with anything like sufficient care. you will hear from me as soon as i think i can say anything that may possibly be of use." be it here noted that mr sexton never did communicate, even when he had looked into mr o'brien's proposals "with sufficient care." later he waged implacable war on the land conference report and the land act from his commanding position as managing director of _the freeman's journal_ (the official national organ). he did so in violation of the promise on which the party had entrusted him with that position, that he would never interfere in its political direction. other informal meetings between sir antony macdonnell and the irish leaders followed, the purpose of sir antony being, before he accepted office in the irish government, to gather the views of leading irishmen, especially as to the possibility of a genuine land settlement, which he regarded as the foundation of all else. subsequently it transpired that mr sexton had engaged in some negotiations on his own account with sir antony macdonnell, and it is not improbable that part at least of his quarrel with the land conference was that the settlement propounded by it superseded and supplanted his own scheme. neither mr o'brien nor his friends were made aware of these private pourparlers, entered into without any vestige of authority from the party or its leader, and they only learnt of them casually afterwards. the incident is instructive of how the path of the peacemaker is ever beset with difficulties, even from among his own household. after surmounting a whole host of obstacles the land conference at long last assembled in the mansion house, dublin, on th december . mr redmond submitted the final selection of the tenants' representatives to a vote of the irish party and, with the exception of one member who declined to vote, the choice fell unanimously upon those named in captain shawe-taylor's letter. although their findings were subsequently subjected to much embittered attack, no one had any right to impugn their authority, capacity, judgment or intimate knowledge of the tenants' case. the landlords' representatives were also fortunately chosen. the earl of dunraven was a man of the most statesmanlike comprehension, whose high patriotic purpose in all the intervening years has won for him an enduring and an honourable place in the history of his country. he strove to imbue his own landlord class with a new vision of their duty and their destiny, and if only a few of the later converts to the national claim of ireland had supported him when he came forward first, in favour of the policy of national reconciliation, many chapters of tragedy in our national life would never have been written. with a close knowledge of his labours and his personality i can write this of him--that a man more passionately devoted to his country, more sincerely anxious to serve her highest interests, or more intrepid in pursuing the courses and supporting the causes he deems right, does not live. he has been a light in his generation and to his class, and he deserves well of all men who admire a moral courage superior to all the shafts of shallow criticism and a patriotism which undoubtedly seeks the best, as he sees it, for the benefit of his country. and more than this cannot be said of the greatest patriot who ever lived. the earl of mayo also brought a fine idealism and high patriotism to the conference council board. he had a genuine enthusiasm for the development of irish industries and was the moving spirit in the irish arts and crafts exhibitions. colonel hutcheson-poë, a gallant soldier, who had lost a leg in kitchener's soudan campaign, a gentleman of sound judgment and excellent sense, was one of the moderating elements in the conference. finally, colonel nugent everard represented one of the oldest anglo-irish families of the pale and the author of several projects tending to the betterment of the people. the tenants' representatives presented a concise list of their own essential requirements as drafted by mr o'brien. it was as follows:-- basis.--abolition of dual ownership . for landlords, net second-term income, less all outgoings. . for occupiers, reduction of not less than per cent. in second-term rents or first-term correspondingly reduced. decennial reductions to be retained. . difference between landlords' terms and occupiers' terms to be made up by state bonus and reduced interest with, in addition, purchase money in cash and increased value for resale of mansion and demesne. . complete settlement of evicted tenants' question an indispensable condition. . special and drastic treatment for all congested districts in the country (as defined by the bill of ). . sales to be between parties or through official commissioners as parties would prefer. . non-judicial and future tenants to be admitted. . (query.) sporting rights to be a matter of agreement. i do not propose to go into any detailed account of what transpired at the sittings (six in number) of the land conference. all this information is available in mr o'brien's _an olive branch in ireland_. suffice it to say that seven out of eight of the tenants' requirements were conceded outright and the eighth was covered by a compromise which would have enabled any tenant in the country, whether non-judicial or future tenants, to become the proprietor of his own holding on reasonable terms. on th january a unanimous report was published. the country scarcely expected this, and its joy at this ever-memorable achievement was correspondingly greater. it was inconceivable that the landlords should have, in solemn treaty, signed their own death warrant as territorialists, yet this was the amazing deed to which they affixed their sign manual when their four representatives signed the land conference report. ever since the first anglo-norman set foot in ireland and began to despoil the ancient clans of their land there has been trouble in connection with the irish land question. the new race of landlords regarded their irish land purely as a speculation, not as a home; they were in great part absentees, having no aim in ireland beyond drawing their rents. they had no duties to their tenants in the sense that english landlords have. they had no natural ties with the country and they regarded themselves as free from all the duties or obligations of ownership. they never advanced capital for the improvement of the land or the erection of buildings, and never put a farthing into the cultivation of the soil. the tenant had to do everything out of his own sweat and blood--build his home and out-offices, clean and drain the land, make the fences, lay down the roads and, when he had done all this and made the property more valuable, his rent was raised on him, even beyond the value of the improvements he had effected. woe to the industrious man, for he was taxed upon his industry! and yet who is not familiar with the foolish and the ignorant tribe of scribblers who, with no knowledge of the facts, prate about "the lazy irish"? and if they were lazy--which i entirely deny--who made them so? had they no justification for their "laziness"? why should they wear their lives out so that a rapacious landlord whom they never saw should live in riotousness and debauchery in the hells of london or the continent? "one could count on one's fingers," said the cowper commission in , "the number of irish estates on which the improvements have been made by the landlord." the irish landlord class never did a thing for ireland except to drain her of her life-blood--to rob and depopulate and destroy, to make exaction after exaction upon the industry of her peasants, until their wrongs cried aloud for redress, if not for vengeance. in england it was estimated in that the landlord class had spent in investments in landlord property a sum estimated at £ , , . these can justly claim some right in the land. in ireland the landlord was simply the owner of "the raw earth"--the bare proprietor of the soil, a dead weight upon the industry and honest toil of the tenant, receiving a rent upon the values that the labour and the energy of generations of members of a particular family had created. the irish landlord and his horde of hangers-on--his agents, his bailiffs, his process-servers, his bog-rangers, his rent-warners--created a system built upon corruption, maintained in tyranny, and enforced with all the ruthless severities of foreign laws enacted solely for the benefit of england's garrison. "i can imagine no fault," said mr arthur balfour, speaking as prime minister in the house of commons, th may , "attaching to any land system which does not attach to the irish system." evictions in ireland came to be known as "sentences of death," so cruel and numerous were they until the popular agitation was strong enough to check them. even the gladstonian legislation of , though it admittedly did something substantial towards redressing the balance between landlord and tenant by securing to the tenants what were known as "the three f.'s "--viz. fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale--yet left the question in a wholly unsettled state. the fixing of fair rents, no doubt, acted as a curb on landlord rapacity, but from the tenants' point of view it was a wholly vicious, indeterminate and unsatisfactory system. it was incentive to indifferent farming, since the commissioners who had the fixing of rents, and the inspectors who examined the farms, made their valuations upon the farms as they saw them. true, the tenant could claim for his improvements, but in practice this was no real safeguard. the more industrious the tenant the higher the rent--the less industrious and the less capable the lower the figure to be paid. hence, after the failure of countless acts of parliament, it was borne in upon all earnest land-reformers that there could be only one final and satisfactory solution: that was the abolition of dual ownership--in other words, the buying out of the landlord and the establishment of the tenant in the single and undisputed ownership of the soil on fair and equitable terms. a tentative start had been made in land purchase by the land purchase act of --called, after its author, the ashbourne act. this experiment had proved an immense success, for in six years the ten millions sterling assigned for its operations were exhausted and , tenants had been turned into owners of their farms. it became clear that a scheme of purchase which would, within a definite period, root out the last vestige of landlordism was the one only real and true solution for the land problem. and now, blessed day, and glory to the eyes that had lived to see it, and undying honour to the men whose genius and sacrifices had made it possible, the decree had gone forth that end there must be to landlordism. and, wonder of wonders, the landlords themselves had agreed to the fiat decreeing their own extinction as a ruling caste. it was with heartfelt hope and relief, and with the sense of a great victory achieved, that the country received the wondrous news of the success of the land conference. the dawn of a glorious promise had broken through the long night of ireland's suffering, but the mischief-makers were already at work to see that the noonday sun of happiness did not shine too strongly or too steadily. chapter x land purchase and a determined campaign to kill it i can only rapidly sketch the events that followed the publication of the land conference report. mr sexton made it his business in _the freeman's journal_ to decry its findings on the sinister ground that they offered too much to the landlords and were not sufficiently favourable to the tenants, sneering at the proposal for a bonus, hinting that no government would find money for this purpose. mr davitt, who was an earnest disciple of henry george's ideal of land nationalisation, naturally enough found nothing to like in the proposals for land purchase, which would set up a race of peasant-proprietors who would never consent to surrender their ownership to the state and would consequently make the application of the principles of land nationalisation for ever impossible in ireland. besides, michael davitt had cause for personal hatred of landlordism, which exiled his parents after eviction, and incidentally meant the loss of an arm to himself, and a violence of language which would be excusable in him would not be justifiable or allowable in the cases of men who had not suffered similarly, such as messrs dillon and sexton. yet the fault was not theirs if the land conference did not end in wreckage and such a glorious chance of national reconciliation and appeasement was not lost to ireland. in the meantime sir antony macdonnell, greatly daring and, i would likewise say, greatly patriotic, accepted the offer of the irish under-secretaryship in a spirit of self-abnegation beyond praise. mr redmond and mr o'brien had, at his request, met him, early in february, , to discuss the provisions of the contemplated purchase bill. it may be remarked that messrs dillon and davitt were invited to meet sir antony on the same occasion, but they declined. they apparently desired the position of greater freedom and less responsibility, from which they could deliver their attacks upon their friends. they received little support from the country in their guerrilla warfare on the land conference findings. the standing committee of the catholic hierarchy left no room for doubt as to their views. they declared the holding of the land conference "to be an event of the best augury for the future welfare of both classes" (landlords and tenants), and they expressed the hope that its unanimity would result in legislation which would settle the land question once for all "and give the irish people of every class a fair opportunity to live and serve their native land." the irish party and the national directory of the united irish league, the two bodies invested with sovereign authority to declare the national policy, unanimously, at specially convened meetings, approved the findings of the land conference and accepted them as the basis of a satisfactory settlement of the land question. neither mr dillon nor mr davitt attended either of these meetings. indeed, mr dillon ostentatiously took his departure from dublin on the morning the meetings were held, but strangely enough he attended an adjourned meeting of the party at westminster the following day and opposed a proposal to raise the question of the land conference report on the address. mr redmond entered a dignified protest against mr dillon's conduct, pointing out that the previous day was mr dillon's proper opportunity for submitting any objections of his to his colleagues of the party and of the national directory. mr dillon did not find a single supporter for his attitude, and he was obliged to disclaim, with some heat, that he had any grievance in reference to the conference. next day he went abroad for the benefit of his health. the debate on the amendment to the address had the most gratifying results. mr wyndham accepted, in principle, the land conference agreement and announced that the government would smooth the operations of land purchase by a bonus of twelve millions sterling as a free grant to ireland. the debate accomplished another striking success, that it elicited from all the men of light and leading in the liberal party--from mr morley, sir h. campbell-bannerman, sir e. grey, mr haldane and mr john burns--expressions of cordial adhesion to the policy of pacification outlined by the chief secretary, thus effecting the obliteration of all english party distinctions for the first time where one of ireland's supreme interests was concerned. it required only the continuance of this spirit to give certain assurance of ireland's early deliverance from all her woes and troubles. but an adverse fate, in the form of certain perverse politicians, ordained it otherwise. on th march mr wyndham introduced his bill. it adopted fully the fundamental principles of the land conference and undertook to find imperial funds for the complete extinction of landlordism in ireland within a period which mr wyndham estimated at fifteen years. furthermore the tenants were to obtain the loans on cheaper terms than had ever been known before--viz. an interest of - / per cent. and a sinking fund of / per cent., being a reduction in the tenants' annuity from £ to £ , s. as compared with the best of the previous acts. in addition a state grant-in-aid to the extent of £ , , --roughly equivalent to three years' purchase--was produced to bridge the gap between what the tenants could afford to pay and the landlords to accept. the bill fell short of the requirements of the land conference in certain respects, notably in that it proposed to withhold one-eighth of the freehold from the tenants as an assertion of state right in the land, and that the clauses dealing with the evicted tenants and congested questions were vague and inadequate. other minor defects there also were, but nothing that might not be remedied in committee by conciliatory adjustments. a national convention was summoned for th april to consider whether the bill should be accepted or otherwise. previously there was much subterranean communication between messrs dillon, davitt, sexton and t.p. o'connor, all with calculated intent to damage or destroy the bill. and it is also clear that certain members of the irish party (messrs dillon and t.p. o'connor), who were pledge-bound to support majority rule "in or out of parliament," were carrying on official negotiations of their own with the minister in charge of the bill and were using the organ of the party to discredit principles and proposals to which the party had given its unanimous assent. it would not, in the circumstances, be unjust to stigmatise this conduct as disloyalty, if not exactly treachery, to the recorded decisions of the party. at any rate it was the source and origin of incredible mischief and the most deplorable consequences to ireland. the opponents of the bill made a concerted effort to stampede the national convention from arriving at any decision regarding the bill. they wanted it to postpone judgment. but the convention, in every sense magnificently representative of all that was sound and sincere in the constitutional movement, was too much alive to all the glorious possibilities of the policy of national reconciliation which was taking shape and form before their eyes to brook any of the ill-advised counsels of those who had determined insidiously on the wreck of this policy. in all the great convention there were only two voices raised in support of the rejection of the bill. and when mr davitt moved the motion, concerted between mr t.p. o'connor, mr sexton and himself, that the convention should suspend judgment until it was brought in its amended third reading form before an adjourned sitting of the convention, he was so impressed by the enthusiastic unanimity of the delegates that he offered, after some parley, to withdraw his motion, and thus this great and authoritative assembly pledged the faith of the irish nation to the policy of national reconciliation and gave its loyal adhesion to the authors of that policy. but this decision of the people, constitutionally and legitimately expressed, was not long to remain unchallenged. immediately after the convention mr davitt waited upon mr redmond, at the gresham hotel, dublin, and blandly told him: "i have had a wire from dillon to-day from the piraeus, to say he is starting by the first boat for home and from this day forth o'brien and yourself will have dillon, t.p. and myself on your track." thus was set on foot what, with engaging candour, mr davitt himself later described in an article he contributed to _the independent review_ as "a determined campaign" against the national policy which had been authoritatively endorsed and approved by every organisation in the country entitled to speak on the subject. the country has had to pay much in misery, in the postponement of its most cherished hopes and in the holding up of land purchase over great areas owing to the folly, the madness and the treachery of this "determined campaign." mr dillon, at a later stage, with a certain machiavellian cunning, raised the cry of "unity" from every platform in the country against those who had never acted a disloyal part in all their lives, whilst his own political conscience never seemed to trouble him when he was flagrantly and foully defying that very principle of unity which he had pledged himself to maintain and uphold "in or out of parliament." the national convention was followed by an event which might easily have been made a turning point in ireland's good fortune had it been properly availed of. lord dunraven and his landlord conciliation committee met the day after the land convention and resolved to support sixteen out of the seventeen nationalist amendments. they furthermore sent a message to mr redmond offering to co-operate actively with the members of the irish party throughout the committee stage of the wyndham bill. every consideration of national policy and prudence would seem to urge the acceptance of this generous offer. it would, if accepted, be the outward and visible sign of that new spirit of grace that had entered into irish relations with the foregathering of the land conference. but fear of what mr dillon and the _freeman_ might do if this open association with a landlord--even if a friendly landlord--interest took place apparently operated on mr redmond's judgment. although urged by mr o'brien, who made the utmost allowance for the leader's difficulties, to accept the offer of lord dunraven and his friends for continued co-operation, mr redmond temporised, and the opportunity passed into the limbo of golden possibilities gone wrong. when mr dillon, in pursuance of his wire to mr davitt, returned from his holiday, he proceeded to make good the threat to be "on the track of redmond and o'brien." he made himself as troublesome as he could during the committee stage of the bill and did his utmost to force its rejection. he sought to commit the party to a policy which must have meant the defeat or withdrawal of the measure. he made vicious personal attacks upon lord dunraven. he did everything in his power to delay and frustrate the passage of the bill in committee. and the most generous construction that can be placed upon his actions is that he did all this in support of the theory, which he is known to have consistently held, that home rule should precede the settlement of the land question, or any other irish question. notwithstanding mr dillon's criticisms, not then well understood either in the party or the country, the bill at length emerged triumphantly from its ordeal, with the good will of all parties in parliament. it should have created--and it would, if it had only been given a fair chance--a new heaven and a new earth in ireland. as far as could be prognosticated all the omens were favourable. even the atmosphere of administration, so important a matter where any irish act is concerned, was of the most auspicious kind. the lord-lieutenant was lord dudley, who was immensely popular in ireland, and who had made public proclamation of his desire that "ireland should be governed in accordance with irish ideas." two out of the three estates commissioners, in whose hands the actual administration of the act lay, were men of whose absolute impartiality the nationalist opinion of the country was assured. sir antony macdonnell was the power in dublin castle, and not much likely to be intimidated by the permanent gang there. all that was required was that the irish party and the united irish league should agree upon a broad-based policy for combining the various classes affected to extract the best possible advantage from the provisions of the act. a meeting of the national directory was summoned to formulate such a policy, but shortly before it was held mr dillon went down to swinford and, from the board-room of the workhouse there, definitely raised the standard of revolt against the new land act. nothing could be said against his action if he had come out from the party and fulminated against its authority, but to remain a member of the party and then to indict its conduct of the nation's business was, to put it mildly, indefensible. he denounced the new spirit of conciliation that had been so fast gaining ground, attacked the landlords, who had proved themselves friendly to a settlement, in rather ferocious language, and spoke in violent terms of those who would "in a moment of weakness mortgage the future of ireland to an intolerable extent." clearly mr dillon intended carrying out his threat of "taking the field" against mr redmond and mr o'brien and of damning the consequences. but the country was not yet "rattled" into disaffection by mr dillon's melancholy vaticinations and rather vulgar appeals to the baser passions of greed and covetousness which are perhaps more firmly rooted in the peasant than in any other class. the national directory, unintimidated by mr dillon's pronouncement, met and calmly proceeded to formulate plans for the better working of the purchase act. a clear and definite plan of campaign was outlined for the testing of the act. mr o'brien was also in favour of handling the disaffection of mr dillon and the _freeman_ in straightforward manner and of pointing out to them their duty of loyally supporting the decisions of the party and of the league. mr redmond shrank from decisive action. it was part of the weakness of his estimable character that he always favoured "the easier way." he thought that when the directory spoke out the recalcitrant elements would subside. little did he understand the malignant temper of the powerful group who, with the aid of the supposedly national organ, were determined to kill the operations of the purchase act and to destroy the policy of conciliation which had promised such splendid fruit in other directions. mr dillon went to swinford again and he and his associates did everything in their power to stir up a national panic and to spread the impression that the purchase act was a public calamity, "a landlord swindle," and that it would lead straight to national bankruptcy. even yet those who sought the wreck and ruin of land purchase might be met with and fought outright if the announcement had not appeared in the _freeman_ that mr redmond had sold his wexford estate at " - / years' purchase," or over two years' purchase higher in the case of second-term rents and four and a half years' purchase in the case of first-term rents than the prices which the national directory had a few weeks previously resolved to fight for, with all the force of the tenants' organisation as a fair standard. true enough mr redmond was able to plead later that these were not the terms finally agreed upon between his tenants and himself, and beyond all question he made no profit out of the transaction. where the mischief lay was in the original publication, which gave a headline to the landlords all over the country and, what was far more regrettable from the purely national standpoint, irretrievably tied the hands of mr redmond so far as making any heroic stand against mr dillon and his fellow-conspirators was concerned. thus the country drifted along, bereft of firm leadership or strong guidance. mr o'brien had to hold his hand whilst "the determined campaigners" were more boldly and defiantly inveighing against the declared and adopted national policy and trampling upon every principle of party discipline and loyalty. the situation might have been saved if mr redmond had taken his courage in both his hands, summoned the party together and received from it an authoritative declaration defining anew the national policy and the danger that attended it from those who had set out recklessly to destroy it; or if he sought an opportunity for publicly recalling the country to its duty and its allegiance to himself and to the party whose chosen leader he was. mr redmond was fully alive to the danger, but he hesitated about taking that bold action which could alone bring the recalcitrants to heel. he was afraid of doing anything which might provoke a fresh "split." later he delivered himself of the unstatesmanlike and unworthy apophthegm: "better be united in support of a short-sighted and foolish policy than divided in support of a far-sighted and wise one." this was the fatuous attitude which led him down the steep declivity that ended so tragically for him and his reputation. in those fateful days, when so much was in the balance for the future of ireland, mr o'brien pressed his views earnestly upon mr redmond that unless he exercised his authority, and that of the party and the directory, it would be impossible for them to persevere in their existing programme, and that the only alternative left for him would be to retire and leave those who had opposed the policy of conciliation a free stage for any more heroic projects they might contemplate. mr redmond still remained indecisive and mr o'brien--whether wisely or unwisely will always remain a debatable point with his friends--quietly quitted the stage, resigning his seat in parliament, withdrawing from the directory of the united irish league, and ceasing publication of his weekly newspaper on the ground, as he says himself, that "the authorised national policy having been made unworkable, nothing remained, in order to save the country from dissension, except to leave its wreckers an absolutely free field for any alternative policy of their own." it is no exaggeration to say that the country was thrown into a state of stupefaction by mr o'brien's retirement. it did not know the reason of it. very few members of the party did. i was then a member of it--perhaps a little on the outer fringe, but still an ordinarily intelligent member--and i was not aware of the underground factors and forces which had caused this thunderbolt out of the blue, as it were. needless to say, the country was in a state of more abysmal ignorance still, and it is questionable whether outside of munster, owing to a scandalous press boycott of mr o'brien's speeches for many years afterwards, the masses of the people ever had an understanding of the motives which impelled him "to stand down and out" when he was undoubtedly supreme in the party and in the united irish league and when he might easily have overborne "the determined campaigners" if he had only knit the issue with them in a fair and square fight. this, however, was the thing of all others he wished to avoid. perhaps if he could have foreseen how barren in any alternative policy his sapient critics were to be he might have acted otherwise, but the credit is due to him of making dissension impossible by leaving no second party to the quarrel. speaking at limerick a few days after his retirement, mr redmond avowed that mr o'brien's principles were his own, and added these memorable words: "but for mr william o'brien there would have been no land conference and no land act." every effort was made to induce mr o'brien to withdraw his resignation. a delegation of the leading citizens of cork travelled all the way to mayo to entreat him to reconsider his decision. to them he said: "there is not the smallest danger of any split either in the party, or in the league, or in the country. there will be a perfectly free field for the development of any alternative policy; and i will not use my retirement in any way whatever to criticise or obstruct; neither, i am certain, will anybody in the country who has any regard for my wishes." but having got all they wanted, "the determined campaigners" mysteriously abandoned their determined campaign. mr dillon's health again required that he should bask 'neath the sunny southern skies of italy, whilst mr davitt betook himself to the united states, without either of them making a single speech or publishing a single suggestion to the tenants how they were to guard themselves against the "inflated prices" and the national insolvency they had been threatening them with. having destroyed the plans of the national directory for testing the purchase act they had no guidance of their own to offer. the tenants were left leaderless, to make their own bargains as best they could, with the inevitable result that the landlords, thanks to "the determined campaigners," were able to force up prices two years above the standard which the directory of the league had decided to stand out and fight for. it used to be said of daniel o'connell that whenever _the times_ praised him he subjected himself to an examination of conscience to find out wherein he had offended as against ireland. likewise one would have supposed that when mr dillon found himself patted on the back by the extreme orange gang he might have asked himself: "wherein am i wrong to have earned the plaudits of these people?" for if mr dillon was rabid in his opposition to the policy of conciliation the ulster orangemen were ferocious in their denunciation of it, mr moore, k.c., referred to it as "the cowardly, rotten, and sickening policy of conciliation." small wonder that the orange extremists should have dreaded this policy, since it had already been the means of creating in the north an independent orange order, who unhesitatingly declared as the first article of their creed that they were "irishmen first of all," and who had an honest and enthusiastic spokesman in the house of commons in the person of mr thomas sloane, and an able and, indeed, a brilliant leader in ireland in mr lindsay crawford. but so it was--every advance towards national reconciliation and mutual understanding was opposed by those two divergent forces as if they had a common interest in defeating it. mr o'brien having retired from cork, the vacancy should, in the ordinary course, have been filled in the course of a few weeks. but the nationalists of "the city by the lee" made it clear that they wanted no other representative than mr o'brien, and they forbade the issue of a writ for a new election. and so there was the extraordinary spectacle of a people who voluntarily disfranchised themselves rather than give up the last hope of a policy of national conciliation in which they descried a home rule settlement by consent as surely as the abolition of landlordism already decreed. as an example of loyalty and personal devotion, as well as of patriotic foresight, it would be difficult to parallel it. towards the close of the session of mr jasper tully, a more or less free lance member of the party, took it upon himself to play them the trick of moving the writ for a new election. and the nationalists of cork knew their own business so well that, without a line of communication with mr o'brien, they had him nominated and re-elected without anybody dreaming that anything else was humanly possible. there were no conditions attaching to mr o'brien's re-election. he was free to rejoin the irish party if it should resume its position of twelve months ago or to remain out of it if a policy of mere destruction were persisted in. he was re-elected because the people of cork had the most absolute confidence in his integrity, good faith and political judgment, and because they were convinced that his return to public life represented the only hope of the resumption of the great policy in which their confidence never for a moment wavered. within a week of mr o'brien's re-election an event took place which once again made it possible for him to take up the threads of his policy where he had surrendered them. the landlords' conference committee, to the number of three hundred of the leading irish nobles and country gentlemen, met in dublin and resolved themselves into a new association, under lord dunraven's leadership, which was named the irish reform association. it immediately issued a manifesto proclaiming "a policy of conciliation, of good will and of reform," by means of "a union of all moderate and progressive opinion irrespective of creed or class animosities," with the object of "the devolution to ireland of a large measure of self-government" without disturbing the parliamentary union between great britain and ireland. within three days of the publication of the manifesto mr redmond, who was on a mission to the states pleading for irish-american support, cabled: "the announcement [of the irish reform association] is of the utmost importance. it is simply a declaration for home rule and is quite a wonderful thing. with these men with us home rule may come at any moment." it is known that the idea of the irish reform association had been talked over between mr wyndham, lord dunraven and sir antony macdonnell, but it is probable that it would never have emerged into the concrete if the cork election had not opened up the prospect of a fair and sympathetic national hearing for a project of self-government, now advocated for the first time by a body of unionist irishmen. mr redmond's fervid message from america also was as plain a welcome to the new movement for genuine national unity as words could express. but "the fly was in the ointment nevertheless." chapter xi the movement for devolution and its defeat the vital declaration of the objects of the irish reform association was contained in the following passage:-- "while firmly maintaining that the parliamentary union between great britain and ireland is essential to the political stability of the empire and to the prosperity of the two islands, we believe that such a union is compatible with the devolution to ireland of a larger measure of self-government than she now possesses. we consider that this devolution, while avoiding matters of imperial concern and subjects of common interest to the kingdom as a whole, would be beneficial to ireland and would relieve the imperial parliament of a mass of business with which it cannot now deal satisfactorily. in particular we consider the present system of financial administration to be wasteful and inappropriate to the needs of the country." and then the manifesto proceeded to enumerate various questions of national reform "for whose solution we earnestly invite the co-operation of all irishmen who have the highest interests of their country at heart." the enemies of home rule had no misconceptions either as to the purpose, scope or object of the reform association. they saw at once how absolutely it menaced their position--how completely it embodied in substance the main principle of the constitutional movement since the days of parnell--namely, the control of purely irish affairs by an irish assembly subject to the supremacy of the imperial parliament. from debates which followed in the house of lords ( th february ) it became clear that the new movement had no sinister origin--that it was honestly conceived and honestly intended for ireland's national advantage. but the irish, whether of north or south, are a people to whom suspiciousness in politics is a sort of second nature. it is the inheritance of centuries of betrayals, treacheries and duplicities--broken treaties, crude diplomacies and shattered faiths. and thus we had a unionist attorney-general (now lord atkinson) asking "whether the devolution scheme is not the price secretly arranged to be paid for nationalist acquiescence in the settlement of the land question on gracious terms"; and _the times_ declaring ( st september ): "what the dunraven devolution policy amounts to is nothing more nor less than the revival in a slightly weakened and thinly disguised form of mr gladstone's fatal enterprise of "; whilst on the other hand those irish nationalists who followed mr dillon's lead attacked the new movement with a ferocity that was as stupid as it was criminal. for at least it did not require any unusual degree of political intelligence to postulate that if _the times_, sir edward carson, _the northern whig_ and other unionist and orange bravoes and journals were denouncing the devolution proposals as "worse than home rule," irish nationalists should have long hesitated before they joined them in their campaign of destruction and became the abject tools of their insensate hate. sir edward carson wrote that, much as he detested the former proposals of home rule, he preferred them to "the insidious scheme put forward by the so-called reform association." so incorrigibly foolish were the attacks of mr dillon and his friends on the reform association that lord rathmore was able to say in the house of lords: "not only did the unionist party in ireland denounce the dunraven scheme as worse than the home rule of mr gladstone, but their language was mild in comparison to the language of contempt which a great many of the irish nationalist patriots showered upon the proposals of the noble earl." it is the mournful tragedy of all this period that a certain section of nationalist opinion should have seen in every advance towards a policy of conciliation, good will and understanding between brother irishmen, some deep and sinister conspiracy against the national cause, and in this unaccountable belief should have allowed themselves to become the dupes and to play the game of the bitterest enemies of irish freedom. but so it was, to the bitter sorrow of ireland; and many a blood-stained chapter has been written because of it. whether a fatal blindness or an insatiate personal rancour dictated this incomprehensible policy providence alone knows, but oceans of woe, and misery and malediction have flowed from it as surely as that the sun is in the heavens. after mr o'brien's retirement, as i have already remarked, the country was left without a policy or active national guidance. the leaders of the revolt against the authorised policy of the nation went abroad "for the benefit of their health." (what a lot of humbug this particular phrase covers in political affairs only the initiated are aware of!) no sooner was the cork election announced than mr dillon returned from his holiday, ready "to take the field" against the irish reform association and anyone who dared to show it toleration or regard. he declared in a speech at sligo that its one object was "to break national unity in ireland and to block the advance of the nationalist cause," and he went on to deliver this definite threat: "now i say that any attempt such as was made the other day in the city of cork to force on the branches of the national organisation, or on the national directory itself, any vote of confidence in lord dunraven or any declaration of satisfaction at the foundation of this association would tear the ranks of the nationalists of ireland to pieces." note mr dillon's extreme zeal for national unity--the man who, less than twelve months before, had set himself at the head of "a determined campaign to defy the decisions of the irish party, the national directory and the united irish league," and who did not in the least scruple whether or not he "would tear the ranks of the nationalists of ireland to pieces" in the gratification of his purpose! the "attempt made in the city of cork" which called forth mr dillon's thunders was a resolution of the cork branch of the united irish league which hailed with sympathy the establishment of the irish reform association as proof of the continuance of the spirit of conciliation "among those classes of our countrymen who have hitherto held aloof from us"--a spirit which had already led to such happy results in the abolition of landlordism "by common consent," and which was capable of "still wider and more blessed results in the direction of a national parliament of our own." the resolution also expressed gratification "at the statesmanlike spirit in which mr redmond has greeted the establishment of the new association." it will be observed that there was here a clear line of demarcation. mr o'brien and his friends wanted, in moderate and guarded language, without in any way binding themselves "to the particular views set forth in the programme of the irish reform association," to give a message of encouragement to a body of irish unionists, who, as sir edward carson, _the times_ and every other enemy of home rule declared, had become converts to the national demand for self-government and who looked likely to bring the bulk of the protestant minority in ireland with them. mr dillon and those who thought with him savagely repelled this movement towards a national unity which would embrace all classes and creeds to the forgetfulness of past wrongs, animosities and deep divisions. it seemed to have got into their minds that the appearance of the irish reform association covered some occult plot between lord dunraven, mr wyndham, sir antony macdonnell and mr o'brien. mr davitt declared that "no party or leader can consent to accept the dunraven substitute without betraying a national trust." others of lesser note denounced the new movement and its authors with every circumstance of insult and used language of a coarseness that deserves the severest condemnation. mr joseph devlin, who had succeeded mr john o'donnell as secretary of the united irish league, now began to be a rather considerable figure in irish politics on the dillonite side. he told his constituents in north kilkenny that they were not going to seek "the co-operation of a few aristocratic nobodies," and he, quite unjustly, as i conceive, attributed to lord dunraven and his friends a desire to weaken the national demand. during this time the government had given no sign that the devolution movement might not find favour in their sight. had its main objects met with a more cordial reception from the arbiters of the national policy it is more than probable that the unionist government would have stood sponsor for a large and generous instalment of self-government which would have received the joyous assent of the liberal party and passed through both houses of parliament with the acclamations of everybody. in his first speech at cork after his election mr o'brien sought to rouse the country to a real perception of the momentous issues that were at stake. he pointed out that the proposals of the reform association were only "mere preliminary materials for discussion and negotiation and that they are rather addressed towards the removal of the prejudices of unionists than put forward as a final and unalterable answer to our national demand." and then he went on to say: "lord dunraven and his friends may be all that is diabolical, but at least they are not such born idiots as to expect us to surrender our own organisation, or, as it has been absurdly put, to coalesce with the new association on such a programme." as a matter of fact, lord dunraven had, in the most outspoken manner, stated that he expected nothing from the nationalists except friendly toleration and fair play, whilst he and those associated with him were engaged in the hard task of conquering the mass of racial prejudice and sectarian bigotry that had been for so long arrayed against the national claim. the efforts to induce in the intransigeant section of the party a spirit of sweet reasonableness were, however, foredoomed to failure. mr dillon declined to address a meeting at limerick, specially summoned to establish a concordat between the irish leaders. mr redmond and mr o'brien accepted the invitation, and the former made it clear that he still regarded the land conference policy as the policy of the nation. he said: "it has been stated in some newspapers of our enemies that the land conference agreement, which was endorsed by the irish party, endorsed by the directory of the league and endorsed by the national convention and accepted by the people, has been in some way repudiated recently by us. i deny that altogether.... i speak to-day only for the people and, so far as the people are concerned, i say that the agreement, from the day it was entered upon down to this moment, has never been repudiated by anybody entitled to speak in their name." had the spirit of the limerick meeting and the unity which it symbolised been allowed to prevail, all might yet have been well and the national platform might have been broadened out so that all men of good will who wished to labour for an independent and self-governed ireland could stand upon it. but such a consummation was not to be. there was no arguing away the hostility of mr dillon, _the freeman's journal_ and those others upon whom they imposed their will. mr dillon could give no better proof of statesmanship or generous sentiment than to refer to "dunraven and his crowd" and to declare that "conciliation, so far as the landlords are concerned, was another name for swindling." from the moment mr wyndham had placed his purchase act on the statute book, with the assent of all parties in england and ireland, his hopes were undoubtedly set on the larger and nobler ambition of linking his name with the grant of a generous measure of self-government. the blood of a great irish patriot, lord edward fitzgerald, coursed through his veins, and it is not impossible that it influenced his irish outlook and stimulated his purpose to write his name largely on irish affairs. and at this time nothing was beyond his capacity or power. he was easily the most notable figure in the cabinet, by reason of the towering success that had attended his effort to remove from the arena of perennial contention a problem that had daunted and defeated so many previous attempts at solution. in all quarters the most glorious future was prophesied for him. his star shone most brightly in the political firmament--and there were many in high places who were quite willing to hitch their wagon to it. he was immensely popular in the house and he had captured the public imagination by his many gifts and graces of intellect and character. he had an exquisite personality, a wonderful charm of manner, a most handsome and distinguished presence and was a perfect courtier in an age which knew his kind not at all. his like was not in parliament, nor, indeed, can i conceive his like to be elsewhere in these rougher days, when the ancient courtesies seem to have vanished from our public life. there can be no doubt about it that in his first tentative approaches towards home rule mr wyndham received encouragement from leading members of the cabinet, including lord lansdowne and mr balfour. sir antony macdonnell had been the welcome guest of lord lansdowne at his summer seat in ireland, and the latter made no secret of the fact that their conversation turned upon the larger question of irish self-government. when lord dunraven was attacked in the house of lords for his devolution plans lord lansdowne "declined to follow lord rathmore in the trenchant vituperation lord dunraven's scheme had encountered," and he admitted that sir antony macdonnell had been in the habit of conferring with lord dunraven on many occasions, with the full knowledge and approval of the chief secretary, and had collaborated with him "in working out proposals for an improved scheme of local government for ireland." the lord-lieutenant of ireland, the earl of dudley, made open avowal of his sympathies and stated repeatedly that it was his earnest wish to see ireland governed in accordance with irish ideas. it was in this friendly atmosphere that the irish reform association propounded its scheme of devolution which mr t.p. o'connor (before he came under the influence of mr dillon) happily described as "the latin for home rule," and which mr redmond welcomed in the glowing terms already quoted. the convention of the united irish league of america, representing the best irish elements in the united states, also proclaimed the landlord concession as embodied in the irish reform association to be "a victory unparalleled in the whole history of moral warfare." here was an opportunity such as wolfe tone, robert emmet, thomas davis and the other honoured patriots of ireland's love sighed for in vain, when, with the display of a generous and forgiving spirit on all sides, the best men of every creed and class could have been gathered together in support of an invincible demand for the restoration of irish liberty. i do not know how any intelligent and impartial student of the events of that historical cycle can fail to visit the blame for the miscarriage of a great occasion, and the defeat of the definite movement towards the widest national union upon mr dillon and those who joined him in his "determined" and tragically foolish campaign. as a humble participator in the activities of the period, i dare say it is not quite possible for me to divest myself of a certain bias, but i cannot help saying that i am confirmed in the opinion that in addition to being the most melancholy figure in his generation mr john dillon was also the most malignant in that at every stage of his career, when decisive action had to be taken his judgment invariably led him to take the course which brought most misfortune upon his country and upon the hopes of its people. attacked on front and flank, assailed by sir edward carson and his gang and denounced by mr dillon and his faithful henchmen, deserted by mr balfour at the moment when his support was vital, mr wyndham weakly allowed himself to be badgered into disowning home rule, thus sealing his doom as a statesman and as potential leader of his own party. the secret history of this time when it is made public will disclose a pitiful story of base intrigue and baser desertion and of a great and chivalrous spirit stretched on the rack of ireland's ill-starred destiny. i do not think it is any exaggeration of the facts to say that wyndham was done to death, physically as well as politically, in those evil days. driven from office, with the ruin of all his high hopes in shattered disorder around him, his proud soul was never able to recover itself, and he drifted out of politics and into the greater void without--so fine a gentleman in such utter disarray that the angels must have wept his fall. that mr william o'brien did not meet a similar fate was due only to the fact that he was made of sterner fighting stuff--that he possessed a more intrepid spirit and a more indomitable will. but the base weapons of calumny and of viler innuendo were employed to injure him in the eyes of his fellow-countrymen, to whom he had devoted, in a manner never surely equalled or surpassed before, a life of service and sacrifice. _the freeman's journal_, whilst suppressing mr o'brien's speeches and arguments, threw its columns open to ruffianly attacks which no paper knowing his record should have published. in one of these he was charged with "unnatural services to insatiable landlordism." he was charged by mr dillon and the _freeman_ with being actively engaged with mr wyndham, sir antony macdonnell and lord dunraven in a plot to break up the irish party, and to construct a new moderate centre party by selling eighteen nationalist seats in parliament to lord dunraven and his friends, and he was further charged with being concerned in a conspiracy having for its object the denationalisation of the _freeman_. there were six libels in all, of so gross a character that mr o'brien, since reports of his speeches were systematically suppressed in every newspaper outside of munster, was obliged to take his libellers into court and, before a jury of their fellow-countrymen at limerick, to convict them of uttering six false, malicious and defamatory libels, and thus bring to the public knowledge the guilt of his accusers. asked what his "unnatural services to insatiable landlordism" were, mr o'brien made this memorable reply: "to abolish it! all the irish tenants had gained by the land agitation of the previous twenty years was a reduction of twenty per cent. my unnatural services under the land conference agreement was to give them a reduction of _forty per cent._ more right away and the ownership of the soil of ireland thrown in." lord dunraven on his own part took mr dillon publicly to task for his misrepresentations of him. he said that mr dillon "mentioned him as being more or less connected with a great variety of conspiracies and plots and with general clandestine arrangements.... he and george wyndham were said to have been constantly plotting for the purpose of driving a wedge into the midst of the nationalist party. well, as far as he was concerned, all these deals and all these conspiracies existed only in mr dillon's fervid imagination." and lord dunraven went on to express his sorrow that a man in mr dillon's position should have taken up so unworthy a line. mr dillon, when he had the opportunity of appearing before the limerick jury, to justify himself, if he could, never did so. and he never expressed regret for having defamed his former friend and colleague and for having vilified honourable men, honourably seeking ireland's welfare. upon which i must content myself with saying that history will pass its own verdict on mr dillon's conduct. chapter xii the later irish party--its character and composition to enable our readers to have a clearer understanding of all that has gone before and all that is to follow, i think it well at this stage to give a just impression of the party, of its personnel, its method of working and its general character and composition. the irish party, as we know it, was originally the creation of parnell, and was, perhaps, his most signal achievement. it became, under the genius of his leadership, a mighty constitutional force--disciplined, united, efficient and vigilant. it had the merit of knowing its own mind. it kept aloof from british party entanglements. it was pledged to sit, act and vote together, and its members loyally observed the pledge both in the spirit and the letter, and did not claim the right to place their own individual interpretation upon it. furthermore, it was a cardinal article of honour that members of the party were to seek no favours from british ministers, because it needs no argument to demonstrate that the member of parliament who pleads for favours for himself or preferment for his friends can possess no individual independence. he is shackled in slavery to the minister to whom his importunities are addressed. he is simply a patriot on the make, despised by himself and despised by those to whom he addresses his subservient appeals. there was no place for such a one in parnell's irish party, which embodied as nearly as possible that perfect political cohesion which is the dream of all great leaders. there were men of varying capacity and, no doubt, of differing thought in parnell's party, but where ireland's national interests were concerned it was a united body, an undivided phalanx which faced the foe. and by the very boldness and directness of parnell's policy, he won to his side in the country, not only all the moral and constitutional forces making for nationalism, but the revolutionary forces--who yearned for an irish republic--as well. he was, therefore, not only the leader of a party; he was much more--he was the leader of a united irish nation. his aim was eminently sane and practical--to obtain the largest possible measure of national autonomy, and he did not care very much what it was called. but he made it clear that whatever he might accept in his time and generation was not to be the last word on the irish question. he fought with the weapons that came to his hand--and he used them with incomparable skill and judgment--with popular agitation in ireland, with "direct action" of a most forcible and audacious kind in parliament. a great leader has always the capacity for attracting capable lieutenants to his side. we need only refer to the example of napoleon as overwhelming proof of this. and so out of what would ordinarily seem humble and unpromising material parnell brought to his banner a band of young colleagues who have since imperishably fixed their place in irish history. i am not writing the life-story of the members of parnell's party, but if i were it would be easy to show that most of the colleagues who have come to any measure of greatness since were men of no antecedent notoriety (i use the word in its better application), with possibly one exception, and it is somewhat remarkable that the son of john blake dillon, who owed perhaps not a little to the fact that he was his father's son, should have been the one who first showed signs of recalcitrancy against party rule and discipline when he inveighed against the land act of and betook himself abroad for three years during the time when the national movement was locked in bitterest conflict with the spencer coercionist regime. let it be at once conceded that parnell's lieutenants were men whose gifts and talents would have in any circumstances carried them to eminent heights, but it might be said also they lost nothing from their early association with so great a personality and from the fact that he brought them into the gladiatorial arena, where their mental muscles were, so to speak, trained and tested and extended in combat with some of the finest minds of the age. in the days when the later irish party had entered upon its decrepitude some of its leaders sought to maintain a sorry unity by shouting incessantly from the house-tops, as if it were some sacred formula which none but the unholy or those predestined to political damnation dare dispute: "majority rule." and a country which they had reduced to the somnambulistic state by the constant reiteration of this phrase unfortunately submitted to their quackery, and have had grave reason to regret it ever since. parnell had very little respect for shams--whether they were sham phrases or sham politicians. he was a member of butt's home rule party but he was not to be intimidated from pursuing the course he had mapped out for himself by any foolish taunts about his "policy of exasperation"; he was a flagrant sinner against the principle of "majority rule," but time has proved him to be a sinner who was very much in the right. mr dillon used to hurl another name of anathema at our heads--the heads of those of us who were associated with mr o'brien in his policy of national reconciliation--he used to dub us "factionists." it was not fair fighting, nor honest warfare, nor decent politics. it was the base weapon of a man who had no arguments of reason by which he could overwhelm an opponent, but who snatched a bludgeon from an armoury of certain evil associations which he knew would prevail where more legitimate methods could not. i entered the party in may , having defeated their official candidate at a united irish league convention for the selection of a parliamentary candidate for mid-cork on the death of dr tanner. in those days i was not much of a politician. my heart was with the neglected labourer and i stood, accordingly, as a labour candidate, my programme being the social elevation of the masses, particularly in the vital matters of housing, employment and wages. i was not even a member of the united irish league, being wholly concerned in building up the irish land and labour association, which was mainly an organisation for the benefit, protection and the education in social and citizen duty of the rural workers. mr joseph devlin was sent down to the convention to represent the party and the league. it was sought to exclude a considerable number of properly accredited labour delegates from the convention, but after a stiff fight my friends and myself compelled the admission of a number just barely sufficient to secure me a majority. this was heralded as a tremendous triumph for the labour movement, and it spoke something for the democratic constitution of the united irish league, as drafted by mr o'brien, that it was possible for an outsider to beat its official nominee and thereby to become the officially adopted candidate of the league himself. in due course i entered the portals of the irish party, but though in it was, to a certain extent, not of it, in that i was more an observer of its proceedings than an active participant in its work. my supreme purpose in public life was to make existence tolerable for a class who had few to espouse their claims and who were in the deepest depths of poverty, distress and neglect. hence, except where labour questions and the general interests of my constituents were concerned, i stood more or less aloof from the active labours of the party. i was in the position of a looker-on and a critic, and i saw many things that did not impress me at all too favourably. in the years immediately following the general election of the party had a splendid solidarity and a fine enthusiasm. there had been just sufficient new blood infused into it to counteract the jealous humours and to minimise the weariness of spirit of those older members who had served in the halcyon days of parnell and had gone through all the squalidness and impotence of the years of the split. had the party been rightly handled, and led by a man of strong will and inflexible character, it could have been made the mightiest constitutional power for ireland's emancipation. unfortunately mr john redmond was not a strong leader. he unquestionably possessed many of the attributes of leadership--a dignified presence, distinguished deportment, a wide knowledge of affairs, a magnificent mastery of the forms and rules of the house of commons, a noble eloquence and a sincere manner, but he lacked the vital quality of strength of character and energetic resolve. he was not, as parnell was, strong enough to impose his will on others if he found it easier to give way himself. and thus from the very outset of his career as leader of the reunited party he allowed his conduct to be influenced by others--very often, let it be said, against his own better judgment. mr redmond had a matchless faculty for stating the case of ireland in sonorous sentences, but too often he was content to take his marching orders from those powers behind the throne who were the real manipulators of what passed for an irish policy. in the shaping of this policy and in the general ordering of affairs, the rank and file of the members had very little say--they were hopelessly invertebrate and pusillanimous. the majority of them were mere automatons--very honest, very patriotic, exceedingly respectable, good, ordinary, decent and fairly intelligent irishmen, but as parliamentarians their only utility consisted in their capacity to find their way into the voting lobby as they were ordered. to their meek submission, and to their rather selfish fear of losing their seats if they asserted an independent opinion, i trace many if not all of the catastrophes and failures that overtook the party in later years. needless to say, neither the country nor the other parties in parliament had the least understanding of the real character and composition of the nationalist party. it had always a dozen or more capable men who could dress the ranks and hold their own "on the floor of the house" as against the best intellects and debating power of either british party. irish readiness and repartee made question time an overwhelmingly irish _divertissement_. our members had a unique faculty for bringing about spectacular scenes that read very well in the newspapers and made the people at home think what fine fellows they had representing them! all this might be very good business in its way if it had any special meaning, but i could never for the life of me see how taking the sultanate of morocco under our wing could by any stretch of the imagination help forward the cause of ireland. the policy of the party, in the ultimate resort, was supposed to be controlled by the united irish league acting through its branches in convention assembled. inasmuch as the party derived whatever strength it possessed in parliament from the virility and force of the agitation in ireland, it was in the fitness of things that the country should have the right of ordering the tune. when he founded the united irish league mr o'brien unquestionably intended that this should be the case--that the country should be the master of its own fate and that the constituencies should be in the position of exercising a wholesome check on the conduct of their parliamentary representatives, who, in addition to the pledge to sit, act and vote with the party, also entered into an equally binding undertaking to accept neither favour nor office from the government. as the party was for the greater part made up of poor men or men of moderate means, members received an indemnity from a special fund called "the parliamentary fund," which was administered by three trustees. this fund was specially collected each year, and in principle, if the subscriptions came from ireland alone, was an excellent method of making members of the party obey the mandate of the people, under the penalty of forfeiting their allowance. but in practice, most of the subscriptions were collected in america, and we had in effect the extraordinary situation of irish representatives being maintained in parliament by the moneys of their american kith and kin. and the situation after was rendered the more ludicrous by reason of the fact that the party could never have dragged along its existence if it had been dependent upon irish contributions to its funds. these were largely withdrawn because the party was delinquent in adhering to the policy of conciliation. it is a phenomenon worth remarking that the irish people never failed to contribute generously what parnell had termed "the sinews of war" so long as the members of the party deserved it of them. but when symptoms of demoralisation set in, or when contentions distracted their energies, the people cut off the supplies. this would undoubtedly have been an effective means of control in normal circumstances, but when the party, of its own volition, was able to send "missions" to america and australia to collect funds, it was no longer dependent on the popular will, as expressed in terms of material support, and it became the masters of the people instead of their servants. not that i want for one moment unnecessarily to disparage the personnel of the party--it was probably the best that ireland could have got in the circumstances--nor do i seek to diminish its undoubtedly great services to ireland in the days of parnell and during the period that it loyally adopted the policy of conciliation. but what i do deplore is that a few men in the party--not more than three or four all told--were able, by getting control of "the machine," to destroy the fairest chance that ireland ever had of gaining a large measure of self-government. knowing all that happened within the party in the years of which i am writing, knowing the methods that were employed, rather unscrupulously and with every circumstance of pettiness, to bear down any member who showed the least disposition to exercise legitimately an independent judgment--knowing how the paid organisers of the league were at once dispatched to his constituency to intrigue against him and to work up local enmities, i am not, and never was, surprised at the compelled submission of the body of the members to the decrees of the secret cabinet who controlled policy and directed affairs with an absolute autocracy that few dared question. one member more courageous than his fellows, mr thomas o'donnell, b.l., did come upon the platform with mr wm. o'brien at tralee, in his own constituency and had the manliness to declare in favour of the policy of conciliation, but the tragic confession was wrung from him: "i know i shall suffer for it." and he did! i mention these matters to explain what would otherwise be inexplicable--how it came to pass that a policy solemnly ratified by the party, by the directory of the league, and by a national convention was subsequently repudiated. whilst mr o'brien remained in the party there was no question of the allegiance of these men to correct principle. mr joseph devlin, who later was far and away the most powerful man in the party, had not yet "arrived." (it was the retirement of mr o'brien from public life and the resignation of mr john o'donnell from the secretaryship of the united irish league--under circumstances which mr devlin's admirers will scarcely care to recall--which gave him his chance.) mr dillon was a more or less negligible figure until mr o'brien made way for him by his retirement. right up to this there was only one man for the party and the country, and that man was william o'brien. let me say at once that in those days i had no attachments and no personal predilections. john redmond, william o'brien and john dillon were all, as we say in ireland, "one and the same to me." if anything, because of my parnellite proclivities, i rather leaned to mr redmond's side, and his chairmanship of the party had certainly my most loyal adherence. otherwise i was positively indifferent to personalities, and to a great extent also to policies, since i was in the party for one purpose, and one alone, of pushing the labourers' claims upon the notice of the leaders and of ventilating their grievances in the house of commons whenever occasion offered. furthermore, i do not think i ever spoke to mr o'brien until after the cork election in , when, convinced of the rectitude of his policy and principles, i stood upon his platform to give such humble support as i could to the cause he advocated, and thereafter, i am proud to say, never once turned aside, either in thought or action, from the thorny and difficult path i had chosen to travel. i take no credit to myself for having taken my stand on behalf of mr o'brien's policy. i knew him in all essential things, both then and thereafter, to be absolutely in the right. i was aware that, had he so minded, in , when he was easily the most powerful man in the party and the most popular in ireland, he could have smashed at one onslaught the conspiracy of "the determined campaigners" and driven its authors to a well-deserved doom. but the mistake he made then, as mistake i believe it to be, was that he left the field to those men, who had no alternative policy of their own to offer to the country, and who, instead of consolidating the national organisation for the assertion of irish right, consolidated it rather in the interests of their own power and personal position. thus it happened that a movement conceived and intended as the adequate expression of the people's will became, in the course of a short twelve months, everywhere outside of munster, a mere machine for registering the decrees of mr dillon and his co-conspirators. i do not think, if mr t.m. healy had been a member of the party then, that mr dillon would have been able so successfully to entrench himself in power as he did. mr healy knew mr dillon inside out and he had little respect for his qualities. he knew him to be vain, intractable, small-minded and abnormally ambitious of power. parnell once said of him: "dillon is as vain as a peacock and as jealous as a schoolgirl." and when he was not included as a member of the land conference i am sure it does him no wrong to say that he made up his mind that somebody should suffer for the affront put upon him. it is ever thus. even the greatest men are human, with human emotions, feelings, likes and dislikes. and though it is far from my intention to robe mr dillon in any garment of greatness, he was, unfortunately, put in a position to do irreparable mischief to great principles, as i conceive, through motives of petty spite. even if mr dillon had stood alone i do not think he would have counted for very much, supported though he was by the suave personality of mr t.p. o'connor. but he had won to his side, in the person of mr devlin, one of great organising gifts and considerable eloquence, who had now obtained control of the united irish league and all its machinery and who knew how to manipulate it as no other living person could. without mr devlin's uncanny genius for organisation mr dillon's idiosyncrasies could have been easily combated. mr dillon's diatribes against "the black-blooded cromwellians" at a time when the best of the landlord class were steadily veering in the nationalist direction, i could never understand. mr devlin's detestation of the implacable spirit of ulster orangemen was a far more comprehensible feeling, but the years have shown only too thoroughly that both passions, and the pursuit of them, have had the most disastrous consequences. even when mr dillon was most powerful in the party there were many men in it, to my knowledge, who secretly sympathised with the policy of conciliation but who had not sufficient moral courage to come out in the open in support of it, knowing that if they did they would be marked down for destruction at the next general election. it is evident that from a party thus dominated and dragooned, and an organisation which had its resolutions manufactured for it in the league offices in dublin, no good fruit could come. mr redmond's position was pitiful in the extreme. neither his judgment nor his sense of statesmanship could approve the departure which mr dillon and his accomplices had initiated. he avowed again and again, publicly to the country and privately in the party, that he was in entire agreement with mr o'brien up to the date of his resignation; and it is as morally certain as anything can be in this world that if he had not crippled his initiative by sanctioning, under his own hand, the announcement of the - / years' purchase terms for his estate, he would never have allowed himself to be associated with what he rather wearily and shamefacedly described as "a short-sighted and unwise policy." from the time that mr dillon and his friends got control of the party and the national organisation the country was never allowed to exercise an independent judgment of its own, for the simple reason that the facts were carefully kept from its knowledge by a press boycott unparalleled in the history of any other nation. under this tyranny all independence and honest conviction were sapped. and with a brutal irony, which must compel a certain amazed admiration on the part of the disinterested inquirer after truth, the men who set the party pledge at defiance, who set themselves to destroy party unity and to scoff at majority rule, were the men who at a later date, when it suited their malevolent purpose, used the catch-cries of "unity," "majority rule" and "factionists" with all their evil memories of the nine years of the split to intimidate the people from listening to the arguments and reasonings of mr o'brien and his friends. and when their kept press and their subservient parliamentarians did not prevail, they did not hesitate to use hired revolver gangs and to employ paid emissaries to prevent the gospel of conciliation from being preached to the people. with the entrance of false principles and the employment of pernicious and demoralising influences the _moral_ of the party began to be at first vitiated and then utterly destroyed. it lost its independent character and cohesive force. to a certain extent it became a party of petty tale-bearers. the men most in favour with the secret cabinet were the men who kept them informed of the sayings and doings of their fellows. the members of lesser note simply dare not be seen speaking to anyone suspected of a friendly feeling to mr o'brien or his policy. woe to them if they were! in the expressive phrase of mr o'donnell, they were "made to suffer for it." the proud independence and incorruptibility which the party boasted in parnell's day of power now also began to give way. with the accession of the liberal party to office in the nationalist members began to beseech favours. it may be it was only in the first instance that they sought j.p.-ships for their leading friends and supporters in their several constituencies. but we all know how the temptation of patronage grows: it is so fine a thing to be able to do "a good turn" for one's friend or neighbour by merely inditing a letter to some condescending minister. and now, particularly since there was no censure to be dreaded, it became one of the ordinary functions of the nationalist m.p.'s life. it was no secret that prominent leaders were exercising a similar privilege, and the rank and file saw no reason why they should not imitate so seductive an example. i once heard a keen student of personalities in parliament observe that mr dillon and mr t.p. o'connor always appeared to him to be sounder and more sincere liberals than they were irish nationalists. i agree, and no doubt much of ireland's later misfortunes sprang from this circumstance. i confess i have always thought of mr dillon, in my own mind, as an english radical first and an irish nationalist afterwards. i believe he was temperamentally incapable of adopting parnell's position of independence of either british party and of supporting only that party which undertook to do most for ireland. then, again, mr dillon was more of an internationalist than a nationalist. he delighted in mixing himself up in foreign affairs, and i am much mistaken if he did not take more pride in being regarded as an authority on the egyptian rather than on the irish question. mr t.p. o'connor was so long out of ireland, and had so completely lost touch with genuine irish opinion that much might be forgiven to him. his ties with liberalism were the outgrowth of years spent in connection with the liberal press of london and of social associations which had their natural and inevitable influence on his political actions. with messrs dillon and o'connor and--at this time, probably, in a more secondary sense--mr devlin, in control of the party, it can be well understood how easy was the descent from an independence of all parties to an alliance with one. i believe that in all these things mr redmond's judgment was overborne by his more resolute colleagues. i believe also, as i have already said, that the weakness of his position was engendered by the unforgettable mistake he made in regard to the sale of his estate--that he felt this was held over him as a sword of damocles, and that he was never able to get away from its haunting shadow sufficiently to assert his own authority in the manner of an independent and resolute leader. i am at pains to set forth these matters to justify the living and, in some measure, to absolve the dead. i want to place the responsibility for grievous failures and criminal blunders on the right shoulders. i seek to make it plain how the country was bamboozled and betrayed by party machinations such as have not had their parallel in any other period of irish history. i state nothing in malice or for any ulterior motive, since i have none. but i think it just and right that the chief events of the past twenty years should be set forth in their true character so that impartial inquirers may know to what causes can be traced the overwhelming tragedies of recent times. chapter xiii a tale of bad leadership and bad faith it became a habit of the irish party, in its more decadent days, to spout out long litanies of its achievements and to claim credit, as a sort of hereditament no doubt, for the reforms won under the leadership of parnell. it was, when one comes to analyse it, a sorry method of appealing for public confidence--a sort of apology for present failures on the score of past successes. it was as if they said: "we may not be doing very well now, but think of what we did and trust us." and the time actually arrived when "trust us" was the leading watchword of mr redmond and his party. how little they deserved that trust in regard to some important concerns i will proceed to explain. i have shown how they dished devolution and drove mr wyndham from office when he was feeling his way towards the concession of home rule--or equivalent proposals under another name; and how they thus destroyed in their generation the last hope of a settlement by consent of the irish question--although a settlement along these lines was what gladstone most desired. writing to mr balfour, so long ago as th december , he thus expressed himself: "on reflection i think what i said to you in our conversation at eaton may have amounted to the conveyance of a hope that the government would take a strong and early decision on the irish question. this being so, i wish, under the very peculiar circumstances of the case, to go a step further and say that i think it will be a public calamity if this great subject should fall into the lines of party conflict. i feel sure that the question can only be dealt with by a government, and i desire especially on grounds of public policy that it should be dealt with by the present government. if, therefore, they bring in a proposal after settling the whole question of the future government of ireland my desire will be, reserving, of course, necessary freedom, to treat it in the same spirit in which i have endeavoured to proceed in respect to afghanistan and with respect to the balkan peninsula." to this statesmanlike offer mr balfour immediately replied: "i have had as yet no opportunity of showing your letter to lord salisbury or of consulting him as to its contents, but i am sure he will receive without any surprise the statement of your earnest hope that the irish question should not fall into the lines of party conflict. if the ingenuity of any ministry is sufficient to devise some adequate and lasting remedy for the chronic ills of ireland, i am certain it will be the wish of the leaders of the opposition, to whatever side they may belong, to treat the question as a national and not as a party one." and not less clear or emphatic were the views of sir henry campbell-bannerman, spoken on rd december , as to the feasibility of settling the irish problem by consent: "on one point i may state my views with tolerable clearness. in my opinion the best plan of dealing with the irish question would be for the leaders of the two great parties to confer together for the purpose of ascertaining whether some _modus vivendi_ could not be arrived at by which the matter would be raised out of the area of party strife." it will thus be seen that at a very early stage indeed of the discussions on home rule, distinguished statesmen were agreed that the ideal way of settling the irish question was by an arrangement or understanding between the two great british parties--otherwise by those methods of conference, conciliation and consent which mr william o'brien and lord dunraven were so violently and irrationally assailed by mr dillon and his supporters for advocating. the great land pact was arranged by those methods of common agreement between all parties in parliament--it could never have been reached otherwise. and, as these pages will conclusively show, the "factionism" of mr o'brien and those associated with him consisted in pressing a settlement by conference methods consistently on the notice of the leaders of all parties. but mr wyndham was treated by the dillonite section as "a prisoner in a condemned cell"--to use their own elegant metaphor--because he showed a disposition to secure a settlement of the irish difficulty on a non-party basis. he was ruthlessly exiled from office by methods which confer no credit on their authors, and the unionist party retired at the close of the year with nothing accomplished on the home rule issue. when the liberals came back to power with an irresistible majority ireland rang from end to end with glad promises of a great, a glorious and a golden future. the liberals had the reins of government in their hands, and the tears were going to be wiped from the face of dark rosaleen. never again was she to know the bitterness of sorrow or that hope of freedom so long deferred which maketh the heart sick. mr t.p. o'connor wrote to his american news agency that home rule was coming at a "not far distant date." it was a fair hope, but the men who gambled on it did not take the house of lords sufficiently into their calculations. and they forgot also that home rule was not a concrete and definite issue before the country at the general election. the liberal party in had no home rule mandate. its leaders were avowedly in favour of what was known as "the step-by-step" programme. this policy was less than lord dunraven's scheme of devolution, but because it was the liberal plan it came in for no stern denunciations from either mr dillon or mr t.p. o'connor. even so staunch a home ruler as mr john morley insisted that mr redmond's home rule amendment to the address should contain this important addendum: "subject to the supreme authority of the imperial parliament." the men who shouted in ireland: "no compromise," who were clamant in their demand that there" should be no hauling down of the flag," and who asked the country to go "back to the old methods" (though they made it clear they were not going to lead them if they did), showed no disinclination to have their own private negotiations with the liberal leaders on a much narrower programme. mr t.p. o'connor, in his _life of sir h. campbell-bannerman, m.p._, tells us exactly what happened, in the following words:-- "the irish nationalists had already become restive, for, while not openly repudiating home rule as an ultimate solution, several of the friends and adherents of lord rosebery among the leaders of the liberal party had proclaimed that they would not only not support, but would resist any attempt to introduce a home rule measure in a parliament that was about to be elected. it was under these circumstances that i had an interview of any length with campbell-bannerman for the last time. he invited a friend and me to breakfast with him.... this exchange of views was brief, for there was complete agreement as to both policy and tactics.... it was shortly after this that he made his historic speech in stirling. that was the speech in which he laid down the policy that while ireland might not expect to get at once a measure of complete home rule, any measure brought in should be consistent with and leading up to a larger policy. such a declaration was all that the irish nationalist party could have expected at that moment and it enabled them to give their full support at the elections to the liberal party." this is a very notable statement, because it shows that the nationalists, who poured out their vials of vituperation upon lord dunraven and the irish reform association, were now eager to accept an infinitely lesser instalment of home rule from their own liberal friends. and it also demonstrates that for a very meagre modicum of the irish birth-right they were willing to sacrifice the position of parliamentary independence, which was one of the greatest assets of the party, and to enter into a formal alliance with the liberals on a mere contingent declaration that "any measure brought in" should be "consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." note, there was no guarantee, no positive statement, that a measure would be brought in, yet mr t.p. o'connor tells us that this declaration was "all that the irish nationalist party could have expected," and that it enabled them "to give their full support at the elections to the liberal party." i wonder what parnell, had he been alive, would have thought of this offer of the liberals and whether he would in return for it make such an easy surrender of a nation's claims. and i wonder also whether a paltrier bargain was ever made in the whole history of political alliances. it does not require any special gift of vision to divine who was "the friend" who went with mr o'connor to sir h. campbell-bannerman's breakfast-party and who was in "complete agreement as to both policy and tactics." they were good liberals both of them, and for my own part i would find no fault with them for this, if only they had been better nationalists. mr redmond publicly ratified the new policy--or rather, treaty, as it now practically was--of home rule by instalments in a speech at motherwell, in which he announced his readiness to accept any concession "which would shorten and smoothen the road to home rule." but it is significant that although mr dillon was in complete agreement with the liberals "as to both policy and tactics," yet he devoted, with a rather supercilious levity, his speeches in ireland to a demand for "boer home rule as a minimum." this was the way in which the country was scandalously hoodwinked as to the real relations which existed between the liberals and nationalists. mr o'brien had at this time gone abroad and left the stage completely to mr dillon and his friends, having, however, made it clear that he was in favour of the council bill and suggested certain improvements, which the government agreed to. his temporary withdrawal from the scene was dictated solely by the desire to give the utmost freedom of action to the irish party, seeing that they were acting in conformity with the best national interests in the special circumstances of the moment. he was also aware that mr birrell, who had now accepted office as chief secretary, was particularly acceptable to the nationalist leaders and that they were in constant communication with him on details of the bill, the safety of which seemed to be assured. indeed, when it was introduced into parliament, mr redmond spoke in appreciation of it, reserved in statement, no doubt, as befitting a leader who had yet to see the measure in print, but there is not a shadow of doubt that messrs redmond, dillon and o'connor were practically pledged to the support of the principle of the bill before ever it was submitted to parliament. when, however, they summoned a national convention to consider the bill, to which they were committed by every principle of honour which could bind self-respecting men, to the amazement of everybody not behind the scenes, the very men who had crossed over from westminster to recommend the acceptance of the measure were the first to move its rejection. a more unworthy and degrading performance it is not possible to imagine. it was an arrant piece of cowardice on the part of "the leaders," who failed to lead and who shamefully broke faith with mr birrell and their liberal allies. true, the irish council bill was not a very great or strikingly generous measure. it had serious defects, but these might be remedied in committee, and it had this merit, at least, that it did carry out the liberal promise of being "consistent with and leading up to a larger policy." its purpose, broadly stated, was to consolidate irish administration under the control of an irish council, which would be elected on the popular franchise. it contained no provision for a statutory legislative body. it was to confine itself to the purely administrative side of government. the various irish administrative departments were to be regrouped, with a minister (to be called chairman) at the head of each, who would be responsible to the elected representatives of the people. the council was to be provided with the full imperial costs (the dearest in the world) of the departments they were to administer, and they were to receive in addition an additional yearly subsidy of £ , to spend, with any savings they might effect on the administrative side on the development of irish resources. finally, this limited incursion into the field of administrative self-government was to last only for five years. appeals to ignorant prejudice were long made by misquoting the title of the irish council bill as "the irish _councils_ bill"--quite falsely, for one of its main recommendations was that the bill created _one_ national assembly for all ireland, including the six counties which the party subsequently ceded to carson. do not these proposals justify the comment of mr o'brien on them?--"if the experiment had been proved to work with the harmony of classes and the broad-mindedness of patriotism, of which the land conference had set the example, the end of the quinquennial period would have found all ireland and all england ready with a heart and a half for 'the larger policy.' there would even have been advantages which no thoughtful irish nationalist will ignore, in accustoming our people to habits of self-government by a probationary period of smaller powers and of substantial premiums upon self-restraint." unfortunately, in addition to having no legislative functions, mr birrell's bill contained one other proposal which damned it from the outset with a very powerful body of irish thought and influence--it proposed to transfer the control of education to a committee preponderatingly composed of laymen. when dropping the bill later sir h. campbell-bannerman declared: "we took what steps we could to ascertain irish feelings and we had good reason to believe that the bill would receive the most favourable reception." one would like to know how far the leaders of the irish party who were taken into the confidence of the government regarding the provisions of the bill concurred in this clause. to anyone acquainted with clerical feeling in ireland, whether catholic or protestant, it should be known that such a proposal would be utterly inadmissible. but apparently the government were not warned, although it is a matter of history that the irish party entertained mr birrell to a banquet in london the night before they went over to ireland for the national convention, and it is equally well known, on the admissions of mr redmond, mr o'connor and others, that they crossed with the express determination to support the irish council bill and in the full expectation that they would carry it. but they had not reckoned on mr devlin and on the younger priests, who had now begun to assert themselves vigorously in politics. mr devlin, in addition to being secretary of the united irish league, had also obtained a position of dominating control in the ancient order of hibernians (board of erin section), a secret and sectarian organisation of which i will have much to say anon. for some inscrutable reason mr devlin set himself at the head of his delegates to intrigue with the young and ardent priesthood against the bill. mr redmond, mr t.p. o'connor and their friends got to hear of the tempest that was brewing when they reached dublin. mr dillon, unfortunately, was suffering from a grievous domestic bereavement at the time, and was naturally unable to attend the convention. the others, instead of standing to their guns like men and courageously facing the opposition which unexpectedly confronted them, and which was largely founded on misunderstandings, basely ran away from all their honourable obligations--from what they owed in good faith to the liberal party, as a duty to their country, and as a matter of self-respect to their own good name--and instead of standing by the bill, defending it and explaining whatever was not quite clear in its proposals, forestalled all criticism by putting up mr redmond to move its rejection. a more humiliating attitude, a more callous betrayal, a more sorry performance the whole history of political baseness and political ineptitude cannot produce. the feeling that swept through ireland on the morrow of this convention was one of disgust and shame, yet the people were so firmly shackled in the bonds of the party that they still sullenly submitted to their chains. and the worst of this bitter business is that the shameful thing need never have occurred. if mr redmond had boldly advocated the adoption of the measure instead of moving its rejection in a state of cowardly panic, there is incontestable evidence he would have carried the overwhelming majority of the convention with him. the truth is that the members of his party had no love for the bill. sensible of their own imperfections, as many of them were, and well aware that, whilst considered good enough by their constituents for service at westminster, it was quite possible they would not come up to the standard which national duty at home would set up, they were naturally not very enthusiastic about any measure which would threaten their vested interests. it may appear an extraordinary statement to make to those who do not know their ireland very well that the members of the party were not the best that could be got, the best that would be got, under other conditions to serve in a representative capacity. but it is nevertheless true that the conditions of service at westminster were not such as to tempt or induce the best men to leave their professions or their interests for seven or eight months of the year, whereas it was and is to be hoped that when the time comes the cream of irish intellect, ability and character will seek the honourable duty of building up irish destinies in ireland. in justice to those who did serve at westminster let it be, however, said that it invariably entailed loss and sacrifice even to the very least of them, and to very many, indeed, it meant ruined careers and broken lives. this apart. the irish council bill was lost because of bad leadership and bad faith, and the irish party continued to travel stumblingly along its pathway of disaster and disgrace. chapter xiv land and labour the fortunes of every country, when one comes seriously to reflect on it, are to a great extent dependent on these two vital factors--land and labour. in a country so circumstanced as ireland, practically bereft of industries and manufactures, land and labour--and more especially the labour which is put into land--are the foundation of its very being. they mean everything to it--whether its people be well or ill off, whether its trade is good, its towns prosperous, its national economy secure. the history of ireland, ever since the first englishman set foot on it with the eye of conquest, centres to a more or less degree around the land. we know how the ancient clans tenaciously clung to their heritage and how ruthlessly they were deprived of it by the plantations and the penal laws and by a series of confiscations, the memory of which even still chills the blood. conquest, confiscation, eviction, persecution--this was the terrible story of ireland for seven centuries--and the past century worst of all. at the commencement of the nineteenth century ireland was extensively cultivated. the land had been parcelled out amongst the people; holdings were multiplied and tenancies for life increased amazingly because it meant a larger rent-roll for the landlord and a great increase in the voting power of his serfs. but there came the corn laws, making cultivation unprofitable, and earlier the law of catholic emancipation, withdrawing the right of voting from the forty-shilling freeholders, and the crisis was reached when the great famine appeared and was followed by the great clearances. the famine lasted for three years, the clearances endured for over thirty. houses were demolished, fences levelled, the peasants swept out and the notices to quit kept falling, as the well-known saying of gladstone expressed it, as thick as snowflakes. between and , according to mulhall, , irish families were evicted, numbering just about , , in all. "i do not think the records of any country, civilised or barbarian," said sir robert peel, "ever presented such scenes of horror." legislation became necessary to counteract the appalling evils arising from such a state of things. it went on through the years with varying fortune, never providing any real solution of the intolerable relations between landlord and tenant, until the blessed land conference pact was sealed and signed and the country finally delivered from the haunting terror of landlordism. now although the entire population may be said in ireland to be either directly or indirectly dependent on the land, two classes were absolutely dependent on it for their very livelihood--namely, the farmers and the agricultural labourers. and through all the various agrarian agitations they made united cause against their common enemy, the landlord. there was also in the days of my boyhood a far friendlier relation between the farmers and labourers than unhappily exists at present. their joint heritage of suffering and hardship had drawn them together in bonds of sympathy and friendship. the farmer often shared, in the bitterness of the winter months, something out of his own stock of necessities with his less fortunate labourer. and before the arrival of the creameries the daily allowance of the gallon of "skimmed" milk was made to almost every labourer's family in the country by kind-hearted neighbouring farmers. in addition, in a land where few were rich, the ancient proverb held good: "the poor always help one another." and it is true that, in the darkest days of their suffering, the farmers and labourers shouldered their troubles and their sorrows in a community of sympathy, which at least lessened their intensity. it is only with the growth of a greater independence among either class that the old friendly bonds and relationships have shown a loosening, and newer and more personal interests have tended to divide them into distinctive bodies, with separate class interests and class programmes. as a very little boy i remember trudging my way to school with children who knew not what the comfort of boots and stockings was on the coldest winter's day; who shivered in insufficient rags and whose gaunt bodies never knew any nourishment save what could be got from "indian meal stir-about" (a kind of weak and watery porridge made from maize). and it was not the children of the labourers alone who endured this bleak and starved and sunless childhood; the offspring of the smaller struggling farmers were often as badly off--they were all the progeny of the poor, kept poor and impoverished by landlordism. this further bond of blood and even class relationship also bound the farmers and labourers together--the labourers of to-day were, in countless cases, the farmers of yesterday, whom the great clearances had reduced to the lowest form of servitude and who dragged out an existence of appalling wretchedness in sight of their former homes, now, alas, razed to the ground. my mind carries me back to the time when the agricultural labourer in munster was working for four shillings a week, and trying to rear a family on it! i vowed then that if god ever gave me the chance to do anything for this woe-stricken class i would strive for their betterment, according to the measure of my opportunity. and it happened, in the mysterious workings of providence, that i was able to battle and plan and accomplish solid work for the amelioration of the labourers' lot. when mr william o'brien was labouring for the wretched "congests" in the west and founding the united irish league to make the great final onslaught on the ramparts of landlordism, a few of us in the south were engaged unpretentiously but earnestly to get houses and allotments for the agricultural labourers, and to provide them with work on the roads during the winter months when they could not labour on the land. ten years previously we had laid the foundations of what we hoped would be a widespread national movement for the regeneration of the working classes. the founder of that movement was the late mr p.j. neilan, of kanturk, a man of eminent talent and of a great heart that throbbed with sympathy for the sufferings of the workers. i was then a schoolboy, with a youthful yearning of my own towards the poor and the needy, and i joined the new movement. two others--the one john d. o'shea, a local painter, and the other john l. o'shea, a carman (the similarity of their names often led to amusing mistakes)--with some humble town workers, formed the working vanguard of the new movement, what i might term a sort of apostolate of rural democracy. our organisation was first known as the kanturk trade and labour association. as we carried our flag, audaciously enough, as it seemed in those days, to neighbouring villages and towns, we enlarged our title, and now came to be known as "the duhallow trade and labour association." i was then trying some 'prentice flights in journalism and i managed to get reports of our meetings into the cork press, with the result that demands for our evangelistic services began to flow in upon us from kerry and limerick and tipperary. but, even as we grew and waxed stronger we still, with rather jealous exclusiveness, called ourselves "the parent branch" in kanturk. we are, by the way, a very proud people down there, proud of our old town and our old barony, which has produced some names distinguished in irish history, such as john philpot curran, barry yelverton and the adored _fiancée_ of robert emmet. in time we interested michael davitt in our movement, and we achieved the glorious summit of our ambitions when we got him to preside at a great convention of our labour branches in cork, where we formally launched the movement on a national basis under the title of the irish democratic trade and labour federation. the credit of this achievement was altogether and entirely due to mr neilan, who had founded the movement, watched over its progress, addressed its meetings, framed its programme and carried it triumphantly to this stage of success. unfortunately, when all seemed favourable for the spread of the movement, though not in opposition to the national league but as a sort of auxiliary force, moving in step with it, the disastrous split occurred. it spelt ruin for our organisation because i think it will not be denied that the workers are the most vehement and vital elements in the national life, and they took sides more violently than any other section of the population. after trying for a little while to steer the democratic trade and labour federation clear of the shoals of disunion, and having failed, mr neilan and his friends gave up the task in despair. meanwhile, however, mr michael austin of the cork united trades, who was joint-secretary, with mr neilan, of the federation, succeeded in getting himself absorbed into the irish party, and, having got the magic letters of m.p. after his name, not very much was ever heard of him in the labour movement afterwards. in the pursuit of journalistic experience i left ireland for a few years, and on my return i found that a new labour movement had been founded on the ruins of the old, under the title of the irish land and labour association. mr james j. o'shee, a young carrick-on-suir solicitor, was the secretary and moving spirit in this--a man of advanced views, of intense sympathy with the labourer's position, and of a most earnest desire to improve their wretched lot. i obtained an editorial position in west cork which left me free to devote my spare time to the labour cause, which i again enthusiastically espoused, having as colleagues in county cork mr cornelius buckley, of blarney, another of exactly the same name in cork, my old friend mr john l. o'shea, of kanturk, and mr william murphy, of macroom--men whose names deserve to be for ever honourably associated with the movement which did as much in its own way for the emancipation and independence of the labourers as the national organisations did for the farmers. it is not my purpose here to recount the fierce opposition that was given to the labourer's programme. it had at first no friends either in the party or in the press. i verily believe that there were otherwise good and honest men who thought the labourers had no citizen rights and that it was the height of conscious daring for anybody to lift either hand or voice on their behalf. but those of us who had taken up the labourer's cause were well aware of all the difficulties and obstacles that would confront us; and we knew that worst of all we had to battle with the deadly torpor of the labourers themselves, who were trained to shout all right for "the land for the people" but who had possibly no conception of their own divine right to an inheritance in that selfsame land. furthermore, since the land and labour association was an organisation entirely apart from the trade and labour movement of the cities and larger corporate towns we received little support or assistance from what i may term, without offence, the aristocracy of labour. we nevertheless simply went our way, building up our branches, extending knowledge of the labourers' claims, educating these humble folk into a sense of their civic rights and citizen responsibilities and making thinking men out of what were previously little better than soulless serfs. it was all desperately hard, uphill work, with little to encourage and no reward beyond the consciousness that one was reaching out a helping hand to the most neglected, despised, and unregarded class in the community. the passage of the local government act of was that which gave power and importance to our movement. the labourers were granted votes for the new county and district councils and poor law guardians as well as for members of parliament. they were no longer a people to be kicked and cuffed and ordered about by the shoneens and squireens of the district: they became a very worthy class, indeed, to be courted and flattered at election times and wheedled with all sorts of fair promises of what would be done for them. the grant of local government enabled the labourers to take a mighty stride in the assertion of their independent claims to a better social position and more constant and remunerative employment. the programme that we put forward on their behalf was a modest one. it was our aim to keep within the immediately practical and attainable and the plainly justifiable and reasonable. in the towns and in the country they had to live in hovels and mud-wall cabins which bred death and disease and all the woeful miseries of mankind. one would not kennel a dog or house any of the lower animals in the vile abominations called human dwellings in which tens of thousands of god's comfortless creatures were huddled together in indiscriminate wretchedness. added to that, most of them had not a "haggart" (a few perches of garden) on which to grow any household vegetables. they were landless and starving, the last word in pitiful rags and bare bones. they were in a far greater and more intense degree than the farmers the victims of capricious harvests, whilst their winters were recurrent periods of the most awful and unbelievable distress and hunger and want. the first man to notice their degraded position was parnell, who, early in the eighties, got a labourers' act passed for the provision of houses and half-acre allotments of land. but as the administration of this act was entrusted to the poor law boards, as it imposed a tax upon the ratepayers, and as the labourers had then no votes and could secure no consideration for their demands, needless to say, very few cottages were built. with the advent of the local government act and the extension of the franchise, the labourer was now able to insist on a speeding-up of building operations. but the labourers' act needed many amendments, a simplification and cheapening of procedure, an extension of taxing powers, an enlargement of the allotment up to an acre and, where the existing abode of the labourers was insanitary, an undeniable claim to a new home. moderate and just and necessary to the national welfare as these claims were, it took us years of unwearied agitation before we were able to get them legislatively recognised. what we did, however, more promptly achieve was the smashing of the contract system by which the roads of the country were farmed out to contractors, mostly drawn from the big farming and grazier classes who, by devious dodges, known to all, were able to make very comfortable incomes out of them. we insisted--and after some exemplary displays of a resolute physical force we carried our point--that in the case of the main roads, particularly, these should be worked under the system known as "direct labour"--that is, by the county and deputy surveyors directly employing the labourers on them and paying them a decent living wage. in this way we removed at one stroke the black shadow of want that troubled their winters and made these dark months a horror for them and their families. but we had still to remove the mud-wall cabins and the foetid dens in the villages and towns in which families were huddled together anyhow, and in our effort to bring about this most necessary of social reforms we received little or no assistance from public men or popular movements. we were left to our own unaided resources and our own persistent agitation. as i have already stated, i was elected member of parliament for mid-cork on the death of dr tanner in , and mr o'shee had been previously elected for west waterford, but not strictly on the land and labour platform as i was. nevertheless, we heartily co-operated in and out of parliament in making the labour organisation a real and vital force, and our relations for many useful years, as i am happy to think, were of the most cordial and kindly character. in the land purchase act of mr wyndham included a few insignificant clauses bearing on the labourer's grievances, but dropped them on the suggestion of mr o'brien, to whom he gave an undertaking at the same time to bring in a comprehensive labourers' bill in the succeeding session. when that session came mr wyndham had, however, other fish to fry. the irish party and the orange gang were howling for his head, and his days of useful service in ireland were reduced to nothingness. meanwhile we kept pressing our demands as energetically as we could on the public notice, but we were systematically boycotted in the press and by the nationalist leaders until a happy circumstance changed the whole outlook for us. it was our custom to invite to all our great labour demonstrations the various nationalist leaders, without any regard to their differences of opinion on the main national issue. the way we looked at it was this--that we wanted the support of all parties in ireland, unionist as well as nationalist, for our programme, which was of a purely non-partisan character, and we were ready to welcome support from any quarter whence it came. our invitations were, however, sent out in vain until, on mr o'brien's re-election for cork in october , a delegation from the land and labour association approached him and requested him to come upon our platform and to specifically advocate the labourers' claims, now long overdue. without any hesitation, nay, even with a readiness which made his acceptance of our request doubly gracious, mr o'brien replied that now that the tenants' question was on the high road to a settlement he considered that the labourers had next call on the national energies and that, for his part, he would hold himself at our disposal. what followed is so faithfully and impartially related in mr o'brien's book, _an olive branch in ireland,_ that i reproduce it: "one of our first cares on my return to cork was to restore vitality to the labourer's cause, and formulate for the first time a precise legislative scheme on which they might take their stand as their charter. this scheme was placed before the country at a memorable meeting in macroom on december , , and whoever will take the trouble of reading it will find therein all the main principles and even details of the great measure subsequently carried into law in . the irish land and labour association, which was the organisation of the labourers, unanimously adopted the scheme, and commissioned their secretary, mr j.j. shee, m.p., in their name, to solicit the co-operation of the directory of the united irish league in convening a friendly conference of all irish parties and sections for the purpose of securing the enactment of a labourers' bill on these lines as a non-contentious measure. if common ground was to be found anywhere on which all irishmen, or at the worst all nationalists, might safely grasp hands, and with a most noble aim, it was surely here. but once more mr dillon scented some new plot against the unity and authority of the irish party, and at the directory meeting of the secretary of the land and labour association was induced without any authority from his principals to abandon their invitation, and thus take the first step to the disruption of his own association. "i bowed and held my peace, to see what another year might bring forth through the efforts of those who had made a national agreement upon the subject impracticable. another year dragged along without a labourers' bill, or any effort of the irish party to bring it within the domain of practical politics. the land and labour association determined to rouse the government and the country to the urgency of the question by an agitation of an unmistakable character. mr redmond, mr dillon and all their chief supporters were invariably invited to these demonstrations; but the moment they learned that mr harrington, mr healy and myself had been invited as well, a rigorous decree of boycott went forth against the labour demonstrations, and as a matter of fact no representative of the irish party figured on the labourers' platform throughout the agitation. this, unfortunately, was not the most inexcusable of their services to the labourers' cause. when the land and labour association held their annual convention, the secretary, who had infringed their instructions at the directory meeting, finding himself hopelessly outnumbered, seceded from the organisation and formed a rival association of his own; and sad and even shocking though the fact is, it is beyond dispute that this split in the ranks of the unhappy labourers, in the very crisis of their cause, was organised with the aid of the moneys of the national organisation administered by the men who were at that very moment deafening the country with their indignation against dissension-mongers and their zeal for majority rule. "it was all over again the dog-in-the-manger policy which had already kept the evicted tenants for years out in the cold. they would neither stand on a non-contentious platform with myself nor organise a single labourers' demonstration of their own. it has been repeatedly stated by members who were constant attendants at the meetings of the irish party that the subject of the labourers' grievances was never once discussed at any meeting of the party until the agitation in ireland had first compelled the introduction of mr bryce's bill. then, indeed, when the battle was won, and there was only question of the booty, mr redmond made the public boast that he and mr dillon "were in almost daily communications with mr bryce upon the subject." the excuse was as unavailing as his plea that the finally revised terms of sale of his wexford estate left him without a penny of profit. what concerned the country was the first announcement of - / years' purchase authorised under his own hand which had 'given a headline' to every landlord in the country. in the same way, whatever obsequious attendance he might dance on mr bryce, when the die was cast and the bill safe, the ineffaceable facts remain that neither he nor anybody in his party whom he could influence had stood on a labour platform, or touched upon the subject at the party meeting, while the intentions of the government were, as we shall see in a moment, undecided in the extreme, but on the contrary were (it may be hoped unconscious but none the less indispensable) parties to an organised effort to split the labourers' association asunder while their fate was trembling in the balance. "their war upon the land and labour association was all the more wanton, because mr dillon's persuasion, which gave rise to it that the association had been brigaded into my secret service for some nefarious purpose of my own, was as absurdly astray as all the rest of his troubled dreams of my machiavellian ambitions. to avoid giving any pretext for such a suspicion, i declined to accept any office or honour or even to become a member of the land and labour association, attended no meeting to which mr redmond and mr dillon were not invited as well as i; and beyond my speeches at those meetings, never in the remotest degree interfered in the business or counsels of the association. a number of men on the governing council of the association were to my knowledge, and continued to be, sympathisers with my critics. beyond the fact that their president, mr sheehan, m.p., happened to be the most successful practiser of my land purchase plans in the county of cork, as well as by far the ablest advocate the labourers' agitation had called into action, i know of no shadow of excuse for the extraordinary folly which led responsible irishmen, with the cry of 'unity' on their lips, not only to decline to meet me on a common platform, but to make tens of thousands of absolutely unoffending labourers the victims of their differences with me. "despite their aloofness and their attempts to divide the labourers' body, the agitation swept throughout the south of ireland with an intensity which nothing could withstand. demonstrations of amazing extent and still more remarkable resoluteness of spirit were addressed by my friends and myself in charleville and macroom, county cork; kilfinane and drumcolliher, county limerick; tralee and castle island, county kerry; scariff, county clare; goolds cross, county tipperary; and ballycullane, county wexford; and by the time they were over, the field was fought and won. one last difficulty remained; but it was a formidable difficulty. so far from mr redmond's 'almost daily communications with mr bryce' reaching back to the critical days of the problem, we were already in the first days of summer in the session of when a communication was made to me from a high official quarter that the irish government were so deeply immersed in the irish council bill of the following year that they shrank from the labour and the financial difficulties of a labourers' bill in the current session, and an appeal was diplomatically hinted as to whether there was any possibility of slowing down the labourers' agitation so as to make a postponement to the following session practicable. my reply was undiplomatically clear:--that, if the government wanted to deprive the irish council bill of all chance of a hearing, they could not take a better means of making the country too hot for themselves than by proposing to fob off the labourers for another year, and that not only would i not, if i could, but could not if i would, moderate their insistence upon immediate redress. "a short time afterwards, i met sir antony macdonnell in the house of commons, and he asked 'what is your labourers' minimum?' i gave him a brief outline of the macroom programme. 'no rational being could object,' he said, 'but what does it mean in hard cash?' i replied, 'roughly, four millions.' and the great irishman--'the worst enemy that ever came to ireland' of mr dillon's nightmare hours--ended the interview with these laconic words: 'the thing ought to be done and i think can be.' at the period of the session at which the bill was introduced, the opposition of even half-a-dozen determined men could have at any stage achieved its ruin. thanks, however, to the good feeling the precedent of the act of and the admirably conciliatory temper displayed by the labourers themselves in their agitation had engendered, the bill went triumphantly through and has been crowned with glory in its practical application. i never pass through any of the southern counties now and feast my eyes on the labourers' cottages which dot the landscape--prettier than the farmers' own homes--honeysuckles or jasmines generally trailing around the portico--an acre of potato ground sufficient to be a sempiternal insurance against starvation, stretching out behind--the pig and the poultry--perhaps a plot of snowdrops or daffodils for the english market, certainly a bunch of roses in the cheeks of the children clustering about the doorsteps--without thankfully acknowledging that cork was right in thinking such conquests were worth a great deal of evil speech from angry politicians." chapter xv some further salvage from the wreckage when mr o'brien retired in the majority of the members of the party scarcely knew what to make of it, and i have to confess myself among those who were lost in wonder and amazement at the suddenness of the event and the reasons that caused it. this knowledge came later, but until i got to a comprehension of the entire facts i refused to mix myself up with either side. when, however, mr o'brien returned to public life in , i saw my way clear to associate myself with his policy and to give it such humble and independent support as i could. it will be remembered that one of mr o'brien's proposals for testing the purchase act was to select suitable estates, parish by parish, where for one reason or another the landlords could be induced to agree to a reasonable number of years' purchase and thus to set up a standard which, with the strength of the national organisation to back it up, could be enforced all over the country. the "determined campaigners" defeated this plan but failed to provide any machinery of their own to protect the tenant purchasers or to assist them in their negotiations. on mr o'brien's re-election he took immediate steps to form an advisory committee composed of delegates from the eight divisional executives of the city and county of cork. this committee adopted as its watchword, "conciliation plus business," and as its honorary secretary i can vouch for it that when the methods of conciliation failed we were not slow about putting into operation the business side of our programme. thus the landlord who could not be induced to listen to reason around a table was compelled to come to terms by an agitation which was none the less forceful and effective because it was directed and controlled by men of conciliatory temper whom circumstances obliged to resort to extreme action. the fruits of the work of the advisory committee, ranging over a number of years, are blazoned in the official statistics. they make it clear that if only a similar policy had been working elsewhere the tenant purchasers all over ireland would have got infinitely better terms than they did. the bare fact is that in county cork, where we had proportionately the largest number of tenant purchasers (in mid-cork, i am glad to say, there was scarcely a tenant who did not purchase, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred through my intervention), the prices are, roughly, two years' purchase lower than the average all over the rest of ireland. in cork, where mr o'brien's policy prevailed, we had, outside the congested districts, from st november to st march , a total of , tenant purchasers, and the amount of the purchase money was £ , , ; whilst in mayo, one of whose divisions mr dillon represented in parliament, and where his doctrines held sway, the number of tenant purchasers in the same period was , and the amount of the purchase money only £ , . and be it noted what these unfortunate and misguided mayo men have to be grateful for: that they have remained for all these years, since the act of was placed on the statute book, under the old inexorable rent-paying conditions, whilst down in cork the tenants are almost to a man the proprietors of their own holdings, owning their own improvements, knowing that every year that passes brings the time nearer when their land will be free of annuities, and having all that sweet content and satisfaction that flow from personal ownership. up in mayo, in a famous speech delivered at swinford, th september , three years after the land purchase act was passed, mr dillon declared: "attempts have been made to throw the blame on michael davitt, _the freeman's journal_ and myself, and it has been said that we have delayed the reinstatement of the evicted tenants and obstructed the smooth working of the act more than we have done. it has worked too smoothly--far too smoothly, to my mind. some men have complained within the past year that the land act was not working smooth enough. for my part i look upon it as working a great deal too fast. its pace has been ruinous to the people." there, in a nutshell and sufficiently stated, are the two policies. mr o'brien wanted to expedite land purchase by every means in his power, but he wished that the tenants should have proper advisers and should act under the skilled guidance of their own organisation, so that they may make no bad bargains. mr dillon, on his part, sought to kill land purchase outright, but why he should have had this mad infatuation against the most beneficent act that was passed for ireland in our generation, i am at a loss to know, if it is not that he allowed his personal feeling against mr o'brien to cloud the operations of his intellect. it is a curious commentary, however, on the good faith of the party leaders, that whilst mr dillon was making the speech i have quoted to his constituents at swinford, his bosom friend and confidant, mr t.p. o'connor, who was seeking the shekels in new york, was telling his audience that "the irish landlords were on the run, and, if they continued to yield, in fifteen years the very name of landlordism would be unknown. i say to the british power:--after seven centuries we have beaten you; the land belongs now to the irish; the land is going back to the old race." what is one to say of the manhood or honour of the men who spent their days denouncing the policy of conciliation in ireland, but who, when they went across the atlantic, and wanted to coax the money out of the exiles' pockets, spoke the sort of stuff that mr o'connor so soothingly "slithered" out at new york? i say it with full and perfect knowledge of the facts, that it was the dishonest policy of mr dillon, mr t.p. o'connor and the men who, blindly and weakly, and with an abominable lack of moral courage, followed their leadership, which has kept one hundred thousand tenants still under the heel of landlordism in ireland. these men, in driving a nail into the policy of conciliation, drove a nail far more deeply into their own coffin. in burying the land act of they were only opening graves for themselves, but, in the words of mr redmond, they were "so short-sighted and unwise" they could not see the inevitable result of their malicious side-stepping. i know of no greater glory that any man, or party, or organisation could aspire to than to be, in any way, however humble, associated with the policy which made three hundred thousand of the farmers of ireland the owners of their own hearths and fields. where the land purchase act operated it gave birth to a new race of peasant owners, who were frugal, industrious, thrifty, and assiduous in the cultivation and improvement of the soil. in a few years the face of the country was transformed. a new life and energy were springing into being. the old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings. personal indebtedness became almost a thing of the past, and the gombeen man--one of ireland's national curses--was fast fading out of sight. the tenant purchasers, against whose solvency the "determined campaigners" issued every form of threat, took a pride in paying their purchase instalments as they fell due. the banks began to swell out into a plethoric affluence on their deposits. and who can estimate the social sweetness that followed on land purchase--the sense of peace and security that it gave to the tenant and his family, the falling from him of the numbing shadows of unrest and discontent? also with the disappearance of agrarian troubles and the unsettlement that attended them there has been a notable decline in the consumption of alcohol. to reverse an old saying: "ireland sober is ireland free"--it may be said that "ireland free (of landlordism) is ireland sober." and then the happiness of being the master of one's own homestead! no race in the world clings so lovingly to the soil as the irish. we have the clan feeling of a personal love and affection for the spot of earth where we were born, and when the shadows of evening begin to fall athwart our lives, do we not wish to lay ourselves down in that hallowed spot where the bones of our forefathers mingle with the dust of ages? truly we love the land of our birth--every stone of it, every blade of grass that grows in it, its lakes, its valleys, and its streams, each mountain that in rugged grandeur stands sentinel over it, each rivulet that whispers its beautiful story to us--and because we would yet own it for our very own, we grudge not the sacrifices that its final deliverance demands, for it will be all the dearer in that its liberty was dearly purchased with the tears and the blood of our best! the settlement of the evicted tenants question was another of the vital issues salved from the wreckage. there were from eight to ten thousand evicted tenants--"the wounded soldiers of the land war" as they were termed--to whom the irish party and the national organisation were pledged by every tie of honour that could bind all but the basest. the land conference report made an equitable settlement of the evicted tenants problem an essential portion of their treaty of peace. but the revival of an evil spirit amongst the worst landlords and the interpretations of hostile law officers reduced the evicted tenants clause in the act of almost to a nullity. in this extremity the cork evicted tenants requested the land conference to reassemble and specify in precise language the settlement which they regarded as essential. all the representatives of the landlords and of the tenants on the conference accepted the invitation, with the single exception of mr redmond. eventually, despite these and other discouragements, the conference met in dublin in october , sat for three days, and agreed upon lines of settlement which were given effect to in legislation by mr bryce the following year. true, the restoration of these unhappy men did not proceed as rapidly as their sacrifices or interests demanded. they were also the victims of the malign opposition extended to the policy of conciliation, even when it embraced a deed so essentially charitable as the relief of the families who had borne the burden and the heat of the day in the fierce agrarian wars. lamentable to relate, mr dillon tried to intimidate mr t.w. russell and mr harrington from joining the conference, and when he failed, publicly denounced their report. and if there are still some of them "on the roadside," as i regret to think they are, the blame does not lie with the conciliationists, but with those who persistently opposed their labours. in the settlement of the university question cork also took the lead when its prospects were in a very bad way. this had been for over a century a vexed and perplexing problem. i have dealt cursorily with primary education, which is even still in a deplorably backward state in ireland. secondary education has not yet been placed on a scientific basis, and is not that natural stepping-stone between the primary school and the university that it ought to be. there is no intelligent co-ordination of studies in ireland and we suffer as no other country from ignorantly imposed "systems" which have had for their object, not the development of irish brains but the anglicisation of irish youth, who were drenched with the mire of "foreign" learning when they should have been bathed in the pure stream of irish thought and culture. it would require a volume in itself to deal with all the evils, not only intellectual and educational, but social, economic and political, which ireland has suffered owing to the absence of a higher education directed to the development of her special psychological and material needs. it took eighty years of agitation before anything like educational equality in the higher realms of study was established. the protestants had in trinity college a university with a noble tradition and a great historic past. the catholics had only university college and a royal university, which conferred degrees without compulsion of residence. in hounding mr wyndham from office and killing him (in the political sense, though one would be sorely tempted to add, also in the physical sense), the irish party also destroyed, amongst other things, the prospects of a university settlement in . a university bill had, as a matter of fact, been promised as the principal business for that session. the question was in a practically quiescent state, nobody taking any particular interest in it, when the catholic laity of cork, supported by the mass of the protestant laity as well (as was now become the custom on all great questions in the leading irish county), came together in a mighty and most representative gathering, which instantly impressed statesmen that this educational disability on religious grounds could no longer be tolerated. mr birrell, who failed in most other things during his ill-starred irish administration, was admirably energetic and suave in getting his university proposals through. and it was by employing wisely the methods of conciliation and winning over to his side men of opposite political views, like mr balfour, mr wyndham, sir edward carson, and professor butcher that he piloted the bill safely through its various parliamentary stages. with the success of land purchase, with the introduction and passage of the labourers and university acts, with the settlement of the evicted tenants question, and with the offering of any resistance to the effort made to remove the embargo on canadian cattle, which would seriously have affected the prospects of the farmers, the irish party had exercised no initiative and could not legitimately claim one atom of credit in respect of them. yet when their parliamentary prestige began to shake and show unmistakable signs of an approaching collapse, it was ever their habit to group these among their achievements in the same way that they appropriated the fruits of parnell's genius--it was "the party" that did everything, and so they demanded that the people should sing eternal hosannas to its glory. in justice to the party, or, more correctly, to mr j.j. clancy, m.p., who stood sponsor for the measures and watched over their progress with paternal care, they did get inscribed on the statute book two acts of considerable importance--the town tenants act and the housing of the working classes act, but beyond these the less said of their parliamentary conquests from onward the better. their achievements were rather of the destructive and mischievous than the constructive and beneficent. chapter xvi reunion and treachery it may be said that whilst all these things were going on in ireland and the party marching with steady purpose to its irretrievable doom, the british people were in the most profound state of ignorance as to what was actually happening. and the same may be said of the irish in america, australia, and all the other distant lands to which the missionary celts have betaken themselves. they were all fed with the same newspaper pap. the various london correspondents took their cue from mr t.p. o'connor and the _freeman_. these and the whips kept them supplied with the tit-bits that were in due course served up to their several readers. and thus it never got to be known that it was mr william o'brien and his friends who were the true repositories of party loyalty and discipline, the only men who were faithful to the pledge, who had never departed from the policy of conference, conciliation and consent, upon which the great land act of was based and to which the party, the united irish league, and nationalist opinion stood committed in the most solemn manner. when the general election of took place those of us in county cork and elsewhere who had taken our stand by mr o'brien were marked out for opposition by the party chiefs. but a truce was arranged through the intervention of mr george crosbie, editor of _the cork examiner_, who generously sought to avert a fight between brother nationalists, which, whatever its effects at home, would be bound to have grave results abroad, where the only thing that would be strikingly apparent was that brother nationalists were at one another's throats. so we all came back, if not exactly a happy family at least outwardly in a certain state of grace. this state of things was not, however, to last. without rhyme or reason, without cause stated or charge alleged, with no intimation of any sort or kind that i was acting contrary to any of the party tenets, i was, so to speak, quietly dropped overboard from the party ship in november . i did not get any official intimation that i was dismissed the party or that i had in any way violated my pledge to sit, act and vote with it. i was simply cut off from the party whips and the parliamentary allowance and, without a word spoken or written, thus politely, as it were, told to go about my business. the matter seemed inconceivable and i wrote a firm letter of remonstrance to mr redmond. it drew from him merely a formal acknowledgment--an adding of insult to injury. to test the matter i immediately resigned my seat for mid-cork, placed the whole facts before my constituents, published my letter and mr redmond's acknowledgment and challenged the party to fight me on the issue they had themselves deliberately raised--namely, as to whether in supporting the policy of conciliation i was in any way faithless to my pledge. wise in their generation, the men who were courageous enough to expel me from the party, to which i belonged by as good a title as they, were not brave enough to meet me in the open in a fair fight and, where there could be no shirking a plain issue, and accordingly i had a bloodless victory. it was satisfactory to know i had the practically unanimous support and confidence of the electors of mid-cork. it would have been more satisfactory still if we had the policy of conciliation affirmed, as we undoubtedly would have, by an overwhelming vote in a genuine trial of strength. there were at this time outside of the party, besides myself, mr william o'brien, mr t. m. healy, m.p. for north louth (who had not been readmitted after ), sir thomas esmonde, m.p. for north wexford, mr john o'donnell, m.p. for south mayo, mr charles dolan, m.p. for south leitrim, and mr augustine roche (mr o'brien's colleague in the representation of cork). the party were now in a rather parlous state. the country was disgusted with their mismanagement of the irish council bill. branches of the united irish league had ceased to subscribe to the party funds and it was evident that a temper distinctly hostile to the party managers was widely springing up. furthermore, an irresistible movement of popular opinion set in, demanding that there should be a reunion of all the nationalist forces and "unity" demonstrations of huge dimensions were held in kerry, limerick, cork, clare and wexford. there was no denying the intensity of the demand that there should be an end of those differences which divided brother nationalists and dissipated their strength. finally, at ballycullane, in mr redmond's native constituency, mr o'brien formulated proposals for reunion, the first of which is so notable as a declaration of nationalist principle that i quote it fully: "no man or party has authority to circumscribe the inalienable right of ireland to the largest measure of national self-government it may be in her power to obtain." further conditions declared that it was the duty of nationalist representatives to devote themselves honestly to working for every measure of practical amelioration which it may be possible to obtain from "either english party, or from both," and that the co-operation of irishmen of all creeds and classes willing to aid in the attainment of any or all of those objects should be cordially welcomed. within a week mr redmond conveyed to mr o'brien his desire for a conference on unity. it was duly held. mr o'brien's proposals were substantially agreed to. it will be observed that they were a solemn reiteration of the principles of conference and conciliation, which was the bed-rock basis of the party policy in its most useful and memorable year, . it is possible that if mr o'brien's suggestion for a national convention to give the new unity an enthusiastic "send-off" had been agreed to, many things might have been different to-day. but mr dillon never wanted, in those days, if he could help it, to appear before a great assemblage of his countrymen in company with mr o'brien. he knew his own limitations for popular appeal too well to risk comparison with the most persuasive irish orator since the days of o'connell. the six of us who rejoined the party under the foregoing peace treaty were sincerely anxious that the reunion should be cordial and thorough. we saw, however, no manifestations of a similar spirit on the part of mr dillon or his special coterie of friends. mr o'brien published in his own paper, _the irish people,_ a _communique_ in which he said: "i am certain the universal irish instinct will be, frankly and completely, to drop all disputes as to the past and have no rivalries except as to who shall do most to create good will and a common patriotism among irishmen of all shades and schools of thought. let us turn with high hearts from the tragedies of the past to the glorious possibilities of the future." our optimism was sadly disappointed when the first occasion came for testing the sincerity of the reunion. a treasury report was issued containing proposals for lessening the landlords' bonus under the purchase act of and for increasing the tenants' annuities. (these proposals were later embodied in mr birrell's land act of and practically put an end to land purchase and to the beneficent operations of the act of .) a meeting of the reunited party was summoned for the mansion house, dublin ( th april ), to deal with this grave situation, rendered all the more serious by reason of the fact that the treasury proposals were openly advocated by _the freeman's journal._ one of the clauses of the articles of reunion declared that the co-operation of irishmen of all classes and creeds willing to aid in the attainment of, among other things, "the completion of the abolition of landlordism" is cordially welcomed. when mr o'brien moved, in order that the demands of the treasury should be met with a united and resolute irish front, that the party was prepared to appoint representatives to confer with representatives of the landlords, mr dillon at once showed that on no account would be agree to any conference, and he proposed an amendment that the whole matter should be referred to a committee of the irish party exclusively. this was a fatal blow at the principle on which the party had been reunited. whilst the controversy raged around the conference idea, mr redmond spoke never a word, though he saw that "the short-sighted and unwise policy" was again getting the upper hand. mr dillon carried his amendment by votes to , and thus the treaty on which the party was reunited was practically torn to pieces before the ink was scarce dry on it. one further effort was made to try to preserve the act of from being ham-strung by the treasury. a short time previously a deputation of the foremost landed men and representative bodies of cork had saved ireland from the importation of canadian cattle into britain. it was decided to organise now a still more powerful deputation from the province of munster to warn the government of the fatal effects of the proposed birrell bill. i had a great deal to do with the preliminaries of the meeting at which this deputation was selected, and i can say with all certainty that if we had had only the most moderate display of political wisdom from mr dillon and his friends we could have the great mass of the landlords in ireland agreeing to the full concession of the constitutional demand for irish liberty. the cork meeting was beyond all doubt or question the most remarkable held in ireland for a century. it was summoned by a joint committee drawn from the nationalist and landlord ranks. on its platform were assembled all the men, either on the landlord or the tenant side, who had been the fiercest antagonists in the agrarian wars of the previous twenty-five years--men who had literally taken their lives in their hands in fighting for their respective causes. it is but the barest truth to say that the evictors and the evicted--the leading actors in the most awful of ireland's tragedies--stood for the first time in irish history side by side to join hands in a noble effort to obliterate the past and to redeem the future. it was one of the greatest scenes of true emotion and tremendous hope that ever was witnessed in any land or any time. if its brave and joyous spirit could only have been caught up and passed along, we would have seen long before now that vision glorious which inspired the deeds and sacrifices of tone and emmet and the other magnificent line of martyrs for irish liberty--we would have witnessed that brotherhood of class and creed which is ireland's greatest need, and upon which alone can her eventual happiness and liberty rest. and, most striking incident of all, here had met, in a blessed forgetfulness of past rancours and of fierce blows given and received, the two most redoubtable champions of the landlords and the tenants--lord barrymore and mr william o'brien, the men whose sword blows upon each other's shields still reverberated in the minds of everyone present. what a study for a painter, or poet, or philosopher! the most dauntless defender of landlordism, in a generous impulse of what i believe to be the most genuine patriotism, stood on a platform with mr william o'brien, whom he had fought so resolutely in the plan of campaign days, to declare in effect that landlordism could no longer be defended and to agree as to the terms on which it could be ended, with advantage to every section of the irish nation. it was only magnanimous men--men of fine fibre and a noble moral courage--who could stretch their hands across the yawning chasm of the bad and bitter years, with all their evil memories of hates and wounds and scars and defy the yelpings of the malicious minds who were only too glad to lead on the pack, to shout afterwards at mr o'brien: "barrymore!" when of a truth, of all the achievements of mr o'brien's crowded life of effort and accomplishment there is not one that should bring more balm to his soul or consolation to his war-worn heart than that he should have induced the enemy of other days to pay this highest of all tributes to his honesty and worth. he had convinced his enemy of his rectitude, and what greater deed than this! i confess it made my ears tingle with shame when i used to hear unthinking scoundrels, egged on by others who should have known better, shout "barrymore!" at mr o'brien in their attempts to hold him up to public odium for an act which might easily have been made the most benign in his life, as it certainly was one of the most noble. this memorable meeting of the erstwhile warring hosts agreed absolutely as to the main conditions on which the land settlement of ought to be preserved--viz. that the abolition of landlordism should be completed in the briefest possible time, that the rate of tenant purchasers' annuity should remain undisturbed, and that the state bonus to the landlords should not be altered. if there were to be losses on the notation of land loans the loss should be borne by the imperial treasury for the greatest of all imperial purposes. a deputation of unequalled strength and unrivalled representative character was appointed to submit these views to the prime minister, the chancellor of the exchequer and the chief secretary for ireland. but jealous and perverse and, i must add, blindly malignant, influences had been at work, and a deputation which comprised six peers, eleven members of parliament, and some of the leading public men in munster was refused a hearing by mr birrell. though the act was the act of mr birrell, all the world knew that the sinister figure in the background was mr dillon. and they have both paid the penalty since then of their follies, not to say crimes--though a nation still suffers for them. chapter xvii a new power arises in ireland the party manipulators had now got their stranglehold on the country. the people, where they were not chloroformed into insensibility, were doped into a state of corrupt acquiescence. all power was in the hands of the party. the orthodox daily press was wholly on their side. the british public and the english newspaper writers were impressed only, as always, by the big battalions. the irish party had numbers, and numbers count in parliament as nothing else does. whatever information went through to the american press passed through tainted sources. an influential irish-american priest, father eamon duffy, writing some time since in the great american catholic magazine, _the monitor_, said: "we really never understood the situation in america. ireland was in the grip of the party machine and of one great daily paper, and these were our sources of information. it was only the great upheaval that awakened us from our dream and showed us that something had been wrong, and that the party no longer represented the country." this is a remarkable admission from an independent and unprejudiced authority. he candidly declares they never understood the situation in america. neither was it understood in england, and the house of commons is the last place which tries to understand anything except party or personal interests. there is just about as much freedom of opinion and individual independence in parliament as there could be in a slave state. in ireland, as i have said, outside munster the truth was never allowed to reach the people. even the great national movement which mr william o'brien re-created in the united irish league had almost ceased to function. it was gradually superseded by a secret sectarian organisation which was the absolute antithesis of all free development of democratic opinion and the complete negation of liberty and fair play. up in the north of ireland there existed an organisation of a secret and sworn character which was an evil inheritance of an evil generation. from the fact that the ribbonmen used to meet in a shebeen owned by one molly maguire, with the irish adaptability for attaching nicknames to anything short of what is sacred, they became known as "molly maguires," or, for short, "the mollies." in some ill-omened day branches of the ancient order of hibernians, which had seceded from the american order of that name, began to interest themselves in ulster in political affairs. they called themselves the board of erin, but they were, as i have said, more generally known as "the mollies." they were a narrowly sectarian institution and they had the almost blasphemous rule that nobody but a catholic frequenting the sacraments could remain a member. they had their own ritual and initiation ceremony, founded on the orange and masonic precedents, and had their secret signs and passwords. it is possible that they were at first intended to be a catholic protection society in ulster at the end of the eighteenth century to combat the aggressiveness and the fanatical intolerance of the orange order, who sought nothing less than the complete extermination of the catholic tenantry. a catholic defence organisation was a necessity in those circumstances, but when the occasion that gave it justification and sanction had passed it would have been better if it were likewise allowed to pass. any organisation which fans the flames of sectarianism and feeds the fires of religious bigotry should have no place in a community which claims the sacred right of freedom. it was the endeavour of mr o'brien and his friends finally to close this bitter chapter of irish history by reconciling the ancient differences of the sects and inducing all irishmen of good intent to meet upon a common platform in which there should be no rivalries except the noble emulations of men seeking the weal of the whole by the combined effort of all. whatever unfortunate circumstance or combination of circumstances gave impulse to "the board of erin," i know not-whether it arose out of a vainglorious purpose to meet the orangemen with a weapon of import similar to their own, or whether it was merely the love of young people to have association with the occult, i can merely conjecture--but it was only when mr joseph devlin assumed the leadership of it that it began to acquire an influence in politics which could have no other ending than a disastrous one. never before was the cause of irish liberty associated with sectarianism. wolfe tone, robert emmet and thomas davis are regarded as the most inspired apostles and confessors of irish nationality. it was a profanation of their memory and an insult to their creed that in the first decade of the twentieth century any man or band of men should have been audacious enough to superimpose upon the structure of the national movement an organisation which in addition to being secret and sectarian was grossly sordid and selfish in its aims. stealthily and insidiously "the board of erin" got its grip in the united irish league. it "bossed," by establishing a superiority of numbers, the standing committee. then by "getting hold" of the officers of divisional executives and branches it acquired control over the entire machinery of the movement, and thus, in an amazingly short space of time, it secured an ascendancy of a most deadly and menacing character. its first overt act of authority was to strangle freedom of speech and to kill land purchase. what mr john dillon had been unable to do through his control of the party and his collusion with _the freeman's journal_ the board of erin most effectively accomplished by an energetic use of boxwood batons and, at a later time, weapons of a more lethal character. a national convention had been summoned to pronounce on the birrell land bill of --a measure which, with incomparable meanness, was designed "to save the treasury" by ridding it of the honourable obligations imposed by the wyndham act of . this bill, on the ground that the finance of the act of had broken down, proposed to increase the rate of interest on land loans from - / to - / per cent., and to transform the bonus from a free imperial grant to a treasury debt against ireland. apparently it should require no argument to prove that this was a treacherous repeal of an existing treaty, guaranteed by considered legislative enactment, and that it was a proposal which no irishman with any sense of the duty he owed his country could for one moment entertain. but it was the unthinkable and the unbelievable thing which happened. mr dillon was determined, at all costs--and how heavy these costs were, one hundred thousand unpurchased tenants in ireland to-day have weighty reason to know--to wreak his spite against the wyndham act, which he had over and over again declared was working too smoothly, and prayed that he might have the power to stop it. mr redmond i regard in all this wretched business as the unwilling victim of the forces which held him, as a vice in their power. yet from the sin of a weak compliancy in the unwise decrees of others he cannot be justly acquitted. although the party had rejected the proposal for a new land conference, and thereby broken the articles of reunion under which mr o'brien and his friends re-entered it, we continued to remain within its fold. we could not, for one thing, believe that the country was so steeped in ignorance and blindness that if the facts were once allowed to reach it, or the arguments to be temperately addressed to any free assembly of irishmen, they would not see where national interests lay. accordingly mr o'brien and his friends determined to submit, in constitutional fashion, the overwhelming objections to mr birrell's bill to the judgment of the national convention which was to consider whether the bill would expedite or destroy land purchase. it was conveyed to mr o'brien beforehand that it was madness on his part to attempt to get a hearing at the convention, that this was the last thing "the powers that be" would allow, and that as he valued his own safety it would be better for him to remain away. just as he had never submitted to intimidation when it was backed by the whole force of the british government, mr o'brien was equally resolved that the arrogance of the new masters of the irish democracy was not going to compel him to a mood of easy yielding and he properly decided to submit his arguments to a convention which, though he was well aware it would be "packed" against him, yet he had hopes might be swayed by the invincibility of his arguments. in the ordinary course the stewards for managing and regulating the convention would be drawn from dublin nationalists. on this occasion, however, they came by special train from belfast and were marched in military order to the mansion house, where some sackfuls of policemen's brand-new batons were distributed amongst them. they were the "special constables" of the molly maguires recruited for the first time by an irish organisation to kill the right of free speech for which irishmen had been contending with their lives through the generations. it would be quite a comedy of irish topsy-turvydom were it not, in fact, such a disastrous tragedy. the favourite cry of the enemies of conciliation was that the purchase act would bankrupt the irish ratepayers. by means which it is not necessary to develop or inquire into, the british treasury was induced on the very eve of the convention to present to a number of the irish county councils claims for thousands of pounds on foot of expenses for the flotation of land loans. a base political trick of this kind is too contemptible for words. it, however, gave mr redmond one of the main arguments for impressing the convention that the birrell bill could alone save the ratepayers from the imminence of this burden. it would have been easy to demolish the contention had the reply been allowed to be made. but this was just the one thing "the bosses" were determined not to allow--mr o'brien had given notice of an amendment, the justification of which is attested by the facts of the succeeding twelve years. it expressed the view that the birrell land bill would lead to the stoppage of land purchase, that it would impose an intolerable penalty upon the tenant purchasers whose purchase money the treasury had failed to provide, and that it would postpone for fifty years any complete solution of the problem of the west and of the redistribution of the untenanted grass lands of the country. the moment mr o'brien stood up to move this, at a concerted signal, pandemonium was let loose. i was never the witness of a more disgraceful incident--that an irishman whose life had been given in so full and generous a fashion to the people should, by secret and subsidised arrangement, be howled down by an imported gang and prevented from presenting his views in rational fashion to men the majority of whom at least were present for honest consideration of arguments. it is a thing not easily forgotten or forgiven for the irishmen who engineered it, that such a ferocious and foolish display of truculent cowardice should have taken place. for an hour mr o'brien manfully faced the obscene chorus of cat-cries and disorder. he describes one of the incidents that occurred in the following words:-- "while i was endeavouring, by the aid of a fairly powerful voice, to dominate the air-splitting clamour around me, mr crean, m.p., on the suggestion of father clancy, attempted to reach me, in order to urge me to give up the unequal struggle. he was no sooner on his legs than he was pounced upon by a group of brawny belfast mollies and dragged back by main force, while mr devlin, with a face blazing with passion, rushed towards his colleague in the irish party, shouting to his lodgemen: 'put the fellow out.' at the same time father clancy, mr sheehan, m.p., and mr gilhooly, m.p., having interposed to remonstrate with mr crean's assailants, found themselves in the midst of a disgraceful mêlée of curses, blows and uplifted sticks, mr sheehan being violently struck in the face, and one of the molly maguire batonmen swinging his baton over mr gilhooly's head to a favourite belfast battle-cry: 'i'll slaughter you if you say another word.'" so does this convention go down to history as the beginning of an infamous period when the sanctity of free speech was a thing to be ruthlessly smashed by the hireling or misguided mobs of an organisation professing democratic principles. the miracle of the easter rising was that it put an end to the rule of the thug and the bludgeonman. but many things were to happen in between. certain police court proceedings followed, in which mr crean, m.p., was the plaintiff. the only comment on these that need now be made is that mr crean's summons for assault was dismissed, and he was ordered to pay £ costs or to go to gaol for two months, whilst the police magistrate who tried the case was shortly afterwards rewarded with the chief magistracy of dublin! the board of erin now began to march south of the boyne and to usurp the functions of the united irish league wherever it got a footing. it was frankly out for jobs, preferments and patronage of all kinds, so that even the dirty crew of place-hunting lawyers which dublin castle had plentifully spoon-fed for over a century became its leaders and gospellers, seeing that through it alone could they carve their way to those goodly plums that maketh easy the path of the unctuous crawlers in life--the creed of the mollies, and it gained them followers galore, being that nobody who was not a member of "the ancient order" was eligible for even the meanest public office in the gift of the government or the elected of the people. even a crown prosecutor, one of the castle "cawtholic" tribe whose record of life-long antipathy to the vital creed of irish nationality was notorious, now became a pious follower of the new order and was in due course "saved" by receiving an exalted position in the judicial establishment of the country, which owed nothing to his honour or his honesty. under the auspices of the board of erin "the shoneen"--the most contemptible of all our irish types--began to flourish amain. it was a great thing to be a "jay pay" in the irish country-side. it added inches to one's girth and one's stature, and to the importance of one's "lady." it was greatly coveted by the thousands who always pine to swagger in a little brief authority, and thus the board of erin drew its adherents from every low fellow who had an interest to serve, a dirty ambition to satisfy, an office to gain or probably even a petty score to pay off. no doubt there were many sincere and honest and enthusiastic young men attracted to it by the charm of the secret sign and password, and others who believed that its catholic pomp and parade made for the religious uplift of the people. but taken all in all, it was unquestionably an evil influence in the lives of the people and it degraded the fine inspiration of nationality to a base sectarian scramble for place and power. gone were the glorious ideals of a nobler day wherever it pushed out its pernicious grip. surrendered were the sterner principles which instructed and enacted that the man who sought office or preferment from a british minister unfitted himself as a standard-bearer or even a raw recruit in the ranks of irish nationality. the irish birth-right was bartered for a mess of pottage and, worst of all, the fine instincts of ireland's glorious youth were being corrupted and perverted. the cry of "up the mollies!" became the watchword of the new movement and the creed of selfishness and sectarianism supplanted the evangel of self-denial and self-sacrifice. it was a time when clear-sighted and earnest men almost lost hope, if they did not lose faith. to be held in subjection by the tyranny of a stronger power was a calamity of destiny to be resisted, but that the people should themselves bind the chains of a more sordid tyranny of selfishness around their spirits was wholly damnable and heart-breaking. it was to fight this thing that mr william o'brien proposed yet another crusade of light and liberty. as he founded the united irish league when the country was sunk in the uttermost depths of despair and indifference, he now made a first gallant effort to establish a new national organisation to preach a nobler creed of brotherhood and reconciliation among all irishmen, and to this he gave the appropriate title of the all-for-ireland league. the city and county of cork rallied to his side, with all the old-time fervour of rebel cork. the inaugural meeting of the league was held in my native town, kanturk, and was splendidly attended by as gallant a body of irishmen as could be found in all ireland--men who knew, as none others better, how to fight, when fighting was the right policy, but who knew also, in its proper season, when it was good to make peace. the press, however, shut its pages to the new movement and a complaisant irish party, now utterly at the mercy of the board of erin, at a meeting specially summoned for the purpose, passed a resolution of excommunication against the new league and against every member of parliament who should venture upon its platform, on the ground that it was usurping the functions and authority of the united irish league, which was now nothing more than a cloak for the operations of the board of erin. no human being could struggle under the mountain weight of responsibility that now rested on the shoulders of mr o'brien. wearied by the monstrous labours and fights of many years, deserted by his own colleague in the representation of cork city, with the nationalist press engaged in a policy of suppression and a system of secret intimidation springing up all over the country, it would have been madness for him to attempt to continue. accordingly he decided to quit the field again and to leave the clever political manipulators in possession. after he had sent in his application for the chiltern hundreds i came across specially from ireland to meet him at the westminster palace hotel. it were meet not to dwell upon our interview, for there are some things too sacred for words. i know that he had then no intention of ever returning to public life, and though he was obviously a man very, very ill, in the physical sense, yet i could see it was the deeper wounds of the soul that really mattered. i have had sorrows in my life and deep afflictions, the scars of which nothing on this earth can cure, yet i can say i never felt parting so poignantly as with this friend, whom i loved most and venerated most on earth. i returned to ireland that night, not knowing whether i should ever see the well-beloved face again. he went to italy on the morrow to seek peace and healing, away from the land to which he had given more than a life's labour and devotion. he enjoined his friends not to communicate with him, but he promised to watch from a distance, and that if the occasion ever arose he would not see them cast to destruction without effort of his duty made. how well and generously he kept that promise these pages will show. chapter xviii a campaign of extermination and its consequences mr o'brien went abroad in march , leaving his friends in membership of the irish party. his last injunction to us was that we should do nothing unnecessarily to draw down the wrath of "the bosses" upon us and to work as well as we might in the circumstances conscientiously for the irish cause. i had some reputation, whether deserved or otherwise, as a successful organiser, and i wrote to mr redmond offering my services to re-establish the united irish league in my own constituency or in any other place where it was practically moribund. i received a formal note of acknowledgment and heard not a word more, nor was my offer ever availed of. on the contrary, the fiat went forth that the constituencies of those who had for five years remained staunch and steadfast to the policy of conciliation should be organised against them and that not a friend of mr o'brien should be allowed to remain in public life. we were not yet actually cut off from the party or its financial perquisites, but in all other ways we were treated as political pariahs and outcasts and made to feel that there was a rod in pickle for us. in the autumn of i was attending my law lectures in dublin when it was conveyed to me that a raid on my constituency was contemplated, that the officials at the league headquarters in dublin were, without rhyme or reason, returning the affiliation fees of branches which were known to be friendly to me, and that a divisional conference of my enemies was summoned for the purpose of "organising" me out of mid-cork. i immediately resolved that if the issue were to be knit at all the sooner the better, and i took my own steps to circumvent the machinations of those who were out, so to speak, for my blood. hence when the bogus delegates were brought together in macroom one saturday afternoon a little surprise awaited them, for as they proceeded to the town hall to deliberate their plans for my overthrow, another and a more determined militant body, with myself at their head, also marched on the same venue. there was a short and sharp encounter for possession of the hall: the plotters put up a sorry fight; they were soon routed, and my friends and myself held our meeting on the chosen ground of our opponents. moreover, mr denis johnston, the chief organiser of the league, who had come down from dublin with all his plans for my extermination cut and dried, dared not take the train that evening in the ordinary course from the macroom station, but, like a thief in the night, stole out of the town in a covered car and drove to a station farther on. thus began the foul attempt to exterminate mr o'brien's friends, who, be it noted, were still members of the irish party, against whom no crime was alleged or any charge of party disloyalty preferred. the funds of the league, its organisers and its executive machinery, instead of being used for the advancement of the irish movement along constitutional lines, were brutally directed to the political execution of mr o'brien's friends, who, now that he had gone for good, and was reported to be in that state of physical breakdown which would prevent him from ever again taking an active part in irish affairs, were supposed to be at the mercy of the big "pots" and their big battalions. mr maurice healy, who had been elected for cork city by an overwhelming majority over the nominee of "the leaders" after mr o'brien's retirement, was unconstitutionally and improperly refused admission to the party, although he was quite prepared to sign the pledge to sit, act, and vote with it. there was scarcely a thing wrong they could do which these blind leaders of the blind did not clumsily attempt at this juncture. they might have shown us, whose only crime was loyalty to principle and to a policy which had been signally ratified by the repeated mandates of the people, a reasonable measure of generosity and a frank fellowship and all would be well. but no; we had committed the cardinal offence of preferring a policy to a personality and, in famous phrase, we were marked down to "suffer for it." hordes of organisers were dispatched to our constituencies to "pull the strings" against us. i can aver, with a certain malicious satisfaction, that wherever they made their appearance in cork, we met them and we routed them. this may appear an ill way to conduct a political campaign, but be it remembered that we were fighting for our lives, almost resourceless, and that the aggressors had practically limitless powers, financially and otherwise. i will mention one incident to explain many. it was announced that mr redmond was to speak at banteer, on the borders of my constituency. i could not allow that challenge to pass unnoticed without surrendering ground which it would be impossible to recover; and so i took the earliest opportunity of proclaiming that if mr redmond came to banteer my friends and i would be there to meet him. he never came! meanwhile through a private source--for none of his colleagues were in communication with him--mr o'brien heard of the nefarious attempts that were being made to exterminate his friends and he broke silence for the first time since his retirement by despatching the following message to the press association:-- "if these people are wise they will drop their campaign of vengeance against my friends." doubtless "these people" thought this the threat of a man helpless through illness, and not to be seriously noticed, for they went on with their preparations, surreptitious and otherwise, for our destruction, in suitable time and form. i will ever remember it with pride and gratitude that the labourers of the south, the president of whose association i was, were gloriously staunch and loyal and that there never was a demand i made upon them for support and encouragement they did not magnificently respond to. they gave repayment, in full measure and flowing over, for whatever little i was able to accomplish in my lifetime for the alleviation of their lot and the brightening of their lives. meanwhile the party had matters all their own way, yet their only "great" achievement was to get the birrell land bill passed into law and to put an end to the operations of the purchase act of which was so rapidly transforming the face of the country. they also passed for mr lloyd george what mr dillon termed "the great and good" budget, but which really added enormously to the direct taxation of ireland--imposing an additional burden of something not far from three millions sterling on the backs of an already overtaxed country. but if the people were plundered the place-hunters were placated. the irish party had now become little better than an annexe of liberalism. they sat in opposition because it was the tradition to do so, but in reality they were the obsequious followers of a british party and browsing on its pasturage in the hope of better things to come. not far off were heard the rumblings of an approaching general election. there were the usual flutterings of the "ins" who wanted to remain in, and of the "outs" who were anxious to taste the social sweets and the personal pomp of the successful politician, who had got the magic letters "m.p." to his name. it is wonderful what an appeal it makes to the man who has made his "pile" somehow or anyhow (or who wants to make it) to have the right to enter the sacred portals of westminster, but it is more wonderful still to see him when he gets there become the mere puppet of the party whips, without an atom of individual independence or a grain of useful initiative. the system absorbs them and they become cogs in a machine, whose movements they have little power of controlling or directing. it was pretended by the leaders of the nationalists that their subservient surrender to the liberal party was a far-sighted move to compel mr asquith and his friends to make home rule "the dominant issue," as they termed it, at the general election. the veto of the house of lords, the hitherto one intractable element of opposition to home rule, was to go before long and the house of commons, within certain limits, would be in a position to impose its will as the sovereign authority in the state. yet it is the scarcely believable fact that in all these precious months, and after all the servile sycophancy they had given to the liberals, neither mr redmond nor those true-blue liberals, mr dillon and mr o'connor, had ever sought to extract from mr asquith an irrefragable statement of his intentions regarding the irish question, or whether he and his government intended to make it a prime plank in the liberal platform at the polls. the rejection of the budget by the lords was made the real issue before the electors, and little was heard of home rule, either on the platform or in the press. true, mr asquith made a vague and non-committal reference to it at the albert hall on the eve of the election, but the liberal candidates, with extraordinary unanimity, fought shy of it in every constituency, except where there was a considerable irish vote to be played up to, and one of the liberal party whips even went so far as to declare there was no home rule engagement at all. far different was it in other days, when parnell was in power. he would have pinned the party to whom he was giving his support down to a written compact, which could not be broken without dishonour, and he would leave nothing to the mere emergencies and expediencies of politics, which are only the gambler's dice in a devil's game. but the men of lesser calibre who had now the destiny of a nation in their hands "trusted" in the good faith of the liberals and in return asked the country to "trust" them. there never was such a puckish game played in history. criticism was stifled and the people were told, and no doubt in their innocence believed it, that home rule was already as good as carried and that the dream of all the years was come true. mr dillon was audaciously flying the flag of "boer home rule as a minimum," although he had not a scrap of authority or a line of sanction for his pronouncements. it seemed as if every friend of mr o'brien was to go under in the campaign of opposition that was being elaborately carried out against them. our constituencies were swarming with paid organisers and men and money galore were pouring in from outside, so that our downfall and defeat should be made an absolute certainty. it was in this crisis that the generous spirit of mr o'brien impelled him to come to our assistance. for my own part i never had a doubt that when the hour struck the champion of so many noble causes would be found once again stoutly defending the men who had staked all for the sake of principle, but who, without his aid, must be mercilessly thrown to the wolves. we were in a most benighted state, without any trace of organisation of our own (except that i had the land and labour association unflinchingly on my side), without any newspaper to report our speeches, and with only the bravest of the brave to come upon our platforms and say a good word for us. the outlook was as bleak as it well could be, when suddenly, towards the end of december , the joyous news reached us that "the hero of a hundred fights" was about to throw himself into the breach on our behalf. our enemies laughed the rumour to scorn, but we knew better and we bided in patience the coming of our man. one stipulation, indeed, mr o'brien did make, that in coming to our assistance it was not implied that he was to be a candidate himself and that he was merely to deliver three speeches in cork city to put the issue clearly before the people. matters had now reached so grave a pitch that not only were mr o'brien's own friends to be attacked by the "board of erin," which was now in complete control of the machinery of the national organisation, but that every other member of parliament who had not bent the knee to its occult omnipotence was to be run out of public life without cause assigned. all this while there was rumour and counter-rumour about mr o'brien's return. the dillonites up to the last moment believed we were playing a game of bluff and went on right merrily with their preparations for making a clean sweep of every man who was "suspect" of possessing an independent mind. then on one winter's night, shortly before the election writs were issued, the doubters and the scoffers were once and for all confounded. mr o'brien arrived in the city which was always proud to do him honour, but which never more proudly did him honour than on this occasion, when they mustered in their thousands at the station and lined the streets, a frantic, cheering, enthusiastic and madly joyous people, to see him back amongst them once again, neither bent nor broken nor physically spent, but gloriously erect, acknowledging the thunderous salutations of the tens of thousands who loved him, even to the little children, with a love which was surely compensation for many a bitter wound of injustice and ingratitude. chapter xix a general election that leads to a "home rule" bill! it boots not to dwell at any great length on the contests that followed. suffice it to say that irish manhood and irish honesty magnificently asserted itself against the audacious and unscrupulous tactics of the party plotters. mr o'brien, by a destiny there was no resisting, was forced into the fight in cork city and emerged victoriously from the ordeal, as well as winning also in north-east cork. in my own case, except for the splendid and most generous assistance given me by mr jeremiah o'leary, the leading citizen of macroom, who shared all the labours and all the anxieties of my campaign, i was left to fight my battle almost single-handed, having arrayed against me two canons of my church and every catholic clergyman in the constituency, with two or three notable exceptions. the odds seemed hopeless, but the result provides the all-sufficient answer to those who say that the irish catholic vote can be controlled under all circumstances by the priests, for i scored a surprising majority of in a total poll of about , and i have good reason for stating that per cent. of the illiterate votes were cast in my favour, although a most powerful personal canvass was made of every vote in the constituency by the clergy. i consider this incident worthy of special emphasis in view of the ignorant and malicious statements of english and unionist publicists, who make it a stock argument against the grant of independence to ireland that the catholics will vote as they are bidden by their priests. i have sufficient experience and knowledge of my countrymen to say that whilst in troublous times the irish soggarths were the natural leaders and protectors of their flocks, even to the peril of their lives, yet in these times, when other conditions prevail, whilst in religion remaining staunchly loyal to their faith and its teachers, when it comes to a question of political principle there is no man in all the world who can be so independently self-assertive as the irish catholic. there is nothing to fear for ireland, either now or in the future, from what i may term clericalism in politics, whilst on the other hand it is earnestly to be hoped that nothing will ever happen to intrude unnecessarily the question or authority of religion in the domain of more mundane affairs. mr o'brien sums up the result of the general election briefly thus: "when the smoke of battle cleared away, nevertheless, every friend of mine, against whom this pitiless cannonade of vengeance had been directed, stood victorious on the field, and it was the conspirators who a few weeks before deemed themselves unshakable in the mastery of ireland who, to their almost comic bewilderment and dismay, found themselves and their boasts rolled in the dust. not only did every man for whose destruction they had thrown all prudence to the winds find his way back to parliament in their despite, but in at least eighteen other constituencies their plots to replace members under any suspicion of independence with reliables absolutely amenable to the signs and passwords of the order resulted in their being blown sky-high with their own petards.... messrs dillon and devlin led their demoralised forces back, seventy in place of eighty-three, and for the first time since they went back a minority of the nationalist votes actually cast as between the policy of conciliation and the policy of _væ victis_." mr o'brien had established a campaign sheet during the election called _the cork accent_ (as a sort of reminder of the "baton" convention, at which the order was given that no one with a "cork accent" should be allowed near the platform), and surely never did paper render more brilliant service in an exceptional emergency. it was his intention that his attitude in the new parliament should be one of "patient observation" and of steady but unaggressive allegiance to the principles of national reconciliation. but such a rôle was rendered impossible by the active hostility of mr dillon and his followers. the doors of the party were shut and banged against every man who was independently elected by the voters. it was proclaimed that we would be helpless in the country without organisation or newspaper to support us and that we would be left even without the means of travelling to london to represent our constituents. we could not sit inactively under this decree of annihilation. it was decided to continue _the cork accent_ in a permanent form as a daily journal under the title of _the cork free press_, which was founded at a public meeting presided over by the lord mayor. the all-for-ireland league was also established to advocate and expound the principles for which we stood in irish life. its purposes are clearly stated in the resolution which gave it birth--viz.: "that inasmuch as we regard self-government in purely irish affairs, the transfer of the soil to the cultivators upon just terms, and the relief of ireland from intolerable over-taxation as essential conditions of happiness and prosperity for our country, and further inasmuch as we believe the surest means of effecting these objects to be a combination of all the elements of the irish population in a spirit of mutual tolerance and patriotic good will, such as will guarantee to the protestant minority of our fellow-countrymen inviolable security for all their rights and liberties and win the friendship of the entire people of great britain, this representative meeting of the city and county of cork hereby establishes an association to be called the all-for-ireland league, whose primary object shall be the union and active co-operation in every department of our national life of all irish men and women who believe in the principle of domestic self-government for ireland." the all-for-ireland league made memorable progress in a brief space of time. mr o'brien's return to public life was hailed even by the late w.t. stead in _the westminster gazette_ as nothing short of a great political resurrection. the noble appeal of the league's programme to the chivalrous instincts of the race attracted the young men to its side with an enthusiasm amounting to an inspiration. the protestant minority in southern ireland were being gradually won over to a genuine confidence in our motives and generous intentions to safeguard fully their interests and position and to secure them an adequate part in the future government of our common country. even the great british parties began to see in the new movement hopes of that peace and reconciliation between great britain and ireland which must be the hope of all just and broad-minded statesmanship. it was in these circumstances that the party surrendered "at discretion" to the expediencies of liberalism, abjectly waiving their position as an independent entity in parliament, with no shadow of the pride and spirit of the parnell period left, seeming to exist for the favours and bonuses that came their way, and for the rest playing to the gallery in ireland by telling them that home rule was coming "at no far distant date," and that they had only to trust to asquith and all would be well. never had a party such a combination of favourable circumstances to command success. they possessed a strategical advantage such as parnell would have given his life for--they held the balance of power and they could order the government to do their bidding or quit. yet instead of regarding themselves as the ambassadors of a nation claiming its liberty they seemed to be obsessed with a criminal selfishness passing all possible belief. when it was proposed to make members of parliament stipendiaries of the state, they at first protested vehemently against the application of this principle to the irish representatives, and therein they were right. from a purely democratic standpoint no reasonable objection can be urged against the payment of those who give their time and talent to the public service, but ireland was in different case. her representatives were at westminster unwillingly, not to assist in the government of the empire with gracious intent, but rather definitely to obstruct, impede and hamper this government until ireland's inalienable right to self-government was conceded, and therefore it was their clear duty to say that they would accept payment only from the country and the people they served and that they cast back this treasury bribe in the teeth of those who offered it. but having ostentatiously resolved that they would never accept a parliamentary stipend, they finally allowed their virtuous resistance to temptation to be overcome and voted for "payment of members," which, without their votes, would never have been adopted by the house of commons. there were placemen now in parliament, and place-hunting was no longer a pastime to be proscribed amongst nationalists. it may be there was no wilful corruption in thus accepting from the common purse of the united kingdom payment which was made to all members of parliament alike, but it deprived the irish people of control of their representatives and handed them over to the control of the english treasury, and thus opened the way to the downfall of parliamentarianism in ireland that rapidly set in. abandoned all too lightly was the rigid principle that to accept favours from england was to betray ireland, and the pursuit of place and patronage was esteemed as not being inconsistent with a pure patriotism. furthermore, as if to cap the climax of their imbecilities and blunders, the irish party allowed the first precious year of their mastery of parliament to be devoted to the passage of an insurance act which nobody in ireland outside the job-seekers wanted, which every independent voice in the country, including a unanimous bench of bishops, protested against, and whose only recommendation was that it provided a regular deluge of well-paid positions for the votaries of the secret sectarian society that had the country in its vicious grip. such a debauch of sham nationalism as now ensued was never paralleled in the worst period of ireland's history, and that this should be done in the name of patriotism was not its least degrading feature. nemesis could not fail to overtake this conscious sin against the national ideal. it met with its own condign punishment before many years were over. to show the veritable depths of baseness to which the so-called national movement had fallen it need only be stated that it was charged against their official organ--_the freeman's journal _--that no less than eighteen members of its staff had obtained positions of profit under the crown, including a lord chancellorship, an under-secretaryship, judgeships, crown prosecutorships, university professorships, resident magistracies, local government inspectorships, etc. in this connection it is also worthy of mention that when the premises of this concern were burnt out in the course of the easter week rebellion it was reendowed for "national" purposes, with a treasury grant of £ , , being twice the amount which the then directors of the _freeman_ confessed to be the business value of the property. thus did the "board of erin" attract to its side all the most selfish and disreputable elements in irish catholic life, and thus also did it repel and disgust the more broad-minded and tolerant protestant patriots whom the all-for-ireland programme, under happier circumstances, would have undoubtedly won over to the side of home rule. much might even yet be forgiven to the men who had the destiny of ireland in their hands if they had shown any striking capacity to exact a measure of self-government sufficiently big and broad to justify the national demand as then understood. but they showed neither strength nor wisdom, neither courage nor sagacity in their dealings with the english liberal leaders and old parliamentary hands against whom they were pitted. they were hopelessly out-manoeuvred and overmatched at every stage of the game. it is but just to state that the members of the party as a whole had scarcely an atom of responsibility for these miserable failures and defects of policy. they owed their election to "the machine." they were the complaisant bondsmen of the secret order. whatever they felt they dared not utter a word which would bring the wrath of "the bosses" upon their heads. they were never candidly consulted as to tactics or strategy, or even first principles. the decisions of the little ring of three or four who dominated the situation within the party were sometimes, it may be, submitted to them for their formal approval, but more often than otherwise this show of formal courtesy was not shown them. the position of mr redmond was most humiliating of all. he did not lack many of the qualities which might have made for greatness in leadership, but he did undoubtedly lack the quality of backbone and that strength of character to assert himself and to maintain his own position without which no man can be truly considered great. whenever it came to an issue between them it is well known he had to submit his judgment and to bend his will to the decision of the three others--messrs dillon, devlin and t.p. o'connor--who must historically be held responsible for the mistakes and weaknesses and horrible blunders of those years, which no self-respecting irishman of the future can ever look back upon without a shudder of horror. the home rule bill, which was the product of those shameful years of debility and disgrace, was so poor and paltry a thing as to be almost an insult to irish patriotism and intelligence. it proposed to establish merely a nominal parliament in dublin. it was financially unsound, besides being a denial of ireland's right to fix and levy her own taxes. as a matter of fact, the power of taxation was rigorously maintained at westminster with a reduced irish representation of two-thirds. and this was the measure which was proclaimed to be greater than grattan's parliament or than any of the previous home rule bills! furthermore, it made no provision for the completion of land purchase, but mr asquith was not really to be blamed for this, as mr dillon proclaimed that one of the great attractions of the bill was that it would leave the remnant of the landlords to be dealt with by him and his obedient henchmen. finally, neither the liberal party nor their faithful irish supporters would hear of any concessions to ulster. these people were now so arrogant in the fancied security and strength of their position to do just as they pleased that mr redmond rashly undertook "to put down ulster with the strong hand" and rather prematurely declared: "there is no longer an ulster difficulty." one further financial infamy the bill perpetrated. the twenty millions sterling which were, under the land purchase act of , to have been a free imperial grant to lubricate the wheels of agrarian settlement, was henceforth and by a "home rule government" to be audaciously charged as a debt against ireland. and this, be it noted, was part of the pact come to with the "nationalist" leaders at the downing street breakfast-table, where ireland's fate was sealed, and which they joyously supported in the house of commons against such opposition as the all-for-ireland minority was allowed to give it by the ruthless application of the guillotine. the independent nationalist members were willing to make the best of a very "bad bargain," if only they could succeed in getting adopted three amendments which they regarded as vital to the success of the measure: ( ) a new financial plan; ( ) the completion of land purchase, and ( ) such concessions as would win the consent of ulster. but our reward for thus endeavouring to make the bill adaptable to irish requirements and acceptable to the whole of ireland was to be dubbed "factionists" and "traitors" by the official irish party, who never once during three years' debates in parliament made the slightest attempt to amend or improve the bill, but who remained silent and impotent as graven images on the irish benches whilst the way was being paved for all the ruin and desolation and accumulated horrors that have since come to ireland through their compliant and criminal imbecility. they had a perfect parliamentary unity; they certainly seemed to have the most perfect understanding with their liberal friends, but they had no more claim to represent an independent, vigilant, self-respecting nation than they had to represent, say, "morocco"! chapter xx the rise of sir edward carson "the question i put to myself is this: in the years of failure, where have we gone wrong? what are the mistakes we have made? what has been the root cause of our failure? the lord chancellor was perfectly frank so far as the unionists were concerned. he said, indeed, that he was still a unionist, but he had come to the conclusion that the maintenance of the union was impossible. what lesson have we who have been home rulers to draw from the past? i think the mistake we made in the beginning was that we did not sufficiently realise the absolute necessity of taking into consideration the feeling of ulster." these notable words were spoken by viscount grey of falloden in the debate in the house of lords on the partition bill on th november . a more remarkable vindication of all-for-ireland principles and a more utter condemnation of the egregious folly of our opponents it is not possible to imagine, coming especially from so clear and calm-minded a statesman as the former liberal foreign secretary. the root principles upon which mr o'brien and his friends proceeded from the start were that success was to be had by making an irish settlement depend, in the first place, upon the co-operation of a million of our protestant countrymen, and next by enlisting the co-operation of both british parties, instead of making the irish question the exclusive possession of one english party. these two principles are now universally acknowledged to be the wise ones, yet when we were urging them in the home rule debates we could find no support from the liberal-irish cohorts, and although we sedulously devoted ourselves to urging a non-party programme and the conciliation of the protestant minority--about which all parties are now agreed--we only received vilification and calumny for our portion. great play is being made by distinguished converts within the past few years of dominion rule as if they were the discoverers of this blessed panacea for ireland's ills, but it is proper to recall that the all-for-ireland party specifically proposed dominion home rule in a letter to mr asquith in as the wisest of all solutions. scant attention was paid to our recommendation then and it is not even remembered for us by the protagonists of a later time. in all our efforts to conciliate ulster and to allay the alarms it undoubtedly felt owing to the growth and aggressiveness of the catholic order of orangeism, we never received encouragement or support from the government or the irish party. on the contrary, they denounced as treason to ireland the proposal made by us that for an experimental term of five years the ulster party, which would remain in the imperial parliament, should have the right of appeal as against any irish bill of which they did not approve, the decision to be given within one month. this, we held, would have been a more effectual safeguard than any proposed since to satisfy irish unionists that legislative oppression would have been impossible. other proposals of a representation in the irish parliament proportioned to their numbers and of guarantees against the establishment of any tammany system of spoils in favour of the secret sectarian association were also submitted. but all our overtures for a peace based on reasonable concessions were repudiated by the official party and contemptuously rejected by them and we were held up to public obloquy as proposing to subject ireland to the veto of fourteen orangemen. in the early stages of the opposition to home rule, curiously enough sir edward carson did not count as a figure of any particular power or malignancy. true, he had his early period of notoriety in ireland when he acted as a crown prosecutor under the crimes act. but when he transferred his legal and political ambition to england it is alleged that he was for a season a member of the national liberal club and was thus entitled to be ranked as a liberal in politics. whether through conviction or otherwise, his allegiance appears to have been promptly and permanently transferred to the unionist party, but even then he was in no sense regarded as an ulster member--he is himself a southern irishman by birth--and in the house of commons comported himself as a good unionist, holding office as such. it was only when the irish party set their faces sternly against any concessions to ulster that sir edward carson stepped into the breach and came to the front as the duly elected leader of the ulster party. it is the sheerest nonsense and pure ignorance of the facts to say that sir edward carson created the ulster difficulty. it was created by the statesmen and politicians who, in the words of viscount grey, "did not sufficiently realise the absolute necessity of taking into consideration the feeling of ulster." when the full history of this period is written, and when documents at present confidential are available, i believe it will be shown that if the concessions and safeguards suggested by the all-for-ireland party had been offered by the government or the irish party in the earlier stages of the home rule controversy they would have been, in the main, acceptable to ulster unionist opinion. i well remember mr (now mr justice) moore declaring, from his place on the ulster benches: "my friends and myself have always marvelled at the fatuity of the irish party in throwing over the member for the city of cork (mr william o'brien) when he had all the cards in his hands." where we preached all reasonable concession and conciliation our opponents proclaimed that ulster must submit itself unconditionally to the law and that it must content itself in the knowledge that "minorities must suffer." and all this while the board of erin hibernians were consolidating their position as the ascendant authority in irish life, from whom the protestant minority might not, without some reason, in looking back on their own bad past, expect that it would be taken out of them when the catholics got into power. thus in very real fear and terror of their disabilities under an irish parliament, which would be elected and dominated by a secret sectarian organisation, they entered into the famous ulster covenant and solemnly swore to resist home rule and to raise a volunteer army for the purpose of giving force and effect to their resistance. the visit of mr winston churchill to belfast early in to address a nationalist meeting there was an aggravation of the situation and there was a time during his progress through the city when his motor car was in imminent danger of being upset and when it was surrounded by a howling and enraged mob of orangemen, who shouted the fiercest curses and threats at him. as a result of this experience mr churchill was never afterwards a very enthusiastic supporter of what came to be called "the coercion of ulster." meanwhile mr churchill's most ill-advised visit, from the point of view of political tactics, was just the thing required to raise all the worst elements of orangeism and to give its best fillip to the signing of the covenant, which proceeded apace, not only in ulster, but in great britain, even to the extent that the army was said to be honey-combed with sworn covenanters, contrary to all the rules and doctrines of military law and discipline. and in due course, in reply to the challenge of mr churchill's visit the leader of the unionist party, mr bonar law, visited balmoral, near belfast, and reviewed from , to , ulster volunteers, who marched past him in military order, and saluted. sir edward carson made the meeting repeat after him the pledge: "we will never in any circumstances submit to home rule." the unionist party was now solidly and assertively on the side of ulster in its opposition to home rule. they held a demonstration at blenheim on th july , when some three thousand delegates from political associations, invited by the duke of marlborough, were present. mr bonar law described the liberal ministry as a revolutionary committee which had seized by fraud on despotic power, and declared that the unionist party would use whatever means seemed likely to be most effective. he made the declaration that ireland was two nations, a theory which, strangely enough, mr lloyd george, as coalition premier, advocated eight years later. he went on to say that the ulster people would submit to no ascendancy and "he could imagine no lengths of resistance to which they might go in which he would not be ready to support them" and in which they would not be supported by the overwhelming majority of the british people. in parliament a few weeks later mr asquith described mr bonar law's speech as a declaration of war against constitutional government, but the ulstermen went on calmly making their preparations for levying war and sir edward carson and his friends coolly delivered speeches which reeked of sedition and treason against the state. sir edward carson declared ( th july ): "we will shortly challenge the government. they shall us if they like it is treason. we are prepared to take the consequences." and again he said ( st october ): "the attorney-general says that my doctrines and the course i am taking lead to anarchy. does he not think i know that?" and that fine exemplar of constitutional law, mr f.e. smith (now lord chancellor of england) said: "supposing the government gave such an order the consequences can only be described in the words of mr bonar law when he said: 'if they did so it would not be a matter of argument but the population of london would lynch you on the lamp-posts.'" ulster scarcely needed these incitements to encourage it in its definite purpose of armed resistance to home rule. it began to organise and discipline its army of volunteers under able military leaders who subsequently demonstrated their capacity in no uncertain fashion, under the tests of actual warfare on many fields of battle. with the knowledge we now possess it seems scarcely believable that mr redmond and his friends should have professed to treat what was happening in ulster as "a gigantic game of bluff." they joked pleasantly over the drilling of the ulster volunteers with "wooden guns," and they only asked that the government should "let the police and soldiers stand aside and make a ring and you will hear no more of the wooden gunmen." ribaldry and gibes of this sort in the face of open and avowed treason was but a poor substitute for that firm statesmanship which should have grappled with the ulster difficulty in either of two ways--to come to terms with it or, in the alternative, beat all unruly opposition to the ground. mr asquith is blamed because he did not put the law in operation against sir edward carson, proclaim his illegal organisation of volunteers and deal with him and his friends as a people seditious and disaffected towards the state, who, by their acts and conduct, had invited and merited the traitors' doom. but mr devlin declared not long after in parliament that the reason why mr asquith did not move was because he and his friends would not allow him. whence this extraordinary tenderness for the man who was thwarting and defying them at every point, it is not possible to say. no doubt the ministry knew themselves in the wrong in that they had not considered the position of ulster and had not attempted to legislate for their just fears. it is beyond question that there were conditions upon which the consent of ulster could have been secured. if, these conditions being offered, this consent was unreasonably withheld, then the government would have been absolutely justified in throttling sir edward carson's preparations for rebellion before they had gained any ground or effective shape. but the weakness of the liberal-irish position was that they would not bring themselves to admit that the all-for-ireland policy of conciliation and a settlement by conference and consent was right. meanwhile, with a weak irish administration in charge of mr birrell as chief secretary--most amiable of _litterateurs_, but most imbecile of politicians--the ulster opposition was allowed to harden into potential violence and civil war. "engagements" between the orangemen and the hibernians began to form a sort of political amusement in the north of ireland. the cries of religious and race hatred were allowed to devour the sweeter gospel of reconciliation and the recognition of a common country and that communion of right and interest between all classes and creeds which was the evangel of wolfe tone and other northern protestant patriots in sublimer days. matters were drifting from bad to worse under the fatal weakness and irresolution of the government. so little fear had sir edward carson of any penal consequences to himself that he declared, on the th september : "we will set up a government [of their own as provided for in the ulster covenant]. i am told it will be illegal. of course it will. drilling is illegal. the government dare not interfere." and he was right! it did not interfere. and the ulster volunteers began to provide themselves with arms and ammunition and to organise themselves for actual war conditions. there were no more feeble jokes about "wooden guns" and "making a free ring"--as if it were to be only an ordinary pugilistic encounter and of no account. in the ulster volunteer force was said to be well armed and probably better drilled than the northern regiments at the outbreak of the american war of secession. official nationalism was, though it knew it not, passing through the gates of disaster. it was still able to maintain its hold on the old stagers who were grafted on to it for various reasons, and the board of erin was still able to count on the fidelity of those who believed in the secret sign and watchword as the avenue to place and preferment. the government of ireland bill was merrily pursuing its three years' course through parliament--passed by the house of commons and rejected by the house of lords after the usual farce and formality of debates which had very little reality in them. what counted was that ulster was in arms and determined to resist and that "the home rule government" had proved themselves incapable either of conceding or of resisting. other things began to count also in ireland. the young manhood of nationalist ireland, seeing the liberties of their country menaced by force, decided to organise themselves into a corps of irish volunteers to defend these liberties from wanton aggression. the transport workers' strike in dublin, in , under mr james larkin, also showed the existence of a powerful body of organised opinion, which cared little for ordinary political methods and which was clearly disaffected to the party leaders. forces were being loosed that had long been held in check by the power of the place-hunting and sectarian "constitutional" movement asserting and enforcing its authority, through unscrupulous methods already described, to speak and act on behalf of the people. if sir edward carson had risen to power through open and flagrant defiance of all constituted right and authority, there were others who were not slow to copy his methods. the irish party may denounce him in parliament as a disloyal subject of the crown, but there were young nationalists in southern ireland, aye, even in rebel cork, who sincerely raised cheers for him because he had shown them, as they believed, the better way "to save ireland." the government could not make one law for the north and another for the south. if it allowed the orangemen to drill and arm it could not well interfere with the nationalists if they took a leaf out of their book and proceeded to act in like manner. and thus are the destinies of people and the fate of nations decided. in preparing for civil war sir edward carson gave that spur of encouragement to germany that it just needed to rush it into a world war. and for how much else he is responsible in ireland every faithful student of current history knows! chapter xxi sinn fein--its original meaning and purpose sinn fein had a comparatively small and unimportant beginning. it was not heralded into existence by any great flourish of trumpets nor for many years had it any considerable following among the masses of the nationalists. it is more than doubtful, if there had been normal political progress in ireland, whether sinn fein would ever have made itself into a great movement. it was, in the first instance, the disappointments and humiliations which the debilitated irish party had brought to the national movement and the utter disrepute into which parliamentarianism had fallen as a consequence that moved the thoughts of ireland's young manhood to some nobler and better way of serving the motherland. but it was the rebellion of easter week which crystallised and fused all these various thoughts and ideals into one direct channel of action and made sinn fein the mightiest national force that has perhaps arisen in ireland since first the english set foot upon our shores for purposes of conquest. sinn fein, as a political organisation, did not exist until , but the originator of it, mr arthur griffith, had established in dublin, in , a weekly paper called _the united irishman_. this was the title of the paper which john mitchell had founded to advocate the policy of the young irelanders and was, therefore, supposed to favour to some extent a movement along those lines. its appeal was mainly to the young and intellectual and to those extremists who were out of harmony with the moderate demands of the parliamentary party. its first editorial gave an index to its teachings and aims. "there exists," it declared, "has existed for centuries and will continue to exist in ireland a conviction hostile to the subjection or dependence of the fortunes of this country to the necessities of any other; we intend to voice that conviction. we bear no ill-will to any section of the irish political body, whether its flag be green or orange, which holds that tortuous paths are the safest for irishmen to tread; but knowing we are governed by a nation which religiously adheres to 'the good old rule, the simple plan, that those may take who have the power and those may keep who can,' we, with all respect for our friends who love the devious ways, are convinced that an occasional exhibition of the naked truth will not shock the modesty of irishmen and that a return to the straight road will not lead us to political destruction.... in these later days we have been diligently taught that, by the law of god, of nature and of nations, we are rightfully entitled to the establishment in dublin of a legislative assembly, with an expunging angel watching over its actions from the viceregal lodge. we do not deprecate the institution of any such body, but we do assert that the whole duty of an irishman is not comprised in utilising all the forces of his nature to procure its inception." it continued: "with the present-day movements outside politics we are in more or less sympathy," and it particularly specified the financial reformers and the gaelic league, adding, however: "we would regret any insistence on a knowledge of gaelic as a test of patriotism." finally it said: "lest there might be any doubt in any mind, we will say that we accept the nationalism of ' , ' and ' as the true nationalism, and grattan's cry 'live ireland. perish the empire' as the watchword of patriotism." thus its creed was the absolute independence of ireland, and though it did not advocate the methods of armed revolution, it opened its columns to those nationalists who did. it preached particularly the doctrine of self-reliance and independence. it attached more importance to moral qualities than to mere political action. it was free in its criticism of persons or parties who it considered were setting up false standards for the guidance of the people. it derided the policy of the irish party as "half-bluster and half-whine," and when mr redmond spoke rhetorically of "wringing from whatever government may be in power the full measure of a nation's rights," it bluntly told him he was talking "arrant humbug." it made the development of irish industries one of the foremost objects of its advocacy. it courageously attacked the catholic clergy for the faults it saw, or thought it saw, in them. they were told they took no effective steps to arrest emigration--that they next to the british government were responsible for the depopulation of the country; that they failed to encourage irish trade and manufactures and that they "made life dull and unendurable for the people." and so on and so forth it continued its criticisms with remarkable candour and consistency. it came early into conflict with the castle authorities on account of its vigorous propaganda against recruiting for the army and it published the text of an anti-recruiting pamphlet for the distribution of which prosecutions were instituted. it was found difficult, however, to obtain convictions against those who distributed these pamphlets, and even in belfast a jury refused to bring in a conviction on this charge at the instance of the crown. _the united irishman_ was seized by the authorities and only got an excellent advertisement into the bargain. meanwhile an organisation of irishmen who shared the views of the paper was being gradually evolved, and in the first steps were taken in the foundation of cumann na n gaedhal. its objects were to advance the cause of ireland's national independence by ( ) cultivating a fraternal spirit amongst irishmen; ( ) diffusing knowledge of ireland's resources and supporting irish industries; ( ) the study and teaching of irish history, literature, language, music and art; ( ) the assiduous cultivation and encouragement of irish games, pastimes and characteristics; ( ) the discountenancing of anything tending towards the anglicisation of ireland; ( ) the physical and intellectual training of the young; ( ) the development of an irish foreign policy; ( ) extending to each other friendly advice and aid, socially and politically; ( ) the nationalisation of public boards. it was felt, however, that the ends of cumann na n gaedhal were remote and that something more was needed to bring the new policy into more intimate connection with political facts. this was supplied by mr a. griffith when he outlined, in october, , what came to be known afterwards as the hungarian policy. this policy was, in effect, a demand that the members of the irish parliamentary should abstain from attendance at westminster, which was declared to be "useless, degrading and demoralising," and should adopt the policy of the hungarian deputies of and, "refusing to attend the british parliament or to recognise its right to legislate for ireland, remain at home to help in promoting ireland's interests and to aid in guarding its national rights." a pamphlet by mr griffith, entitled _the resurrection of hungary_, was prepared and published, which expounded the details of the new policy. mr r.m. henry, in his admirable book, _the evolution of sinn fein_ (to which i express my indebtedness for much of what appears in this chapter), tells us that the pamphlet, as a piece of propaganda, was a failure, and produced no immediate or widespread response. mr henry also takes exception to the fact of mr griffith putting forward the hungarian policy as an original idea. "it had," he writes, "been advocated and to a certain extent practised in ireland long before the hungarian deputies adopted it," and he quotes matter to show that thomas davis was the real author of the policy of parliamentary abstention and wonders why the credit was not given to the irishman instead of the hungarian franz deák. the claim of mr griffith at this stage was that the independence of ireland was to be based not upon force but upon law and the constitution of : "his claim was not a republic, but a national constitution under an irish crown" (mr r.m. henry). finally _sinn fein_, which, literally translated, means "ourselves," was formally inaugurated at a meeting held in dublin on th november , under the chairmanship of mr edward martyn and was defined as: "national self-development through the recognition of the rights and duties of citizenship on the part of the individual and by the aid and support of all movements originating from within ireland, instinct with national tradition and not looking outside ireland for the accomplishment of their aims." sinn fein had now formally constituted itself into a distinct party, with a definite policy of its own, and _the united irishman_ ceasing to exist, a new organ was established, called _sinn fein_. but though mr griffith may found a party, he was not so fortunate in getting followers. the parliamentarians had not yet begun to make that mess of their position which they did so lamentably later. that self-reliant spirit was not abroad which came when a manlier generation arose to take their stand for ireland. canon hannay paints a peculiarly unpleasant picture of the state of ireland at this time. "never," he writes, "in her history was ireland less inclined to self-reliance. the soul of the country was debauched with doles and charities. an english statesman might quite truthfully have boasted that ireland would eat out of his hand. the only thing which troubled most of us was that the hand, whether we licked it or snarled at it, was never full enough. the idea of self-help was intensely unpleasant, and as for self-sacrifice!" the note of exclamation sufficiently conveys the writer's meaning. the sinn fein organisation as a national movement made very little progress and exercised no considerable influence in affairs. but its principles undoubtedly spread, particularly among the more earnest and enthusiastic young men in the towns. the one parliamentary election it contested--that of north leitrim, where the sitting member, mr c.j. dolan, resigned, declared himself a convert to the new movement and offered himself for re-election--proved a costly failure. it established a daily edition of _sinn fein_, but this also had no success and had to be dropped. for some following years sinn fein could be said merely to exist as a name and nothing more. the country had dangled before it the project of the triumph of parliamentarianism and it discouraged all criticism of "the party," no matter how just, honest or well-intended. in april , _sinn fein_ announced, on behalf of its party, that mr john redmond, having now the chance of a lifetime to obtain home rule, "will be given a free hand, without a word said to embarrass him." sinn fein took no part in the elections of . "this," says mr henry, "was not purely an act of self-sacrifice. in fact, sinn fein was never at so low an ebb." its attitude towards the home rule, which now seemed inevitable, was stated as follows:--"no scheme which the english parliament may pass in the near future will satisfy sinn fein--no legislature created in ireland which is not supreme and absolute will offer a basis for concluding a final settlement with the foreigners who usurp the government of this country. but any measure which gives genuine, if even partial, control of their own affairs to irishmen shall meet with no opposition from us and should meet with no opposition from any section of irishmen." from now onward until the sinn fein movement was practically moribund and its name was scarcely heard of. when it appeared again as an active force it was not the old sinn fein movement that was there. as canon hannay justly remarks: "it cannot be said with any accuracy that sinn fein won ireland. ireland took over sinn fein. indeed, ireland took over very little of sinn fein except the name." and this is the literal truth. chapter xxii labour becomes a power in irish life in the play and interplay of movements and events at this time in ireland we cannot leave out of account the labour movement--that is, the official trade union organisation as distinct from the labourers' association. hitherto it had mainly concerned itself with industrial and social questions and had not made politics or nationalism an object of direct activity. the workers had their politics, so to speak, apart from their trade unions, and the toilers from belfast were able to meet the moilers from cork for the consideration of their common programme and common lot without infringing on the vexed issue of home rule, on which they held widely divergent views--often enough without understanding the reason why. they were a good deal concerned about municipal government and how many men they were able to return to the dublin, belfast and cork corporations, but they had not counted highly and, indeed, scarcely at all in the scheme of national affairs. the parliamentarians were too strong for them. yet it was the workers who always provided the soundest leaders of nationality and its most incorruptible and self-sacrificing body-guard. the thinkers expressed the ideals of irish nationhood; they lived them and were even prepared to suffer for them. but the time had come when this parochialism of labour in ireland was to end. to the enthusiasm and impetuous force of james larkin and the fine brain of james connolly irish labour owes most for its awakening. the rise of larkin was almost meteoric. he was one day organising the workers of cork into a transport workers union; almost the next he was marshalling a strike in dublin, which made him an international democratic figure of extraordinary power. he was a man of amazing personality, who exercised a compelling influence over the workers. he shook them out of their deadly stupor, lectured them in a manner that they were not accustomed to, brow-beat them and, though he made them suffer in body over the weary months of the strike, he infused a spirit into them they had not known before. he made the world ring with the shame of dublin's slums and he did much to make men of those who were little better than dumb-driven animals. he united the capitalists of ireland against him in a powerful organisation, and though they broke his strike they did not break the spirit that was behind it. some men will say the rebellion of easter week had its beginnings in the dublin strike of ; others that carson was the cause of it; whilst many ascribe it to the criminal folly and short-sightedness of redmond and his followers, who allowed british politicians to bully and betray them at every point and made parliamentarianism of their type intolerable to the young soul of ireland. history in due course will assign each its due meed of responsibility, but of this we are certain, that the men who came out in easter week and bore arms were largely the men whom larkin had organised and whom connolly's doctrine had influenced. from the point of view of mental calibre connolly was by far the abler man. he was not as well known outside labour circles in dublin as he has come to be since his death, but to anyone who has given any thought or study to his life and writings he must appear a person of single-minded purpose, great ability, ordered methods of thought and a fine nationalism, which was rooted in the principles of wolfe tone and the united irishmen. connolly preached the gospel of social democracy with a fine and almost inspired fervour. he was an internationalist in the full socialist sense, but seeing the harrowing sights that beset him every day in the abominable slums of dublin city he was an irish reformer above all else. mr robert lynd writes of him, in his introduction to connolly's _labour in ireland_: "to connolly dublin was in one respect a vast charnel-house of the poor. he quotes figures showing that in the death-rate in dublin city was per as compared with a mean death-rate of . in the seventy-six largest english towns. he then quotes other figures, showing that while among the professional and independent classes of dublin children under five die at a rate of . per of the population of the class the rate among the labouring poor is . . to acquiesce in conditions such as are revealed in these figures is to be guilty of something like child murder. we endure such things because it is the tradition of comfortable people to endure them. but it would be impossible for any people that had its social conscience awakened to endure them for a day. connolly was the pioneer of the social conscience in ireland." in the chapter on "labour in dublin" connolly himself thus refers to the dublin strike and what it meant: "out of all this turmoil and fighting the irish working class movement has evolved, is evolving, amongst its members a higher conception of mutual life, a realisation of their duties to each other and to society at large, and are thus building for the future a way that ought to gladden the hearts of all lovers of the race. in contrast to the narrow, restricted outlook of the capitalist class and even of certain old-fashioned trade unionists, with their perpetual insistence upon 'rights,' it insists, almost fiercely, that there are no rights without duties, and the first duty is to help one another. this is, indeed, revolutionary and disturbing, but not half as much as would be a practical following out of the moral precepts of christianity." here we get some measure of the man and of his creed. to the part he played in the easter week rebellion i must refer in its own proper place. that the dublin strike and its consequences had a profound effect on later events, this quotation from "Ã�" will show. in a famous "open letter" to the employers he declared: "the men whose manhood you have broken will loathe you and will be always brooding and scheming to strike a fresh blow. the children will be taught to curse you. the infant being moulded in the womb will have breathed into its starved body the vitality of hate. it is not they--it is you who are blind samsons pulling down the pillars of the social order." the poet oftentimes has the vision to see in clear outline what the politician and the pharisee cannot even glimpse. at any rate this may be asserted, that from the year of the dublin strike dates the uprise of labour in ireland. connolly became a martyr for his principles, whilst larkin has been hunted from one end of the world to the other because of his doctrines, undoubtedly of an extremely revolutionary character. but able men have arisen to continue the work they inaugurated and labour in ireland has now formally insisted on its right to be a political party as well as a social organisation. it no longer circumscribes its aspirations to purely industrial issues and social concerns, but it takes its place on the stage of larger happenings and events and is like to play a great part in the moulding of the ireland that will arise when the old vicious systems and forms are shattered for evermore. chapter xxiii carson, ulster and other considerations with the nearness of the time when home rule must automatically become law, unless something happened to interfere, events began to move rapidly. the tory party, largely, i believe, through political considerations, had unalterably taken sides with ulster. the liberal party were irresolute, wavering, pusillanimous. mr redmond's followers began to be uneasy--they commenced to falter in their blind faith that they had only to trust asquith and all would be well. "in the ancient order of hibernians," mr henry tells us, "all sections of sinn fein, as well as the labour party, saw a menace to any prospect of an accommodation with ulster. this strictly sectarian society, as sectarian and often as violent in its methods as the orange lodges, evoked their determined hostility." "this narrowing down," wrote _irish freedom_ (the organ of mr p. h. pearse and his friends), "of nationalism to the members of one creed is the most fatal thing that has taken place in irish politics since the days of the pope's brass band," and the ancient order was further referred to as "a job-getting and job-cornering organisation," as "a silent, practical riveting of sectarianism on the nation." _the irish worker_ was equally emphatic. "were it not for the existence of the board of erin the orange society would have long since ceased to exist. to brother devlin and not to brother carson is mainly due the progress of the covenanter movement in ulster." though no doubt in ireland religion exercises a considerable influence, it is nevertheless a mistake to think that it was purely a question of religion with those redoubtable northern unionists whom sir edward carson led. they attached more importance to their political rights and independent commercial position, which they believed to be endangered; corruption in matters of administration was what they were most in dread of. the irish party used to point proudly to the number of protestants who had been elected as members of their party. the reply of ulster was that they owed their election to their accommodating spirit in accepting the parliamentary policy and not because of their rigid adherence to protestant principles. then came the lame gun-running expedition, when the _fanny_ sailed across from hamburg, under the noses of english destroyers and men-of-war, and, it is said, with the knowledge and connivance of the officers commanding them, safely landed , german rifles and several million rounds of ammunition, which were distributed within twenty-four hours to the covenanters throughout the province. it is clear that at this time extensive negotiations were going on between germany and the ulster extremists. the ulster provisional government were leaving nothing to chance. history is entitled to know the full story of all that happened at this most fateful period--what "discussions" took place between the ulster leaders and the kaiser, how far sir edward carson was implicated in these matters and how real and positive is his responsibility for the world war that ensued. and it should be borne in mind that these seditious traffickings with a foreign state were going on at a time when there was no sinn fein army in existence, and that the man who first showed a readiness not alone to invoke german aid but actually to avail himself of it, was not any southern nationalist rebel leader but sir edward carson, the leader and, as he was called, "the uncrowned king" of ulster. when critics condemn the nationalists of the south for their alleged communications with germany, let them not, in all fairness, forget sir edward carson was the man who first showed the way. to whom then--if guilt there be--does the greater guilt belong? when the news of this audacious gun-running expedition was published, ireland waited breathless to know what was going to happen. warships were posted on the ulster coast, ostensibly to stop further gun-running, and the prime minister announced in the house of commons that "in view of this grave and unprecedented outrage the government would take appropriate steps without delay to vindicate the authority of the law." but in view of what _the westminster gazette_ termed "the abject surrender to the army" of the government over the curragh incident, when officers were declared to have refused to serve against ulster, not much in the way of stern measures was to be expected now. the government on the occasion of the curragh incident had declared: "his majesty's government must retain their right to use all the forces of the crown in ireland or elsewhere to maintain law and order and to support the civil power in the ordinary execution of its duty. but they have no intention whatever of taking advantage of this right to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the home rule bill." as mr balfour was not slow in pointing out, this statement made "it impossible to coerce ulster." the officers who had refused to obey orders, including general gough, were in effect patted on the back, told they were splendid fellows, and that they would not be asked to march against ulster. it was the same thing over again in the case of the _fanny_ exploit, sir edward carson unblushingly improving the occasion by laying stress on the weakening of great britain's position abroad that followed as a consequence of his own acts. the irish party leaders, who had a few months before still persisted in describing the ulster preparations as "a masquerade" and "a sham," were now in a state of funk and panic. they found the solid ground they thought they had stood on rapidly slipping from under them. there was to be no prosecution of the ulster leaders, no proclamation of their organisation, nothing to compel them to surrender the arms they had so brazenly and illegally imported. why was not carson arrested at this crisis, as he surely ought to have been by any government which respected its constitutional forms and authority, not to speak of its dignity? captain wedgwood benn having in the parliamentary session of taunted sir edward carson with his threat that if ulster was coerced he intended to break every law that was possible, there followed this interchange: sir e. carson: i agree that these words are perfectly correct. a labour member: anyone else would have been in prison. sir e. carson: why was i not put in prison? mr devlin: because i was against it. well may mr devlin take all the credit that is due to him for preventing sir edward carson's arrest, considering that he and his order had been mainly the cause of bringing carson to the verge of rebellion, but that gentleman himself seems to have a different opinion about it if we are to put any credence in the following extract from colonel repington's _diary of the first world war_, under date th november : "had a talk with carson about the ulster business. he was very amusing and outspoken. he told me how near we were to an explosion, that the government had determined to arrest the chief leaders; that he had arranged to send the one word h.x. over the wire to belfast and that this was to be the signal for the seizure of the customs throughout ulster. he called to see the king and told stamfordham exactly what was going to happen and the arrest of the leaders was promptly stopped." note the scandalous implication here! what does it amount to? that sir edward carson went to buckingham palace, held the threat of civil war over the king, and intimidated his majesty into using his exalted office to screen the orange leader and his chief advisers from prosecution! if it does not bear this meaning, what other can it bear? and what are we to think of its relation to constitutional authority and right usage? but this is not the only occasion on which sir edward carson shows up in colonel repington's pages. under date th october : "carson told me that a man who had been on board the _fanny_ was writing the story of the famous voyage and the gun-running exploit." we have not got that story yet. when it is published it would be an advantage if we could also have the full account of the circumstances under which baron von kuhlman went over to ireland to prospect as to the imminence of civil war, who it was he saw in ulster, what arrangements and interviews he had with the ulster volunteers and their leaders, who were the other prominent people he met there and, above all, how the _fanny's_ cargo of german rifles was arranged and paid for? surely these are questions vital to an understanding of the extent of sir edward carson's culpability for the outbreak of war. loyalist ulster--the ulster of law and order--was now openly defiant of the law. mr p.h. pearse summed up the situation rather neatly in an article in _irish freedom_: "one great source of misunderstanding" (he wrote) "has now disappeared; it has become clear within the last few years that the orangeman is no more loyal to england than we are. he wants the union because he imagines it secures his prosperity, but he is ready to fire on the union flag the moment it threatens his prosperity.... the case might be put thus: hitherto england has governed ireland through the orange lodges--she now proposes to govern ireland through the ancient order of hibernians. you object: so do we. why not unite and get rid of the english? they are the real difficulty; their presence here the real incongruity." i quote this to show it was not the all-for-irelanders alone who saw that the board of erin was the real stumbling-block in the way of a national settlement. and now when matters were to be put to the test the government showed a monstrous culpability. it does not avail them to say that the irish party had been guilty of treachery to ireland, that it misled the ministry as to the extent and depth of ulster's irreconcilability, and that it had betrayed its own supporters by reposing a childish faith in liberal promises. the government must bear their own responsibility for allowing sir edward carson and the ulster covenanters to defy and thwart them at every point, for permitting what amounted to a mutiny in the army, for ordering the channel fleet and the soldiers to ulster "to put these grave matters to the test even if the red blood should flow," and then withdrawing them again, for issuing a proclamation forbidding the importation of arms and allowing the covenanters to spit at it in mockery, and finally for admitting, in the famous army order i have quoted, the right of rebellion as part of the constitutional machinery of the state. "the gigantic game of bluff"--as the ulster preparations were termed--had won outright. the political gamesters, who would not surrender an inch to ulster when it could be negotiated with, were now willing to surrender everything, including the principle of an indivisible irish nationhood. "conversations" between the various leaders went on during the early months of to arrange a compromise and a settlement, the gigantic crime of partition as a substitute for irish freedom was traitorously perpetrated by ireland's own "representatives" and by the so-called "home rule government," and ireland woke up one fine morning to find that the home rule act even when on the statute book might as well not be there--all the bonfires that were lighted in ireland to hail its enactment nothwithstanding--that "dark rosaleen," the mother that they loved so well, was to be brutally dismembered, and that "a nation once again" was to mean, in the words of sir horace plunkett: "half home rule for three-quarters of ireland." the prime minister had proposed the partition of ireland--three-fourths to go to the nationalists and one-fourth to the orangemen--and the irish party had accepted the proposal, nay, more, they summoned a conference of northern nationalists and compelled them to pass a resolution, strongly against their inclination, in favour of the proposal, under threat of the resignation of messrs redmond, dillon and devlin if the resolution were not adopted. an amending bill was immediately introduced into parliament ( rd june ), which provided for the exclusion of such ulster counties as might avail themselves of it. this measure was transformed by the house of lords so as permanently to exclude the whole of ulster from the operations of the home rule act. by people forgetful of the facts, it is sometimes supposed that the partition was agreed to by the irish party under the pressure of war conditions. this is not so. the party have not even this poor excuse to justify their betrayal, which was the culminating point in the steep declivity of their downfall. the all-for-ireland party resisted with all the strength at their command the violation of ireland's national unity. we spoke against it, voted against it, did all we could to rouse the conscience of the people as to its unparalleled iniquity. but though a proposal more offensive to every instinct of national feeling could not be submitted, the irish party determined to see the thing through--they seemed anxious to catch at any straw that would save them from an irretrievable doom. on account of the deadlock between the lords and commons on the question of exclusion, and with a view to the adjustment of differences, it was announced that the king had summoned a conference of two representatives from each party--eight in all--to meet at buckingham palace. it is believed that this conference was initiated by his majesty but taken with the knowledge and consent of the ministry. messrs redmond and dillon represented the irish party, and thus the man (mr dillon) who had been for ten years denouncing any conference with his own countrymen went blithely into a conference at buckingham palace, where the only issue to be discussed was as to whether sir edward carson should have four or six counties for his kingdom in the north. on this point the conference for the moment disagreed, but nothing can ever undo the fact that a body of irishmen claiming to be nationalists had not only ignobly agreed to the partition of their native land but, after twelve months for deliberation, agreed to surrender six counties, instead of four, to the covenanters. and the time came when it was remembered for them in an ireland which had worthier concepts of nationality than partition and plunder. chapter xxiv formation of irish volunteers and outbreak of war meanwhile nationalist ireland was deep in its heart revolted by the way the parliamentary party was managing its affairs. they sought still to delude it with the cry that "the act" was on the statute book and that all would be well. my experience of my own people is that once confidence is yielded to a person or party they are trustful to an amazing degree; let that confidence once be disturbed, then distrust and suspicion are quickly bred--and to anyone who knows the celtic psychology a suspicious irishman is not a very pleasant person to deal with. this the party were to find out in suitable time. meanwhile the young men of the south saw no reason why, ulster being armed and insolent, they might not become armed and self-reliant. and accordingly, without any petty distinctions of party, or class, or creed, they decided to band themselves into a body of volunteers and they adopted a title sanctioned in irish history--namely, the irish volunteers. the movement was publicly inaugurated at a meeting held in the rotunda, dublin, on th november , the leading spirits in the organisation being captain white, d.s.o., and sir roger casement, a northern protestant who, knighted by england for his consular and diplomatic services, was later to meet the death penalty at her hands for his loyalty to his own country. the new body drew its supporters from parliamentarians, sinn feiners, republicans and every other class of irish nationalist. the manifesto it issued stated: "the object proposed for the irish volunteers is to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of ireland. their duties will be defensive and protective and they will not attempt either aggression or domination. their ranks are open to all able-bodied irishmen without distinction of creed, politics, or social grade." and then it appealed "in the name of national unity, of national dignity, of national and individual liberty, of manly citizenship to our countrymen to recognise and accept without hesitation the opportunity that has been granted to them to join the ranks of the irish volunteers and to make the movement now begun not unworthy of the historic title which it has adopted." the president of the volunteers was professor john macneill, who had borne an honourable and distinguished part in the gaelic league revival. they declared they had nothing to fear from the ulster volunteers nor the ulster volunteers from them. they acknowledged that the northern body had opened the way for a national volunteer movement, but whilst at first they were willing to cheer sir edward carson because he had shown them the way to arm, it was not long before they recognised that whilst extending courtesy to ulster, their supreme duty was the defence of irish liberty. for this they drilled and armed in quiet but firm determination. when partition became part of the policy of the irish party, mr redmond and his friends had many warnings that the irish volunteers were not in existence to support the mutilation of ireland. they proclaimed their intention originally of placing themselves at the disposal of an irish parliament, but not of the kind contemplated by the home rule bill. the irish party saw in the volunteers a formidable menace to their power, if not to their continued existence. they must either control them or suppress them. mr redmond demanded the right to nominate a committee of twenty-five "true-blue" supporters of his own policy. the volunteer committee had either to declare war on mr redmond or submit to his demand. they submitted. the government, who were supposed to have instigated and inspired mr redmond's demand, were satisfied. the reconstituted committee called the new body the national volunteers. but though the redmondites got control of the committee they did not succeed in curbing the spirit of the volunteers. and besides there was in dublin an independent body of volunteers entitled the citizen army, under the control of messrs connolly and larkin. this was purely drawn from the workers of the metropolis and was fiercely antagonistic to the ancient order of hibernians, which _the irish worker_ declared to be "the foulest growth that ever cursed this land," and again as "a gang of place-hunters and political thugs." it appears mr redmond's nominees gave little assistance in arming the volunteers, but the original members of the committee got arms on their own responsibility and, imitating the exploit of the _fanny_, they ran a cargo of rifles into howth. the forces of the crown, which winked at the larne gun-running, made themselves active at howth. the volunteers were intercepted on their way back by a military force, but succeeded in getting away with their rifles. the soldiers, on returning to dublin, irritated at their failure to get the arms and provoked by a jeering crowd, fired on them, killing three (including one woman) and wounding thirty-two. "it was," writes mr robert lynd, "sir edward carson and mr bonar law who introduced the bloody rule of the revolver into modern ireland and the first victims were the dublin citizens shot down in bachelor's walk on the eve of the war." hardly had the echoes of the dublin street firing died down before the thunders of war were heard on the continent. germany had temporarily cut through the entanglements of the irish situation, and from the island drama across the irish sea the thoughts of all flew to the world tragedy that was commencing with an entire continent for a battlefield. if the situation created by the war had been properly handled, it could, with the exercise of a little tact and management and, it may be, with the application of a certain pressure upon ulster, have been turned to magnificent account for the settlement of ireland's difficulties and disagreements. the home rule bill had not yet passed into law. anything was possible in regard to it. again, however--and with the utmost regret it must be set down--the wrong turning was taken. confronted with a common peril, all british parties drew together in a united effort to support the war. the irish party had to declare themselves. mr redmond spoke in parliament with restraint and qualification, but he made a sensation, at which probably nobody was more surprised than himself, when he said that the government might withdraw all her troops from ireland; her coasts would be defended by her armed sons and the national volunteers would gladly co-operate with those of ulster in doing so. mr redmond might have bargained for the immediate enactment of home rule or he might have remained neutral. instead he gave a half-hearted offer of service at home, "to defend the shores of ireland," and forthwith sir edward grey proclaimed, with an applauding empire to support him, that "ireland was the one bright spot." yes, but at what a cost to ireland herself! it is a fallacy, widely believed in, that mr redmond proposed a definite war policy. he did not. he did not at first promise a single recruit for the front. he did not put england upon her honour even to grant "full self-government" in return for irish service. admitted that the home rule act was on the statute book; but it was accompanied by a suspensory bill postponing its operation, and the government likewise gave a guarantee that an amending bill would be introduced to make the measure acceptable to ulster according to the bargain agreed to by the irish party surrendering the six counties to carson. the ulster party, on the other hand, were determined to extract the last ounce of advantage they could out of the situation. they made no promises and gave no guarantees until they knew where they stood. when it was seen, after the war had been for a month running its untoward course against the allies, that they had nothing to fear from home rule, they told the ulster volunteers they were free to enlist. the official organ of sinn fein and _the irish worker_ were against any irish offer of service, but the bulk of nationalist opinion undoubtedly favoured the allied course on the broad grounds of its justice and righteousness. mr william o'brien sought to unite all irish parties on a definite war policy. he held the view that "however legitimate would have been the policy of compelling england to fulfil her pledges by holding sternly aloof in her hour of necessity, the policy of frank and instant friendship on condition of that fulfilment would have been greatly the more effectual to make home rule a necessity that could not be parried, as well as to start it under every condition of cordiality all round." but mr redmond and his friends missed the tide of the war opportunity as they missed all other tides. they were neither one thing nor the other. mr redmond spoke in ireland in halting and hesitating fashion, publicly asking the national volunteers to stay at home, and again made half-hearted speeches in favour of recruiting. mr redmond's supporters in cork were not, however, as politically obtuse as he appeared to be, or perhaps as his associations with mr dillon compelled him to be. through the writer they asked mr o'brien to set forth a plan of united action. mr o'brien did so in a memorandum which suggested that mr redmond should take the initiative in inviting a conference with the irish unionists to devise a programme of common action for the double purpose of drawing up an agreement for home rule on a basis beyond cavil in the matter of generosity to the irish unionists, and, on the strength of this agreement, undertaking a joint campaign to raise an irish army corps, with its reserves, which was mr asquith's own measure of ireland's just contribution. mr o'brien was in a position to assure mr redmond, and did in fact assure him, that if he took the initiative in summoning this conference, he would have the ready co-operation of some of the most eminent irish unionists who followed lord midleton three years afterwards. to this memorandum mr o'brien never received any reply, and i have reason to believe that all the reply received by mr redmond's own supporters in cork, who submitted the memorandum to him with an expression of their own approval of its terms, was a mere formal acknowledgment. i am confident that mr redmond's own judgment favoured this proposal, as it did the policy of conference and conciliation in , but that he was overborne by the other bosses, who had him completely at their mercy and who had not the wisdom to see that this gave them a glorious and honourable way out of their manifold difficulties. there were, meanwhile, differences at the headquarters of the national volunteers over mr redmond's offer of their services "for the defence of the shores of ireland," which was made without their knowledge or consent. they, however, passed a resolution declaring "the complete readiness of the irish volunteers to take joint action with the ulster volunteer force for the defence of ireland." the prime minister promised in parliament that the secretary for war would "do everything in his power after consultation with gentlemen in ireland, to arrange for the full equipment and organisation of the irish volunteers." but the war office had other views in the matter, and though a scheme was drawn up by general sir arthur paget, commanding the forces in ireland, "by which the war office may be supplied from the irish volunteers with a force for the defence of ireland," this scheme was immediately rejected by the war office authorities who, in their efforts to gain irish recruits--and i write with perfect knowledge of the facts--were guilty of every imaginable blunder and every possible insult to irish sentiment and irish ideals. the ulster volunteers, on the other hand, were allowed to retain their own officers and their own tests of admission, and were taken over, holus-bolus, as they stood; were trained in camps of their own, had their own banners, were kept compactly together and were recognised in every way as a distinct unit of army organisation. all of these privileges were insolently refused to the nationalists of the south--they were for a time employed in the paltry duty of minding bridges, but they were withdrawn from even this humiliating performance after a short period. meanwhile an irish division was called for to be composed of southern nationalists, and with the government guarantee that "it would be manned by irishmen and officered by irishmen." i had my own strong and earnest conviction about the war and the justice and righteousness of the allied cause. i felt, if service was offered at all, it should not be confined to "defence of the shores of ireland," but should be given abroad where, under battle conditions, the actual issue between right and wrong would be decided. i made my own offer of service in november , and all the claim i make was that i was actuated by one desire and one only--to advance, humbly as may be, in myself the cause of irish freedom. for the rest, i served and i suffered, and i sacrificed, and if the results were not all that we intended let this credit at least be given to those of us who joined up then, that we enlisted for worthy and honourable motives and that we sought, and sought alone, the ultimate good of ireland in doing so. mr redmond's family bore their own honourable and distinguished part in "the irish brigade," as it came to be known, and major "willie" redmond, when he died on the field of france, offered his life as surely for ireland as any man who ever died for irish liberty. faith was not kept with "the irish brigade" in either the manning or the officering of it by irishmen, and the time came when, through failure of reserves, it was irish more in name than in anything else, and when the gaps caused by casualties had to be filled by english recruits. a disgusted and disappointed country turned its thoughts away from constitutional channels; and the betrayals of ireland's hopes, and dignity and honour, which had gone on during the years, were fast leading to their natural and inevitable nemesis. chapter xxv the easter week rebellion and afterwards a world preoccupied with the tremendous movements of mighty armies woke up one morning and rubbed its eyes in amazement to read that a rebellion had broken out in the capital of ireland. how did it happen? what did it mean? what was the cause of it? these and similar questions were being asked, and those who were ready with an answer were very few indeed. the marvellous thing, a matter almost incredible of belief, is that it caught the irish government absolutely unawares. their secret service department might as well not have been in existence. for the first time probably in irish history an irish movement had come into being which had not a single "informer" in its ranks. this in itself was a remarkable thing and to be noted. the leaders and their officers had accomplished the remarkable achievement of discriminating against the secret service agent. although everything was clouded in a mist of conjecture and obscurity at the time, the causes of the rebellion of easter week are now fairly clear, and may be shortly summarised. from the moment that the redmondite party had imposed their conditions on the committee of the irish volunteers the vast bulk of the volunteers who were not also "mollies" were thoroughly dissatisfied with the arrangement. this discontent increased when the recruiting campaign in ireland was conducted with calculated offence to nationalist sentiment and self-respect, and eventually developed into a split. the members of the original committee as a result summoned a volunteer convention for th november , at which it was decided to declare: "that ireland cannot with honour or safety take part in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a national government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of irishmen and irishwomen to the service of the british empire while no national government which could act and speak for the people of ireland is allowed to exist." the new body, or rather the old, resumed the original title of the irish volunteers. there were also a number of other bodies entirely out of harmony with the policy of the parliamentary party, such as sinn feiners, the republicans, and the citizen army of dublin's workers organised in connection with liberty hall. these were all opposed to recruiting, and the extremists amongst them advocated total separation from england as the cardinal article of their faith. a new separatist daily newspaper was published in dublin under the title _eire--ireland_. its attitude towards the war was that ireland had no cause of quarrel with the german people, or just cause of offence against them; and it was not long before the irish volunteers came to be regarded by the british authorities as a "disaffected" organisation. its organs in the press were promptly suppressed, only for others as promptly to take their place. its officers began to be deported without charge preferred or investigation of any sort. fenian teachings became popular once more and "the old guard" of ireland, who had remained ever loyal to their early fenian faith, must have felt a pulsing of their veins when they saw the doctrines of their hot youth take shape again. the eyes of a small but resolute minority of irish nationalists began to see in red revolution the only hope of irish freedom. physical force may appear a hopeless policy but it was at least worth preparing for, and it may be also it would be worth the trial. this was their creed and this the purpose that animated them. there can be no doubt that through the medium of the old irish republican brotherhood, which had never quite died out in ireland, communications were kept up with the clan-na-gael and other extreme organisations in the united states, and through these avenues also probably with germany. indeed the german foreign office, quite early in the war, at the instigation of sir roger casement had declared formally "that germany would not invade ireland with any intentions of conquest or of the destruction of any institutions." if they did land in the course of the war, they would come "inspired by good will towards a land and a people for whom germany only wishes national prosperity and freedom." the avowedly revolutionary party gained a great accession of strength when mr p.h. pearse and mr james connolly composed certain differences and united the workers in the citizen army with the irish volunteers. mr pearse was now the leader of the latter organisation--a man of high intellectual attainments, single-minded purpose, and austere character. "for many years," writes mr henry, "his life seems to have been passed in the grave shadow of the sacrifice he felt that he was called upon to make for ireland. he believed that he was appointed to tread the path that robert emmet and wolfe tone had trodden before him, and his life was shaped so that it might be worthy of its end." separation as the only road to independence was the burden of pearse's teaching. it was his definite purpose to do something which, by the splendour of the sacrifice involved, would rouse ireland out of its national apathy and national stupor. he and his associates believed, as a writer in _nationality_ declared: "we have the material, the men and stuff of war, the faith and purpose and cause for revolution.... we shall have ireland illumined with a light before which even the martyrs' will pale: the light of freedom, of a deed done and action taken and a blow struck for the old land." it was in this faith they went forth to their sacrifice. "on palm sunday ," writes mr henry, "the union of irish labour and irish nationality was proclaimed in a striking fashion. in the evening of that day connolly hoisted over liberty hall, the headquarters of the citizen army, the irish tricolour of orange, white, and green, the flag designed by the young irelanders in to symbolise the union of the orange and green by the white bond of a common brotherhood. on easter monday the irish republic was proclaimed in arms in dublin." now there are many considerations that could be usefully discussed in relation to the easter week rebellion, but this is not the time or place for them. let it be made clear, however, that the rising was not the work of sinn fein, but of the leaders of the irish volunteers and the citizen army. it would be a pretty subject of inquiry to know how sinn fein got the credit for the rising and why the title was given to the new movement that came into being afterwards. my own view is that the british journalists who swarmed into ireland are chiefly responsible for the designation. _sinn fein_ was a fine mouthful for their british readers to swallow, and so they gave it to them. be this as it may, the rebellion came to be referred to as the sinn fein rebellion, and the movement to which it gave birth has ever since assumed the same name. it is not my intention to dwell on the grave incidents that followed, the prolonged agony of "the shootings of the rebel leaders," the assassination of mr sheehy-skeffington, the indecent scenes in the house of commons when the nationalist members behaved themselves with sad lack of restraint--cheering mr birrell's prediction that "the irish people would never regard the dublin rebellion with the same feelings with which they regarded previous rebellions," cheering still more loudly when, in response to sir edward carson's invitation to mr redmond to join him in "denouncing and putting down those rebels for evermore," mr redmond expressed, to the amazement of all nationalist ireland, his "horror and detestation" of irishmen who, however mistaken they may be--and history has yet to decide this--at least "poured out their blood like heroes--as they believed and as millions of their countrymen now believe for ireland" (mr william o'brien). mr dillon, needless to say, flung his leader overboard on this occasion without the slightest truth. he declared he had never stood on a recruiting platform (which was not true!) and that he never would do so, and accused the government and the soldiers of washing out the life-work of the nationalists in "a sea of blood." the government were at their wits' end what to do. mr birrell, the amiable and inefficient chief secretary, had to go. mr asquith went over to ireland on a tour of investigation and returned to westminster with two dominant impressions: ( ) the breakdown of the existing machinery of irish government; ( ) the strength and depth, almost the universality, of the feeling in ireland that there was a unique opportunity for the settlement of outstanding problems and for a combined effort to obtain an agreement as to the way in which the government of ireland was to be carried on for the future. he announced that mr lloyd george had undertaken, at the request of his colleagues, to devote his time and energy to the promotion of an irish settlement. undoubtedly "the machinery of government had broken down." but the government of england had taken no account of what was happening in ireland--of the veritable wave of passion that swept the country after, the "executions" of the rebel leaders, of the manner in which this passion was fanned and flamed by the arrest and deportation of thousands of young men all over the country, who were believed to be prominently identified with the volunteer movement, of the unrest that was caused by the reports that a number of the peaceable citizens of dublin were deliberately shot without cause by the troops during the military occupation of the city. what wonder that there was a strong and even fierce revulsion of feeling! and this was not reserved altogether for the government. the irish parliamentarians had their own fair share of it. the process of disillusionment now rapidly set in. that portion of the country that had not already completely lost faith in the party and in parliamentary methods was fast losing it. it only required that the party should once again give its unqualified assent, as it did, to mr lloyd george's "headings of agreement," which provided for the partition of ireland and the definite exclusion of the six counties of down, antrim, londonderry, armagh, monaghan and tyrone, to send it down into the nethermost depths of popular favour and the whole-hearted contempt of every self-respecting man of the irish race. the collapse of parliamentarianism was now complete. there was no nationalist of independent spirit left in ireland who would even yield it lip service. irish public bodies which a year or two previously were the obedient vehicles of party manipulation were now unanimous in denouncing any form of partition. the proposals for settlement definitely failed, and the machinery of irish government which had "broken down" was set up afresh and the discredited administration of dublin castle fully restored by the appointment of mr duke, a unionist, as chief secretary for ireland. the war was not going at all well for the allies. america was still hesitating on the brink as to whether she would come in or remain steadfastly aloof. the asquithian ministry had been manoeuvred out of office under circumstances which it will be the joy of the historian to deal with when all the documents and facts are available. that interesting and candid diarist, colonel repington, under date rd december , writes: "last friday began a great internal crisis, when l.g. [lloyd george] wrote to the p.m. [asquith] that he could not go on unless our methods of waging war were speeded up. he proposed a war council of three, including himself, bonar law and carson. the two latter are with him, which means the unionists too." asquith resigned, the coalition ministry was formed, and it is probably more than a surmise that the part played by sir edward carson in bringing about this result and in elevating mr lloyd george into the premiership explains much of the power he has exercised over him ever since. mr redmond and sir edward carson were both invited to join the coalition. the former declined, the latter accepted, and from his position of power within the cabinet was able to torpedo home rule at will. and thus came to an end in ireland as gross a tyranny perpetrated in the sacred name of nationality as ever disgraced our annals. the party which had so long held power had destroyed themselves by years of selfish blundering. the country was growing weary of the men who killed land purchase, constituted themselves the mere dependents of an english party in exchange for boundless jobbery, intensified the alarm of ulster by transferring all power and patronage to a pseudo-catholic secret organisation, and crowned their incompetence by accepting a miserably inadequate home rule bill (with partition twice over thrown in). the country which had been shackled into silence by the terrorist methods of the board of erin (which made the right of free meeting impossible by the use of their batons, bludgeons and revolvers) was emancipated by the dublin rising. and in the scale of things it must be counted, for the young men who risked their lives in easter week, not the least of their performances that they gave back to the people of ireland the right of thinking and acting for themselves. how well they used this right to exact a full measure of retribution from the party that had betrayed them the general election of abundantly shows. chapter xxvi the irish convention and the conscription of ireland the time had now come when the irish party had to taste all the bitterness of actual and anticipated defeat. several irish newspapers had gone over to sinn fein. _the irish independent_ had been previously a fearless critic of the party, and the defeat of the partition proposals was largely due to the manner in which they had denounced them and exposed their real character. a bye-election took place in north roscommon. there was a straight fight between the parliamentary party and sinn fein and the former were defeated by an overwhelming majority. another trial of strength came soon afterwards, and the party again bit the dust. the coalitionists had now turned a cold shoulder to the party. they could get along very well without them. they had got all they could out of them for war purposes. they foresaw their approaching defeat, and they did not, therefore, count on their scheme of things as a force to be conciliated or to be afraid of. and as if to ensure the complete downfall and overthrow of the party the government continued their arrests and deportations. the party had to "demonstrate" in some way and they hit upon the device of withdrawing from parliament and sending a manifesto to the united states and the self-governing dominions. but whilst they paid _sinn fein_ the compliment of adopting their policy of parliamentary abstention, they neither honestly kept away nor openly remained--asking questions and sending ambassadors from time to time. _sinn fein_ was not inactive either. it summoned a convention to meet in dublin to assert the independence of ireland, its status as a nation and its right to representation at the peace conference. the government was still faced with a reluctant and undecided america, and it became essential for "propaganda purposes" to do something of fair seeming on the irish question. the prime minister accordingly revived the old partition proposals, but these were now dead and damned by all parties, the roscommon, longford and east clare victories of sinn fein having brought the irish party to disown their twice-repeated bargain for partition. he then proposed as an alternative that an irish convention, composed of representative irishmen, should assemble to deliberate upon the best means of governing their own country. the all-for-ireland party were asked to nominate representatives to this convention, as were also sinn fein. in reply mr o'brien stated four essential conditions of success: ( ) a conference of ten or a dozen persons known to intend peace; ( ) a prompt agreement, making every conceivable concession to ulster, with the one reservation that partition in any shape or form was inadmissible and unthinkable; ( ) the immediate submission of the agreement to a referendum of the irish people (never before consulted upon a definite proposal); ( ) if any considerable minority of irreconcilables still uttered threats of an ulster rebellion a bold appeal of the government to the british electorate at a general election to declare once and for all between the claims of reason and justice and the incorrigibility of ulster. one panel of names which mr o'brien submitted to the cabinet at their request was: the lord mayor of dublin, the protestant primate, the catholic archbishop of dublin, the marquess of londonderry, the marquess of ormonde, general sir hubert gough, major "willie" redmond, m.p., the earl of shaftesbury, the earl of dunraven, viscount northcliffe, mr william martin murphy, mr hugh barrie, m.p., and two representatives of sinn fein. mr o'brien was in a position to guarantee that at a conference thus constituted sinn fein would not be unrepresented. instead of setting up a conference of this character, which it is now clear would not have separated without coming to an agreement, the proposal was set aside--whether by mr lloyd george or by mr redmond's advisers has yet to be revealed--and an irish convention composed of nominated representatives was constituted, which had no possibility of agreement except an agreement on the lines of partition and which was doubtless planned and conceived for the purpose of fooling ireland and america and keeping the convention "talking" for nine months until america was wiled into the war. the convention could by no possibility succeed, and my belief is it was never intended to succeed. it was numerically unwieldy. nine-tenths of its representation was drawn from the ulster party's and the irish party's supporters, both of whom were pledged in advance to the partition settlement, and as far as the irish party representation was concerned the last thing that could be said of it was that it was representative. of the seventy-five redmondites who composed three-fourths of the convention only one escaped rejection by his constituents as soon as the electors had their say! the convention laboured under the still further disadvantage of being at the mercy of an orange veto, which makes one wonder how it was that mr redmond or his party ever submitted to it. the ulster delegates to the convention were under the control of an outside body--the ulster orange council. they could decide nothing without reference to this body, and hence the convention was in the perfectly humiliating position of carrying on its proceedings subject to an outside orange veto. neither the all-for-ireland party nor sinn fein was represented at the convention, although mr lloyd george made a second appeal to mr o'brien to assist in its deliberations. it says something for the wisdom of mr o'brien's proposal for a small conference that after debating the matter for months the convention decided to transmit their powers to a committee of nine to draw up terms of agreement. this committee did actually reach agreement, only to have it squelched instantly by the veto of the ulster council when the ulster nominees reported the terms of it to them. lord macdonnell, in a letter to _the times_, dated nd november , makes the following disclosure regarding mr redmond's view of this matter:-- "in regard to this episode i well remember the late mr redmond saying in conversation that if he had foreseen the possibility of a proposal made there being submitted for judgment to men who had not participated in the convention's proceedings, and were removed from its pervading atmosphere of good will, he would never have consented to enter it." mr o'brien, however, saw this danger in advance and drew public attention to it. in a speech in the house of commons he also foretold what the failure of the convention meant: the destruction of the constitutional movement and the setting up of "the right of rebellion, whether from the covenanters or sinn feiners as the only arbiter left in irish affairs. you will justly make parliamentary methods more despised and detested than they are at the present moment by the young men of ireland." the convention failed to reach unanimity. it presented various reports, and the government, glad of so easy a way out, simply did nothing. the convention served the ministerial purpose, and there was an end of it. the proceedings were, however, notable for one tragic incident. mr redmond sought to rally the majority of the convention in support of a compromise which, whilst falling short of dominion home rule, avoided partition and would have been acceptable to southern unionist opinion. mr devlin and the catholic bishops opposed mr redmond's motion and the irish leader, feeling himself deserted at the most critical moment, did not move, and withdrew from the convention to his death, adding another to the long list of tragic figures in irish history. the only practical outcome of the convention was the acceptance of dominion home rule by a minority, which included mr devlin. as if to make matters as impracticable as possible for the parliamentarians, mr lloyd george introduced a bill to conscript ireland at the very time the convention proposals were before parliament. a more callous indifference to irish psychology could scarcely be imagined. a series of sinn fein victories at the polls had decided the fate of partition once and for all. but the war exigencies of the government were so great, the military situation on the continent was so hazardous, they seemed determined to risk even civil war in their resolve to get irishmen to serve. they must have fighting men at any cost. the menace was very real, and the whole of nationalist ireland came together as one man to resist it. the representatives of the irish party, of labour, of sinn fein and of the all-for-irelanders met in conference at the mansion house, dublin, to concert measures of irish defence. the mansion house conference, at its first meeting, on th april, issued the following declaration:-- "taking our stand on ireland's separate and distinct nationhood, and affirming the principle of liberty, that the governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we deny the right of the british government or any external authority to impose compulsory military service in ireland against the clearly expressed will of the irish people. the passing of the conscription bill by the british house of commons must be regarded as a declaration of war on the irish nation. the alternative to accepting it as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. it is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self-determination, which even the prime minister of england--now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his act upon ireland--himself announced as an essential condition for peace at the peace congress. the attempt to enforce it is an unwarrantable aggression, which we call upon all irishmen to resist by the most effective means at their disposal." the irish catholic bishops on the same day received a deputation from the mansion house conference, and, having heard them, issued a manifesto, in the course of which they said: "in view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider that conscription forced in this way upon ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law, which the irish people have a right to resist by every means that are consonant with the law of god." the irish labour party called a one-day strike on rd april as "a demonstration of fealty to the cause of labour and ireland." the government went on with its preparations for enforcing conscription. the lord-lieutenant, who was known to be opposed to the policy of the ministry, was recalled, and field-marshal lord french was put in his place. a "german plot," which the late viceroy declared had no existence in fact, was supposed to be discovered, and in connection with it messrs de valera and a. griffith, the two sinn fein members of the mansion house conference, were arrested and deported. the sinn fein, the gaelic league and allied organisations were declared to be "dangerous associations." concerts, hurling matches, etc., were prohibited, and ireland was frankly treated as an occupied territory. a bye-election occurred in east cavan and mr griffith--england's prisoner--was returned, defeating a nominee of the irish party. this gave the death-blow to conscription, though ireland still stood sternly on guard. the mansion house conference during its existence held a position of unique authority in the country. during its sittings a proposal was made to initiate negotiations with a view to combined action between sinn fein, the two sections of parliamentary nationalists and the irish labour bodies, on the basis of the concession of dominion home rule, while the war was still proceeding with the alternative, if the concession were refused, of combined action to enforce the claims of ireland at the peace conference. there was reason to believe sinn fein would agree to this proposal, and that the cabinet would have invited the dominion premiers' conference to intervene in favour of an irish settlement, limited only by the formula: "within the empire." mr dillon blocked the way with the technical objection that the conference was called to discuss conscription alone and that no other topic must be permitted to go further. could stupid malignancy or blind perversity go further? this fair chance was lost, with so many others. the war came to an end and a few weeks afterwards the irish parliamentary party, which had so long played shuttlecock with the national destinies of ireland, went to crashing doom and disaster at the polls. the country had found them out for what they were, and it cast them into that outer darkness from which, for them, there is no returning. chapter xxvii "the times" and irish settlement no volume, professing to deal however cursorily with the events of the period, can ignore the profound influence of _the times_ as a factor in promoting an irish settlement. that this powerful organ of opinion--so long arrayed in deadly hostility to ireland--should have in recent years given sympathetic ear to her sufferings and disabilities is an event of the most tremendous significance, and it is not improbable that the irish administration in these troubled years would have been even more deplorably vicious than it has been were it not that _the times_ showed the way to other independent journals in england in vigilant criticism and fearless exposure of official wrongdoing. when, on st patrick's day, , lord northcliffe spoke at the irish club in london on the urgency of an irish settlement and on the need for the economic and industrial development of the country, and when he proclaimed himself an irish-born man with "a strong strain of irish blood" in him, he did a sounder day's work for ireland than he imagined, for he shattered a tradition of evil association which for generations had linked the name of a great english newspaper with unrelenting opposition to ireland's historic claim for independence. if ireland had been then approached in the generous spirit of lord northcliffe's speech, if the investigation into irish self-government for which he pleaded had then taken place, if british statesmen had made "a supreme effort," as he begged them to do, "to find good government for ireland," i am convinced that all the horrors and manifold disasters of the past four years would have been avoided, and the irish people would be at this moment in happiness and contentment administering their own affairs. but the voice of sweet reasonableness and statesmanlike admonition was not hearkened unto. the neglect of ireland and of her industrial concerns, of which lord northcliffe so justly made complaint, continued, and instead of the counsels of peace prevailing all the follies of wrong methods and repressive courses were committed which will leave enduring memories of bitterness and broken faith long after a settlement is reached. meanwhile _the times_ devoted itself earnestly and assiduously to the cause of peace and justice. it opened its columns to the expression of reasoned opinion on the irish case. the problem of settlement was admittedly one of extreme difficulty--it welcomed discussion and consideration of every feasible plan in the hope that some _via media_ might be found which would constitute a basis of comparative agreement between the various warring factors. it even instituted independent inquiries of its own and gave an exhaustive and splendidly impartial survey of the whole irish situation and of the various influences, psychological, religious and material, that made the question one of such complexity and so implacably unyielding in many of its features. its pressure upon the government was continuous and consistent, but the government was deaf to wisdom and dumb to a generous importunity. not content with appeal, remonstrance and exhortation, _the times_, in the summer of , boldly, and with a courage that was greatly daring in the circumstances of the moment, set forth in all detail, and with a vigorous clearness that was most praiseworthy, its own plan of settlement. as it was upon this model that the ministry later built its government of ireland act, i think it well to quote _the times_, own summary of its scheme, though it is but proper to say that whilst the government adapted the model it discarded everything else that was useful and workmanlike in the structure: _legislatures_ creation by an act of settlement of two state legislatures for (a) the whole of ulster, (b) the rest of ireland, with full powers of legislation in all matters affecting the internal affairs of their respective states. in each state there will be a state executive responsible to the state legislature. by the same act of settlement, the creation of an all-ireland parliament on the basis of equal representation of the two states--_i.e.,_ ulster is to have as many representatives as the rest of ireland. the all-ireland parliament to be a single chamber which may sit alternately at dublin and belfast. _powers_ governing powers not conferred on the state legislatures will be divided between the all-ireland and the imperial parliament. the imperial parliament will retain such powers as those involving the crown and the succession; peace and war; the armed forces. to the all-ireland parliament may be delegated, _inter alia_, the powers involving direct taxation, customs and excise, commercial treaties (with possible exceptions), land purchase, and education. the delegation may take place by stages. _executive_ upon the assumption of the irish parliament of any or all of the powers transferred from the imperial parliament, an all-ireland executive, responsible to the all-ireland parliament, will come into being. the office of lord lieutenant, shorn of its political character, will continue. the lord lieutenant will have the right of veto on irish and state legislation, and may be assisted by the irish privy council. _safeguards_ to safeguard the liberties of both states, each state legislature is to have a permanent veto upon the application of its own state of any legislation passed by an all-ireland parliament. _representation at westminster_ ireland will be still represented at westminster by direct election. the number of representatives to the commons is to be determined on the basis of population relative to that of great britain. irish representative peers will retain their seats in the house of lords. _constitutional disputes_ constitutional disputes between the imperial and irish parliament will be decided by the judicial committee of the privy council; those between the irish parliament and state legislatures by an irish supreme court. _finance_ in the financial section of the scheme, the case for the over-taxation of ireland is considered, but it is urged that, while due account should be taken of this circumstance in any plan for financial reconstruction, ireland ought not to be relieved of her proper share of the cost of the war or of liability for her share of the national debt. ireland is to contribute an annual sum to the imperial exchequer, calculated on the relative taxable capacity of ireland. this will cover interest on the irish share of the national debt and a contribution to the sinking fund, as well as to defence and other imperial expenditure. i do not intend to subject the foregoing scheme to any detailed criticism. the method of constituting the all-ireland parliament was open to grave objection. it was to be a single chamber legislature and was to be selected or nominated rather than elected. this damned it right away from the democratic standpoint, and the defence of _the times_ that "the system of delegations would probably have the advantage of being the simplest inasmuch as it would avoid complicating the electoral machinery" was not very forceful. the supreme test to be applied to any plan of irish government is whether it provides, beyond yea or nay, for the absolute unity of ireland as one distinct nation. unless this essential unity is recognised all proposals for settlement, no matter how generous in intent otherwise, must fail. mr lloyd george grossly offended irish sentiment when he flippantly declared that ireland was not one nation but two nations. this is the kind of foolishness that makes one despair at times of british good sense, not to speak of british statesmanship. mr asquith, whatever his political blunderings--and they were many and grievous in the case of ireland--declared in :--"i have always maintained and i maintain as strongly to-day that ireland is a nation--not two nations but one nation." and those prime ministers of another day--mr gladstone and mr disraeli--were equally emphatic in recognising that ireland was one distinct nation. _the times_ itself saw the folly of partition, for it wrote ( th july ): "the burden of finding a solution rests squarely upon the shoulders of the british government, and they must bear it until at least the beginnings have been found. some expedients have found favour among those who realise the urgency of an irish settlement, but have neither opportunity nor inclination closely to study the intricacies of the question. one such expedient is partition in the form of the total exclusion from the operations of any irish settlement of the whole or a part of ulster. far more cogent reasons than any yet adduced, and far more certainty that every other path had been explored to the end, would be needed to render this expedient other than superficially plausible. politically there are acute differences between ulster and the rest of ireland; economically they are closely interwoven. economic bonds are stronger than constitutional devices. the partition of ireland would limit the powers of a southern parliament so severely, and would leave so little room for development, that it would preclude any adequate realisation of nationalist hopes. for instance, fiscal autonomy for the southern provinces could be enjoyed at the price of a customs barrier round the excluded ulster counties. yet to irish nationalists fiscal autonomy is the symbol of freedom. however speciously it may be attired, partition offers no hope of a permanent settlement." although _the times_ specifically denounced partition its proposals undoubtedly perpetuated the partition idea and were thus repugnant to national opinion. its plan also suggested a settlement by process of gradual evolution, but ireland had progressed far beyond the point when any step-by-step scheme stood the slightest chance of success. credit must, however, be given to it for its generous intentions, for the magnificent spirit of fair play it has shown ever since towards a sadly stricken land and for what it has done and is still doing to find peace and healing for the wrongs and sufferings of an afflicted race. for all these things ireland is deeply grateful, with the gratitude that does not readily forget, and it may be that when all this storm and stress, and the turbulent passions of an evil epoch have passed away, it will be remembered then for englishmen that their greatest organ in the press maintained a fine tradition of independence, and thus did much to redeem the good name of britain when "the black and tans" were dragging it woefully in the mire. chapter xxviii the issues now at stake and now my appointed task draws to its close. in the pages i have written i have set nothing down in malice nor have i sought otherwise than to make a just presentment of facts as they are within my knowledge. it may be that, being a protagonist of one party in the struggles and vicissitudes of these years, i may sometimes see things too much from the standpoint of my own preconceived opinions and notions. but on the whole it has been my endeavour to give an honest and fair-minded narrative of the main events and movements of irish history over a period in which i believe i can claim i am the first explorer. there are some subjects which would come properly within the purview of my title, such as the power, province and influence of clericalism in politics, but i have thought it best at this stage, when so many matters are in process of readjustment in ireland, and when our people are adapting themselves to a new form of citizen duty and responsibility, to leave certain aspects of our public life untouched. it may be, however, if this book meets with the success i hope for it, that my researches and labours in this field of enterprise are not at an end. all i have now to do in this my final chapter is to summarise some of the issues that present themselves for our consideration. i do not propose to deal with the activities of sinn fein since it won its redoubtable victory over the forces of parliamentarianism as represented by the irish party at the general election. the country turned to it as its only avenue of salvation from a reign of corruption, incompetence and helplessness unparalleled in history. mr o'brien and his friends of the all-for-ireland league, of their own volition, effaced themselves at the general election. they had striven through fifteen long years, against overwhelming odds and most unscrupulous and malignant forces, for a policy of reason and for the principles of conference, conciliation and consent, as between all irish-born men and a combination of all parties, irish and british, for the purpose of effecting a broad and generous national settlement. had they received that support which the events of the last two years demonstrates could have been had--had the moderate irish unionists, and especially the southern irish unionists, the moral courage to declare their views, temperately but unequivocally, as lord midleton and others have recently declared them, the tide might easily have been turned and wiser counsels and policies prevailed. if the great peace pronouncement of cork city merchants and professional men, made a few months ago on the initiative of alderman beamish, had only been arranged when the all-for-ireland league was founded; if lord bandon had then held the meeting of deputy-lieutenants he recently convened to declare for home rule; if lord shaftesbury, three times lord mayor of belfast, had then made the speech he made at the dublin peace conference last year, nothing could have resisted the triumph of the policy of conciliation, and ireland would be now in enjoyment of responsible self-government instead of being ravaged as it is by the savagery of a civil war, in which all the usages of modern warfare have been ruthlessly abandoned. it is also to be deplored that sir horace plunkett, who is now the enthusiastic advocate of dominion home rule (and, indeed, believes himself to be the discoverer of it), did not, during all the years when he could potently influence certain channels of opinion in england, raise his voice either for the agrarian settlement or for home rule and refused his support, when he was chairman of the irish convention, to mr w.m. murphy's well-meant efforts to get dominion home rule adopted or even discussed by the convention. of course this much must be said for the unionists who have pronounced in favour of home rule within the past few years, that they could plead fairly enough that every man like lord dunraven, mr moreton frewen, lord rossmore, colonel hutcheson-poë, and mr lindsay crawford, who came upon the all-for-ireland platform from the first, was foully assailed and traduced and had his motives impugned by the board of erin bosses, and other unionists, more timid, naturally enough, shrank from incurring a similar fate. but these things are of the past, and we would turn our thoughts to the present and the future. the country, at the general election of , by a vote so overwhelming as to be practically unanimous, gave the guardianship of its national faith and honour into the keeping of sinn fein. this is the dominant fact of the situation from the irish standpoint. other considerations there are, but any which leave this out of account fail to grip the vital factor which must influence our march towards a just and durable irish settlement. another fact that cannot be lost sight of is that there is a home rule act on the statute book. with this southern ireland will have nothing to do! unionists and nationalists alike condemn it as a mockery of their national rights. but the orangeman of the six counties are first seriously going to work their regional autonomy--they are going to set up their parliament in belfast. and once set up it will be a new and vital complication of the situation preceding a settlement which will embrace the whole of ireland. so far as ireland is concerned the public mind is occupied at the moment of my writing with the question of "reprisals." various efforts have been made to bring about peace. they have failed because, in my view, they have been reluctant to recognise and make allowance for certain essential facts. the whole blame for the existing state of civil war--for, repudiate it as the government may, such it undoubtedly is--is thrown on the shoulders of the irish republican army by those who take their ethical standard from sir hamar greenwood. it is forgotten that for two or three years before the attacks on the royal irish constabulary began there were no murders, no assassinations and no civil war in ireland. there was, however, a campaign of gross provocation by dublin castle for two reasons: ( ) by way of vengeance for their defeat on the conscription issue; ( ) as a retaliation on sinn fein, because it had succeeded in peacefully supplanting english rule by a system of volunteer police, sinn fein courts, sinn fein local government, etc. the only pretext on which this provocation was pursued was on account of a mythical "german plot," which lord wimbourne never heard of, which sir bryan mahon, commander-in-chief, told lord french he flatly disbelieved in, and which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced, proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the easter week rising, with some sham "german irish society" in berlin. on this pretext the sinn fein leaders, messrs de valera and griffith (whom there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the german plot), were arrested and deported, with many hundreds of the most responsible leaders. furthermore, an endless series of prosecutions were instituted and savage sentences imposed for the most paltry charges-such as drilling, wearing uniform, singing _the soldiers' song_, having portraits of rebel leaders, taking part in the arbitration courts which had superseded the petty sessions courts, and such like. all this, with suppression of newspapers and of all public meetings, went on for many months before sinn fein, deprived of its leaders, was goaded at last into attacking the royal irish constabulary. whatever the juridical status of the guerrilla warfare thus entered upon (which it is not improbable england would have applauded if employed against any other empire than her own), it was conducted on honourable lines by the sinn feiners. the policemen and soldiers, including general lewis, who surrendered, were treated with courtesy, and not one of them wounded or insulted. their wives and children were also carefully preserved from danger until the police "reprisals" in the thurles neighbourhood--the wrecking of villages and the savage murders of young men--ended by producing equally ruthless "reprisals" on the other side. in dublin, since the dublin metropolitan police declined to go about armed, not one of them has been fired upon. the real ferocity on both sides began when the "black and tans" were imported to take the place of the r.i.c., who were resigning in batches. it is indisputable--independent investigation by the committee of the british labour party and the daily messages of fearless british journalists, such as mr hugh martin, establish it beyond possibility of contradiction--that when the "black and tans" were let loose on the irish people they began a villainous campaign of cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have made all decent englishmen and englishwomen shudder for the deeds committed in their name. whenever the particulars are fully disclosed they will, i venture to say, horrify every honest man in the empire. not the least disgraceful feature of this black business was the manner in which the chief secretary sought to brazen things out and the audacious lies that he fathered, such as that lord mayor m'curtain was murdered by the sinn feiners, that it was sinn feiners who raided the bishop of killaloe's house at midnight and searched for him (unquestionably with intent to shoot him), that it was the sinn feiners who burned down the city hall, public library and the principal streets of cork, etc. and then the utter failure of all this "frightfulness"! several months ago sir hamar greenwood declared that sinn fein was on the run, and the prime minister declared they had "murder by the throat," the fact being that the young men they sought to terrorise were made more resolute in their defiance of the government. the only people at all terrorised were the invalids, the nuns whose cloisters were violated by night, the women and children whose homes were invaded at night by miscreants masquerading in the british uniform, maddened with drink and uttering the filthiest obscenities. and does england take account of what all this is going to mean to her--that the young generation will grow up with never-to-be-forgotten memories of these atrocities, while the thousands of young men herded together in the internment camps and convict prisons are being manufactured into life-long enemies of the empire? might not englishmen pause and ask themselves whether it is worth it all, apart from other considerations, to implant this legacy of bitter hatred in irish breasts? let it be admitted that since the government have been shamed into dropping their denials of "reprisals" and taken them in hand themselves the military destruction has at least been carried on with some show of reluctance and humanity by the regular army, but it cannot be too strongly emphasised that the disbandment and deportation of "the black and tans" is the first condition of any return to civilised warfare or to any respect for the good name of england or her army. if i were asked to state some of the essentials of peace i would say it must depend first of all on the re-establishment of a belief in the good faith of england. this belief, and for the reasons which i have attempted to outline in the preceding chapters, has been shattered into fragments. there is a strong feeling in ireland that the prime minister's recent peace "explorations" are not honestly meant--that they are intended to rouse the "sane and moderate" elements in opposition to sinn fein. whilst this feeling exists no real headway can be made by those who seek a genuine peace along rational and reasoned lines. the prime minister must be aware that when he professes his readiness to meet those who can "deliver the goods" he is talking rhetorical rubbish. "delivering the goods" is not a matter for irishmen, but for british politicians, who have spent the last twenty years cheating ireland of the "goods" of home rule, which they had solemnly covenanted again and again to "deliver." mr lloyd george's conditions for a meeting with "dail eireann" are so impossible that one wonders he took the trouble to state them--viz. ( ) that "dail eireann" must give up to be tried (and we presume hanged) a certain unspecified number of their own colleagues; ( ) that they must recant their republicanism and proclaim their allegiance to the empire; ( ) that negotiations must proceed on the basis of the partition act and the surrender of one-fourth of their country to the new orange ascendancy. no section of honest irishmen will dream of negotiating on such a basis, and any attempt to make use of "sane and moderate" elements to divide and discredit the elected representatives of the people will be met by the universal declaration that the "dail eireann" alone is entitled to speak for ireland. until this primary fact is recognised the fight in ireland must go on, and many black chapters of its history will have to be written before some british statesman comes along who is prepared to treat with the irish nation in a spirit of justice and generosity. peace is still perfectly possible if right methods are employed to ensure it. it is futile to ask sinn fein to lay down arms and to abjure their opinions as a preliminary condition to negotiations. i doubt whether the sinn fein leaders could impose such a condition upon their followers, even if they were so inclined--which they are not and never will be. let there, then, to start with, be no preliminary tying of hands. the initiative must come from the government. they should announce the largest measure of home rule they will pledge themselves to pass. they should accompany this with a public promise to submit it to an immediate plebiscite or referendum of the whole irish people on the plain issue "yes" or "no." all they can ask of the sinn fein leaders is that they will leave the irish people absolutely free to record their judgment. i can imagine that, in such circumstances, the attitude of the sinn fein leaders would be: "we do not surrender our republican opinions, but if the government offer full new zealand home rule (let us say) and pledge themselves to enforce it if ireland accepts it, sinn fein would be justified before all national republicans in saying: 'this is a prospect so magnificent for our country we shall do nothing in the smallest degree to prejudice the opinion of the people against its acceptance or to fetter the free and honest working of the new institutions.'" beyond this no person desiring a real peace ought to expect sinn fein to go, and i am convinced that if this were the attitude of sinn fein and if the offer were made by the government as suggested, the majority for acceptance, on a plebiscite being taken, would be so great that there would be no further shadow of opposition even in ulster, where nobody would object that it should have local autonomy in all necessary particulars. i can conceive only one man standing in the way of a settlement on these lines--a settlement which would be just to ireland and honourable to britain. so long as sir edward carson remains the powerful figure he is--dictating and directing the policy of the cabinet--it is improbable that he will consent to have the opinion of "the six counties" taken by a plebiscite. but if sir edward carson were to quit politics, as one may hope he can see a thousand good reasons for doing, i can well imagine that mr lloyd george would be very glad to come to a satisfactory arrangement. whatever happens this much is certain, there is only one road to peace in ireland--the recognition of her nationhood, one and indivisible, and of the right of irishmen to manage their own affairs in accordance with irish ideals. the end postscript since this book went to press, the appointment of sir edward carson as lord of appeal and the interview between mr de valera and sir james craig are developments of a more hopeful character which, it is devoutly to be hoped, will bring about the longed-for _rapprochement_ between the two countries. proofreading team handbook of home rule being _articles on the irish question_ by the right hon. w.e. gladstone, m.p. the right hon. john morley, m.p., lord thring james bryce, m.p., canon maccoll e.l. godkin, and r. barry o'brien _with preface by_ the right hon. earl spencer, k.g. edited by james bryce, m.p. second edition london kegan paul, trench & co., i, paternoster square editor's note. of the articles contained in this volume, those by mr. gladstone, mr. e.l. godkin on "a lawyer's objections to home rule," and mr. barry o'brien appear for the first time. the others are reprinted from the _contemporary review_, the _nineteenth century_, and the _new princeton review_, to the proprietors and editors of which periodicals respectively the thanks of the several writers and of the editor are tendered. in most of these reprints some passages of transitory interest have been omitted, and some few additions have been made. the object of the writers has been to treat the difficult questions connected with the government of ireland in a dispassionate spirit; and the volume is offered to the public in the hope that it may, at a time of warm controversy over passing events, help to lead thoughtful men back to the consideration of the principles which underlie those questions, and which it seeks to elucidate by calm discussion and by references to history. _october_, . contents. preface. by the right hon. earl spencer, k.g. american home rule. by e.l. godkin how we became home rulers. by james bryce, m.p. home rule and imperial unity. by lord thring the irish government bill and the irish land bill. by lord thring the "unionist" position. by canon maccoll a lawyer's objections to home rule. by e.l. godkin the "unionist" case for home rule. by r. barry o'brien ireland's alternatives. by lord thring the past and future of the irish question. by james bryce, m.p. some arguments considered. by the right hon. john morley, m.p. lessons of irish history in the eighteenth century. by the right hon. w.e. gladstone, m.p. preface. the present seems an excellent moment for bringing forward the arguments in favour of a new policy for ireland, which are to be found in the articles contained in this volume. we are realizing the first results of the verdict given at the election of . and this i interpret as saying that the constituencies were not then ready to depart from the lines of policy which, up to last year, nearly all politicians of both parties in parliament had laid down for their guidance in irish affairs. we have had the session occupied almost wholly with lord salisbury's proposals for strengthening the power of the central government to maintain law and order in ireland, and for dealing with the most pressing necessities of the land question in that country. it is well, before the policy of the government is practically tested, that the views of thoughtful men holding different opinions should be clearly set forth, not in the shape of polemical speeches, but in measured articles which specially appeal to those who have not hitherto joined the fighting ranks of either side, and who are sure to intervene with great force at the next election, when the irish question is again submitted to the constituencies. i feel that i can add little or nothing to the weight of the arguments contained in these papers, but i should like to give some reasons why i earnestly hope that they will receive careful consideration. the writers have endeavoured to approach their work with impartiality, and to free themselves from those prejudices which make it difficult for englishmen to discuss irish questions in a fresh and independent train of thought, and realize how widely irish customs, laws, traditions, and sentiments differ from our own. we are apt to think that what has worked well here will work well in ireland; that irishmen who differ from us are unreasonable; and that their proposals for change must be mistaken. we do not make allowance for the soreness of feeling prevailing among men who have long objected to the system by which ireland has been governed, and who find that their earnest appeals for reform have been, until recent times, contemptuously disregarded by english politicians. time after time moderate counsels have been rejected until too late. acts of an exceptional character intended to secure law and order have been very numerous, and every one of them has caused fresh irritation; while remedial measures have been given in a manner which has not won the sympathy of the people, because they have not been the work of the irish themselves, and have not been prepared in their own way. parliament seems during the past session to have fallen into the same error. by the power of an english majority, measures have been passed which are vehemently opposed by the political leaders and the majority of the irish nation, and which are only agreeable to a small minority in ireland. this action can only succeed if the irish can be persuaded to relinquish the national sentiments of home rule; and yet this was never stronger or more vigorous than at the present time. it is supported by millions of irish settled in america and in australia; and here i would say that it has often struck me that the strong feeling of dissatisfaction, or, i might say, of disaffection, among the irish is fed and nurtured by the marked contrast existing between the social condition of large numbers of the irish in the south and west of ireland and the views and habits of their numerous relatives in the united states. the social condition of many parts of ireland is as backward, or perhaps more backward, than the condition of the rural population of england at the end of last or the beginning of this century. the irish peasantry still live in poor hovels, often in the same room with animals; they have few modern comforts; and yet they are in close communication with those who live at ease in the cities and farms of the united states. they are also imbued with all the advanced political notions of the american republic, and are sufficiently educated to read the latest political doctrines in the press which circulates among them. their social condition at home is a hundred years behind their state of political and mental culture. they naturally contrast the misery of many irish peasants with the position of their relatives in the new world. this cannot but embitter their views against english rulers, and strengthen their leaning to national sentiments. their national aspirations have never died out since . they have taken various forms; but if the movements arising from them have been put down, fresh movements have constantly sprung up. the press has grown into an immense power, and its influences have all been used to strengthen the zeal for irish nationality, while, at the same time, the success of the national movements in italy, hungary, greece, and germany have had the same effect. lastly, the sentiment of home rule has gained the sympathy of large bodies of electors in the constituencies of great britain, and, under the circumstances, it is difficult to suppose that, even if the country remains quiet, constitutional agitation will vanish or the irish relinquish their most cherished ambition. we hear, from men who ought to know something of ireland, that if the land question is once settled, and dual ownership practically abolished, the tenants will be satisfied, and the movement for home rule will no longer find active support in ireland. without going into the whole of this argument, i should like to say two things: first, that i do not know how a large scheme of land purchase can be carried through parliament with safety to imperial interests without establishing, at the same time, some strong irish government in dublin to act between the imperial government and the tenants of ireland; and, second, that the feeling for home rule has a vitality of its own which will survive the land question, even if independently settled. home rule is an expression of national feeling which cannot be extinguished in ireland, and the only safe method of dealing with it is to turn its force and power to the support of an irish government established for the management of local irish affairs. there are those who think that this must lead to separation. i cannot believe in this fear, for i know of no english statesman who looks upon complete separation of ireland from great britain as possible. the geographical position of ireland, the social and commercial connection between the two peoples, renders such a thing impossible. the irish know this, and they are not so foolish as to think that they could gain their independence by force of arms; but i do not believe that they desire it. they are satisfied to obtain the management of their own local affairs under the _ægis_ of the flag of england. the papers in this volume show how this can be done with due regard to imperial interests and the rights of minorities. i shall not enlarge on this part of the subject, but i wish to draw attention to the working of the irish government, and the position which it holds in the country, for it is through its administration that the policy of the cabinet will be carried out. at the outset i feel bound to deprecate the exaggerated condemnation which the "castle" receives from its opponents. it has its defects. notwithstanding efforts of various ministers to enlarge the circle from which its officials are drawn, it is still too narrow for the modern development of irish society, and it has from time to time been recruited from partisans without sufficient regard to the efficiency and requirements of the public service. but, on the whole, its members, taken as individuals, can well bear comparison with those of other branches of the civil service. they are diligent; they desire to do their duty with impartiality, and to hold an even balance between many opposing interests in ireland. whatever party is in office, they loyally carry out the policy of their chiefs. they are, probably, more plastic to the leadership of the heads of departments than members of some english offices, and they are more quickly moved by the influences around them. sometimes they may relapse into an attitude of indifference and inertness if their chiefs are not active; but, on the other hand, they will act with vigour and decision if they are led by men who know their own minds and desire to be firm in the government of the country. when speaking of the chiefs of the irish civil service, who change according to the political party in office, we must not overlook the legal officers, who exercise a most powerful influence on irish administration. they consist of the lord chancellor, the attorney and solicitor general, and, until , there was also an officer called the law adviser, who was the maid-of-all-work of castle administration. in england, those who hold similar legal offices take no part in the daily administration of public affairs. the lord chancellor, as a member of the cabinet, takes his share in responsibility for the policy of the government. the law officers are consulted in special cases, and take their part from time to time in debates in the house of commons. in ireland, however, the chancellor is constantly consulted by the lord-lieutenant on any difficult matter of administration, and the attorney and solicitor general are in constant communication with the lord-lieutenant, if he carries out the daily work of administration, and with the chief and the under secretary. governments differ as to the use they make of these officials. some governments have endeavoured to confine their work to cases where a mere legal opinion has to be obtained; but, when the country is in a disturbed state, even these limited references become very frequent, and questions of policy as well as of law are often discussed with the law officers. it is needless to say that, with their knowledge of ireland and the traditions of castle government (it is rare that all the law officers are new to office, and, consequently, they carry on the traditions from one government to another), they often exercise a paramount influence over the policy of the irish government, and practically control it. they are connected with the closest and most influential order in irish society--the legal order, consisting of the judges and bar of ireland. this adds to the general weight of their advice, but it has a special bearing when cases of legal reform or administration are under consideration; it then requires unwonted courage and independence for the law officers of the crown to support changes which the lay members of the government deem necessary. i have known conspicuous instances of the exercise of these high qualities by law officers enabling reforms to be carried, but as a rule, particularly when the initiative of legal reform is left to them, the irish law officers do not care to move against the feeling of the legal world in dublin. the lawyers, like other bodies, oppose the diminution of offices and honours belonging to them, or of the funds which, in the way of fees and salaries, are distributed among members of the bar; and they become bitterly hostile to any permanent official who is known to be a firm legal reformer. it would be impossible for me not to acknowledge the great service often done to the government by the able men who have filled the law offices, yet i feel that under certain circumstances, when their influence has been allowed too strongly to prevail, it has tended to narrow the views of the irish government, and to keep it within a circle too narrow for the altered circumstances of modern life. the chief peculiarity of the irish administration is its extreme centralization. in this two departments may be mentioned as typical of the whole--the police and administration of local justice. the police in dublin and throughout ireland are under the control of the lord-lieutenant, and both these forces are admirable of their kind. they are almost wholly maintained by imperial funds. the dublin force costs about £ , a year. the royal irish constabulary costs over a million in quiet, and a million and a half in disturbed times. local authorities have nothing to do with their action or management. local justice is administered by unpaid magistrates as in england, but they have been assisted, and gradually are being supplanted, by magistrates appointed by the lord-lieutenant and paid by the state. this state of things arose many years ago from the want of confidence between resident landlords and the bulk of the people. when agrarian or religious differences disturbed a locality the people distrusted the local magistrates, and by degrees the system of stipendiary, or, as they are called, resident magistrates, spread over the country. to maintain the judicial independence and impartiality of these magistrates is of the highest importance. at one time this was in some danger, for the resident magistrates not only heard cases at petty sessions, but, as executive peace officers, to a very great extent took the control of the police in their district, not only at riots, but in following up and discovering offenders. their position as judicial and executive officers was thus very unfortunately mixed up. between and the irish government did their utmost to separate and distinguish between these two functions, and it is to be hoped that the same policy has been and will be now continued, otherwise grave mischief in the administration of justice will arise. the existence of this staff of stipendiary magistrates could not fail to weaken the influence of the gentry in local affairs, and, at the same time, other causes were at work to undermine still further their power. the spread of education, the ballot, the extension of the franchise, communication with america, all tended to strengthen the political leaning of the tenants towards the national party in ireland, and to widen the political differences between the richer and poorer classes in the country. the result of this has been, that not only have even the best landlords gradually lost their power in parliamentary elections and on elective boards, but the government, which greatly relied on them for support, has become isolated. the system of centralization is felt all over the country. it was the cause of weakness in the disturbed years of and , and, although the irish executive strengthened themselves by placing officers over several counties, on whom they devolved a great deal of responsibility, they did not by these steps meet the real difficulty, which was that everything that went wrong, whether as to police or magisterial decisions, was attributed to the management of the castle. in this country, local authorities and benches of magistrates, quite independent of the home office, are held responsible for mistakes in police action or irregularities in local justice. the consequence is that there is a strong buffer to protect the character and power of the home office. the absence of such protection in ireland obviously has a very prejudicial effect on the permanent influence and popularity of the irish government. but as long as our system of government from england exists, this centralization cannot be avoided, for it would not be possible to transfer the responsibility of the police to local representative bodies, as they are too much opposed to the landlords and the government to be trusted when strong party differences arise; nor, for the same reason, would it be possible to fall back on local men to administer justice. the fact is, that, out of the protestant part of ulster, the irish government receives the cordial support of only the landed proprietors, and a part of the upper middle classes in the towns. the feeling of the mass of the people has been so long against them that no change in the direction of trust in any centralized government of anti-national character can be expected. it would be difficult, perhaps impossible, to find any municipal council, boards of guardians, or local boards, in leinster, munster, or connaught, whose members do not consist of a majority of nationalists. at nearly all such assemblies, whenever any important political movement takes place in the country, or when the irish government take any action which is displeasing to the nationalists, resolutions are discussed and carried in a spirit of sharp hostility to the government. in parliamentary elections we also find clear evidence of the strength of the nationalists, and the extreme weakness of their opponents. this is a test which those who accept popular representative government cannot disregard, particularly at an election when for the first time the new constituencies were called upon to exercise the privileges entrusted to them by parliament. such was the election of , followed in by another general election. in contests took place in most of the irish constituencies. they were between liberals allied with conservatives, and parnellites. in the contests were between those who called themselves unionists and parnellites, and the irish policy of mr. gladstone was specially referred to the electors. in regard to the number of members returned on the two sides, the result of each election was almost identical, but in there were fewer contests. we may, then, assume that the relative forces of parnellites and unionists were accurately represented at the election of . if we take the votes at the election of for candidates standing as nationalists, we shall find, roughly speaking, that they obtained in round numbers about , votes, and candidates who stood either as liberals or conservatives about , . but the case is really stronger than these figures represent it, because in some constituencies the contests were between liberals and conservatives, and there can be no doubt that in those constituencies a number of nationalist votes were given for one or both of such candidates--votes which, therefore, would have to be deducted from the , , leaving a still heavier majority on the nationalist side.[ ] if we look at individual constituencies, we find that in south kerry only persons voted for the "unionist" candidate, while voted for the nationalist. in six out of seven constituencies in cork where contests took place , votes were given for the nationalists, and only for their opponents. in dublin, in the division which may be considered the west end constituency of the irish metropolis, the most successful man of commerce in ireland, a leader of society, whose liberality towards those in his employment is only equalled by his munificence in all public works, was defeated by over votes. he did not stand in , but his successor was defeated by a still larger majority. these elections show the numbers in ireland on which the government and those who oppose mr. parnell's policy can count for support. it is absurd to say that these results are caused by terrorism exercised over the minds of the electors by the agitators in ireland; the same results occurred in every part of three provinces, and in part of ulster, and the universality of the feeling proves the dominant feeling of the irish electors. they show the extreme difficulty, the impossibility, of gaining that support and confidence which a government needs in a free country. as it is, the irish government stands isolated in ireland, and relies for support solely on england. is a policy opposed to national feeling, which has been often, and by different ministers, tried in ireland, likely to succeed in the hands of a government such as i have described, and isolated, as i think few will deny it to be? it is impossible in the long run to maintain it. the roots of strength are wanting. if we turn from dublin to london, we do not find greater prospects of success. twice within fourteen months lord salisbury has formed a government. in his cabinet, on taking office, deliberately decided to rule ireland without exceptional laws; after a few months, they announced that they must ask parliament for fresh powers. they resigned before they had defined their measures. but within six months lord salisbury was once more prime minister, and again commenced his administration by governing ireland under the ordinary law. this attempt did not continue longer than the first, for when parliament met in , preparations were at once made to carry the criminal law amendment act, which occupied so large a portion of the late session. this is not the action of men who have strong faith in their principles. nor can it be shown that the continuous support so necessary for success will be given to this policy. no doubt it may be urged that the operation of the act is not limited in duration; but, notwithstanding that, few politicians believe that the constituencies of great britain will long support the application of exceptional criminal laws to any part of the united kingdom. this would be wholly inconsistent with past experience in relation to these measures, which points entirely the other way; and the publication in english newspapers and constant discussion on english platforms of the painful incidents which seem, unfortunately, inseparable from a rigid administration of the law in ireland, together with the prolonged debates, such incidents give rise to, in parliament, aggravate the difficulties of administration, and lead the irish people to believe that exceptional legislation will be as short-lived in the future as it has been in the past. it was this evidence of want of continuity of policy in , and the startling disclosure of the weakness of the anti-national party in ireland at the election in the autumn of that year, which finally convinced me that the time had come when we could no longer turn to a mixed policy of remedial and exceptional criminal legislation as the means of winning the constituencies of that country in support of our old system of governing ireland. that system has failed for eighty-six years, and obviously cannot succeed when worked with representative institutions. as the people of great britain will not for a moment tolerate the withdrawal of representative government from ireland, we must adopt some new plan. what i have here written deals with but a fragment of the arguments for home rule, some of which are admirably set forth by the able men who have written the articles to which this is the preface. i earnestly wish that they may arrest the attention of many excellent irishmen who still cling to the old traditions of english rule, and cause them to realize that the only way of relieving their country from the intolerable uncertainty which hangs over her commercial, social, and political interests and paralyzes all efforts for the improvement of her people, will be to form a constitution supported by all classes of the community. i trust that they will join in this work before it is too late, for they may yet exercise a powerful and salutary influence in the settlement of this great question. footnotes: [footnote : there was one case--north louth--in which two nationalists opposed one another, and i have left that case out of the calculation.] american home rule by e.l. godkin american experience has been frequently cited, in the course of the controversy now raging in england over the irish question, both by way of warning and of example. for instance, i have found in the _times_ as well as in other journals--the _spectator_, i think, among the number--very contemptuous dismissals of the plan of offering ireland a government like that of an american state, on the ground that the americans are loyal to the central authority, while in ireland there is a strong feeling of hostility to it, which would probably increase under home rule. the queen's writ, it has been remarked, cannot be said to run in large parts of ireland, while in every part of the united states the federal writ is implicitly obeyed, and the ministers of federal authority find ready aid and sympathy from the people. if i remember rightly, the duke of argyll has been very emphatic in pointing out the difference between giving local self-government to a community in which the tendencies of popular feeling are "centrifugal," and giving it to one in which these tendencies are "centripetal." the inference to be drawn was, of course, that as long as ireland disliked the imperial government the concession of home rule would be unsafe, and would only become safe when the irish people showed somewhat the same sort of affection for the english connection which the people of the state of new york now feel for the constitution of the united states. among the multitude of those who have taken part in the controversy on one side or the other, no one has, so far as i have observed, pointed out that the state of feeling in america toward the central government with which the state of feeling in ireland towards the british government is now compared, did not exist when the american constitution was set up; that the political tendencies in america at that time were centrifugal, not centripetal, and that the extraordinary love and admiration with which americans now regard the federal government are the result of eighty years' experience of its working. the first confederation was as much as the people could bear in the way of surrendering local powers when the war of independence came to an end. it was its hopeless failure to provide peace and security which led to the framing of the present constitution. but even with this experience still fresh, the adoption of the constitution was no easy matter. i shall not burden this article with historical citations showing the very great difficulty which the framers of the constitution had in inducing the various states to adopt it, or the magnitude and variety of the fears and suspicions with which, many of the most influential men in all parts of the country regarded it. any one who wishes to know how numerous and diversified these fears and suspicions were, cannot do better than read the series of papers known as "the federalist," written mainly by hamilton and madison, to commend the new plan to the various states. it was adopted almost as a matter of necessity, that is, as the only way out of the slough of despond in which the confederation had plunged the union of the states; but the objections to it which were felt at the beginning were only removed by actual trial. hamilton's two colleagues, as delegates from new york, yates and lansing, withdrew in disgust from the convention, as soon as the constitution was outlined, and did not return. the notion that the constitution was produced by the craving of the american people for something of that sort to love and revere, and that it was not bestowed on them until they had given ample assurance that they would lavish affection on it, has no foundation whatever in fact. the devotion of americans to the union is, indeed, as clear a case of cause and effect as is to be found in political history. they have learned to like the constitution because the country has prospered under it, and because it has given them all the benefits of national life without interference with local liberties. if they had not set up a central government until the centrifugal sentiment had disappeared from the states, and the feeling of loyalty for a central authority had fully shown itself, they would assuredly never have set it up at all. moreover, it has to be borne in mind that the adoption of the constitution did not involve the surrender of any local franchises, by which the people of the various states set great store. the states preserved fully four-fifths of their autonomy, or in fact nearly all of it which closely concerned the daily lives of individuals. set aside the post-office, and a citizen of the state of new york, not engaged in foreign trade, might, down to the outbreak of the civil war, have passed a long and busy life without once coming in contact with a united states official, and without being made aware in any of his doings, by any restriction or regulation, that he was living under any government but that of his own state. if he went abroad he had to apply for a united states passport. if he quarrelled with a foreigner, or with the citizen of another state, he might be sued in the federal court. if he imported foreign goods he had to pay duties to the collector of a federal custom-house. if he invented something, or wrote a book, he had to apply to the department of the interior for a patent or a copyright. but how few there were in the first seventy years of american history who had any of these experiences! no one supposes, or has ever supposed, that had the federalists demanded any very large sacrifice of local franchises, or attempted to set up even a close approach to a centralized government, the adoption of the constitution would have been possible. if, for instance, such a transfer of both administration and legislation to the central authority as took place in ireland after the union had been proposed, it would have been rejected with derision. you will get no american to argue with you on this point. if you ask him whether he thinks it likely that a highly centralized government could have been created in --such a one, for example, as ireland has been under since --or whether if created it would by this time have won the affection of the people, or filled them with centripetal tendencies, he will answer you with a smile. the truth is that nowhere, any more than in ireland, do people love their government from a sense of duty or because they crave an object of political affection, or even because it exalts them in the eyes of foreigners. they love it because they are happy or prosperous under it; because it supplies security in the form best suited to their tastes and habits, or in some manner ministers to their self-love. loyalty to the king as the lord's anointed, without any sense either of favours received or expected, has played a great part in european politics, i admit; but, for reasons which i will not here take up space in stating, a political arrangement, whether it be an elected monarch or a constitution, cannot be made, in our day, to reign in men's hearts except as the result of benefits so palpable that common people, as well as political philosophers, can see them and count them. many of the opponents of home rule, too, point to the vigour with which the united states government put down the attempt made by the south to break up the union as an example of the american love of "imperial unity," and of the spirit in which england should now meet the irish demands for local autonomy. this again is rather surprising, because you will find no one in america who will maintain for one moment that troops could have been raised in to undertake the conquest of the south for the purpose of setting up a centralized administration, or, in other words, for the purpose of wiping out state lines, or diminishing state authority. no man or party proposed anything of this kind at the outbreak of the war, or would have dared to propose it. the object for which the north rose in arms, and which lincoln had in view when he called for troops, was the restoration of the union just as it was when south carolina seceded, barring the extension of slavery into the territories. during the first year of the war, certainly, the revolted states might at any time have had peace on the _status quo_ basis, that is, without the smallest diminution of their rights and immunities under the constitution. it was only when it became evident that the war would have to be fought out to a finish, as the pugilists say--that is, that it would have to end in a complete conquest of the southern territory--that the question, what would become of the states as a political organization after the struggle was over, began to be debated at all. what did become of them? how did americans deal with home rule, after it had been used to set on foot against the central authority what the newspapers used to delight in calling "the greatest rebellion the world ever saw"? the answer to these questions is, it seems to me, a contribution of some value to the discussion of the irish problem in its present stage, if american precedents can throw any light whatever on it. there was a joint committee of both houses of congress appointed in to consider the condition of the south with reference to the safety or expediency of admitting the states lately in rebellion to their old relations to the union, including representation in congress. it contained, besides such fanatical enemies of the south as thaddeus stevens, such very conservative men as mr. fessenden, mr. grimes, mr. morrill, and mr. conkling. here is the account they gave of the condition of southern feeling one year after lee's surrender:-- "examining the evidence taken by your committee still further, in connection with facts too notorious to be disputed, it appears that the southern press, with few exceptions, and those mostly of newspapers recently established by northern men, abounds with weekly and daily abuse of the institutions and people of the loyal states; defends the men who led, and the principles which incited, the rebellion; denounces and reviles southern men who adhered to the union; and strives constantly and unscrupulously, by every means in its power, to keep alive the fire of hate and discord between the sections; calling upon the president to violate his oath of office, overturn the government by force of arms, and drive the representatives of the people from their seats in congress. the national banner is openly insulted, and the national airs scoffed at, not only by an ignorant populace, but at public meetings, and once, among other notable instances, at a dinner given in honour of a notorious rebel who had violated his oath and abandoned his flag. the same individual is elected to an important office in the leading city of his state, although an unpardoned rebel, and so offensive that the president refuses to allow him to enter upon his official duties. in another state the leading general of the rebel armies is openly nominated for governor by the speaker of the house of delegates, and the nomination is hailed by the people with shouts of satisfaction, and openly endorsed by the press.... "the evidence of an intense hostility to the federal union, and an equally intense love of the late confederacy, nurtured by the war is decisive. while it appears that nearly all are willing to submit, at least for the time being, to the federal authority, it is equally clear that the ruling motive is a desire to obtain the advantages which will be derived from a representation in congress. officers of the union army on duty, and northern men who go south to engage in business, are generally detested and proscribed. southern men who adhered to the union are bitterly hated and relentlessly persecuted. in some localities prosecutions have been instituted in state courts against union officers for acts done in the line of official duty, and similar prosecutions are threatened elsewhere as soon as the united states troops are removed. all such demonstrations show a state of feeling against which it is unmistakably necessary to guard. "the testimony is conclusive that after the collapse of the confederacy the feeling of the people of the rebellious states was that of abject submission. having appealed to the tribunal of arms, they had no hope except that by the magnanimity of their conquerors, their lives, and possibly their property, might be preserved. unfortunately the general issue of pardons to persons who had been prominent in the rebellion, and the feeling of kindliness and conciliation manifested by the executive, and very generally indicated through the northern press, had the effect to render whole communities forgetful of the crime they had committed, defiant towards the federal government, and regardless of their duties as citizens. the conciliatory measures of the government do not seem to have been met even half-way. the bitterness and defiance exhibited towards the united states under such circumstances is without a parallel in the history of the world. in return for our leniency we receive only an insulting denial of our authority. in return for our kind desire for the resumption of fraternal relations we receive only an insolent assumption of rights and privileges long since forfeited. the crime we have punished is paraded as a virtue, and the principles of republican government which we have vindicated at so terrible a cost are denounced as unjust and oppressive. "if we add to this evidence the fact that, although peace has been declared by the president, he has not, to this day, deemed it safe to restore the writ of _habeas corpus_, to relieve the insurrectionary states of martial law, nor to withdraw the troops from many localities, and that the commanding general deems an increase of the army indispensable to the preservation of order and the protection of loyal and well-disposed people in the south, the proof of a condition of feeling hostile to the union and dangerous to the government throughout the insurrectionary states would seem to be overwhelming." this committee recommended a series of coercive measures, the first of which was the adoption of the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, which disqualified for all office, either under the united states or under any state, any person who having in any capacity taken an oath of allegiance to the united states afterwards engaged in rebellion or gave aid and comfort to the rebels. this denied the _jus honorum_ to all the leading men at the south who had survived the war. in addition to it, an act was passed in march, , which put all the rebel states under military rule until a constitution should have been framed by a convention elected by all males over twenty-one, except such as would be excluded from office by the above-named constitutional amendment if it were adopted, which at that time it had not been. another act was passed three weeks later, prescribing, for voters in the states lately in rebellion, what was known as the "ironclad oath," which excluded from the franchise not only all who had borne arms against the united states, but all who, having ever held any office for which the taking an oath of allegiance to the united states was a qualification, had afterwards ever given "aid or comfort to the enemies thereof." this practically disfranchised all the white men of the south over twenty-five years old. on this legislation there grew up, as all the world now knows, what was called the "carpet-bag" _regime_. swarms of northern adventurers went down to the southern states, organized the ignorant negro voters, constructed state constitutions to suit themselves, got themselves elected to all the chief offices, plundered the state treasuries, contracted huge state debts, and stole the proceeds in connivance with legislatures composed mainly of negroes, of whom the most intelligent and instructed had been barbers and hotel-waiters. in some of the states, such as south carolina and mississippi, in which the negro population were in the majority, the government became a mere caricature. i was in columbia, the capital of south carolina, in , during the session of the legislature, when you could obtain the passage of almost any measure you pleased by a small payment--at that time seven hundred dollars--to an old negro preacher who controlled the coloured majority. under the pretence of fitting up committee-rooms, the private lodging-rooms at the boarding-houses of the negro members, in many instances, were extravagantly furnished with wilton and brussels carpets, mirrors, and sofas. a thousand dollars were expended for two hundred elegant imported china spittoons. there were only one hundred and twenty-three members in the house of representatives, but the residue were, perhaps, transferred to the private chambers of the legislators. now, how did the southern whites deal with this state of things? well, i am sorry to say they manifested their discontent very much in the way in which the irish have for the last hundred years been manifesting theirs. if, as the english opponents of home rule seem to think, readiness to commit outrages, and refusal to sympathize with the victims of outrages, indicate political incapacity, the whites of the south showed, in the period between and , that they were utterly unfit to be entrusted with the work of self-government. they could not rise openly in revolt because the united states troops were everywhere at the service of the carpet-baggers, for the suppression of armed resistance. they did not send petitions to congress, or write letters to the northern newspapers, or hold indignation meetings. they simply formed a huge secret society on the model of the "molly maguires" or "moonlighters," whose special function was to intimidate, flog, mutilate, or murder political opponents in the night time. this society was called the "ku-klux klan." let me give some account of its operation, and i shall make it as brief as possible. it had become so powerful in that president grant in that year, in his message to congress, declared that "a condition of things existed in some of the states of the union rendering life and property insecure, and the carrying of the mails and the collecting of the revenue dangerous." a joint select committee of congress was accordingly appointed, early in , to "inquire into the condition of affairs in the late insurrectionary states, so far as regards the execution of the laws and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the united states." its report now lies before me, and it reads uncommonly like the speech of an irish secretary in the house of commons bringing in a "suppression of crime bill." the committee say-- "there is a remarkable concurrence of testimony to the effect that, in those of the late rebellious states into whose condition we have examined, the courts and juries administer justice between man and man in all ordinary cases, civil and criminal; and while there is this concurrence on this point, the evidence is equally decisive that redress cannot be obtained against those who commit crimes in disguise and at night. the reasons assigned are that identification is difficult, almost impossible; that, when this is attempted, the combinations and oaths of the order come in and release the culprit by perjury, either upon the witness-stand or in the jury-box; and that the terror inspired by their acts, as well as the public sentiment in their favour in many localities, paralyzes the arm of civil power. * * * * * "the murders and outrages which have been perpetrated in many counties of middle and west tennessee, during the past few months, have been so numerous, and of such an aggravated character, as almost baffles investigation. in these counties a reign of terror exists which is so absolute in its nature that the best of citizens are unable or unwilling to give free expression to their opinions. the terror inspired by the secret organization known as the ku-klux klan is so great, that the officers of the law are powerless to execute its provisions, to discharge their duties, or to bring the guilty perpetrators of these outrages to the punishment they deserve. their stealthy movements are generally made under cover of night, and under masks and disguises, which render their identification difficult, if not impossible. to add to the secrecy which envelops their operations, is the fact that no information of their murderous acts can be obtained without the greatest difficulty and danger in the localities where they are committed. no one dares to inform upon them, or take any measures to bring them to punishment, because no one can tell but that he may be the next victim of their hostility or animosity. the members of this organization, with their friends, aiders, and abettors, take especial pains to conceal all their operations. * * * * * "your committee believe that during the past six months, the murders--to say nothing of other outrages--would average one a day, or one for every twenty-four hours; that in the great majority of these cases they have been perpetrated by the ku-klux above referred to, and few, if any, have been brought to punishment. a number of the counties of this state (tennessee) are entirely at the mercy of this organization, and roving bands of nightly marauders bid defiance to the civil authorities, and threaten to drive out every man, white or black, who does not submit to their arbitrary dictation. to add to the general lawlessness of these communities, bad men of every description take advantage of the circumstances surrounding them, and perpetrate acts of violence, from personal or pecuniary motives, under the plea of political necessity." here is some of the evidence on which the report was based. a complaint of outrages committed in georgia was referred by the general of the army, in june, , to the general of the department of the south for thorough investigation and report. general terry, in his report, made august , , says[ ]-- "in many parts of the state there is practically no government. the worst of crimes are committed, and no attempt is made to punish those who commit them. murders have been and are frequent; the abuse, in various ways, of the blacks is too common to excite notice. there can be no doubt of the existence of numerous insurrectionary organizations known as 'ku-klux klans,' who, shielded by their disguise, by the secrecy of their movements, and by the terror which they inspire, perpetrate crime with impunity. there is great reason to believe that in some cases local magistrates are in sympathy with the members of these organizations. in many places they are overawed by them and dare not attempt to punish them. to punish such offenders by civil proceedings would be a difficult task, even were magistrates in all cases disposed and had they the courage to do their duty, for the same influences which govern them equally affect juries and witnesses." lieutenant-colonel lewis merrill, who assumed command (in louisiana) on the th of march, and commenced investigation into the state of affairs, says (p. )-- "from the best information i can get, i estimate the number of cases of whipping, beating, and personal violence of various grades, in this county, since the first of last november, at between three and four hundred, excluding numerous minor cases of threats, intimidation, abuse, and small personal violence, as knocking down with a pistol or gun, etc. the more serious outrages, exclusive of murders and whippings, noted hereafter, have been the following:--" he then proceeds with the details of sixty-eight cases, giving the names of the parties injured, white and black, and including the tearing up of the railway, on the night before a raid was made by the ku-klux on the county treasury building. the rails were taken up, to prevent the arrival of the united states troops, who, it was known, were to come on sunday morning. the raid was made on that sunday night while the troops were lying at chester, twenty-two miles distant, unable to reach yorkville, because of the rails being torn up. another witness said: "to give the details of the whipping of men to compel them to change their mode of voting, the tearing of them away from their families at night, accompanied with insults and outrage, and followed by their murder, would be but repeating what has been described in other states, showing that it is the same organization in all, working by the same means for the same end. five murders are shown to have been committed in monroe county, fifteen in noxubee, one in lowndes, by the testimony taken in the city of washington; but the extent to which school-houses were burnt, teachers whipped, and outrages committed in this state, cannot be fully given until the testimony taken by the sub-committee shall have been printed and made ready to report." there are about eighty, closely printed, large octavo pages of this kind of testimony given by sufferers from the outrages. something was done to suppress the ku-klux by a federal act passed in , which made offences of this kind punishable in the federal courts. considerable numbers of them were arrested, tried, and convicted, and sent to undergo their punishment in the northern jails. but there was no complete pacification of the south until the carpet-bag governments were refused the support of the federal troops by president hayes, on his accession to power in . then the carpet-bag _régime_ disappeared like a house of cards. the chief carpet-baggers fled, and the government passed at once into the hands of the native whites. i do not propose to defend or explain the way in which they have since then kept it in their hands, by suppressing or controlling the negro vote. this is not necessary to my purpose. what i seek to show is that the irish are not peculiar in their manner of expressing their discontent with a government directed or controlled by the public opinion of another indifferent or semi-hostile community which it is impossible to resist in open warfare; that anglo-saxons resort to somewhat the same methods under similar circumstances, and that lawlessness and cruelty, considered as expressions of political animosity, do not necessarily argue any incapacity for the conduct of an orderly and efficient government, although i admit freely that they do argue a low state of civilization. i will add one more illustration which, although more remote than those which i have taken from the southern states during the reconstruction period, is not too remote for my purpose, and is in some respects stronger than any of them. i do not know a more orderly community in the world, or one which, down to the outbreak of the civil war, when manufactures began to multiply, and the irish immigration began to pour in, had a higher average of intelligence than the state of connecticut. down to all voters in that state had to be members of the congregational church. it had no large cities, and this, with the aid of its seat of learning, yale college, preserved in it, i think, in greater purity than even massachusetts, the old puritan simplicity of manners, the puritan spirit of order and thrift, and the business-like view of government which grew out of the practice of town government. a less sentimental community, i do not think, exists anywhere, or one in which the expression of strong feeling on any subject but religion is less cultivated or viewed with less favour. in the matter of managing their own political affairs in peace or war, i do not expect the irish to equal the connecticut people for a hundred years to come, no matter how much practice they may have in the interval, and i think that fifty years ago it was only picked bodies of englishmen who could do so. yet, in , in the town of canterbury, one of the most orderly and intelligent in the state, an estimable and much-esteemed lady, miss prudence crandall, was carrying on a girls' school, when something happened to touch her conscience about the condition of the free negroes of the north. she resolved, in a moment of enthusiasm, to undertake the education of negro girls only. what follows forms one of the most famous episodes in the anti-slavery struggle in america, and is possibly familiar to many of the older readers of this article. i shall extract the account of it as given briefly in the lately published life of william lloyd garrison, by his sons. some of the details are much worse than is here described. "the story of this remarkable case cannot be pursued here except in brief.... it will be enough to say that the struggle between the modest and heroic young quaker woman and the town lasted for nearly two years; that the school was opened in april; that attempts were immediately made under the law to frighten the pupils away and to fine miss crandall for harbouring them; that in may an act prohibiting private schools for non-resident coloured persons, and providing for the expulsion of the latter, was procured from the legislature, amid the greatest rejoicing in canterbury (even to the ringing of church bells); that, under this act, miss crandall was in june arrested and temporarily imprisoned in the county jail, twice tried (august and october) and convicted; that her case was carried up to the supreme court of errors, and her persecutors defeated on a technicality (july, ), and that pending this litigation the most vindictive and inhuman measures were taken to isolate the school from the countenance and even the physical support of the townspeople. the shops and the meeting-house were closed against teacher and pupils, carriage in the public conveyances was denied them, physicians would not wait upon them, miss crandall's own family and friends were forbidden, under penalty of heavy fines, to visit her, the well was filled with manure and water from other sources refused, the house itself was smeared with filth, assailed with rotten eggs and stones, and finally set on fire" (vol. i. p. ). miss crandall is still living in the west, in extreme old age, and the connecticut legislature voted her a small pension two years ago, as a slight expiation of the ignominy and injustice from which she had suffered at the hands of a past generation. the _spectator_ frequently refers to the ferocious hatred displayed toward the widow of curtin, the man who was cruelly murdered by moonlighters somewhere in kerry, as an evidence of barbarism which almost, if not quite, justifies the denial of self-government to a people capable of producing such monsters in one spot and on one occasion. let me match this from mississippi with a case which i produce, not because it was singular, but because it was notorious at the north, where it occurred, in . one chisholm, a native of the state, and a man of good standing and character, became a republican after the war, and was somewhat active in organizing the negro voters in his district. he was repeatedly warned by some of his neighbours to desist and abandon politics, but continued resolutely on his course. a mob, composed of many of the leading men in the town, then attacked him in his house. he made his escape, with his wife and young daughter and son, a lad of fourteen, to the jail. his assailants broke the jail open, and killed him and his son, and desperately wounded the daughter. the poor lad received such a volley of bullets, that his blood went in one rush to the floor, and traced the outlines of his trunk on the ceiling of the room below, where it remained months afterwards, an eye-witness told me, as an illustration of the callousness of the jailer. the leading murderers were tried. they had no defence. the facts were not disputed. the judge and the bar did their duty, but the jury acquitted the prisoners without leaving their seats. mrs. chisholm, the widow, found neither sympathy nor friends at the scene of the tragedy. she had to leave the state, and found refuge in washington, where she now holds a clerkship in the treasury department. let me cite as another illustration the violent ways in which popular discontent may find expression in communities whose political capacity and general respect for the law and its officers, as well as for the sanctity of contracts, have never been questioned. large tracts of land were formerly held along the hudson river in the state of new york, by a few families, of which the van rensselaers and the livingstons were the chief, either under grants from the dutch at the first settlement of the colony, or from the english crown after the conquest. that known as the "manor of rensselaerwick," held by the van rensselaers, comprised a tract of country extending twenty-four miles north and south, and forty-eight miles east and west, lying on each side of the hudson river. it was held by the tenants for perpetual leases. the rents were, on the van rensselaer estate, fourteen bushels of wheat for each hundred acres, and four fat hens, and one day's service with a carriage and horses, to each farm of one hundred and sixty acres. besides this, there was a fine on alienation amounting to about half a year's rent. the livingston estates were let in much the same way. in , stephen van rensselaer, the proprietor, or "patroon" as he was called, died, with $ , due to him as arrears from the tenants, for which, being a man of easy temper, he had forborne to press them. but he left the amount in trust by his will for the payment of his debts, and his heirs proceeded to collect it, and persisted in the attempt during the ensuing seven years. what then happened i shall describe in the words of mr. john bigelow. mr. tilden was a member of the state legislature in , and was appointed chairman of a committee to investigate the rent troubles, and make the report which furnished the basis for the legislation by which they were subsequently settled. mr. bigelow, who has edited mr. tilden's _public writings and speeches_, prefaces the report with the following explanatory note:-- "attempts were made to enforce the collection of these rents. the tenants resisted. they established armed patrols, and, by the adoption of various disguises, were enabled successfully to defy the civil authorities. eventually it became necessary to call out the military, but the result was only partially satisfactory. these demonstrations of authority provoked the formation of 'anti-rent clubs' throughout the manorial district, with a view of acquiring a controlling influence in the legislature. small bands, armed and disguised as indians, were also formed to hold themselves in readiness at all times to resist the officers of the law whenever and wherever they attempted to serve legal process upon the tenants. the principal roads throughout the infected district were guarded by the bands so carefully, and the animosity between the tenants and the civil authorities was so intense, that at last it became dangerous for any one not an anti-renter to be found in these neighbourhoods. it was equally dangerous for the landlords to make any appeal to the law or for the collection of rents or for protection of their persons. when governor wright entered upon his duties in albany in , he found that the anti-rent party had a formidable representation in the legislature, and that the questions involved were assuming an almost national importance." the sheriff made gallant attempts to enforce the law, but his deputies were killed, and a legal investigation in which two hundred persons were examined, failed to reveal the perpetrators of the crime. the militia were called out, but they were no more successful than the sheriff. in the case of one murder committed in delaware county in , however, two persons were convicted, but their sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life. various others concerned in the disturbances were convicted of minor offences, but when governor young succeeded governor seward after an election in which the anti-renters showed considerable voting strength, he pardoned them all on the ground that their crimes were political. the dispute was finally settled by a compromise--that is, the van rensselaers and the livingstons both sold their estates, giving quit-claim deeds to the tenants for what they chose to pay, and the granting of agricultural leases for a longer term than twelve years was forbidden by the state constitution of . this anti-rent agitation is described by professor johnston of princeton, in the _cyclopædia of political science_, as "a reign of terror which for ten years practically suspended the operations of law and the payment of rent throughout the district." suppose all the land of the state had been held under similar tenures; that the controversy had lasted one hundred years; that the rents had been high; and that the van rensselaers and the livingstons had had the aid of the federal army in enforcing distraints and evictions, and in enabling them to set local opinion at defiance, what do you suppose the state of morals and manners would have been in new york by this time? what would have been the feelings of the people towards the federal authority had the matter been finally adjusted with the strong hand, in accordance, not with the views of the people of the state, but of the landholders of south carolina or of the district of columbia? i am afraid they would have been terribly irish. i know very well the risk i run, in citing all these precedents and parallels, of seeming to justify, or at all events to palliate, irish lawlessness. but i am not doing anything of the kind. i am trying to illustrate a somewhat trite remark which i recently made: "that government is a very practical business, and that those succeed best in it who bring least sentiment or enthusiasm to the conduct of their affairs." the government of ireland, like the government of all other countries, is a piece of business--a very difficult piece of business, i admit--and therefore horror over irish doings, and the natural and human desire to "get even with" murderers and moonlighters, by denying the community which produces them something it would like much to possess, should have no influence with those who are charged with irish government. it is only in nurseries and kindergartens that we can give offenders their exact due and withhold their toffee until they have furnished satisfactory proofs of repentance. rulers of men have to occupy themselves mainly with the question of drying up the sources of crime, and often, in order to accomplish this, to let much crime and disorder go unwhipped of justice. with the state of mind which cannot bear to see any concessions made to the irish nationalists because they are such wicked men, in which so many excellent englishmen, whom we used to think genuine political philosophers, are now living, we are very familiar in the united states. it is a state of mind which prevailed in the republican party with regard to the south, down to the election of , and found constant expression on the stump and in the newspapers in what is described, in political slang, as "waving the bloody shirt." it showed itself after the war in unwillingness to release the south from military rule; then in unwillingness to remove the disfranchisement of the whites or to withdraw from the carpet-bag state governments the military support without which they could not have existed for a day; and, last of all, in dread of the advent of a democratic federal administration in which southerners or "ex-rebels" would be likely to hold office. at first the whole republican party was more or less permeated by these ideas; but the number of those who held them gradually diminished, until in it was at last possible to elect a democratic president. nevertheless a great multitude witnessed the entrance into the white house of a president who is indebted for his election mainly to the states formerly in rebellion, with genuine alarm. they feared from it something dreadful, in the shape either of a violation of the rights of the freedmen, or of an assault on the credit and stability of the federal government. nothing but actual experiment would have disabused them. i am very familiar with the controversy with them, for i have taken some part in it ever since the passage of the reconstruction acts, and i know very well how they felt, and am sometimes greatly impressed by the similarity between their arguments and those of the opponents of irish home rule. one of their fixed beliefs for many years, though it is now extinct, was that southerners were so bent on rebelling again, and were generally so prone to rebellion, that the awful consequences of their last attempt in the loss of life and property, had made absolutely no impression on them. the southerner was, in fact, in their eyes, what mr. gladstone says the irishman is in the eyes of some englishmen: "a _lusus naturæ_; that justice, common sense, moderation, national prosperity had no meaning for him; that all he could appreciate was strife and perpetual dissension. it was for many years useless to point out to them the severity of the lesson taught by the civil war as to the physical superiority of the north, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable the new generation of southerners to restore their fortunes, or even gain a livelihood. nor was it easy to impress them with the inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made southerners what they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners, ideas, or opinions. all this they answered by pointing to speeches delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the ku-klux outrages, to political murders, like that of chisholm, to the building of monuments to the confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of reverence for confederate nationality. in fact, for fully ten years after the close of the war the collection of southern "outrages" and their display before northern audiences, was the chief work of republican politicians. in , during the hayes-tilden canvass, the opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the campaign" was made by mr. wheeler, the republican candidate for the vice-presidency, and his advice to the vermonters, to whom it was delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war. i need hardly tell english readers how all this has ended. the withdrawal of the federal troops from the south by president hayes, and the consequent complete restoration of the state governments to the discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely disappear. it is true, at least in the western world, that if you give communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs, the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among all civilized, and even partially civilized men, is sure in the long run to do the work of creating and maintaining order; or, as mr. gladstone has expressed it, in setting up a government, "the best and surest foundation we can find to build on is the foundation afforded by the affections, the convictions, and the will of men." footnotes: [footnote : report of secretary of war, - , vol. i. p. .] how we became home rulers. by james bryce, m.p. in the home rule contest of the last eighteen months no argument has been more frequently used against the liberal party than the charge of sudden, and therefore, it would seem, dishonest change of view. "you were opposed to an irish parliament at the election of and for some time afterward; you are not entitled to advocate it in ." "you passed a coercion bill in , your ministry (though against the protests of an active section of its supporters) passed another coercion bill in ; you have no right to resist a third such bill in , and, if you do, your conduct can be due to nothing but party spite and revenge at your own exclusion from office." reproaches of this kind are now the stock-in-trade, not merely of the ordinary politician, who, for want of a case, abuses the plaintiff's attorney, but of leading men, and, still more, of leading newspapers, who might be thought bound to produce from recent events and an examination of the condition of ireland some better grounds for the passion they display. it is noticeable that such reproaches come more often from the so-called liberal unionists than from the present ministry. perhaps, with their belief that all liberals are unprincipled revolutionaries, the tories deem a sin more or less to be of small account. perhaps a recollection of their own remarkable gyrations, before and after the general election of , may suggest that the less said about the past the better for everybody. be the cause what it may, it is surprising to find that a section commanding so much ability as the group of dissentient liberals does, should rely rather on the charge of inconsistency than on the advocacy of any counter-policy of their own. it is not large and elevated, but petty, minds that rejoice to say to an opponent (and all the more so if he was once a friend), "you must either be wrong now, or have been wrong then, because you have changed your opinion. i have not changed; i was right then, and i am right now." such an argument not only dispenses with the necessity of sifting the facts, but it fosters the satisfaction of the person who employs it. consistency is the pet virtue of the self-righteous, and the man who values himself on his consistency can seldom be induced to see that to shut one's eyes to the facts which time develops, to refuse to reconsider one's position by the light they shed, to cling to an old solution when the problem is substantially new, is a proof, not of fortitude and wisdom, but rather of folly and conceit. such persons may be left to the contemplation of their own virtues. but there are many fair-minded men of both political parties, or of neither, who, while acquitting those liberal members who supported home rule in and opposed coercion in of the sordid or spiteful motives with which the virulence of journalism credits them, have nevertheless been surprised at the apparent swiftness and completeness of the change in their opinions. it would be idle to deny that, in startling the minds of steady-going people, this change did, for the moment, weaken the influence and weight of those who had changed. this must be so. a man who says now what he denied six years ago cannot expect to be believed on his _ipse dixit_. he must set forth the grounds of his conviction. he must explain how his views altered, and why reasons which formerly satisfied him satisfy him no longer. it may be that the liberal party have omitted to do this as they ought. occupied by warm and incessant discussions, and conscious, i venture to believe, of their own honesty, few of its members have been at the trouble of showing what were the causes which modified their views, and what the stages of the process which carried them from the position of to that of . of that process i shall attempt in the following pages to give a sketch. such a sketch, though mainly retrospective, is pertinent to the issues which now divide the country. it will indicate the origin and the strength of the chief reasons by which liberals are now governed. and, if executed with proper fairness and truth, it may, as a study in contemporary history, be of some little interest to those who in future will attempt to understand our present conflict. the causes which underlie changes of opinion are among the most obscure phenomena in history, because those who undergo, these changes are often only half conscious of them, and do not think of recording that which is imperceptible in its growth, and whose importance is not realized till it already belongs to the past. the account which follows is based primarily on my own recollection of the phases of opinion and feeling through which i myself, and the friends whom i knew most intimately in the house of commons, passed during the parliament which sat from till . but i should not think of giving it to the public if i did not believe that what happened to our minds happened to many others also, and that the record of our own slow movement from the position of to that of is substantially a record of the movement of the liberal party at large. we were fairly typical members of that party, loyal to our leaders, but placing the principles for which the liberal party exists above the success of the party itself; with our share of prepossessions and prejudices, yet with reasonably open minds, and (as we believed) inferior to no other section of the house of commons in patriotism and in attachment to the constitution. i admit frankly that when we entered parliament we knew less about the irish question than we ought to have known, and that even after knowledge had been forced upon us, we were more deferential to our leaders than was good either for us or for them. but these are faults always chargeable on the great majority of members. it is because those of whom i speak were in these respects fairly typical, that it seems worth while to trace the history of their opinions. if any one should accuse me of attributing to an earlier year sentiments which began to appear in a later one, i can only reply that i am aware of this danger, as one which always besets those who recall their past states of mind, and that i have done my utmost to avoid it. the change i have to describe was slow and gradual. it was reluctant--that is to say, it seemed rather forced upon us by the teaching of events than the work of our own minds. each session marked a further stage in it; and i therefore propose to examine its progress session by session. session of .--the general election of turned mainly on the foreign policy of lord beaconsfield's government. few liberal candidates said much about ireland. absorbed in the eastern and afghan questions, they had not watched the progress of events in ireland with the requisite care, nor realized the gravity of the crisis which was approaching. they were anxious to do justice to ireland, in the way of amending both the land laws and local government, but saw no reason for going further. nearly all of them refused, even when pressed by irish electors in their constituencies, to promise to vote for that "parliamentary inquiry into the demand for home rule," which was then propounded by those electors as a sort of test question. we (_i.e._ the liberal candidates of ) then declared that we thought an irish parliament would involve serious constitutional difficulties, and that we saw no reason why the imperial parliament should not do full justice to ireland. little was said about coercion. hopes were expressed that it would not be resorted to, but very few (if any) pledged themselves against it. when mr. forster was appointed irish secretary in mr. gladstone's government which the general election brought into power, we (by which i mean throughout the new liberal members) were delighted. we knew him to be conscientious, industrious, kind-hearted. we believed him to be penetrating and judicious. we applauded his conduct in not renewing the coercion act which lord beaconsfield's government had failed to renew before dissolving parliament, and which indeed there was scarcely time left after the election to renew, a fact which did not save mr. forster from severe censure on the part of the tories. the chief business of the session was the compensation for disturbance bill, which mr. forster brought in for the sake of saving from immediate eviction tenants whom a succession of bad seasons had rendered utterly unable to pay their rents. this bill was pressed through the house of commons with the utmost difficulty, and at an expenditure of time which damaged the other work of the session, though the house continued to sit into september. the executive government declared it to be necessary, in order not only to relieve the misery of the people, but to secure the tranquillity of the country. nevertheless, the whole tory party, and a considerable section of the liberal party, opposed it in the interests of the irish landlords, and of economic principles in general, principles which (as commonly understood in england) it certainly trenched on. when it reached the house of lords it was contemptuously rejected, and the unhappy irish secretary left to face as he best might the cries of a wretched peasantry and the rising tide of outrage. what was even more remarkable, was the coolness with which the liberal party took the defeat of a bill their leaders had pronounced absolutely needed. had it been an english bill of the same consequence to england as it was to ireland, the country would have been up in arms against the house of lords, demanding the reform or the abolition of a chamber which dared to disregard the will of the people. but nothing of the kind happened. it was only an irish measure. we relieved ourselves by a few strong words, and the matter dropped. it was in this session that the liberal party first learnt what sort of a spirit was burning in the hearts of irish members. there had been obstruction in the last years of the previous parliament, but, as the tories were in power, they had to bear the brunt of it. now that a liberal ministry reigned, it fell on the liberals. at first it incensed us. full of our own good intentions towards ireland, we thought it contrary to nature that irish members should worry us, their friends, as they had worried tories, their hereditary enemies. presently we came to understand how matters stood. the irish members made little difference between the two great english parties. both represented to them a hostile domination. both were ignorant of the condition of their country. both cared so little about irish questions that nothing less than deeds of violence out of doors or obstruction within doors could secure their attention. concessions had to be extorted from both by the same devices; coercion might be feared at the hands of both. hence the irish party was resolved to treat both parties alike, and play off the one against the other in the interests of ireland alone, using the questions which divide englishmen and scotchmen merely as levers whereby to effect their own purposes, because themselves quite indifferent to the substantial merits of those questions. to us new members this was an alarming revelation. we found that the house of commons consisted of two distinct and dissimilar bodies: a large british body (including some few tories and liberals from ireland), which, though it was distracted by party quarrels, really cared for the welfare of the country and the dignity of the house, and would set aside its quarrels in the presence of a great emergency; and a small irish body, which, though it spoke the english language, was practically foreign, felt no interest in, no responsibility for, the business of britain or the empire, and valued its place in the house only as a means of making itself so disagreeable as to obtain its release. when we had grasped this fact, we began to reflect on its causes and conjecture its effects. we had read of the same things in the newspapers, but what a difference there is between reading a drama in your study and seeing it acted on the stage! we realized what irish feeling was when we heard these angry cries, and noted how appeals that would have affected english partisans fell on deaf ears. i remember how one night in the summer of , when the irish members kept us up very late over some trivial bill of theirs, refusing to adjourn till they had extorted terms, a friend, sitting beside me, said, "see how things come round. they keep us out of bed till five o'clock in the morning because our ancestors bullied theirs for six centuries." and we saw that the natural relations of an executive, even a liberal executive, to the irish members were those of strife. whose fault it was we were unable to decide. perhaps the government was too stiff; perhaps the members were vexatious. anyhow, this strife was evidently the normal state of things, wholly unlike that which existed between scotch members, to whichever party they belonged, and the executive authorities of scotland. thus the session of , though it did not bring us consciously nearer to home rule, impressed three facts upon us: first, that the house of lords regarded ireland solely from the point of view of english landlords, sympathizing with irish landlords; secondly, that the house of commons knew so little or cared so little about ireland that when the executive declared a measure essential to the peace of ireland, it scarcely resented the rejection of that measure by the house of lords; thirdly, that the irish nationalists in the house of commons were a foreign body, foreign in the sense in which a needle which a man swallows is foreign, not helping the organism to discharge its functions, but impeding them, and setting up irritation. we did not yet draw from these facts all the conclusions we should now draw. but the facts were there, and they began to tell upon our minds. session of .--the winter of - was a terrible one in ireland. the rejection of the compensation for disturbance bill had borne the fruit which mr. forster had predicted, and which the house of lords had ignored. outrages were numerous and serious. the cry in england for repressive measures had gone on rising from november, when it occasioned a demonstration at the guildhall banquet. several liberal members (of whom i was one) went to ireland at christmas, to see with our own eyes how things stood. we were struck by the difficulty of obtaining trustworthy information in dublin, where the richer classes, with whom we chiefly came in contact, merely abused the land league, while the land leaguers declared that the accounts of outrages were grossly exaggerated. the most prominent, mr. michael davitt, assured me, and i believe with perfect truth, that he had exerted himself to discountenance outrage, and that if, as he expected, he was locked up by the government, outrages would increase. when one reached the disturbed districts, where, of course, one talked to members as well of the landlord class as of the peasantry, the general conclusion which emerged from the medley of contradictions was that, though there was much agrarian crime, and a pervading sense of insecurity, the disorders were not so bad as people in england believed, and might have been dealt with by a vigorous administration of the existing law. unfortunately, the so-called "better classes," full of bitterness against the liberal ministry and mr. forster (whom they did not praise till it was too late), had not assisted the executive, and had allowed things to reach a pass at which it found the work of governing very difficult. when the coercion bill of was introduced, many english liberals were inclined to resist it. the great majority voted for it, but within two years they bitterly repented their votes. our motives, which i mention by way of extenuation, not of defence, were these. the executive government declared that it could not deal with crime by the ordinary law. if its followers refused exceptional powers, they must displace the ministry, and let in the tories, who would doubtless obtain such powers, and probably use them worse. we had still confidence in mr. forster's judgment, and a deference to irish executive governments generally which parliamentary experience is well fitted to dissipate. the violence with which the nationalist members resisted the introduction of the bill had roused our blood, and the foolish attempts which the radical and irish electors in some constituencies had made to deter their members from supporting it had told the other way, and disposed these members to vote for it, in order to show that they were not to be cowed by threats. finally, we were assured that votes given for the coercion bill would purchase a thorough-going land bill, and our anxiety for the latter induced us, naturally, but erringly, to acquiesce in the former. when that land bill went into committee we perceived how much harm the coercion bill had done in intensifying the bitterness of irish members. although the ministry was fighting for their interests against the tory party and the so-called whiggish section of its own supporters, who were seeking to cut down the benefits which the measure offered to irish tenants, the nationalist members regarded it, and in particular mr. forster, as their foe. they resented what they deemed the insult put upon their country. they saw those who had been fighting, often, no doubt, by unlawful methods, for the national cause, thrown into prison and kept there without trial. they anticipated (not without reason) the same fortune for themselves. hence the friendliness which the liberal party sought to show them met with no response, and mr. forster was worried with undiminished vehemence. in the discussions on the bill we found the ministry generally resisting all amendments which came from irish members. when these amendments seemed to us right, we voted for them, but they were almost always defeated by the union of the tories with the steady ministerialists. subsequent events have proved that many were right, but, whether they were right or wrong, the fact which impressed us was that in matters which concerned ireland only, and lay within the exclusive knowledge of irishmen, irish members were constantly outvoted by english and scotch members, who knew nothing at all of the merits of the case, but simply obeyed the party whip. this happened even when the irish members who sat on the liberal side (such as mr. dickson and his liberal colleagues from ulster) joined the nationalist section in demanding some extension of the bill which the ministry refused. and we perceived that nothing incensed the irish members more than the feeling that their arguments were addressed to deaf ears; that they were overborne, not by reason, but by sheer weight of numbers. even if they convinced the ministry, they could seldom hope to obtain its assent, because the ministry had to consider the house of lords, sure to reject amendments which favoured the tenant, while to detach a number of ministerialists sufficient to carry an amendment against the treasury bench, the moderate liberals, and the tories, was evidently hopeless. at the end of the session the house of lords came again upon the scene. it seriously damaged the bill by its amendments, and would have destroyed it but for the skill with which the head of the government handled these amendments, accepting the least pernicious, so as to enable the upper house without loss of dignity to recede from those which were wholly inadmissible. several times it seemed as if the conflict would have to pass from westminster to the country, and, in contemplating the chances of a popular agitation or a dissolution, we were regretfully obliged to own that the english people cared too little and knew too little about irish questions to give us much hope of defeating the house of lords and the tories upon these issues. an incident which occurred towards the end of the session seems, though trifling in itself, so illustrative of the illogical position in which we stood towards ireland, as to deserve mention. mr. forster, still chief secretary, had brought in a bill for extinguishing the queen's university in ireland, and creating in place of it a body to be called the royal university, which, however, was not to be a real university at all, but only a set of examiners plus some salaried fellowships, to be held at various places of instruction. regarding this as a gross educational blunder, which would destroy a useful existing body, and create a sham university in its place, and finding several parliamentary friends on whose judgment i could rely to be of the same opinion, i gave notice of opposition to the bill. mr. forster came to me, and pressed with great warmth that the opposition should be withdrawn. the bill, he said, would satisfy the roman catholic hierarchy, and complete the work of the land bill in pacifying ireland. the irish members wanted it: what business had an english member to interfere to defeat their wishes, and thwart the executive? the reply was obvious. not to speak of the simplicity of expecting the hierarchy to be satisfied by this small concession, what were such arguments but the admission of home rule in its worst form? "you resist the demand of the irish members to legislate for ireland; you have just been demanding, and obtaining, the support of english members against those amendments of the land bill which irish members declare to be necessary. now you bid us surrender our own judgment, ignore our own responsibility, and blindly pass a bill which we, who have studied these university questions as they affect both ireland and england, believe to be thoroughly mischievous to the prospects of higher education in ireland, only because the irish members, as you say, desire it. do one thing or the other. either give them the power and the responsibility, or leave both with the imperial parliament. you are now asking us to surrender the power, but to remain still subject to the responsibility. we will not bear the latter without the former. we shall prefer home rule." needless to add that this device--a sample of the petty sops by which successive generations of english statesmen, whigs and tories alike, have sought to win over a priesthood which uses and laughs at them--failed as completely as its predecessors to settle the university question or to range the bishops on the side of the government. the autumn and winter of revealed the magnitude of the mischief done by making a coercion bill precede a relief bill. the land bill was the largest concession made to the demands of the people since catholic emancipation. it was a departure, justified by necessity, but still a departure from our established principles of legislation. it ought to have brought satisfaction and confidence, if not gratitude, with it; ought to have led ireland to believe in the sincere friendliness of england, and produced a new cordiality between the islands. it did nothing of the kind. it was held to have been extorted from our fears; its grace and sweetness were destroyed by the concomitant severities which the coercion act had brought into force, as wholesome food becomes distasteful when some bitter compound has been sprinkled over it. we were deeply mortified at this result of our efforts. what was the malign power which made the boons we had conferred shrivel up, "like fairy gifts fading away"? we still believed the coercion act to have been justified, but lamented the fate which baffled the main object of our efforts, the winning over ireland to trust the justice and the capacity of the imperial parliament. and thus the two facts which stood out from the history of this eventful session were, first, that even in legislating for the good of ireland we were legislating against the wishes of ireland, imposing on her enactments which her representatives opposed, and which we supported only at the bidding of the ministry; and, secondly, that at the end of a long session, entirely devoted to her needs, we found her more hostile and not less disturbed than she had been at its beginning. we began to wonder whether we should ever succeed better on our present lines. but we still mostly regarded home rule as a disagreeable solution. session of .--still graver were the lessons of the first four months of this year. mr. forster went on filling the prisons of ireland with persons whom he arrested under the habeas corpus suspension act, and never brought to trial. but the country grew no more quiet. at last he had nine hundred and forty men under lock and key, many of them not "village ruffians," whose power a few weeks' detention was to break, but political offenders, and even popular leaders. how long could this go on? where was it to stop? it became plain that the act was a failure, and that the people, trained to combination by a century and a half's practice, were too strong for the executive. either the scheme and plan of the act had been wrong, or its administration had been incompetent. whichever was the source of the failure (most people will now blame both), the fault must be laid at the door of the irish executive; not of mr. forster himself, but of those on whom he relied. it had been a dublin castle bill, conceived and carried out by the incompetent bureaucracy which has so long pretended to govern ireland. such a proof of incompetence destroyed whatever confidence in that bureaucracy then remained to us, and the disclosures which the phoenix park murders and the subsequent proceedings against the invincibles brought out, proved beyond question that the irish executive had only succeeded in giving a more dark and dangerous form, the form of ruthless conspiracy, to the agitation it was combating. when therefore the prevention of crime bill of was brought in, some of us felt unable to support it, and specially bound to resist those of its provisions which related to trials without a jury, and to boycotting. it was impossible, on the morrow of the phoenix park murders, to deny that some coercive measure might be needed; but we had so far lost faith in repression, and in the officials who were to administer it, as to desire to limit it to what was absolutely necessary, and we protested against enacting for ireland a criminal code which was not to be applied to great britain. our resistance might have been more successful but for the manner in which the nationalist members conducted their opposition. when they began to obstruct--not that under the circumstances we felt entitled to censure them for obstructing a bill dealing so harshly with their countrymen--we were obliged to desist, and our experience of the stormy scenes of the summer of deepened our sense of the passionate bitterness with which they regarded english members, scarcely making an exception in favour of those who were most disposed to sympathize with them. many and many a time when we listened to their fierce cries, we seemed to hear in them the battle-cries of the centuries of strife between celt and englishman from athenry to vinegar hill; many a time we felt that this rage and mistrust were chiefly of england's making; and yet not of england's, but rather of the overmastering fate which had prolonged to our own days the hatreds and the methods of barbarous times: hêmeis d' ouk aitioi esmen alla zeus kai moira kai êerophoitis herinus. so much of the session as the crime bill had spared was consumed by the arrears bill, over which we had again a "crisis" with the house of lords. this was the third session that had been practically given up to irishmen. the freshness and force of the parliament of --a parliament full of zeal and ability--had now been almost spent, yet few of the plans of domestic legislation spread before the constituencies of had been realized. the government had been anxious to legislate, their majority had been ready to support them, but ireland had blocked the way; and now the only expedient for improving the procedure of the house was to summon parliament in an extra autumn session. here was another cause for reflection. england and scotland were calling for measures promised years ago, but no time could be found to discuss them. nothing was done to reorganize local government, to reform the liquor laws, to improve secondary education, to deal with the housing of the poor, or a dozen other urgent questions, because we were busy with ireland; and yet how little more loyal or contented did ireland seem to be for all we had done. we began to ask whether home rule might not be as much an english and scotch question as an irish question. it was, at any rate, clear that to allow ireland to manage her own affairs would open a prospect for england and scotland to obtain time to attend to theirs.[ ] this feeling was strengthened by the result of the attempts made in the autumn session of , to improve the procedure of the house of commons. we had cherished the hope that more drastic remedies against obstruction and better arrangements for the conduct of business, might relieve much of the pressure irish members had made us suffer. the passing of the new rules shattered this hope, for it was plain they would not accomplish what was needed. some blamed the government for not framing a more stringent code. some blamed the tory and the irish oppositions (now beginning to work in concert) for cutting down the proposals of the government. but most of us saw, and came to see still more clearly in the three succeeding sessions, that the evil was too deep-rooted to be cured by any changes of procedure, unless they went so far as to destroy freedom of debate for english members also. the presence in a deliberative assembly of a section numbering (or likely soon to number) one-seventh of the whole--a section seeking to lower the character of the assembly, and to derange its mechanism, with no further interest in the greater part of its business except that of preventing it from conducting that business--this was the phenomenon which confronted us, and we felt that no rules of debate would overcome the dangers it threatened. it is from this year that i date the impression which we formed, that home rule was sure to come. "it may be a bold experiment," we said to one another in the lobbies; "there are serious difficulties in the way, though the case for it is stronger than we thought two years ago. but if the irishmen persist as they are doing now, they will get it. it is only a question of their tenacity." it was impossible not to be struck during the conflicts of and with the small amount of real bitterness which the conduct of the irish members, irritating as it often was, provoked among the liberals, who of course bore the brunt of the conflict. the nationalists did their best to injure a government which was at the same time being denounced by the tories as too favourable to irish claims; they lowered the character of parliament by scenes far more painful than those of the session of , on which so much indignation has been lately expended; they said the hardest things they could think of against us in the house; they attacked us in our constituencies. their partisans (for i do not charge this on the leaders) interrupted and broke up our meetings. nevertheless, all this did not provoke responsive hatred from the liberals. there could not be a greater contrast than that between the way in which the great bulk of the liberal members all through the parliament of behaved towards their irish antagonists, and the violence with which the tory members, under much slighter provocation, conduct themselves towards those antagonists now. i say this not to the credit of our temper, which was no better than that of other men heated by the struggles of a crowded assembly. it was due entirely to our feeling that there was a great balance of wrong standing to the debit of england; that if the irish were turbulent, it was the ill-treatment of former days that had made them so; and that, whatever might be their methods, they were fighting for their country. although, therefore, there was little social intercourse between us and them, there was always a hope and a wish that the day might come when the liberal party should resume its natural position of joining the representatives of the irish people in obtaining radical reforms in irish government. and the remarkable speech of february , , in which mr. gladstone declared his mind to be open on the subject, and invited the nationalists to propound a practicable scheme of self-government, had encouraged us to hope that this day might soon arrive. session of .--three facts stood out in the history of this comparatively quiet session, each of which brought us further along the road we had entered. one was the omission of parliament to complete the work begun by the land bill of , of improving the condition of the irish peasantry and reorganizing irish administration. the nationalist members brought in bills for these purposes, including one for amending the land act by admitting leaseholders to its benefits and securing tenants against having their improvements reckoned against them in the fixing of rents. though we could not approve all the contents of these bills, we desired to see the government either take them up and amend them, or introduce bills of its own to do what was needed. some of us spoke strongly in this sense, nor will any one now deny that we were right. sound policy called aloud for the completion of the undertaking of . the government however refused, alleging, no doubt with some truth, that ireland could not have all the time of parliament, but must let england and scotland have their turn. nor was anything done towards the creation of new local institutions in ireland, or the reform of the castle bureaucracy. we were profoundly disheartened. we saw golden opportunities slipping away, and doubted more than ever whether westminster was the place in which to legislate for irish grievances. another momentous fact was the steady increase in the number of nationalist members. every seat that fell vacant in ireland was filled by them. the moderate irish party, most of whom had by this time crossed the floor of the house, and were sitting among us, had evidently no future. they were estimable, and, in some cases, able men, from whom we had hoped much, as a link between the liberal party and the irish people. but they seemed to have lost their hold on the people, nor were they able to give us much practical counsel as to irish problems. it was clear that they would vanish at the next general election, and parliament be left to settle accounts with the extreme men, whose spirits rose as those of our friends steadily sank. lastly: it was in this session that the alliance of the nationalists and the tory opposition became a potent factor in politics. its first conspicuous manifestation was in the defeat of the government by the allied forces on the affirmation bill, when the least respectable privates in both armies vied with one another in boisterous rejoicings over the announcement of numbers in the division. i do not refer to this as ground for complaint. it was in the course of our usual political warfare that two groups, each hating and fearing the ministry, should unite to displace it. but we now saw what power the irish section must exert when it came to hold the balance of numbers in the house. till this division, the government had commanded a majority of the whole house. this would probably not outlast a dissolution. what then? could the two english parties, differing so profoundly from one another, combine against the third party? evidently not. we must, therefore, look forward to unstable governments, if not to a total dislocation of our parliamentary system. session of .--i pass over the minor incidents of this year, including the continued neglect of remedial legislation for ireland to dwell on its dominant and most impressive lesson. it was the year of the franchise bill, which, as regards ireland, worked an extension, not merely of the county but also of the borough franchise, and produced, owing to the economic condition of the humbler classes in that country, a far more extensive change than in england or scotland. when the bill was introduced the question at once arose--should ireland be included? there were two ways of treating ireland between which parliament had to choose. one was to leave her out of the bill, on the ground that the masses of her population could not be trusted with the franchise, as being ignorant, sympathetic to crime, hostile to the english government. this course was the logical concomitant of exceptional coercive legislation, such as had been passed in and . it was quite compatible with generous remedial legislation. but it placed ireland in an unequal and lower position, treating her, as the coercion acts did, as a dependent country, inhabited by a population unfit for the same measure of power which the inhabitants of britain might receive. the other course was to bestow on ireland the same extended franchise which the english county occupiers were to receive, applying the principle of equality, and disregarding the obvious consequences. these consequences were both practical and logical. the practical consequence was the increase in numbers and weight of the irish party in parliament hostile to parliament itself. the logical consequence was the duty of complying with the wishes of the enfranchised nation. whatever reasons were good for giving this enlarged suffrage to the irish masses, were good for respecting the will which they might use to express it. if the irish were deemed fit to exercise the same full constitutional rights in legislation as the english, must they not be fit for the same rights of trial by jury, a free press, and all the privileges of personal freedom? of these two courses the cabinet chose the latter, those of its members whom we must suppose, from the language they now hold, to have then hesitated, either stifling their fears or not apprehending the consequences of their boldness. it might have been expected, and indeed was generally expected, that the tory party would refuse to follow. they talked largely about the danger of an extended irish suffrage, and pointed out that it would be a weapon in the hands of disloyalty. but when the moment for resistance came, they swerved, and never divided in either house against the application of the bill to ireland. they might have failed to defeat the measure; but they would have immensely strengthened their position, logically and morally, had they given effect by their votes to the sentiments they were known to entertain, and which not a few liberals shared. the effect of this uncontested grant to ireland of a suffrage practically universal was immense upon our minds, and the longer we reflected on it the more significant did it become. it meant to us that the old methods were abandoned, and, as we supposed, for ever. we had deliberately given the home rule party arms against english control far more powerful than they previously possessed. we had deliberately asserted our faith in the irish people. impossible after this to fall back on coercion bills. impossible to refuse any request compatible with the general safety of the united kingdom, which ireland as a nation might prefer. impossible to establish that system of crown colony government which we had come to perceive was the only real and solid alternative to self-government. to those of us who had been feeling that the irish difficulty was much the greatest of all england's difficulties, this stood out beyond the agitation of the autumn and the compromise of the winter as the great political event of .[ ] although this sketch is in the main a record of parliamentary opinion, i ought not to pass over the influence which the study of their constituents' ideas exerted upon members for the larger towns. we found the vast bulk of our supporters--english supporters, for after it was understood that the irish voters were our enemies--sympathetic with the irish people. they knew and thought little about home rule, believing that their member understood that question better than they did, and willing, so long as he was sound on english issues, to trust him. but they pitied irish tenants, and condemned irish landlords. though they acquiesced in a coercion bill when proposed by a liberal cabinet, because they concluded that nothing less than necessity would lead such a cabinet to propose one, they so much disliked any exceptional or repressive legislation that it was plain they would not long tolerate it. any popular leader denouncing coercion was certain to have the sentiment of the english masses with him, while as to suspending irish representation or carrying out consistently the policy of treating ireland as a subject country, there was no chance in the world of their approval. those of us, therefore, who represented large working-class constituencies became convinced that the solution of the irish problem must be sought in conciliation and self-government, if only because the other solution, crown colony government, was utterly repugnant to the english masses, in whom the franchise bill of , completing that of , had vested political supremacy.[ ] session of .--the allied powers of toryism and nationalism gained in this year the victory they had so long striven for. in february they reduced the ministerial majority to fourteen; in june they overthrew the ministry. no one supposed that on either occasion the merits of the issue had anything to do with the nationalist vote: that vote was given simply and solely against the government, as the government which had passed the coercion acts of and --acts demanded by the tory party, and which had not conceded an irish parliament. at last the irish party had attained its position as the arbiter of power and office. some of us said, as we walked away from the house, under the dawning light of that memorable th of june, "this means home rule." our forecast was soon to be confirmed. lord salisbury's cabinet, formed upon the resignation of mr. gladstone's, announced that it would not propose to renew any part of the coercion act of , which was to expire in august. here was a surrender indeed! but the tory leaders went further. they did not excuse themselves on the ground of want of time. they took credit for their benevolence towards ireland; they discovered excellent reasons why the act should be dropped. they even turned upon lord spencer, whose administration they had hitherto blamed for its leniency, and attacked him in parliament, among the cheers of his irish enemies. from that time till the close of the general election in december everything was done, short of giving public pledges, to keep the irish leaders and the irish voters in good humour. the tory party in fact posed as the true friends of ireland, averse from coercion, and with minds perfectly open on the subject of self-government. this change of front, so sudden, so unblushing, completed the process which had been going on in our minds. by we had come to feel that home rule was inevitable, though probably undesirable. before long we had asked ourselves whether it was really undesirable, whether it might not be a good thing both for england, whose parliament and cabinet system it would relieve from impending dangers, while leaving free scope for domestic legislation, and for ireland, which could hardly manage her affairs worse than we were managing them for her, and might manage them better. and thus, by the spring of , many of us were prepared for a large scheme of local self-government in ireland, including a central legislative body in dublin.[ ] now when it was plain that the english party which had hitherto called for repression, and had professed itself anxious for a patriotic union of all parties to maintain order and a continuity of policy in ireland, was ready to bid for irish help at the polls by throwing over repression and reversing the policy it had advocated, we felt that the sooner ireland was taken out of english party politics the better. what prospect was there of improving ireland by the superior wisdom and fairness of the british parliament, if british leaders were to make their irish policy turn on interested bargains with nationalist leaders? repression, which we clearly saw to be the only alternative to self-government, seemed to be by common consent abandoned. i remember how, at a party of members in the beginning of july, some one said, "well, there's an end for ever of coercion at any rate," and every one assented as to an obvious truth. accordingly the result of the new departure of the salisbury cabinet in was to convince even doubters that home rule must come, and to make those already convinced anxious to see it come quickly, and to find the best form that could be given it. many of us expected the tory government to propose it. rumour declared the new lord lieutenant to be in favour of it. his government was extremely conciliatory in ireland, even to the recalcitrant corporation of limerick. not to mention less serious and less respected tory ministers, lord salisbury talked at newport about the dualism of the austro-hungarian monarchy with the air of a man who desired to have a workable scheme, analogous, if not similar, suggested for ireland and great britain. the irish nationalists appeared to place their hopes in this quarter, for they attacked the liberal party with unexampled bitterness, and threw all their voting strength into the tory scale. as it has lately been attempted to blacken the character of the irish leaders, it deserves to be remarked that whatever has been charged against them was said or done by them before the spring of , and was, practically, perfectly well known to the tory leaders when they accepted the alliance of the irish party in the house of commons, and courted their support in the election of . to those who remember what went on in the house in the sessions of and , the horror now professed by the tory leaders for the conduct and words of the irish party would be matter for laughter if it were not also matter for just indignation. why, it may be asked, if the persuasion that home rule was certain, and even desirable, had become general among the liberals who had sat through the parliament of , was it not more fully expressed at the election of ? this is a fair question, which i shall try to answer. in the first place, the electors made few inquiries about ireland. they disliked the subject; they had not realized its supreme importance. those of us who felt anxious to explain our views (as was my own case) had to volunteer to do so, for we were not asked about them. the irish party in the constituencies was in violent opposition to liberal candidates; it did not interrogate, but denounced. further, it was felt that the issue was mainly one to be decided in ireland itself. the question of home rule was being submitted, not, as heretofore, to a limited constituency, but to the whole irish people. till their will had been constitutionally declared at the polls it was not proper that englishmen or scotchmen should anticipate its tenour. we should even have been accused, had we volunteered our opinions, of seeking to affect the result in ireland, and, not only of playing for the irish vote in great britain, as we saw the tories doing, but of prejudicing the chances of those liberal candidates who, in irish constituencies, were competing with extreme nationalists. a third reason was that most english and scotch liberals did not know how far their own dispositions towards home rule were shared by their leaders. mr. gladstone's declaration in his midlothian address was no doubt a decided intimation of his views, and was certainly understood by some (as by myself) to imply the grant to ireland of a parliament; but, strong as its words were, its importance does not seem to have been fully appreciated at the moment. and the opinions of a statesman whose unequalled irish experience and elevated character gave him a weight only second to that of mr. gladstone--i mean lord spencer--had not been made known. we had consequently no certainty that there were leaders prepared to give prompt effect to the views we entertained. lastly, we were not prepared with a practical scheme of self-government for ireland. the nationalist members had propounded none which we could either adopt or criticize. convinced as we were that home rule would come and must come, we felt the difficulties surrounding every suggestion that had yet been made, and had not hammered out any plan which we could lay before the electors as approved by liberal opinion.[ ] we were forced to confine ourselves to generalities. whether it would have been better for us to have done our thinking and scheme-making in public, and thereby have sooner forced the details of the problem upon the attention of the country, need not now be inquired. any one can now see that something was lost by the omission. but those who censure a course that has actually been taken usually fail to estimate the evils that would have followed from the taking of the opposite course. such evils might in this instance have been as great as those we have encountered. i have spoken of the importance we attached to the decision of ireland itself, and of the attitude of expectancy which, while that decision was uncertain, englishmen were forced to maintain. we had not long to wait. early in december it was known that five-sixths of the members returned from ireland were nationalists, and that the majorities which had returned them were crushing. if ever a people spoke its will, the irish people spoke theirs at the election of . the last link in the chain of conviction, which events had been forging since , was now supplied. in passing the franchise bill of , we had asked ireland to declare her mind. she had now answered. if the question was not a mockery, and representative government a sham, we were bound to accept the answer, subject only, but subject always, to the interests of the whole united kingdom. in other words, we were bound to devise such a scheme of self-government for ireland as would give full satisfaction to her wishes, while maintaining the ultimate supremacy of the imperial parliament and the unity of the british empire. very few words are needed to summarize the outline which, omitting many details which would have illustrated and confirmed its truth, i have attempted to present of the progress of opinion among liberal members of the parliament of . . our experience of the coercion bills of and disclosed the enormous mischief which such measures do in alienating the minds of irishmen, and the difficulty of enlisting irish sentiment on behalf of the law. the results of the act of taught us that the repression of open agitation means the growth of far more dangerous conspiracy; those of the act of proved that even under an administration like lord spencer's repression works no change for the better in the habits and ideas of the people. . the conduct of the house of lords in and , and the malign influence which its existence exerted whenever remedial legislation for ireland came in question, convinced us that full and complete justice will never be done to ireland by the british parliament while the upper house (as at present constituted) remains a part of that parliament. . the break-down of the procedure of the house of commons, and the failure of the efforts to amend it, proved that parliament cannot work so long as a considerable section of its members seek to impede its working. to enable it to do its duty by england and scotland, it was evidently necessary, either to make the irish members as loyal to parliament as english and scotch members usually are, or else to exclude them. . the discussions of irish bills in the house of commons made us realize how little english members knew about ireland; how utterly different were their competence for, and their attitude towards, irish questions and english questions. we perceived that we were legislating in the dark for a country whose economic and social condition we did not understand--a country to which we could not apply our english ideas of policy; a country whose very temper and feeling were strange to us. we were really fitter to pass laws for canada or australia than for this isle within sight of our shores. . i have said that we were legislating in the dark. but there were two quarters from which light was proffered, the irish members and the irish executive. we rejected the first, and could hardly help doing so, for to accept it would have been to displace our own leaders. we followed the light which the executive gave. but in some cases (as notably in the case of the coercion bill of ) it proved to be a "wandering fire," leading us into dangerous morasses. and we perceived that at all times legislation at the bidding of the executive, against the wishes of irish members, was not self-government or free government. it was despotism. the rule of ireland by the british parliament was really "the rule of a dependency through an official, responsible no doubt, but responsible not to the ruled, but to an assembly of which they form less than a sixth part."[ ] as this assembly closed its ears to the one-sixth, and gave effect to the will of the official, this was essentially arbitrary government, and wanted those elements of success which free government contains. this experience had, by , convinced us that the present relations of the british parliament to ireland were bad, and could not last; that the discontent of ireland was justified; that the existing system, in alienating the mind of ireland, tended, not merely to repeal, but to separation; that the simplest, and probably the only effective, remedy for the increasing dangers was the grant of an irish legislature. two events clinched these conclusions. one was the tory surrender of june, . self-government, we had come to see, was the only alternative to coercion, and now coercion was gone. the other was the general election of december, , when newly-enfranchised ireland, through five-sixths of her representatives, demanded a parliament of her own. these were not, as is sometimes alleged, conclusions of despair. we were mostly persons of a cautious and conservative turn of mind, as men imbued with the spirit of the british constitution ought to be. the first thing was to convince us that the existing relations of the islands were faulty, and could not be maintained. this was a negative result, and while we remained in that stage we were despondent. many liberal members will remember the gloom that fell on us in and whenever we thought or spoke of ireland. but presently the clouds lifted. we still felt the old objections to any home rule scheme, though we now saw that they were less formidable than the evils of the present system. but we came to feel that the grant of self-government was a right thing in itself. it was not merely a means of ridding ourselves of our difficulties, not merely a boon yielded because long demanded. it was a return to broad and deep principles, a conformity to those natural laws which govern human society as well as the inanimate world--an effort to enlist the better and higher feelings of mankind in the creation of a truer union between the two nations than had ever yet existed. when we perceived this, hope returned. it is strong with us now, for, though we see troubles, perhaps even dangers, in the immediate future, we are confident that the principles on which liberal policy towards ireland is based will in the long run work out a happy issue for her, as they have in and for every other country that has trusted to them. one last word as to consistency. we learnt in the parliament of many facts about ireland we had not known before; we felt the force and bearing of other facts previously accepted on hearsay, but not realized. we saw the irish problem change from what it had been in into the new phase which stood apparent at the end of , coercion abandoned by its former advocates, self-government demanded by the nation. were we to disregard all these new facts, ignore all these new conditions, and cling to old ideas, some of which we perceived to be mistaken, while others, still true in themselves, were out-weighed by arguments of far wider import? we did not so estimate our duty. we foresaw the taunts of foes and the reproaches of friends. but we resolved to give effect to the opinions we slowly, painfully, even reluctantly formed, opinions all the stronger because not suddenly adopted, and founded upon evidence whose strength no one can appreciate till he has studied the causes of irish discontent in irish history, and been forced (as we were) to face in parliament the practical difficulties of the government of ireland by the british house of commons. footnotes: [footnote : i may mention here another fact whose significance impressed some among us. parliament, which usually sinned in not doing for ireland what ireland asked, occasionally passed bills for ireland which were regarded as setting very bad precedents for england. by some bargain between the irish office and the nationalist members, measures were put through which may have been right as respects ireland, but which embodied principles mischievous as respects great britain. we felt that if it was necessary to enact such statutes, it would be better that they should proceed from an irish legislature rather than from the imperial parliament, which might be embarrassed by its own acts when asked to extend the same principles to england. the labourers' act of july, , is the most conspicuous example.] [footnote : at easter, , i met a number of leading ulster liberals in belfast, told them that home rule was certainly coming, and urged them to prepare some plan under which any special interests they conceived the protestant part of ulster to have, would be effectually safe-guarded. they were startled, and at first discomposed, but presently told me i was mistaken; to which i could only reply that time would show, and perhaps sooner then even english liberals expected.] [footnote : my recollection of a conversation with a distinguished public man in july, , enables me to say that this fact had impressed itself upon us as early as that year. he doubted the fact, but admitted that, if true, it was momentous. the passing of the franchise bill made it, in our view, more momentous than ever.] [footnote : some thought that its functions should be very limited, while large powers were granted to county boards or provincial councils. but most had, i think, already perceived that the grant of a merely local self-government, while retaining an irresponsible central bureaucracy, would do more harm than good. it seemed at first sight a safer experiment than the creation of a central legislative body. but, like many middle courses, it combined the demerits and wanted the merits of each of the extreme courses. it would not make the country tranquil, as firm and long-continued repression might possibly do. neither would it satisfy the people's demands, and divert them from struggles against england to disputes and discussions among themselves, as the gift of genuine self-government might do.] [footnote : some of us had tried to do so. i prepared such a scheme in the autumn of , and submitted it to some specially competent friends. their objections, made from what would now be called the unionist point of view, were weighty. but their effect was to convince me that the scheme erred on the side of caution; and i believe the experience of other liberals who worked at the problem to have been the same as my own--viz. that a small and timid scheme is more dangerous than a large and bold one. thus the result of our thinking from july, , till april, , was to make us more and more disposed to reject half-and-half solutions. some of us (of whom i was one) expressed this feeling by saying in our election addresses in , "the further we go in giving the irish people the management of their own affairs (subject to the maintenance of the unity of the empire) the better."] [footnote : quoted from an article contributed by myself to the american _century magazine_, which i refer to because, written in the spring of , it expresses the ideas here stated.] home rule and imperial unity by lord thring the principal charge made against the scheme of home rule contained in the irish government bill, , is that it is incompatible with the maintenance of the unity of the empire and the supremacy of the imperial parliament. a further allegation states that the bill is useless, as agrarian exasperation lies at the root of irish discontent and irish disloyalty, and that no place would be found for a home rule bill even in irish aspirations if an effective land bill were first passed. an endeavour will be made in the following pages to secure a verdict of acquittal on both counts--as to the charge relating to imperial unity and the supremacy of the imperial parliament, by proving that the accusation is absolutely unfounded, and based partly on a misconception of the nature of imperial ties, and partly on a misapprehension of the effect of the provisions of the home rule bill as bearing on imperial questions; and as to the inutility of the home rule bill in view of the necessity of land reform, by showing that without a home rule bill no land bill worth consideration as a means of pacifying ireland can be passed. the complete partisan spirit in which home rule has been treated is the more to be deplored as the subject is one which does not lend itself readily to the trivialities of party debates. it raises questions of principle, not of detail. it ascends at once into the highest region of politics. it is conversant with the great questions of constitutional and international law, and leads to an inquiry into the very nature of governments and the various modes in which communities of men are associated together either as simple or composite nations. to describe those modes in detail would be to give a history of the various despotic, monarchical, oligarchical, and democratic systems of government which have oppressed or made happy the children of men. such a description is calculated to perplex and mislead from its very extent; not so an inquiry into the powers of government, and a classification of those powers. they are limited in extent, and, if we confine ourselves to english names and english necessities, we shall readily attain to an apprehension of the mode in which empires, nations, and political societies are bound together, at least in so far as such knowledge is required for the understanding of the nature of imperial supremacy, and the mode in which home rule in ireland is calculated to affect that supremacy. the powers of government are divisible into two great classes-- . imperial powers; . state powers, using "state" in the american sense of a political community subordinated to some other power, and not in the sense of an independent nation. the imperial powers are in english law described as the prerogatives of the crown, and consist in the main of the powers of making peace and war, of maintaining armies and fleets and regulating commerce, and making treaties with foreign nations. state powers are complete powers of local self-government, described in our colonial constitutions as powers to make laws "for the peace, order, and good government of the colony or state" in which such powers are to be exercised. intermediate between the imperial and state powers are a class of powers required to prevent disputes and facilitate intercourse between the various parts of an empire or other composite system of states--for example, the coinage of money, and other regulations relating to the currency; the laws relating to copyright, or other exclusive rights to the use and profits of any works or inventions; and so forth. these powers may be described as quasi-imperial powers. having arrived at a competent knowledge of the materials out of which governments are formed, it may be well to proceed to a consideration of the manner in which those materials have been worked up in building the two great anglo-saxon composite nations--namely, the american union and the british empire--for, if we find that the arrangements proposed by the irish home rule bill are strictly in accordance with the principles on which the unity of the american union was based and on which the imperial power of great britain has rested for centuries, the conclusion must be that the irish home rule bill is not antagonistic to the unity of the empire or to the supremacy of the british parliament. in discussing these matters it will be convenient to begin with the american union, as it is less extensive in area and more homogeneous in its construction than the british empire. the thirteen revolted american colonies, on the conclusion of their war with england, found themselves in the position of thirteen independent states having no connection with each other. the common tie of supremacy exercised by the mother country was broken, and each state was an independent nation, possessed both of imperial and local rights. the impossibility of a cluster of thirteen small independent nations maintaining their independence against foreign aggression became immediately apparent, and, to remedy this evil, the thirteen states appointed delegates to form a convention authorized to weld them into one body as respected imperial powers. this was attempted to be done by the establishment of a central body called a congress, consisting of delegates from the component states, and invested with all the powers designated above as imperial and quasi-imperial powers. the expenses incurred by the confederacy were to be defrayed out of a common fund, to be supplied by requisitions made on the several states. in effect, the confederacy of the thirteen states amounted to little more than an offensive and defensive alliance between thirteen independent nations, as the central power had states for its subjects and not individuals, and could only enforce the law against any disobedient state by calling on the twelve other states to make war on the refractory member of the union. a system dependent for its efficacy on the concurrence of so many separate communities contained in itself the seeds of dissolution, and it soon became apparent that one of two things must occur--either the american states must cease as such to be a nation, or the component members of that union must each be prepared to relinquish a further portion of the sovereign or quasi-sovereign powers which it possessed. under those circumstances, what was the course taken by the thirteen states? they perceived that it was quite possible to maintain complete unity and compactness as a nation if, in addition to investing the supreme government with imperial and quasi-imperial powers, they added full power to impose federal taxes on the component states and established an executive furnished with ample means to carry all federal powers into effect through the medium of federal officers. the government so formed consisted of a president and two elected houses called congress, and, as a balance-wheel of the constitution, a supreme court was established, to which was confided the task of deciding in case of dispute all questions arising under the constitution of the united states or relating to international law. the executive of the united states, with the president as its source and head, was furnished with full authority and power to enforce the federal laws. the army and navy were under its command, and it was provided with courts of justice, and subordinate officers to enforce the decrees of those courts throughout the length and breadth of the union. above all, a complete system of federal taxation supplied the central government with the necessary funds to perform effectually all the functions of a supreme national government. the nature of the constitution of the united states will be best understood by considering the position in which its subjects stand to the central government and their own state governments. in effect, every inhabitant of the united states has a double nationality. he belongs to one great nation called the united states, or, as it would be more aptly called to show its absolute unity, the american republic, having jurisdiction over the whole surface of ground comprised in the area of the united states. he is also a citizen of a smaller local and partially self-governing body--more important than a county, but not approaching the position of a nation--called a state. it is no part of the object of this article to enter into the details of the american government, its advantages or defects. this much, however, is clear--the american constitution has lasted nearly one hundred years, and shows no signs of decay or disruption. it has stood the strain of the greatest war of modern times, and has emerged from the conflict stronger than before. even during the war the antagonism of the rebels was directed, not against the union, but against the efforts of the northern states to suppress slavery, or, in other words, to destroy, as the southern states believed (not unjustly as the event showed), their property in slaves, and consequently the only means they had of making their estates profitable. one conclusion, then, we may draw, that a nation in which the imperial powers and the state powers are vested in different authorities is no less compact and powerful, as respects all national capacities, than a nation in which both classes of powers are wielded by the same functionaries; and one lesson more may be learnt from the american war of secession--namely, that in a nation having such a division of powers, any conflict between the two classes results in the supreme or imperial powers prevailing over the local governmental powers, and not in the latter invading or driving a wedge into the supreme powers. in fact, the tendency in case of a struggle is towards an undue centralization of the nation by reason of the encroachment by the supreme authority, rather than towards a weakening of the national unity by separatist action on the part of the constituent members of the nation. in comparing the constitution of the united states with the constitution of the british empire, we find an apparent resemblance in form as respects the anglo-saxon colonies, but underlying the surface a total difference of principle. the united states is an aggregate of homogeneous and contiguous states which, in order to weld themselves into a nation, gave up a portion of their rights to a central authority, reserving to themselves all powers of government which they did not expressly relinquish. the british empire is an aggregate of many communities under one common head, and is thus described by mr. burke in , in language which may seem to have been somewhat too enthusiastic at the time when it was spoken, but at the present day does not more than do justice to an empire which comprises one-sixth of the habitable globe in extent and population:-- "i look, i say, on the imperial rights of great britain, and the privileges which the colonies ought to enjoy under those rights, to be just the most reconcilable things in the world. the parliament of great britain sits at the head of her extensive empire in two capacities: one as the local legislature of this island, providing for all things at home immediately and by no other instrument than the executive power; the other, and i think her nobler capacity, is what i call her imperial character, in which, as from the throne of heaven, she superintends all the several legislatures, and guides and controls them all without annihilating any. as all these provincial legislatures are only co-ordinate with each other, they ought all to be subordinate to her, else they can neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual assistance."[ ] the means by which the possessions of great britain were acquired have been as various as the possessions themselves. the european, asiatic, and african possessions became ours by conquest and cession; the american by conquest, treaty, and settlement; the australasian by settlement, and by that dubious system of settlement known by the name of annexation. now, what is the link which fastens each of these possessions to the mother country? surely it is the inherent and indestructible right of the british crown to exercise imperial powers--in other words, the supremacy of the queen and the british parliament? what, again, is the common bond of union between these vast colonial possessions, differing in laws, in religion, and in the character of the population? the same answer must be given: the joint and several tie, so to speak, is the same--namely, the sovereignty of great britain. it is true that the mode in which the materials composing the british empire have been cemented together is exactly the reverse of the manner of the construction of the american union. in the case of the union, independent states voluntarily relinquished a portion of their sovereignty to secure national unity, and entrusted the guardianship of that unity to a representative body chosen by themselves. such a union was based on contract, and could only be constructed by communities which claimed to be independent. far different have been the circumstances under which england has developed itself into the british empire. england began as a sovereign power, having its sovereignty vested at first solely in the sovereign, but gradually in the sovereign and parliament. this sovereignty neither the crown nor the parliament can, jointly or severally, get rid of, for it is of the very essence of a sovereign power that it cannot, by act of parliament or otherwise, bind its successors.[ ] this principle of supremacy has never been lost sight of by the british parliament. their right to alter or suspend a colonial constitution has never been disputed. contract never enters into the question. the dominant authority delegates to its subordinate communities as much or as little power as it deems advantageous for each body, and, if it sees fit, resumes a portion or the whole of the delegated authority. the last point of difference to be noted between the american constitution and the constitution of the british empire is the fact that as minerva sprang from the brain of jupiter fully equipped, so the american constitution came forth from the hands of its framers complete and, what is of more importance, practically in material matters unchangeable except by the agony of an internecine war or some overwhelming passions. the british empire, on the other hand, is, as respects its component members, ever in progress and flux. an anglo-saxon colony, no less than a human being, has its infancy under the maternal care of a governor, its boyhood subject to the government of a representative council and an executive appointed by the crown, its manhood under home rule and responsible government, in which the executive are bound to vacate their offices whenever they are out-voted in the legislature. changes are ever taking place in the growth, so to speak, of the several british possessions, but what is the result? nobody ever dreams of these changes injuring the imperial tie or the supremacy of the british parliament, that alone towers above all, unchangeable and unimpaired; and, what is most notable, loyalty and devotion to the crown--that is to say, the imperial tie--so far from being weakened by the transition of a colony from a state of dependence in local affairs to the higher degree of a self-governing colony, are, on the contrary, strengthened almost in direct proportion as the central interference with local affairs is diminished. on this point an unimpeachable witness--mr. merivale--says: "what, then, are the lessons to be learnt from a consideration of the american constitution and of our colonial system? surely these: that imperial unity and imperial supremacy are in no degree dependent on the control exercised by the central power on its dependent members." facts, however, are more conclusive than any arguments; and we have only to look back to the state some forty years ago of canada, new zealand, and the various colonies of australia, and compare that state with their condition to-day, to come to the conclusion that the fullest power of local government is perfectly consistent with the unity of the empire and the supremacy of the british parliament. under the old colonial constitutions the executive of those colonies was under the control of the crown; and mr. merivale says "that the political existence consisted of a series of quarrels and reconciliations between the two opposing authorities--the colonial legislative body and the executive nominated by the crown." england resolved to give up the control of the executive, and to grant complete responsible government--that is to say, the governor of each colony was instructed that his executive council (or ministry, as we should call it) must resign whenever they were out-voted by the legislative body. the effect of this change, this relaxing, as would be supposed, of the imperial tie, was magical, and is thus described by mr. merivale:[ ] "the magnitude of that change--the extraordinary rapidity of its beneficial effects--it is scarcely possible to exaggerate. none but those who have traced it can realize the sudden spring made by a young community under its first release from the old tie of subjection, moderate as that tie really was. the cessation, as if by magic, of the old irritant sores between colony and mother country is the first result. not only are they at concord, but they seem to leave hardly any traces in the public mind behind them. confidence and affection towards the home, still fondly so termed by the colonist as well as the emigrant, seem to supersede at once distrust and hostility. loyalty, which was before the badge of a class suspected by the rest of the community, became the common watchword of all, and, with some extravagance in the sentiment, there arises no small share of its nobleness and devotion. communities, which but a few years ago would have wrangled over the smallest item of public expenditure to which they were invited by the executive to contribute, have vied with each other in their subscriptions to purposes of british interests in response to calls of humanity, or munificence for objects but indistinctly heard of at the distance of half the world." the dominion of canada has been so much talked about that it may be well to give a summary of its constitution, though, in so far as regards its relations to the mother country, it differs in no material respect from any other self-governing colony. the dominion consists of seven provinces, each of which has a legislature of its own, but is at the same time subject to the legislature of the dominion, in the same manner as each state in the american union has a legislature of its own, and is at the same time subject to the control of congress. the distinguishing feature between the system of the american states and the associated colonies of the dominion of canada is this--that all imperial powers, everything that constitutes a people a nation as respects foreigners, are reserved to the mother country. the division, then, of the dominion and its provinces consists only in a division of local powers. it is impossible to mark accurately the line between dominion and provincial powers, but, speaking generally, dominion powers relate to such matters--for example, the regulation of trade and commerce, postal service, currency, and so forth--as require to be dealt with on a uniform principle throughout the whole area of a country; while the provincial powers relate to provincial and municipal institutions, provincial licensing, and other subjects restricted to the limits of the province. as a general rule, the legislature of the dominion and the legislature of each province have respectively exclusive jurisdiction within the limits of the subjects entrusted to them; but, as respects agriculture and immigration, the dominion parliament have power to overrule any act of the provincial legislatures, and, as respects property and civil rights in ontario, nova scotia, and new brunswick, the dominion parliament may legislate with a view to uniformity, but their legislation is not valid unless it is accepted by the legislature of each province to which it applies. the executive authority in the dominion government, as in all the self-governing colonies, is carried on by the governor in the name of the queen, but with the advice of a council: that is to say, as to all imperial matters, he is under the control of the mother country; as to all local matters, he acts on the advice of his local council. the result of the whole is that the citizenship of an inhabitant of the dominion of canada is a triple tie. suppose him to reside in the province of quebec. first, he is a citizen of that province, and bound to obey all the laws which it is within the competence of the provincial legislature to pass. next, he is a citizen of the dominion of canada, and acknowledges its jurisdiction in all matters outside the legitimate sphere of the province. lastly, and above all, he is a subject of her majesty. he is to all intents and purposes, as respects the vast company of nations, an englishman, entitled to all the privileges as he is to all the glory of the mother country so far as such privileges can be enjoyed and glory participated in without actual residence in england. one startling point of likeness in events and unlikeness in consequences is to be found in the history of ireland and canada. in ireland rebelled. protestant and catholic were arrayed in arms against each other. the rebellion was quenched in blood, and measures of repression have been in force, with slight intervals of suspension, ever since, with this result--that the ireland of is scarcely less disloyal and discontented than the ireland of . in and canada rebelled. protestants and catholics, differing in nationality as well as in religion, were arrayed in arms against each other. the rebellion was quelled with the least possible violence, a free constitution was given, and the canada of is the largest, most loyal, and most contented colony in her majesty's dominions. assuming, then, thus much to be proved by the constitution of the united states that national unity of the closest description is consistent with complete home rule in the component members of the nation, and by the history of canada and the british colonial empire that an imperial tie is sufficient to bind together for centuries dependencies differing in situation, in nationality, in religion, in laws, in everything that distinguishes peoples one from another, and further and more particularly that emancipation of the anglo-saxon colonies from control in their internal affairs strengthens instead of weakening imperial unity, let us turn to ireland and inquire whether there is anything in the circumstances under which home rule was proposed to be granted to ireland, or in the measures intended to establish that home rule, fairly leading to the inference that disruption of the empire or an impairment of imperial powers would probably be a consequence of passing the irish government bill and the irish land bill. and, first, as to the circumstances which would seem to recommend the irish home rule bill. ireland, from the very commencement of her connection with england, has chafed under the restraints which that connection imposed. the closer the apparent union between the two countries the greater the real disunion. the act of , _in words and in law_, effected not a union merely, but a consolidation of the two countries. the effect of those words and that law was to give rise to a restless discontent, which has constantly found expression in efforts to procure the repeal of the act of union and the reestablishment of a national parliament in dublin. how futile have been the efforts of the british parliament to diminish by concession or repress by coercion irish aspirations or irish discontent it is unnecessary to discuss here. all men admit the facts, however different the conclusions which they draw from those facts. what burke said of america on moving in his resolution on conciliation with the colonies was true in with respect to ireland:-- "the fact is undoubted, that under former parliaments the state of america [read for america, ireland] has been kept in continual agitation. everything administered as remedy to the public complaint, if it did not produce, was at least followed by an heightening of the distemper, until, by a variety of experiments, that important country has been brought into her present situation--a situation which i will not miscall, which i dare not name, which i scarcely know how to comprehend in the terms of any description."[ ] at length, after the election of , mr. gladstone and the majority of his followers came to the conclusion that an opportunity had presented itself for providing ireland with a constitution conferring on the people of that country the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute supremacy of the crown and the imperial parliament and the entire unity of the empire. a scheme was proposed which was accepted in principle by the representatives of the national party in ireland as a fair and sufficient adjustment of the imperial claims of great britain and the local claims of ireland. the scheme was shortly this. a legislative assembly was proposed to be established in ireland with power to make all laws necessary for the good government of ireland--in other words, invested with the same powers of local self-government as a colonial assembly. the irish assembly was in one respect unlike a colonial legislature. it consisted of one house only, but this house was divided into two orders, each of which, in case of differences on any important legislative matter, voted separately. this form was adopted in order to minimize the chances of collision between the two orders, by making it imperative on each order to hear the arguments of the other before proceeding to a division, thus throwing on the dissentient order the full responsibility of its dissent, with a complete knowledge of the consequences likely to ensue therefrom. the clause conferring on the irish legislature full powers of local self-government was immediately followed by a provision excepting, by enumeration, from any interference on the part of the irish legislature, all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed on that provision. this exception (as is well known) is not found in colonial constitutional acts. in them the restriction of the words of the grant to local powers only has been held sufficient to safeguard the supremacy of the british parliament and the unity of the empire. the reason for making a difference in the case of the home rule bill was political, not legal. separation was declared by the enemies of the bill to be the real intention of its supporters, and destruction of the unity of the empire to be its certain consequence. it seemed well that ireland, by her representatives, should accept as a satisfactory charter of irish liberty a document which contained an express submission to imperial power and a direct acknowledgment of imperial unity. similarly with respect to the supremacy of the british parliament. in the colonial constitutions all reference to this supremacy is omitted as being too clear to require notice. in the case of the irish home rule bill instructions were given to preserve in express words the supremacy of the british parliament in order to pledge ireland to an express admission of that supremacy by the same vote which accepted local powers. it is true that the wording by the draftsman of the sentence reserving the supremacy of parliament was justly found fault with as inaccurate and doubtful, but that defect would have been cured by an amendment in committee; and, even if there had not been any such clause in the bill, it is clear, from what has been said above, that the imperial legislature could not, if it would, renounce its supremacy or abdicate its sovereign powers. the executive government in ireland was continued in the queen, to be carried on by the lord lieutenant on behalf of her majesty, with the aid of such officers and council as to her majesty might from time to time seem fit. her majesty was also a constituent part of the legislature, with power to delegate to the lord lieutenant the prerogative of assenting to or dissenting from bills, and of summoning, proroguing, and dissolving parliament. under these provisions the lord lieutenant resembled the governor of a colony with responsible government. he was invested with a double authority--first, imperial; secondly, local. as an imperial officer, he was bound to veto any bill injuriously affecting imperial interests or inconsistent with general imperial policy; as a local officer, it was his duty to act in all local matters according to the advice of his council, whose tenure of office depended on their being in harmony with, and supported by, a majority of the legislative assembly. questions relating to the constitutionality of any particular law were not left altogether to the decision of the governor. if a bill containing a provision infringing imperial rights passed the legislature, its validity might be decided in the first instance by the ordinary courts of law, but the ultimate appeal lay to the judicial committee of the privy council, and, with a view to secure absolute impartiality in the committee, it was provided that ireland should be represented on that body by persons who either were or had been irish judges. not the least important provision of the bill, as respects the maintenance of imperial interests, was the continuance of imperial taxation. the customs and excise duties were directed to be levied, as heretofore, in pursuance of the enactments of the imperial parliament, and were excepted from the control of the irish legislature, which had full power, with that exception, to impose such taxes in ireland as they might think expedient. the bill further provided that neither the imperial taxes of excise nor any local taxes that might be imposed by the irish legislature should be paid into the irish exchequer. an imperial officer, called the receiver-general, was appointed, into whose hands the produce of every tax, both imperial and local, was required to be paid, and it was the duty of the receiver-general to take care that all claims of the english exchequer, including especially the contribution payable by ireland for imperial purposes, were satisfied before a farthing found its way into the irish exchequer for irish purposes. the receiver-general was provided with an imperial court to enforce his rights of imperial taxation, and adequate means for enforcing all imperial powers by imperial civil officers. the bill did not provide for the representation of ireland in the imperial parliament on all imperial questions, including questions relating to imperial taxation, but it is fully understood that in any bill which might hereafter be brought forward relating to home rule those defects would be remedied. an examination, then, of the home rule bill, that "child of revolution and parent of separation," appears to lead irresistibly to two conclusions. first, that imperial rights and imperial powers, representation for imperial purposes, imperial taxation--in short, every link that binds a subordinate member of an empire to its supreme head--have been maintained unimpaired and unchanged. secondly, that, in granting home rule to discontented ireland, that form of responsible government has been adopted which, as mr. merivale declares--and his declaration subsequent events have more than verified--when conferred on the discontented colonies, changed restless aspirations for separation into quiet loyalty. that such a bill as the home rule bill should be treated as an invasion of imperial rights is a proof of one, or perhaps of both, the following axioms--that bills are never read by their accusers, and that party spirit will distort the plainest facts. the union of great britain and ireland was not, so far as imperial powers were concerned, disturbed by the bill, and an irishman remains a citizen of the british empire under the home rule bill, with the same obligations and the same privileges, on the same terms as before. all the bill did was to make his irish citizenship distinct from his imperial citizenship, in the same manner as the citizenship of a native of the state of new york is distinct from his citizenship as a member of the united states. now it has been found that the central power in the united states has been more than a match for the state powers, and can it be conceived for a moment that the imperial power of great britain should not be a match for the local power of ireland--a state which has not one-seventh of the population or one-twentieth part of the income of the dominant community? one argument remains to be noticed which the opponents of home rule urge as absolutely condemnatory of the measure, whereas, if properly weighed, it is conclusive in its favour. home rule, they say, is a mere question of sentiment. "national aspirations" are the twaddle of english enthusiasts who know nothing of ireland. what is really wanted is the reform of the land law. settle the agrarian problem, and home rule may be relegated to the place supposed to be paved with good intentions. the irish will straightway change their character, and become a law-abiding, contented, loyal people. be it so. but suppose it to be proved that the establishment of an irish government, or, in other words, home rule, is an essential condition of agrarian reform--that the latter cannot be had without the former--surely home rule should stand none the worse in the estimation of its opponents if it not only secures a safe basis for putting an end to agrarian exasperation, but also gratifies the feeling of the irish people as expressed by the majority of its representatives in parliament? now, what is the nature of the irish land question? this we must understand before considering the remedy. in ireland (meaning by ireland that part of the country which is in the hands of tenants, and falls within the compass of a land bill) the tenure of land is wholly unlike that which is found in the greater part of england. instead of large farms in which the landlord makes all the improvements and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the land and receives the produce, small holdings are found in which the tenant does the improvements (if any) and pays a fixed rent-charge to the owner. in england the tenant does not perform the obligations or in any way aspire to the character of owner. if he thinks he can get a cheaper farm, he quits his former one, regarding his interest in the land as a mere matter of pounds, shillings, and pence. not so the irish tenant. he has made what he calls improvements, he claims a quasi-ownership in the land, and has the characteristic celtic attachment for the patch of ground forming his holding, however squalid it may be, however inadequate for his support. in short, in ireland there is a dual ownership--that of the proprietor, who has no interest in the soil so long as the tenant pays his rent and fulfils the conditions of his tenancy; and that of the tenant, who, subject to the payment of his rent and performance of the fixed conditions, acts, thinks, and carries himself as the owner of his holding. a system, then, of agrarian reform in ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of putting an end to this dual ownership--that is to say, of making the tenant the sole proprietor of his holding, and compensating the landlord for his interest in the ownership. the problem is further narrowed by the circumstance that the tenant cannot be expected to advance any capital or pay an increased rent, so that the means of compensating the landlord must be found out of the existing rent. the plan adopted in mr. gladstone's land bill was to commute the rent-charges, offering the landlord, as a general rule, twenty years' purchase on the net rental of the estate (that is to say, the rent received by him after deducting all outgoings), and paying him the purchase-money in £ per cent. stock taken at par. the stock was to be advanced by the english government to an irish state department at - / per cent. interest, and the bill provided that the tenant, instead of rent, was to pay an annuity of £ per cent. on a capital sum equal in amount to twenty times the gross rental. the notable feature which distinguished this plan from all other schemes was the security given for the repayment of the purchase-money: hitherto the english government has lent the money directly to the landlord or tenant, and has become the mortgagee of the land--in other words, has become in effect the landlord of the land sold to the tenant until the repayment of the loan has been completed. to carry into effect under such a system any extensive scheme of agrarian reform (and if not extensive such a reform would be of no value in pacifying ireland) presupposes a readiness on the part of the english government to become virtually the landlord of a large portion of ireland, with the attendant odium of absenteeism and alien domination. under a land scheme such as that of , all these difficulties would be overcome. the irish, not the english, government would be the virtual landlord. it would be the interest of ireland that the annuities due from the tenants should be regularly paid, as, subject to the prior charge of the english exchequer, they would form part of the irish revenues. the cardinal difference, then, between mr. gladstone's scheme and any other land scheme that has seen the light is this--that in mr. gladstone's scheme the english loans would have been lent to the irish government on the security of the whole irish revenues, whereas in every other scheme they have been lent by the english government to the irish creditors on the security of individual patches of land. the whole question, then, of the relation between home rule and agrarian reform may be summed up as follows:--agrarian reform is necessary for the pacification of ireland; agrarian reform cannot be efficiently carried into effect without an irish government; an irish government can only be established by a home rule bill: therefore a home rule bill is necessary for the pacification of ireland. it is idle to say, as has been said on numerous platforms, that plans no doubt can be devised for agrarian reform without home rule. the irish revenues are the only collateral security that can be obtained for loans of english money, and irish revenues are only available for the purpose on the establishment of an irish government. baronial guarantees, union guarantees, county guarantees, debenture schemes, have all been tried and found wanting, and vague assertions as to possibilities are idle unless they are based on intelligible working plans. the foregoing arguments will be equally valid if, instead of making the tenants peasant-proprietors, it were thought desirable that the irish state should be the proprietor and the tenants be the holders of the land at perpetual rents and subject to fixed conditions. again, it might be possible to pay the landlords by annual sums instead of capital sums. such matters are really questions of detail. the substance is to interpose the irish government between the tenant and the english mortgagee, and to make the loans general charges on the whole of the irish government revenues as paid into the hands of an imperial receiver instead of placing them as special charges, each fixed on its own small estate or holding. the fact that mr. gladstone's land scheme was denounced as confiscation of £ , , of the english taxpayers' property, while lord ashbourne's act is pronounced by the same party wise and prudent, shows the political blindness of party spirit in its most absurd form. lord ashbourne's act requires precisely the same expenditure to do the same work as mr. gladstone's bill requires, but in mr. gladstone's scheme the whole irish revenue was pledged as collateral security, and the irish government was interposed between the ultimate creditor and the irish tenant, while under lord ashbourne's act the english government figures without disguise as the landlord of each tenant, exacting a debt which the tenant is unwilling to pay as being due to what he calls an alien government. an endeavour has been made in the preceding pages to prove that home rule in no respect infringes on imperial rights or imperial unity, for the simple reason that the imperial power remains exactly in the same position as it was before, the home rule bill dealing only with local matters. at all events, burke thought that the imperial supremacy alone constituted a real union between england and ireland. he says-- "my poor opinion is, that the closest connection between great britain and ireland is essential to the well-being--i had almost said to the very being--of the three kingdoms; for that purpose i humbly conceive that the whole of the superior, and what i should call imperial politics, ought to have its residence here, and that ireland, locally, civilly, and commercially independent, ought politically to look up to great britain in all matters of peace and war. in all these points to be joined with her, and, in a word, with her to live and to die."[ ] how strange to burke would have seemed the doctrine that the restoration of a limited power of self-government to ireland, excluding commerce, and excluding all matters not only imperial, but those in which uniformity is required, should be denounced as a disruption of the empire! it remains to notice one other charge made against the gladstonian home rule bill, namely, that of impairing the supremacy of the british parliament. that allegation has been shown also to be founded on a mistake. next, it is said that the gladstonian scheme does not provide securities against executive and legislative oppression. the answer is complete. the executive authority being vested in the queen, it will be the duty of the governor not to allow executive oppression; still more will it be his duty to veto any act of legislative oppression. further, it is stated that difficulties will arise with respect to the power of the privy council to nullify unconstitutional acts. but it is hard to see why a power which is exercised with success in the united states, where all the states are equal, and without dispute in our colonies, which are all dependent, should not be carried into effect with equal ease in ireland, which is more closely bound to us and more completely under our power than the colonies are, or than the several states are under the power of the central government. to conclude: the cause of irish discontent is the conjoint operation of the passion for nationality and the vicious system of land tenure, and the scheme of the irish home rule bill and the land bill removes the whole fabric on which irish discontent is raised. the irish, by the great majority of their representatives, have accepted the home rule bill as a satisfactory settlement of the nationality question. the british parliament can, through the medium of the home rule bill and the establishment of an irish legislature, carry through a final settlement of agrarian disputes with less injustice to individuals than could a parliament sitting in dublin, and, be it added, with scarcely any appreciable risk to the british taxpayer. of course it may be said that an irish parliament will go farther--that home rule is a step to separation, and a reform of the land laws a spoliation of the landlords. to those who urge such arguments i would recommend the perusal of the speech of burke on conciliation with america, and especially the following sentences, substituting "ireland" for "the colonies:"-- "but [the colonies] ireland will go further. alas! alas! when will this speculating against fact and reason end? what will quiet these panic fears which we entertain of the hostile effect of a conciliatory conduct? is it true that no case can exist in which it is proper for the sovereign to accede to the desires of his discontented subjects? is there anything peculiar in this case to make it a rule for itself? is all authority of course lost when it is not pushed to the extreme? is it a certain maxim that the fewer causes of discontentment are left by government the more the subject will be inclined to resist and rebel?" footnotes: [footnote : burke's speech on american taxation, vol. i. p. ] [footnote : this is the opinion of both english and american lawyers. see blackstone's comm., i. ; austin on jurisprudence, i. . as to american cases, see corley on constitutional limitations, pp. - .] [footnote : "lectures on the colonies," p, .] [footnote : burke, vol. i. p. .] [footnote : "letter on affairs of ireland," i. .] the irish government bill and the irish land bill by lord thring a mere enumeration or analysis of the contents of the irish government bill, , and the land (ireland) bill, , would convey scarcely any intelligible idea to the mind of an ordinary reader. it is, therefore, proposed in the following pages, before entering on the details of each bill, to give a summary of the reasons which led to its introduction, and of the principles on which it is founded. to begin with the irish government bill-- the object of the irish government bill is to confer on the irish people the largest measure of self-government consistent with the absolute supremacy of the crown and imperial parliament and the entire unity of the empire. to carry into effect this object it was essential to create a separate though subordinate legislature; thus occasion was given to opponents to apply the name of separatists to the supporters of the bill--a term true in so far only as it denoted the intention to create a separate legislature, but false and calumnious when used in the sense in which it was intended to be understood--of imputing to the promoters of the bill the intention to disunite or in any way to disintegrate the empire. indeed, the very object of the measure was, by relaxing a little the legal bonds of union, to draw closer the actual ties between england and ireland, in fact, to do as we have done in our colonies, by decentralizing the subordinate functions of government to strengthen the central supremacy of natural affection and imperial unity. the example of the effects of giving complete self-government to our colonies would seem not unfavourable to trying the same experiment in ireland. some forty years ago, canada, new zealand, and the various colonies of australia were discontented and uneasy at the control exercised by the government of england over their local affairs. what did england do? she gave to each of those communities the fullest power of local government consistent with the unity of the empire. the result was that the real union was established in the same degree as the apparent tie of control over local affairs was loosened. are there any reasons to suppose that the condition of ireland is such as to render the example of the colonies applicable? let us look a little at the past history of that country. up to ireland was governed practically as a conquered country. the result was that in , in order to save imperial unity, we altogether relaxed the local tie and made ireland legislatively independent. the empire was thus saved, but difficulties naturally arose between two independent legislatures. the true remedy would have been to have imposed on grattan's parliament the conditions imposed by the irish government bill on the statutory parliament created by that bill; the course actually taken was that, instead of leaving the irish with their local government, and arranging for the due supremacy of england, the irish legislature was destroyed under the guise of union, and irish representatives were transferred to an assembly in which they had little weight, and in which they found no sympathy. the result was that from the date of the union to the present day ireland has been constantly working for the reinstatement of its national legislature, and has been governed by a continuous system of extraordinary legislature called coercion; the fact being that between , the date of the act of union, and , the date of the great reform act, there were only eleven years free from coercion, while in the fifty-three years since that period there have been only two years entirely free from special repressive legislation. so much, therefore, is clear, that irish discontent at not being allowed to manage their own affairs has gradually increased instead of diminishing. the conclusion then would seem irresistible, that if coercion has failed, the only practical mode of governing ireland satisfactorily is to give the people power to manage their local affairs. coming, then, to the principle of the bill, the first step is to reconcile local government with imperial supremacy, in other words, to divide imperial from local powers; for if this division be accurately made, and the former class of powers be reserved to the british crown and british parliament, while the latter only are intrusted to the irish parliament, it becomes a contradiction in terms to say that imperial unity is dissolved by reserving to the imperial authority all its powers, or that home rule is a sundering of the imperial tie when that tie is preserved inviolable. imperial powers, then, are the prerogatives of the crown with respect to peace and war, and making treaties with foreign nations; in short, the power of regulating the relations of the empire towards foreign nations. these are the _jura summi imperii_, the very insignia of supremacy; the attributes of sovereign authority in every form of government, be it despotism, limited monarchy, or republic; the only difference is that in a system of government under one supreme head, they are vested in that head alone, in a federal government, as in america or switzerland, they reside in the composite body forming the federal supreme authority. various subsidiary powers necessarily attend the above supreme powers; for example, the power of maintaining armies and navies, of commanding the militia, and other incidental powers. closely connected with the power of making peace and war is the power of regulating commerce with foreign nations. next in importance to the reservations necessary to constitute the empire a unity with regard to foreign nations, are the powers required to prevent disputes and to facilitate intercourse between the various parts of the empire. these are the coinage of money and other regulations relating to currency, to copyright or other exclusive rights to the use or profit of any works or inventions. the above subjects must be altogether excluded from the powers of the subordinate legislature; it ceases to be subordinate as soon as it is invested with these imperial, or quasi-imperial, powers. assuming, however, the division between imperial and local powers to be accurately determined, how is the subordinate legislative body to be kept within its due limits? the answer is very plain,--an imperial court must be established to decide in the last resort whether the subordinate legislature has or has not infringed imperial rights. such a court has been in action in the united states of america ever since their union, and no serious conflict has arisen in carrying its decisions into effect, and the privy council, acting as the supreme court in respect to colonial appeals, has been accepted by all the self-governing colonies as a just and impartial expositor of the meaning of their several constitutions. next in importance to the right division of imperial and local powers is a correct understanding of the relation borne by the executive of an autonomous country to the mother country. in every part of the british empire which enjoys home rule the legislature consists of the queen and the two local legislative bodies. the administrative power resides in the queen alone. the queen has the appointment of all the officers of the government; money bills can be introduced into the legislature only with the consent of the queen. the initiative power of taxation then is vested in the queen, the executive head, in practice represented by the governor. but such a power of initiation is of course useless unless the legislative body is willing to support the executive, and grants it the necessary funds for carrying on the government. what, then, is the contrivance by which the governmental machine is prevented from being stopped by a difference between the executive and legislative authorities? it is the same in the mother country, and in every british home-rule country, with this difference only--that beyond the limits of the mother country the queen is represented by a governor to whom are delegated such a measure of powers as is necessary for the supreme head of a local self-governing community. the contrivance is this in the mother country:--the queen acts upon the advice of a cabinet council; in home-rule dependencies the governor acts on the advice of a local council. if this cabinet council in the mother country, or local council in a dependency, ceases to command a majority in the popular legislative body, it resigns, and the governor is obliged to select a council which, by commanding such a majority, can obtain the supplies necessary to carry on the government. the consequence then is, that in a home-rule community, if a serious difficulty arises between the legislative and executive authority, the head of the executive, the governor, refers the ultimate decision of the question to the general body of electors by dissolving the popular legislative body. it has been urged in the discussion on the irish government bill that the powers of the executive in relation to the legislative body ought to be expressed in the bill itself; but it is clear to anybody acquainted with the rudiments of legislation that the details of such a system (in other words, the mode in which a governor ought to act under the endless variety of circumstances which may occur in governing a dependency) never have been and never can be expressed in an act of parliament. but how little difficulty this absence of definition has caused may be judged from the fact that neither in england nor in any of her home-rule dependencies has any vital collision arisen between the executive and legislative authorities, and that all the home-rule colonies have managed to surmount the obstacles which the opponents of home rule argued would be fatal to their existence. the main principles have now been stated on which the irish government bill is framed, and it remains to give a summary of the provisions of the bill, the objects and bearing of which will be readily understood from the foregoing observations. the first clause provides that-- "on and after the appointed day there shall be established in ireland a legislature consisting of her majesty the queen and an irish legislative body." this is the first step in all english constitutional systems, to vest the power of legislation in the queen and the legislative body. such a legislature might have had conferred on it the independent powers vested in grattan's parliament: but the second clause at once puts an end to any doubt as to the subordination of the irish legislative body; for while on the one hand it confers full powers of local self-government, by declaring that the legislature may make any laws for the peace, order, and good government of ireland, it subjects that power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. the exceptions are contained in the third clause, and the restrictions in the fourth. the exceptions are as follows:-- "the legislature of ireland shall not make laws relating to the following matters or any of them:-- "( .) the status or dignity of the crown, or the succession to the crown, or a regency; "( .) the making of peace or war; "( .) the army, navy, militia, volunteers, or other military or naval forces, or the defence of the realm; "( .) treaties and other relations with foreign states, or the relations between the various parts of her majesty's dominions; "( .) dignities or titles of honour; "( .) prize or booty of war; "( .) offences against the law of nations; or offences committed in violation of any treaty made, or hereafter to be made, between her majesty and any foreign state; or offences committed on the high seas; "( .) treason, alienage, or naturalization; "( .) trade, navigation, or quarantine; "( .) the postal and telegraph service, except as hereafter in this act mentioned with respect to the transmission of letters and telegrams in ireland; "( .) beacons, lighthouses, or sea-marks; "( .) the coinage; the value of foreign money; legal tender; or weights and measures; or "( .) copyright, patent rights, or other exclusive rights to the use or profits of any works or inventions." of these exceptions the first four preserve the imperial rights which have been insisted on above, and maintain the position of ireland as an integral portion of that empire of which great britain is the head. the remaining exceptions are either subsidiary to the first four, or relate, as is the case with exceptions to , to matters on which it is desirable that uniformity should exist throughout the whole empire. the restrictions in clause are:-- "the irish legislature shall not make any law-- "( .) respecting the establishment or endowment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or "( .) imposing any disability, or conferring any privilege, on account of religious belief; or "( .) abrogating or derogating from the right to establish or maintain any place of denominational education or any denominational institution or charity; or "( .) prejudicially affecting the right of any child to attend a school receiving public money without attending the religious instruction at that school; or "( .) impairing, without either the leave of her majesty in council first obtained on an address presented by the legislative body of ireland, or the consent of the corporation interested, the rights, property, or privileges of any existing corporation incorporated by royal charter or local and general act of parliament; or "( .) imposing or relating to duties of customs and duties of excise, as defined by this act, or either of such duties, or affecting any act relating to such duties or either of them; or "( .) affecting this act, except in so far as it is declared to be alterable by the irish legislature." these restrictions differ from the exceptions, inasmuch as they do not prevent the legislature of ireland from dealing with the subjects to which they refer, but merely impose on it an obligation not to handle the specified matters in a manner detrimental to the interests of certain classes of her majesty's subjects. for example, restrictions to are practically concerned in securing religious freedom; restriction protects existing charters; restriction is necessary, as will be seen hereinafter, to carrying into effect the financial scheme of the bill; restriction is a consequence of the very framework of the bill: it provides for the stability of the irish constitution, by declaring that the irish legislature is not competent to alter the constitutional act to which it owes its existence, except on those points on which it is expressly permitted to make alterations. clause is an exposition, so to speak, of the consequence which would seem to flow from the fact of the queen being a constitutional part of the legislature. it states that the royal prerogatives with respect to the summoning, prorogation, and dissolution of the irish legislative body are to be the same as the royal prerogatives in relation to the imperial parliament. the next clause ( ) is comparatively immaterial; it merely provides that the duration of the irish legislative body is to be quinquennial. as it deals with a matter of detail, it perhaps would have more aptly found a place in a subsequent part of the bill. clause passes from the legislative to the executive authority; it declares:-- ( .) the executive government of ireland shall continue vested in her majesty, and shall be carried on by the lord lieutenant on behalf of her majesty with the aid of such officers and such council as to her majesty may from time to time seem fit. ( .) subject to any instructions which may from time to time be given by her majesty, the lord lieutenant shall give or withhold the assent of her majesty to bills passed by the irish legislative body, and shall exercise the prerogatives of her majesty in respect of the summoning, proroguing, and dissolving of the irish legislative body, and any prerogatives the exercise of which may be delegated to him by her majesty. bearing in mind what has been said in the preliminary observations in respect of the relation between the executive and the legislative authority, it will be at once understood how much this clause implies, according to constitutional maxims, of the dependence on the one hand of the irish executive in respect of imperial matters, and of its independence in respect of local matters. the clause is practically co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the irish legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the imperial legislature. the governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. on the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the irish executive council. the system is, as has been shown above, self-acting. the governor, for local purposes, must have a council which is in harmony with the legislative body. if a council, supported by the legislative body and the governor do not agree, the governor must give way unless he can, by dismissing his council and dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative body which will support his views. as respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the irish people, and be dealt with accordingly. the above clauses contain the pith and marrow of the whole scheme. the exact constitution of the legislative body, and the orders into which it should be divided, the exclusion or non-exclusion of the irish members from the imperial parliament, indeed, the whole of the provisions found in the remainder of this bill, are matters which might be altered without destroying, or even violently disarranging, the home-rule scheme as above described. clauses , , and provide for the constitution of the legislative body; it differs materially from the colonial legislative bodies, and from the legislature of the united states. for the purpose of deliberation it consists of one house only; for the purpose of voting on all questions (except interlocutory applications and questions of order), it is divided into two classes, called in the bill "orders," each of which votes separately, with the result that a question on which the two orders disagree is deemed to be decided in the negative. the object of this arrangement is to diminish the chances of collision between the two branches of the legislature, which have given rise to so much difficulty both in england and the colonies. each order will have ample opportunity of learning the strength and hearing the arguments of the other order. they will therefore, each of them, proceed to a division with a full sense of the responsibility attaching to their action. a further safeguard is provided against a final conflict between the first and second orders. if the first order negative a proposition, that negative is in force only for a period of three years, unless a dissolution takes place sooner, in which case it is terminated at once; the lost bill or clause may then be submitted to the whole house, and if decided in the affirmative, and assented to by the queen, becomes law. the first order of the irish legislative body comprises members. it is intended to consist ultimately wholly of elective members; but for the next immediate period of thirty years the rights of the irish representative peers are, as will be seen, scrupulously reserved. the plan is this: of the members composing the first order, seventy-five are elective, and twenty-eight peerage members. the qualification of the elective members is an annual income of £ , or the possession of a capital sum of £ free from all charges. the elections are to be conducted in the electoral districts set out in the schedule to the bill. the electors must possess land or tenements within the district of the annual value of £ . the twenty-eight peerage members consist of the existing twenty-eight representative peers, and any vacancies in their body during the next thirty years are to be filled up in the manner at present in use respecting the election of irish representative peers. the irish representative peers cease to sit in the english parliament; but a member of that body is not required to sit in the irish parliament without his assent, and the place of any existing peer refusing to sit in the irish parliament will be filled up as in the case of an ordinary vacancy. the elective members of the first order sit for ten years; every five years one half their number will retire. the members of the first order do not vacate their seats on a dissolution of the legislative body. at the expiration of thirty years, that is to say, upon the exhaustion of all the existing irish representative peers, the whole of the upper order will consist of elective members. the second order consists of members, that is to say, of the existing irish members (who are transferred to the irish parliament), and of additional members to be elected by the county districts and the represented towns, in the same manner as that in which the present members for counties and towns are elected--each constituency returning two instead of one member. if an existing member does not assent to his transfer, his seat is vacated. a power is given to the legislature of ireland to enable the royal university of ireland to return two members. the provisions with respect to this second order fall within the class of enactments which are alterable by the irish legislature. after the first dissolution of parliament the irish legislature may deal with the second order in any manner they think fit, with the important restrictions:--( ) that in the distribution of members they must have due regard to population; ( ) that they must not increase or diminish the number of members. the transfer to the irish legislative body of the irish representative peers, and of the irish members, involves their exclusion under ordinary circumstances from the imperial parliament, with this great exception, that whenever an alteration is proposed to be made in the fundamental provisions of the irish government bill, a mode of procedure is devised for recalling both orders of the irish legislative body to the imperial parliament for the purpose of obtaining their consent to such alteration (clause ). further, it is right to state here that mr. gladstone in his speech on the second reading of the bill proposed to provide, "that when any proposal for taxation was made affecting the condition of ireland, irish members should have an opportunity of appearing in the house to take a share in the transaction of that business." questions arising as to whether the irish parliament has or not exceeded its constitutional powers may be determined by the ordinary courts of law in the first instance; the ultimate appeal lies to the judicial committee of the privy council. an additional safeguard is provided by declaring that before a provision in a bill becomes law, the lord lieutenant may take the opinion of the judicial committee of the privy council as to its legality, and further, that without subjecting private litigants to the expense of trying the constitutionality of an act, the lord lieutenant may, of his own motion, move the judicial committee to determine the question. with a view to secure absolute impartiality in the committee, ireland will be represented on that body by persons who are or have been irish judges (clause ). the question of finance forms a separate portion of the bill, the provisions of which are contained in clauses twelve to twenty, while the machinery for carrying those enactments into effect will be found in part iii. of the land bill. the first point to be determined was the amount to be contributed by ireland to imperial expenses. under the act of union it was intended that ireland should pay / ths, or in the proportion of to - / of the total expenditure of the united kingdom. this amount being found exorbitant, it was gradually reduced, until at the present moment it amounts to something under the proportion of to - / . the bill fixes the proportion at / th, or to , this sum being arrived at by a comparison between the amount of the income-tax, death-duties, and valuation of property in great britain, and the amount of the same particulars in ireland. the amount to be contributed by ireland to the imperial expenditure being thus ascertained, the more difficult part of the problem remained to provide the fund out of which the contribution should be payable, and the mode in which its payment should be secured. the plan which commended itself to the framers of the bill, as combining the advantage of insuring the fiscal unity of great britain and ireland, with absolute security to the british exchequer, was to continue the customs and excise duties under imperial control, and to pay them into the hands of an imperial officer. this plan is carried into effect by the conjoint operation of the clauses of the irish government bill and the irish land bill above referred to. the customs and excise duties are directed to be levied as heretofore in pursuance of the enactments of the imperial parliament, and are excepted from the control of the irish legislature, which may, with that exception, impose any taxes in ireland it may think expedient. the imperial officer who is appointed under the land bill bears the title of receiver-general, and into his hands not only the imperial taxes (the customs and excise duties), but also all local taxes imposed by the irish parliament are in the first instance paid. (see clauses - of the land bill.) the receiver-general having thus in his hands all imperial and local funds levied in ireland, his duty is to satisfy all imperial claims before paying over any moneys to the irish exchequer. further, an imperial court of exchequer is established in ireland to watch over the interests of the receiver-general, and all revenue cases are to be tried, and all defaults punished in that court. any neglect of the local authorities to carry into effect the decrees of the imperial court will amount to treason, and it will be the duty of the imperial government to deal with it accordingly. supposing the bill to have passed, the account of the exchequer in ireland would have stood thus:-- receipts. . _imperial taxes_: ( ) customs . . . . . . . . . . £ , , ( ) excise . . . . . . . . . . , , --------- £ , , . _local taxes_: ( ) stamps . . . . . . . . . . . £ , ( ) income-tax at _d_. in £ . . , --------- £ , , . _non-tax revenue_: (post office, telegraph, etc.) . . . . . £ , , ---------- £ , , expenditure. . _contribution to imperial exchequer_ on basis of / th of imperial expenditure, viz.: ( ) debt charge . . . . . . . . £ , , ( ) army and navy . . . . . . . , , ( ) civil charges . . . . . . . , --------- £ , , . _sinking fund_ on / th of capital of debt . . . . . . . . . . . . . , . _charge for constabulary_[ ] . . . . . . . , , . _local civil charges_ other than constabulary . . . . . . . . . , , . _collection of revenue_: ( ) imperial taxes . . . . . . £ , ( ) local taxes . . . . . . . . , ( ) non-tax revenue . . . . . . , ------- , . _balance_ or surplus . . . . . . . . . . . . , -------- £ , , the imperial contribution payable by ireland to great britain cannot be increased for thirty years, though it may be diminished if the charges for the army and navy and imperial civil expenditure for any year be less than fifteen times the contribution paid by ireland, in which case / th of the diminution will be deducted from the annual imperial contribution. apart from the imperial charges there are other charges strictly irish, for the security of the payment of which the bill provides. this it does by imposing an obligation on the irish legislative body to enact sufficient taxes to meet such charges, and by directing them to be paid by the imperial receiver-general, who is required to keep an imperial and an irish account, carrying the customs and excise duties, in the first instance, to the imperial account, and the local taxes to the irish account, transferring to the irish account the surplus remaining after paying the imperial charges on the imperial account. on this irish account are charged debts due from the government of ireland, pensions, and other sums due to the civil servants, and the salaries of the judges of the supreme courts in ireland. some provisions of importance remain to be noticed. judges of the superior and county courts in ireland are to be removable from office only on address to the crown, presented by both orders of the legislative body voting separately. existing civil servants are retained in their offices at their existing salaries; if the irish government desire their retirement, they will be entitled to pensions; on the other hand, if at the end of two years the officers themselves wish to retire, they can do so, and will be entitled to the same pensions as if their office had been abolished. the pensions are payable by the receiver-general out of the irish account above mentioned. the supremacy of the imperial parliament over all parts of the empire is an inherent quality of which parliament cannot divest itself, inasmuch as it cannot bind its successors or prevent them from repealing any prior act. in order, however, to prevent any misapprehension on this point clause was inserted, the efficacy of which, owing in great measure to a misprint, has been doubted. it is enough to state here that it was intended by express legislation to reserve all powers to the imperial parliament, and had the bill gone into committee the question would have been placed beyond the reach of cavil by a slight alteration in the wording of the clause. this summary may be concluded by the statement that the appellate jurisdiction of the house of lords over actions and suits arising in ireland (except in respect of constitutional questions reserved for the determination of the judicial committee of the privy council as explained above), and with respect to claims for irish peerages, is preserved intact. the object of the land bill was a political one: to promote the contentment of the people, and the cause of good government in ireland, by settling once and for ever the vexed question relating to land. to do this effectually it was necessary to devise a system under which the tenants, as a class, should become interested in the maintenance of social order, and be furnished with substantial inducements to rally round the institutions of their country. on the other hand, it was just and right that the landlords should participate in the benefits of any measure proposed for remedying the evils attendant upon the tenure of land in ireland; and should be enabled to rid themselves, on fair terms, of their estates in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. further, it was felt by the framers of the bill that a moral obligation rested on the imperial government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, and so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the irish government on its first entry on official existence. such were the governing motives for bringing in the land bill. to understand an irish land bill it is necessary to dismiss at once all ideas of the ordinary relations between landlord and tenant in england, and to grasp a true conception of the condition of an irish tenanted estate. in england the relation between the landlord and tenant of a farm resembles, with a difference in the subject-matter, the relation between the landlord and tenant of a furnished house. in the case of the house, the landlord keeps it in a state fit for habitation, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of living in another man's house. in the case of the farm, the landlord provides the farm with house, farm-buildings, gates, and other permanent improvements required to fit it for cultivation by the tenant, and the tenant pays rent for the privilege of cultivating the farm, receiving the proceeds of that cultivation. the characters of owner and tenant, however long the connection between them may subsist, are quite distinct. the tenant does no acts of ownership, and never regards the land as belonging to himself, quitting it without hesitation if he can make more money by taking another farm. in ireland the whole situation is different: instead of a farm of some one hundred or two hundred acres, the tenant has a holding varying, say, from five to fifty acres, for which he pays an annual rent-charge to the landlord. he, or his ancestors have, in the opinion of the tenant, acquired a quasi-ownership in the land by making all the improvements, and he is only removable on non-payment of the fixed rent, or non-fulfilment of certain specified conditions. in short, in ireland the ownership is dual: the landlord is merely the lord of a quasi-copyhold manor, consisting of numerous small tenements held by quasi-copyholders who, so long as they pay what may be called the manorial rents, and fulfil the manorial conditions, regard themselves as independent owners of their holdings. an irish land bill, then, dealing with tenanted estates, is, in fact, merely a bill for converting the small holders of tenements held at a fixed rent into fee-simple owners by redemption of the rent due to the landlord and a transfer of the land to the holders. every scheme, therefore, for settling the land question in ireland resolves itself into an inquiry as to the best mode of paying off the rent-charges due to the landlord. the tenant cannot, of course, raise the capital sufficient for paying off the redemption money; some state authority must, therefore, intervene and advance the whole or the greater part of that money, and recoup itself for the advance by the creation in its own favour of an annual charge on the holding sufficient to repay in a certain number of years both the principal and interest due in respect of the advance. the first problem, then, in an irish land bill, is to settle the conditions of this annuity in such a manner as to satisfy the landlord and tenant; the first, as to the price of his estate; the second, as to the amount of the annuity to be paid by him, at the same time to provide the state authority with adequate security for the repayment of the advance, or, in other words, for the punctual payments of the annuity which is to discharge the advance. next in importance to the financial question of the adjustment of the annuity comes the administrative difficulty of investigating the title, and thus securing to the tenant the possession of the fee simple, and to the state authority the position of a mortgagee. under ordinary circumstances the investigation of the title to an estate involves the examination of every document relating thereto for a period of forty years, and the distribution of the purchase-money amongst the head renters, mortgagees, and other encumbrancers, who, in addition to the landlord, are found to be interested in the ownership of almost every irish estate. such a process is costly, even in the case of large estates, and involves an expense almost, and, indeed, speaking generally, absolutely prohibitory in the case of small properties. some mode, then, must be devised for reducing this expense within manageable limits, or any scheme for dealing with irish land, however well devised from a financial point of view, will sink under the burden imposed by the expense attending the transfer of the land to the new proprietors. having thus stated the two principal difficulties attending the land question in ireland, it may be well before entering on the details of the sale and purchase of land (ireland) bill, to mention the efforts which have been made during the last fifteen years to surmount those difficulties. the acts having this object in view are the land acts of , , and , brought in by mr. gladstone, and the land purchase act of , brought in by the conservative lord chancellor of ireland (lord ashbourne). the act of , as amended by the act of , provided that the state authority might advance two-thirds of the purchase-money. an attempt was made to get over the difficulties of title by providing that the landed estates court or board of works shall undertake the investigation of the title and the transfer and distribution of the purchase-money at a fixed price. the act of increased the advance to three-quarters, leaving the same machinery to deal with the title. both under the acts of and the advance was secured by an annuity of per cent., payable for the period of thirty-five years, and based on the loan of the money by the english exchequer at - / per cent. interest. these acts produced very little effect. the expense of dealing with the titles in the landed estates court proved overwhelming, and neither the board of works, under the act of , nor the land commission, under the act of , found themselves equal to the task of completing inexpensively the transfer of the land; further, the tenants had no means of providing even the quarter of the purchase-money required by the act of . in lord ashbourne determined to remove all obstacles at the expense of the english exchequer. by the land act of that year he authorized the whole of the purchase-money to be advanced by the state, with a guarantee by the landlord, to be carried into effect by his allowing one-fifth of the purchase-money to remain in the hands of the agents of the state authority until one-fifth of the purchase-money had been repaid by the annual payments of the tenants. the principal was to be recouped by an annuity of per cent., extending over a period of forty-nine years, instead of an annuity of per cent. extending over a period of thirty-five years. the english exchequer was to advance the money on the basis of interest at - / per cent., instead of at - / per cent. though sufficient time has not yet elapsed to show whether the great bribe offered by the act of , at the expense of the british taxpayer, will succeed in overcoming the apathy of the tenants, it cannot escape notice that if the act of succeeds better than the previous acts, it will owe that success solely to the greater amount of risk which it imposes on the english exchequer, and not to any improvement in the scheme in respect of securing greater certainty of sale to the irish landlord, or of diminishing the danger of loss to the english taxpayer. such being the state of legislation, and such the circumstances of the land question in ireland in the year , the irish government bill afforded mr. gladstone the means and the opportunity of bringing in a land bill which would secure to the irish landlord the certainty of selling his land at a fair price, without imposing any practical liability on the english exchequer, and would, at the same time, diminish the annual sums payable by the tenant; while it also conferred a benefit on the irish exchequer. these advantages were, as will be seen, gained, firstly, by the pledge of english credit on good security, instead of advancing money on a mere mortgage on irish holdings, made directly to the english government; and, secondly, by the interposition of the irish government, as the immediate creditor of the irish tenant. the scheme of the land purchase bill is as follows:--the landlord of an agricultural estate occupied by tenants may apply to a department of the new irish government to purchase his estate. the tenants need not be consulted, as the purchase, if completed, will necessarily better their condition, and thus at the very outset the difficulty of procuring the assent of the tenants, which has hitherto proved so formidable an obstacle to all irish land schemes, disappears. the landlord may require the department to which he applies (called in the bill the state authority) to pay him the statutory price of his estate, not in cash, but in consols valued at par. this price, except in certain unusual cases of great goodness or of great badness of the land, is twenty years' purchase of the _net_ rental. the _net_ rental is the _gross_ rental after deducting from that rent tithe rent-charge, the average percentage for expenses in respect of bad debts, any rates paid by the landlord, and any like outgoings. the _gross_ rental of an estate is the gross rent of all the holdings on the estate, payable in the year ending in november, . where a judicial rent has been fixed, it is the judicial rent; where no judicial rent has been fixed, it is the rent to be determined in the manner provided by the bill. to state this shortly, the bill provides that an irish landlord may require the state authority to pay him for his estate, in consols valued at par, a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the annual sum which he has actually put into his pocket out of the proceeds of the estate. the determination of the statutory price is, so far as the landlord is concerned, the cardinal point of the bill, and in order that no injustice may be done the landlord, an imperial commission--called the land commission--is appointed by the bill, whose duty it is to fix the statutory price, and, where there is no judicial rent, to determine the amount of rent which, in the character of gross rental, is to form the basis of the statutory price. the commission also pay the purchase-money to the landlord, or distribute it amongst the parties entitled, and generally the commission act as intermediaries between the landlord and the irish state authority, which has no power of varying the terms to which the landlord is entitled under the bill, or of judging of the conditions which affect the statutory price. if the landlord thinks the price fixed by the land commission, as the statutory price inequitable, he may reject their offer and keep his estate. supposing, however, the landlord to be satisfied with the statutory price offered by the land commission, the sale is concluded, and the land commission make an order carrying the required sum of consols (which is for convenience hereinafter called the purchase-money, although it consists of stock and not of cash) to the account of the estate in their books after deducting per cent. for the cost of investigation of title and distribution of the purchase-money, and upon the purchase-money being thus credited to the estate, the landlord ceases to have any interest in the estate, and the tenants, by virtue of the order of the land commission, become owners in fee simple of their holdings, subject to the payment to the irish state authority of an annuity. the amount of the annuity is stated in the bill. it is a sum equal to £ per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the amount of the gross rental of the holding. the illustration given by mr. gladstone in his speech will at once explain these apparently intricate matters of finance. a landlord is entitled to the hendon estate, producing £ a year gross rental; to find the net rental, the land commission deduct from this gross rental outgoings estimated at about per cent., or £ a year. this makes the net rental £ a year, and the price payable to the landlord is £ , (twenty years' purchase of £ , or £ multiplied by ), which, as above stated, will be paid in consols. the tenants will pay, as the maximum amount for their holdings, £ per cent. for forty-nine years on the capitalized value of twenty years' purchase of the gross rent. this will amount to £ instead of £ , , which they have hitherto paid; a saving of £ a year will thus be effected, from which, however, must be deducted the half rates to which they will become liable, formerly paid by the landlord. this £ per cent. charge payable by the tenants will continue for forty-nine years, but at the end of that time each tenant will become a free owner of his estate without any annual payment. next, as to the position of the state authority. the state authority receives £ from the tenants; it pays out of that sum £ per cent., not upon the gross rental, but upon the net rental capitalized, that is to say, £ to the imperial exchequer. the state authority, therefore, receives,£ , and assuming that the charge of collecting the rental is per cent., that is to say, £ _s._, the state authority will, out of £ , have to disburse only £ _s._, leaving it a gainer of £ _s._, or nearly per cent. the result then between the several parties is, the landlord receives £ , ; the tenantry pay £ a year less than they have hitherto paid, and at the end of forty-nine years are exempt altogether from payment; the gain of irish state authority is £ _s._ a year. another mode of putting the case shortly is as follows: the english exchequer lends the money to the irish state authority at - / per cent. and an annuity of per cent. paid during forty-nine years will, as has been stated above, repay both principal and interest for every £ lent at - / per cent. on the sale of an estate under the bill, the landlord receives twenty years' purchase; the tenant pays £ per cent. on twenty years' purchase of the gross rental; the irish state authority receives £ per cent. on the gross rental; the english exchequer receives per cent. on the net rental only. the repayment of the interest due by the irish authority to the english exchequer is in no wise dependent on the punctual payment of their annuities by the irish tenants, nor does the english government in any way figure as the landlord or creditor of the irish tenants. the annuities payable by the tenants are due to the irish government, and collected by them, while the interest due to the english government is a charge on the whole of the irish government funds; and further, these funds themselves are paid into the hands of the imperial officer, whose duty it is to liquidate the debt due to his master, the imperial exchequer, before a sixpence can be touched by the irish government. it is not, then, any exaggeration to say that the land purchase bill of provides for the settlement of the irish land question without any appreciable risk to the english exchequer, and with the advantage of securing a fair price for the landlord, a diminution of annual payments to the tenant with the ultimate acquisition of the fee simple, also a gain of no inconsiderable sum to the irish exchequer. in order to obviate the difficulties attending the investigation of title and transfer of the property, the bill provides, as stated above, that on the completion of the agreement for the sale between the landlord and the commission, the holding shall vest at once in the tenants: it then proceeds to declare that the claims of all persons interested in the land shall attach to the purchase-money in the same manner as though it were land. the duty of ascertaining these claims and distributing the purchase-money is vested in the land commission, who undertake the task in exchange for the per cent. which they have, as above stated, deducted from the purchase-money as the cost of conducting the complete transfer of the estate from the landlord to the tenants. the difficulty of the process of dealing with the purchase-money depends, of course, on the intricacy of the title. if the vendor is the sole unencumbered owner, he is put in immediate possession of the stock constituting the price of the estate. if there are encumbrances, as is usually the case, they are paid off by the land commission. capital sums are paid in full; jointures and other life charges are valued according to the usual tables. drainage and other temporary charges are estimated at their present value, permanent rent-charges are valued by agreement, or in case of disagreement, by the land commission; a certain minimum number of years' purchase being assigned by the bill to any permanent rent-charge which amounts only to one-fifth part of the rental of the estate on which it is charged, this provision being made to prevent injustice being done to the holders of rent-charges which are amply secured. it remains to notice certain other points of some importance. the landlord entitled to require the state to purchase his property is the immediate landlord, that is to say, the person entitled to the receipt of the rent of the estate; no encumbrancer can avail himself of the privilege, the reason being that the bill is intended to assist solvent landlords, and not to create a new encumbered estates court. the landlord may sell this privilege, and possibly by means of this power of sale may be able to put pressure on his encumbrancers to reduce their claims in order to obtain immediate payment. the land commission, in their character of quasi-arbitrators between the landlord and the irish state authority, have ample powers given to enable them to do justice. if the statutory price, as settled according to the act, is too low, they may raise it to twenty-two years' purchase instead of twenty years' purchase. if it is too high, they may refuse to buy unless the landlord will reduce it to a proper price. in the congested districts scheduled in the bill the land, on a sale, passes to the irish state authority, as landlords, and not to the tenants; the reason being that it is considered that the tenants would be worsened, rather than bettered, by having their small plots vested in them in fee simple. for the same cause it is provided that in any part of ireland tenants of holdings under £ a year may object to become the owners of their holdings, which will thereupon vest, on a sale, in the irish state authority. lastly, the opportunity is taken of establishing a registry of title in respect of all property dealt with under the bill. the result of such a registry would be that any property entered therein would ever thereafter be capable of being transferred with the same facility, and at as little expense, as stock in the public funds. footnotes: [footnote : any charge in excess of one million was to be borne by imperial exchequer.] the "unionist" position. by canon maccoll is it not time that the opponents of home rule for ireland should define their position? they defeated mr. gladstone's scheme last year in parliament and in the constituencies; and they defeated it by the promise of a counter policy which was to consist, in brief, of placing ireland on the same footing as great britain in respect to local government; or, if there was to be any difference, it was to be in the direction of a larger and more generous measure for ireland than for the rest of the united kingdom. this certainly was the policy propounded by the distinguished leader of the liberal unionists in his speech at belfast, in november, , and repeated in his electoral speeches last year. in the belfast speech lord hartington said: "my opinion is that it is desirable for irishmen that institutions of local self-government such as are possessed by england and scotland, and such as we hope to give in the next session in greater extent to england and scotland, should also be extended to ireland." but this extension of local self-government to ireland would require, in lord hartington's opinion, a fundamental change in the fabric of irish government. "i would not shrink," he says, "from a great and bold reconstruction of the irish government," a reconstruction leading up gradually to some real and substantial form of home rule. his lordship's words are: "i submit with some confidence to you these principles, which i have endeavoured to lay down, and upon which, i think, the extension of local government in ireland must proceed. first, you must have some adequate guarantees both for the maintenance of the essential unity of the empire and for the protection of the minority in ireland. and, secondly, you must also admit this principle: the work of complete self-government of ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs, is not a grant that can be made by any parliament of this country in a day. it must be the work of continuous and careful effort." elsewhere in the same speech lord hartington says: "certainly i am of opinion that nothing can be done in the direction of giving ireland anything like complete control over her own affairs either in a day, or a session, or probably in a parliament." "complete control over her own affairs," "the work of complete self-government of ireland, the grant of full control over the management of its own affairs:" this is the policy which lord hartington proclaimed in ulster, the promise which he, the proximate liberal leader, held out to ireland on the eve of the general election of . it was a policy to be begun "in the next session," though not likely to be completed "in a day, or a session, or probably in a parliament." next to mr. gladstone and lord hartington the most important member of the liberal party at that time was undoubtedly mr. chamberlain, and mr. chamberlain's irish policy was proclaimed in the _radical programme, which was published before the general election as the radical leader's manifesto to the constituencies. this scheme, which mr. chamberlain had submitted as a responsible minister to the cabinet of mr. gladstone in june, , culminated in a national council which was to control a series of local bodies and govern the whole of ireland. "his national council was to consist of two orders; one-third of its members were to be elected by the owners of property, and two-thirds by ratepayers. the national council also was to be a single one, and ulster was not to have a separate council. as the council was to be charged with the supervision and legislation about education, which is the burning question between catholics and protestants, it is clear that mr. chamberlain at that time contemplated no special protection for ulster."[ ] moreover, in a letter dated april rd, , and published in the _daily news_ of may th, , mr. chamberlain declared that he "had not changed his opinion in the least" since his first public declaration on irish policy in . "i then said that i was in favour of the principles of home rule, as defined by mr. butt, but that i would do nothing which would weaken in any way imperial unity, and that i did not agree with all the details of his plan.... mr. butt's proposals were in the nature of a federal scheme, and differ entirely from mr. gladstone's, which are on the lines of colonial independence. mr. butt did not propose to give up irish representation at westminster." it is true that mr. butt did not propose to give up irish representation at westminster; but it is also true that he proposed to give it up in the sense in which mr. chamberlain wishes to retain it. mr. butt's words, in the debate to which mr. chamberlain refers, are, "that the house should meet _without irish members_ for the discussion of english and scotch business; and when there was any question affecting the empire at large, irish members might be summoned to attend. he saw no difficulty in the matter."[ ] there is no need to quote mr. gladstone's declarations on the irish question at the general election of , and previously. he has been accused of springing a surprise on the country when he proposed home rule in the beginning of . that is not, at all events, the opinion of lord hartington. in a speech delivered at the eighty club in march, , his lordship, with his usual manly candour, declared as follows: "i am not going to say one word of complaint or charge against mr. gladstone for the attitude which he has taken on this question. i think no one who has read or heard, during a long series of years, the declarations of mr. gladstone on the question of self-government for ireland, can be surprised at the tone of his present declarations.... when i look back to those declarations that mr. gladstone made in parliament, which have not been unfrequent; when i look back to the increased definiteness given to those declarations in his address to the electors of midlothian, and in his midlothian speeches; i say, when i consider all these things, i feel that i have not, and that no one has, any right to complain of the tone of the declarations which mr. gladstone has recently made upon this subject." so much as to the state of liberal opinion on the irish question at the general election of . the leaders of all sections of the party put the irish question in the foreground of their programme for the session of . we all remember sir charles dilke's public announcement that he and mr. chamberlain were going to visit ireland in the autumn of , to study the irish question on the spot, with a view to maturing a plan for the first session of the new parliament. what about the conservative party? lord salisbury's newport speech was avowedly the programme of his cabinet. it was the conservative answer to mr. gladstone's midlothian manifesto. he dealt with the irish question in guarded language; but it was language which plainly showed that he recognized, not less clearly than the liberal leaders, the crucial change which the assimilation of the irish franchise to that of great britain had wrought in irish policy. his keen eye saw at once the important bearing which that enfranchisement had on the traditional policy of coercion: "you had passed an act of parliament, giving in unexampled abundance, and with unexampled freedom, supreme power to the great mass of the irish people--supreme power as regards their own locality.... to my mind the renewal of exceptional legislation against a population whom you had treated legislatively to this marked confidence was so gross in its inconsistency that you could not possibly hope, during the few remaining months that were at your disposal before the present parliament expired, to renew any legislation which expressed on one side a distrust of what on the other side your former legislation had so strongly emphasized. the only result of your doing it would have been, not that you would have passed the act, but that you would have promoted by the very inconsistency of the position that you were occupying--by the untenable character of the arguments that you were advancing--you would have produced so intense an exasperation amongst the irish people, that you would have caused ten times more evil, ten times more resistance to law than your crimes act, even if it had been renewed, would possibly have been able to check." lord salisbury went on to say that "the effect of the crimes act had been very much exaggerated," and that "boycotting is of that character which legislation has very great difficulty in reaching." "boycotting does not operate through outrage. boycotting is the act of a large majority of a community resolving to do a number of things which are themselves legal, and which are only illegal by the intention with which they are done." next to lord salisbury the most prominent member of the conservative party at that date was lord randolph churchill. on the rd of january, , when it was rumoured that mr. gladstone's government, then in office, intended to renew a few of the clauses of the crimes act, lord randolph churchill made a speech at bow against any such policy. the following quotation will suffice as a specimen of his opinion: "it comes to this, that the policy of the government in ireland is to declare on the one hand, by the passing of the reform bill, that the irish people are perfectly capable of exercising for the advantage of the empire the highest rights and privileges of citizenship; and by the proposal to renew the crimes act they simultaneously declare, on the other hand, that the irish people are perfectly incapable of performing for the advantage of society the lowest and most ordinary duties of citizenship.... all i can say is that, if such an incoherent, such a ridiculous, such a dangerously ridiculous combination of acts can be called a policy, then, thank god, the conservative party have no policy." within a few months of the delivery of that speech a conservative government was in office, with lord randolph churchill as its leader in the house of commons; and one of the first acts of the new leader was to separate himself ostentatiously from the irish policy of lord spencer and from the policy of coercion in general. lord randolph churchill, as the organ of the government in the house of commons, repudiated in scornful language any atom of sympathy with the policy pursued by lord spencer in ireland; and lord carnarvon, the new viceroy, declared that "the era of coercion" was past, and that the conservative government intended to govern ireland by the ordinary law. lord carnarvon, in addition, and very much to his credit, sought and obtained an interview with mr. parnell, and discussed with him, in sympathetic language, the question of home rule. in his own explanation of this interview lord carnarvon admitted that he desired to see established in ireland some form of self-government which would satisfy "the national sentiment." it is idle, therefore, to assert that the question of home rule for ireland, in some form or other, was sprung on the country as a surprise by mr. gladstone in the beginning of . the question was brought prominently before the public in the general election of as one that must be faced in the new parliament. all parties were committed to that policy, and the only difference was as to the character and limits of the measure of self-government to be granted to ireland; whether it was to be large enough to satisfy "the national sentiment," as lord carnarvon, mr. chamberlain, mr. gladstone, and others desired; or whether it was to consist only of a system of county boards under the control of a reformed dublin castle. there was a general agreement that the grant to ireland of electoral equality with england necessitated equality of political treatment, and that, above all things, there was to be no renewal of the stale policy of coercion until the irish people had got an opportunity of proving or disproving their fitness for self-government, unless, indeed, there should happen to be a recrudescence of crime which would render exceptional legislation necessary. the election of turned almost entirely on the question of irish government, and it is not too much to say that conservatives and liberal unionists vied with home rulers in repudiating a return to the policy of coercion until the effect of some kind of self-government had been tried. of course, there were the usual platitudes about the necessity of maintaining law and order; but there was a _consensus_ of profession that coercion should not be resorted to unless there was a fresh outbreak of crime and disorder in ireland. such were the professions of the opponents of home rule in and in . they have now been in office for eighteen months, and what do we behold? they have passed a perpetual coercion bill for ireland, and the question of any kind of self-government has been relegated to an uncertain future. in his recent speech at birmingham (sept. ), mr. chamberlain has declared that the question is not ripe for solution, and that the question of disestablishment, in wales, scotland, and england successively, as well as the questions of local option, local government for great britain, and of the safety of life at sea, must take precedence of it. that means the postponement of the reform of irish government to the greek kalends. what justification can be made for this change of front? no valid justification has been offered. so far from there having been any increase of crime in the interval, there has been a very marked decrease. when the coercion bill received the royal assent last august, ireland was more free from crime than it had been for many years past. nothing had happened to account for the return to the policy of coercion in violation of the promise to try the experiment of conciliation. the national league was in full vigour in - , when the policy of coercion was abandoned; boycotting was just as prevalent, and outrages were much more numerous. under these circumstances it is the opponents of home rule, not its advocates, who owe an explanation to the public. they defeated mr. gladstone's bill, but promised a bill of their own. where is their bill? we hear nothing of it. they have made a complete change of front. they now tell us that the grievance of ireland is entirely economic, and that the true solution of the irish question is the abolition of dual ownership in land combined with a firm administration of the existing law. england and scotland are to have a large measure of local government next year; but ireland is to wait till a more convenient season. a more complete reversal of the policy proclaimed last summer by the so-called unionists cannot be imagined. still, however, the "unionists" hope to be able some day to offer some form of self-government to ireland. for party purposes they are wise in postponing that day to the latest possible period, for its advent will probably dissolve the union of the "unionists." lord salisbury, lord hartington, mr. bright, and mr. chamberlain cannot agree upon any scheme which all can accept without a public recantation of previous professions. mr. bright is opposed to home rule "in any shape or form." mr. chamberlain, on the other hand, is in favour of a great national council, on mr. butt's lines or on the lines of the canadian plan; either of which would give the national council control over education and the maintenance of law and order. latterly, indeed, mr. chamberlain has advocated a separate treatment for ulster. but the first act of an ulster provincial assembly would probably be to declare the union of that province with the rest of ireland. ulster, be it remembered, returns a majority of nationalists to the imperial parliament. to exclude ulster from any share in the settlement offered to the other three provinces would therefore be impracticable; and mr. bright has lately expressed his opinion emphatically in that sense. in any case, lord hartington could be no party to any scheme so advanced as mr. chamberlain's. for although he declared, in his belfast speech, that "complete self-government" was the goal of his policy for ireland, he was careful to explain that "the extension of irish management over irish affairs must be a growth from small beginnings." but this "growth from small beginnings" would be, in lord salisbury's opinion, a very dangerous and mischievous policy. the establishment of self-government in ireland, as distinct from what is commonly known as home rule, he pronounced in his newport speech to be "a very difficult question;" and in the following passage he placed his finger upon the kernel of the difficulty:--"a local authority is more exposed to the temptation, and has more of the facility for enabling a majority to be unjust to the minority, than is the case when the authority derives its sanction and extends its jurisdiction over a wide area. that is one of the weaknesses of local authorities. in a large central authority the wisdom of several parts of the country will correct the folly or the mistakes of one. in a local authority that correction to a much greater extent is wanting; and it would be impossible to leave that out of sight in the extension of any such local authority to ireland." this seems to me a much wiser and more statesmanlike view than a system of elective boards scattered broadcast over ireland. a multitude of local boards all over ireland, without a recognized central authority to control them, would inevitably become facile instruments in the hands of the emissaries of disorder and sedition. and, even apart from any such sinister influences, they would be almost certain to yield to the temptation of being oppressive, extravagant, and corrupt, if there were no executive power to command their confidence and enforce obedience. without the previous creation of some authority of that kind it would be sheer madness to offer ireland the fatal boon of local self-government. it would enormously increase without conciliating the power of the nationalists, and would make the administration of ireland by constitutional means simply impossible. the policy of the liberal unionists is thus much too large or much too small. it is too small to conciliate, and therefore too large to be given with safety. all these proposed concessions are liable to one insuperable objection; they would each and all enable the irish to extort home rule, but under circumstances which would rob it of its grace and repel gratitude. mill has some admirable observations bearing on this subject, and i venture to quote the following passage: "the greatest imperfection of popular local institutions, and the chief cause of the failure which so often attends them, is the low calibre of the men by whom they are almost always carried on. that these should be of a very miscellaneous character is, indeed, part of the usefulness of the institution; it is that circumstance chiefly which renders it a school of political capacity and general intelligence. but a school supposes teachers as well as scholars; the utility of the instruction greatly depends on its bringing inferior minds into contact with superior, a contact which in the ordinary course of life is altogether exceptional, and the want of which contributes more than anything else to keep the generality of mankind on one level of contented ignorance.... it is quite hopeless to induce persons of a high class, either socially or intellectually, to take a share of local administration in a corner by piecemeal as members of a paving board or a drainage commission."[ ] mr. mill goes on to argue that it is essential to the safe working of any scheme of local self-government that it should be under the control of a central authority in harmony with public opinion. when the "unionists" begin, if they ever do begin, seriously to deliberate on the question of self-government for ireland, they will find that they have only two practicable alternatives--the maintenance of the present system, or some scheme of home rule on the lines of mr. gladstone's much misunderstood bill. and the ablest men among the "unionists" are beginning to perceive this. the _spectator_ has in a recent article implored mr. chamberlain to desist from any further proposal in favour of self-government for ireland, because the inevitable result would be to split up the unionist party; and mr. chamberlain, as we have seen, has accepted the advice. another very able and very logical opponent of home rule has candidly avowed that the only alternative to home rule is the perpetuation of "things as they are." ireland, he thinks, "possesses none of the conditions necessary for local self-government." his own view, therefore, is "that in ireland, as in france, an honest, centralized administration of impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the real wants of the people." "the name of 'self-government' has a natural fascination for englishmen; but a policy which cannot satisfy the wishes of home rulers, which may--it is likely enough--be of no benefit to the irish people, which will certainly weaken the government in its contest with lawlessness and oppression, is not a policy which obviously commends itself to english good sense."[ ] well may this distinguished "supporter of things as they are" declare: "the maintenance of the union [on such terms] must necessarily turn out as severe a task as ever taxed a nation's energies; for to maintain the union with any good effect, means that, while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of irishmen, we must sedulously do justice to every fair demand from ireland; must strenuously, and without fear or favour, assert the equal rights of landlords and tenants, of protestants and catholics; and must, at the same time, put down every outrage and reform every abuse." what hope is there of this? our only guide to the probabilities of the future is our experience of the past and what has that been in ireland? in every year since the legislative union there have been multitudes of men in england as upright, as enlightened, as well-intentioned towards ireland, as professor dicey, and with better opportunities of translating their thoughts into acts. yet what has been the result? _si monumenlum requiris circumspice_. behold ireland at this moment, and examine every year of its history since the union. do the annals of any constitutional government in the world present so portentous a monument of parliamentary failure, so vivid an example of a moral and material ruin "paved with good intentions"? therein lies the pathos of it. not from malice, not from cruelty, not from wanton injustice, not even from callous indifference to suffering and wrong, does our misgovernment of ireland come. if the evil had its root in deliberate wrong-doing on the part of england it would probably have been cured long ago. but each generation, while freely confessing the sins of its fathers, has protested its own innocence and boasted of its own achievements, and then, with a pharisaic sense of rectitude, has complacently pointed to some inscrutable flaw in the irish character as the key to the irish problem. the generation which passed the act of union, oblivious of british pledges solemnly given and lightly broken, wondered what had become of the prosperity and contentment which the promoters of the union had promised to ireland. the next generation made vicarious penance, and preferred the enactment of catholic emancipation to the alternative of civil war; and then wondered in its turn that ireland still remained unpacified. then came a terrible famine, followed by evictions on a scale so vast and cruel that the late sir robert peel declared that no parallel could be found for such a tale of inhumanity in "the records of any country, civilized or barbarous." another generation, pluming itself on its enlightened views and kind intentions, passed the encumbered estates act, which delivered the irish tenants over to the tender mercies of speculators and money-lenders; and then parliament for a time closed its eyes and ears, and relied upon force alone to keep ireland quiet. it rejected every suggestion of reform in the land laws; and a great minister, himself an irish landlord, dismissed the whole subject in the flippant epigram that "tenant-right was landlord-wrong." since then the irish church has been disestablished, and two land acts have been passed; yet we seem to be as far as ever from the pacification of ireland. surely it is time to inquire whether the evil is not inherent in our system of governing ireland, and whether there is any other cure than that which de beaumont suggested, namely, the destruction of the system. it is probable that there is not in all london a more humane or a more kind-hearted man than lord salisbury. yet lord salisbury's government will do some harsh and inequitable things in ireland this winter, just as liberal governments have done during their term of office. the fault is not in the men, but in the system which they have to administer. i see no reason to doubt that sir m. hicks-beach did the best he could under the circumstances; but, unfortunately, bad is the best. in a conversation which i had with dr. döllinger while he was in full communion with his church, i ventured to ask him whether he thought that a new pope, of liberal ideas, force of character, and commanding ability, would make any great difference in the papal system. "no," he replied, "the curial system is the growth of centuries, and there can be no change of any consequence while it lasts. many a pope has begun with brave projects of reform; but the struggle has been brief, and the end has been invariably the same: the pope has been forced to succumb. his _entourage_ has been too much for him. he has found himself enclosed in a system which was too strong for him, wheel within wheel; and while the system lasts the most enlightened ideas and the best intentions are in the long run unavailing." this criticism applies, _mutatis mutandis_, to what may be called the curial system of dublin castle. it is a species of political ultramontanism, exercising supreme power behind the screen of an official infallibility on which there is practically no check, since parliament has never hitherto refused to grant it any power which it demanded for enforcing its decrees. there is, moreover, another consideration which must convince any dispassionate mind which ponders it, that the british parliament is incompetent to manage irish affairs, and must become increasingly incompetent year by year. in ordinary circumstances parliament sits about twenty-seven weeks out of the fifty-two. five out of the twenty-seven may safely be subtracted for holidays, debates on the address, and other debates apart from ordinary business. that leaves twenty-two weeks, and out of these two nights a week are at the disposal of the government and three at the disposal of private members; leaving in all forty-four days for the government and sixty-six for private members. into those forty-four nights government must compress all its yearly programme of legislation for the whole of the british empire, from the settlement of some petty dispute about land in the hebrides, to some question of high policy in egypt, india, or other portions of the queen's world-wide empire; and all this amidst endless distractions, enforced attendance through dreary debates and vapid talk, and a running fire of cross-examination from any volunteer questioner out of the six hundred odd members who sit outside the government circle. the consequence is, that parliament is getting less able every year to overtake the mass of business which comes before it. each year contributes its quota of inevitable arrears to the accumulated mass of previous sessions, and the process will go on multiplying in increasing ratio as the complex and multiform needs of modern life increase. the large addition recently made to the electorate of the united kingdom is already forcing a crop of fresh subjects on the attention of parliament, as well as presenting old ones from new points of view. plans of devolution and grand committees will fail to cope with this evil. to overcome it we need some organic change in our present parliamentary system, some form of decentralization, which shall leave the imperial parliament supreme over all subordinate bodies, yet relegate to the historic and geographical divisions of the united kingdom the management severally of their own local affairs. i should have better hope from governing ireland (if it were possible) as we govern india, than from the present unionist method of leaving "things as they are." a viceroy surrounded by a council of trained officials, and in semi-independence of parliament, would have settled the irish question, land and all, long ago. but imagine india governed on the model of ireland: the viceroy and the most important member of his government changing with every change of administration at westminster;[ ] his council and the official class in general consisting almost exclusively of native mussulmans, deeply prejudiced by religious and traditional enmity against the great mass of the population; himself generally subordinate to his chief secretary, and exposed to the daily criticism of an ignorant parliament and to the determined hostility of eighty-six hindoos, holding seats in parliament as the representatives of the vast majority of the people of india, and resenting bitterly the domination of the hereditary oppressors of their race. how long could the government of india be carried on under such conditions? viewing it all round, then, it must be admitted that the problem of governing ireland while leaving things as they are is a sufficiently formidable one. read the remarkable admissions which the facts have forced from intelligent opponents of home rule like mr. dicey, and add to them all the other evils which are rooted in our existing system of irish government, and then consider what hope there is, under "things as they are," of "sedulously doing justice to every demand from ireland," "strenuously, and without fear or favour, asserting the equal rights of landlords and tenants, protestants and catholics," "putting down every outrage, and reforming every abuse;" and all the "while refusing to accede to the wishes of millions of irishmen" for a fundamental change in a political arrangement that has for centuries produced all the mischief which the so-called unionist party are forced to admit, and much more besides, while it has at the same time frustrated every serious endeavour to bring about the better state of things which they expect from--what? from "things as they are!" as well expect grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles. while the tree remains the same, no amount of weeding, or pruning, or manuring, or change of culture, will make it bring forth different fruit. mr. dicey, among others, has demolished what lord beaconsfield used to call the "bit-by-bit" reformers of irish government--those who would administer homoeopathic doses of local self-government, but always under protest that the supply was to stop short of what would satisfy the hunger of the patient. but a continuance of "things as they are," gilded with a thin tissue of benevolent hopes and aspirations, is scarcely a more promising remedy for the ills of ireland. is it not time to try some new treatment--one which has been tried in similar cases, and always with success? one only policy has never been tried in ireland--honest home rule. certainly, if home rule is to be refused till all the prophets of evil are refuted, ireland must go without home rule for ever. "if the sky fall, we shall catch larks." but he would be a foolish bird-catcher who waited for that contingency. and not less foolish is the statesman who sits still till every conceivable objection to his policy has been mathematically refuted in advance, and every wild prediction falsified by the event; for that would ensure his never moving at all. _sedet æternumque sedebit_. a proper enough attitude, perhaps, on the part of an eristic philosopher speculating on politics in the silent shade of academic groves, but hardly suitable for a practical politician who has to take action on one of the most burning questions of our time. human affairs are not governed by mathematical reasoning. you cannot demonstrate the precise results of any legislative measure beforehand as you can demonstrate the course of a planet in the solar system. "probability," as bishop butler says, "is the guide of life;" and an older philosopher than butler has warned us that to demand demonstrative proof in the sphere of contingent matter is the same kind of absurdity as to demand probable reasoning in mathematics. you cannot confute a prophet before the event; you can only disbelieve him. the advocates of home rule believe that their policy would in general have an exactly contrary effect to that predicted by their opponents. in truth, every act of legislation is, before experience, amenable to such destructive criticism as these critics urge against home rule. i have not a doubt that they could have made out an unanswerable "case" against the great charter at runnymede; and they would find it easy to prove on _à priori_ grounds that the british constitution is one of the most absurd, mischievous, and unworkable instruments that ever issued from human brains or from the evolution of events. by their method of reasoning the great charter and other fundamental portions of the constitution ought to have brought the government of the british empire to a deadlock long ago. every suspension of the habeas corpus act, every act of attainder, every statute for summary trial and conviction before justices of the peace, is a violation of the fundamental article of the constitution, which requires that no man shall be imprisoned or otherwise punished except after lawful trial by his peers.[ ] consider also the magazines of explosive materials which lie hidden in the constitutional prerogatives of the crown, if they could only be ignited by the match of an ingenious theorist. the crown, as lord sherbrooke once somewhat irreverently expressed it, "can turn every cobbler in the land into a peer," and could thus put an end, as the duke of wellington declared, to "the constitution of this country."[ ] "the crown is not bound by act of parliament unless named therein by special and particular words."[ ] the crown can make peace or war without consulting parliament, can by secret treaty saddle the nation with the most perilous obligations, and give away all such portions of the empire as do not rest on statute. the prerogative of mercy, too, would enable an eccentric sovereign, aided by an obsequious minister, to open the jails and let all the convicted criminals in the land loose upon society.[ ] but criticism which proves too much in effect proves nothing. in short, every stage in the progress of constitutional reform has, in matter of fact, been marked by similar predictions falsified by results, and the prophets who condemn home rule have no better credentials; indeed, much worse, for they proclaim the miserable failure of "things as they are," whereas their predecessors were in their day satisfied with things as they were.[ ] it is, high time, therefore, to call upon the opponents of home rule to tell us plainly where they stand. they claim a mandate from the country for their policy. they neither asked nor received a mandate to support the system of government which prevailed in ireland at the last election, and still less the policy of coercion which they have substituted for that system. do they mean to go back or forward? they cannot stand still. they have already discovered that one act of repression leads to another, and they will find ere long that they have no alternative except home rule or the suppression of parliamentary government in ireland. men may talk lightly of the ease with which eighty-six irish members may be kept in order in parliament. they forget that the irish people are behind the irish members. how is ireland to be governed on parliamentary principles if the voice of her representatives is to be forcibly silenced or disregarded? could even yorkshire or lancashire be governed permanently in that way? let it be observed that we have now reached this pass, namely, that the opponents of home rule are opposed to the irish members, not on any particular form of self-government for ireland, but on any form; in other words, they resist the all but unanimous demand of ireland for what "unionists" of all parties declared a year ago to be a reasonable demand. no candidate at the last election ventured to ask the suffrages of any constituency as "a supporter of things as they are." yet that is practically the attitude now assumed by the ministerial party, both conservatives and liberal unionists. it is an attitude of which the country is getting weary, as the bye-elections have shown. but the "unionists," it must be admitted, are in a sore dilemma. their strength, such as it is, lies in doing nothing for the reform of irish government. their bond of union consists of nothing else but opposition to mr. gladstone's policy. they dare not attempt to formulate any policy of their own, knowing well that they would go to pieces in the process. their hope and speculation is that something may happen to remove mr. gladstone from the political arena before the next dissolution. but, after all, mr. gladstone did not create the irish difficulty. it preceded him and will survive him, unless it is settled to the satisfaction of the irish people before his departure. and the difficulty of the final settlement will increase with every year of delay. nor will the difficulty be confined to ireland. the irish question is already reacting upon kindred, though not identical, problems in england and scotland, and the longer it is kept open, so much the worse will it be for what are generally regarded as conservative interests. it is not the moderate liberals or conservatives who are gaining ground by the prolongation of the controversy, and the disappearance of mr. gladstone from the scene would have the effect of removing from the forces of extreme radicalism a conservative influence, which his political opponents will discover when it is too late to restore it. their regret will then be as unavailing as the lament of william of deloraine over his fallen foe-- "i'd give the lands of deloraine dark musgrave were alive again." the irish landlords have already begun to realize the mistake they made when they rejected mr. gladstone's policy of home rule and land purchase. it is the old story of the sibyl's books. no british government will ever again offer such terms to the irish landlords as they refused to accept from mr. gladstone. on the other hand, home rule is inevitable. can any reflective person really suppose that the democracy of great britain will consent to refuse to share with the irish people the boon of self-government which will be offered to themselves next year? any attempt to exclude the irish from the benefits of such a scheme, after all the promises of the last general election, would almost certainly wreck the government; for constituencies have ways and means of impressing their wills on their representatives in parliament even without a dissolution. if, on the other hand, ireland should be included in a general scheme of local government, the question of who shall control the police will arise. in great britain the police, of course, will be under local control. to refuse this to ireland would be to offer a boon with a stigma attached to it. the irish members agreed to let the control of the constabulary remain, under mr. gladstone's scheme, for some years in the hands of the british government; but they would not agree to this while dublin castle ruled the country. moreover, the formidable difficulty suggested by lord salisbury and mr. john stuart mill (see pp. , ) would appear the moment men began seriously to consider the question of local government for ireland. the government of dublin castle would have to go, but something would have to be put in its place; and when that point has been reached it will probably be seen that nothing much better or safer can be found than some plan on the main lines of mr. gladstone's bill. footnotes: [footnote : speech at manchester, may , , by mr. shaw-lefevre, who was a member of the cabinet to which mr. chamberlain's scheme was submitted.] [footnote : _hansard_, vol. , pp. , .] [footnote : _considerations on representative government_, p. .] [footnote : dicey's _england's case against home rule_, pp. - , and letter in _spectator_ of september th, .] [footnote : from the beginning of till now there have been six viceroys and ten chief secretaries in dublin--namely, duke of marlborough, earls cowper and spencer, earls of carnarvon and aberdeen, and the marquis of londonderry; mr. lowther, mr. forster, lord f. cavendish, mr. trevelyan, mr. campbell bannerman, sir w. hart dyke, mr. w.h. smith, mr. j. morley, sir m. hicks-beach, and mr. a. balfour. a fine example, truly, of stable government and continuous policy!] [footnote : creasy's _imperial and colonial constitutions of the britannic empire,_ p. .] [footnote : may's _const. hist._, i. .] [footnote : blackstone's _commentaries_, by stephen, ii. , , , .] [footnote : we need not go far afield for illustrations. a few samples will suffice. "it was natural," says mill (_rep. gov._, p. ), "to feel strong doubts before trial had been made how such a provision [as the supreme court of the united states] would work; whether the tribunal would have the courage to exercise its constitutional power; if it did, whether it would exercise it wisely, and whether the government would consent peaceably to its decision. the discussions on the american constitution, before its final adoption, give evidence that these natural apprehensions were strongly felt; but they are now entirely quieted, since, during the two generations and more which have subsequently elapsed, nothing has occurred to verify them, though there have at times been disputes of considerable acrimony, and which became the badges of parties respecting the limits of the authority of the federal and state governments." the austrian opponents of home rule in hungary predicted that it would lead straight to separation. the opponents of the canadian constitution prophesied that canada would in a few years be annexed to the united states; and home rule in australia was believed by able statesmen to involve independence at an early date. mr. dicey himself tells us "that the wisest thinkers of the eighteenth century (including burke) held that the independence of the american colonies meant the irreparable ruin of great britain. there were apparently solid reasons for this belief: experience has proved it to be without foundation." the various changes in our own constitution, and even in our criminal code, were believed by "men of light and leading" at the time to portend national ruin. all the judges in the land, all the bankers, and the professions generally, petitioned against alteration in the law which sent children of ten to the gallows for the theft of a pocket-handkerchief. the great lord ellenborough declared in the house of lords that "the learned judges were unanimously agreed" that any mitigation in that law would imperil "the public security." "my lords," he exclaimed, "if we suffer this bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are on our heads or on our feet." mr. perceval, when leader of the house of commons in , declared that "he could not conceive a time or change of circumstances which would render further concessions to the catholics consistent with the safety of the state." (_croker papers_, i. .) croker was a very astute man; but here is his forecast of the reform act of : "no kings, no lords, no inequalities in the social system; all will be levelled to the plane of the petty shopkeepers and small farmers: this, perhaps, not without bloodshed, but certainly by confiscations and persecutions." "there can be no longer any doubt that the reform bill is a stepping-stone in england to a republic, and in ireland to separation." croker met the queen in , considered her very good-looking, but thought it not unlikely that "she may live to be plain miss guelph." even sir robert peel wrote: "if i am to be believed, i foresee revolution as the consequence of this bill;" and he "felt that it had ceased to be an object of ambition to any man of equable and consistent mind to enter into the service of the crown." and as late as , so robust a character as sir james graham thought the world was coming to an end because the young queen gave her confidence to a whig minister. "i begin to share all your apprehensions and forebodings," he writes to croker, "with regard to the probable issue of the present struggle. the crown in alliance with democracy baffles every calculation on the balance of power in our mixed form of government. aristocracy and church cannot contend against queen and people mixed; they must yield in the first instance, when the crown, unprotected, will meet its fate, and the accustomed round of anarchy and despotism will run its course." and he prays that he may "lie cold before that dreadful day." (_ibid._, ii. , , , , .) free trade created a similar panic. "good god!" croker exclaimed, "what a chaos of anarchy and misery do i foresee in every direction, from so comparatively small a beginning as changing an _average_ duty of _s._ into a _fixed_ duty of _s._, the fact being that the fixed duty means _no duty at all_; and _no duty at all_ will be the overthrow of the existing social and political system of our country!" (_ibid._, iii. .) and what have become of mr. lowe's gloomy vaticinations as to the terrible consequences of the very moderate reform bill of , followed as it was by a much more democratic measure?] a lawyer's objections to home rule. by e.l. godkin. mr. dicey in his _case against home rule_ does me the honour to refer to an article which i wrote a year ago on "american home rule,"[ ] expressing in one place "disagreement in the general conclusion to which the article is intended to lead," and in another "inability to follow the inference" which he supposes me to draw "against all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." now the object of that article, i may be permitted to explain, was twofold. i desired, in the first place, to combat the notion which, it seemed to me, if i might judge from a great many of the speeches and articles on the irish question, was widely diffused even among thoughtful englishmen that the manner in which the irish have expressed their discontent--that is, through outrage and disorder--was indicative of incapacity for self-government, and even imposed upon the englishmen the duty, in the interest of morality (i think it was the _spectator_ who took this view), and as a disciplinary measure, of refusing to such a people the privilege of managing their own affairs. i tried to show by several noted examples occurring in this country that prolonged displays of lawlessness, and violence, and even cruelty, such as the anti-rent movement in the state of new york, the ku-klux outrages in the south, and the persecution of miss prudence crandall in connecticut, were not inconsistent with the possession of marked political capacity. i suggested that it was hardly adult politics to take such things into consideration in passing on the expediency of conceding local self-government to a subject community. there was to me something almost childish in the arguments drawn from irish lawlessness in the discussion of home rule, and in the moral importance attached by some englishmen to the refusal to such wicked men as the irish of the things they most desire. it is only in kindergartens, i said, that rulers are able to do equal and exact justice, and see that the naughty are brought to grief and the good made comfortable. statesmen occupy themselves with the more serious business of curing discontent. they concern themselves but little, if at all, with the question whether it might not be manifested by less objectionable methods. the irish methods of manifesting it, i endeavoured to show, were not exceptional, and did not prove either inability to make laws or unwillingness to obey them. i illustrated this by examples drawn from the united states. i might, had i had more time and space, have made these examples still more numerous and striking. i might have given very good reasons for believing that, were ireland a state in the american union, there probably would not have been any rent paid in the island within the last fifty years, and that the armed resistance of the tenants would have had the open or secret sympathy of the great bulk of the american people. in truth, the importance of irish crime as a political symptom is grossly exaggerated by english writers. i venture to assert that more murders unconnected with robbery are committed in the state of kentucky in one year than in ireland in ten, and the condition of some other southern and western states is nearly as bad. all good americans lament this and are ashamed of it, but it never enters into the heads of even the most lugubrious american moralists that kentucky or any other state should be disfranchised and remanded to the condition of a territory, because the offences against the person committed in it are so numerous, and the punishment of them, owing to popular sympathy or apathy, so difficult. there are a great many englishmen who think that when they show that grattan's parliament was a venal and somewhat disorderly body, which occasionally indulged in mixed metaphor, they have proved the impossibility of giving ireland a parliament now. but then, as they are obliged to admit, walpole's parliament was very corrupt, and no one would say that for that reason it would have been wise to suspend constitutional government in england in the eighteenth century. it is only through the pernicious habit of thinking of irishmen as exceptions to all political rules that grattan's parliament is considered likely, had it lasted, to have come down to our time unreformed and unimproved. those have misunderstood me who suppose that i draw from the success of the anti-rent movement in this state between and an inference against "all attempts to enforce an unpopular law." such was not by any means my object. what i sought to show by the history of this movement was that there was nothing peculiar or inexplicable in the hostility to rent-paying in ireland. the rights of the new york landlords were as good in law and morals as the rights of the irish landlords, and their mode of asserting them far superior. moreover, those who resisted them were not men of a different race, religion, or nationality, and had, as mr. dicey says, "none of the excuses that can be urged in extenuation of half-starved tenants." their mode of setting the law at defiance was exactly similar to that adopted by the irish, and it was persisted in for a period of ten years, or until they had secured a substantial victory. the history of the anti-rent agitation in new york also illustrates strikingly, as it seems to me, the perspicacity of a remark made, in substance, long ago by mr. disraeli, which, in my eyes at least, threw a great deal of light on the irish problem, namely, that ireland was suffering from suppressed revolution. as mr. dicey says, "the crises called revolutions are the ultimate and desperate cures for the fundamental disorganization of society. the issue of a revolutionary struggle shows what is the true sovereign power in the revolutionized state. so strong is the interest of mankind, at least in any european country, in favour of some sort of settled rule, that civil disturbance will, if left to itself, in general end in the supremacy of some power which by securing the safety at last gains the attachment of the people. the reign of terror begets the empire; even wars of religion at last produce peace, albeit peace may be nothing better than the iron uniformity of despotism. could ireland have been left for any lengthened period to herself, some form of rule adapted to the needs of the country would in all probability have been established. whether protestants or catholics would have been the predominant element in the state; whether the landlords would have held their own, or whether the english system of tenure would long ago have made way for one more in conformity with native traditions; whether hostile classes and races would at last have established some _modus vivendi_ favourable to individual freedom, or whether despotism under some of its various forms would have been sanctioned by the acquiescence of its subjects, are matters of uncertain speculation. a conclusion which, though speculative, is far less uncertain, is that ireland, if left absolutely to herself, would have arrived, like every other country, at some lasting settlement of her difficulties" (p. ). that is to say, that in ireland as in new york the attempt to enforce unpopular land laws would have been abandoned, had local self-government existed. for "revolution" is, after all, only a fine name for the failure or refusal of the rulers of a country to persist in executing laws which the bulk of the population find obnoxious. when the popular hostility to the law is strong enough to make its execution impossible, as it was in new york in the rent affair, it is accepted as the respectable solution of a very troublesome problem. when, as in ireland, it is strong enough to produce turbulence and disorder, but not strong enough to tire out and overcome the authorities, it simply ruins the political manners of the people. if the irish landlords had had from the beginning to face the tenants single-handed and either hold them down by superior physical force, or come to terms with them as the new york landlords had to do, conditions of peace and good will would have assuredly been discovered long ago. the land question, in other words, would have been adjusted in accordance with "irish ideas," that is, in some way satisfactory to the tenants. the very memory of the conflict would probably by this time have died out, and the two classes would be living in harmony on the common soil. if in new york, on the other hand, the van rensselaers and livingstons had been able to secure the aid of martial law and of the federal troops in asserting their claims, and in preventing local opinion having any influence whatever on the settlement of the dispute, there can be no doubt that a large portion of this state would to-day be as poor and as savage, and apparently as little fitted for the serious business of government, as the greater part of ireland is. there is, in truth, no reason to doubt that the idea of property in land, thoroughly accepted though it be in the united states, is nevertheless held under the same limitations as in the rest of the world. no matter what the law may say in any country, in no country is the right of the landed proprietor in his acres as absolute as his right in his movables. a man may own as much land as he can purchase, and may assert his ownership in its most absolute form against one, two, or three occupants, but the minute he began to assert it against a large number of occupants, that is, to act as if his rights were such that he had only to buy a whole state or a whole island in order to be able to evict the entire population, he would find in america, as he finds in ireland, that he cannot have the same title to land as to personal property. he would, for instance, if he tried to oust the people of a whole district or of a village from their homes on any plea of possession, or of a contract, find that he was going too far, and that no matter what the judges might say, or the sheriff might try to do for him, his legal position was worth very little to him. consequently a large landlord in america, if he were lucky enough to get tenants at all, would be very chary indeed about quarrelling with more than one of them at a time. the tenants would no more submit to wholesale ejectment than the farmers in missouri would submit some years ago to a tax levy on their property to pay county bonds given in aid of a railroad. the goods of some of them were seized, but a large body of them attended the sale armed with rifles, having previously issued a notice that the place would be very "unhealthy" for outside bidders. the bearing of this condition of american opinion on the irish question will be plainer if i remind english readers that the irish in the united states numbered in nearly , , , and that the number of persons of irish parentage is probably between , , and , , . in short there are, as well as one can judge, more irish nationalists in the united states than in ireland. the irish-americans are to-day the only large and prosperous irish community in the world. the children of the irish born in the united states or brought there in their infancy are just as irish in their politics as those who have grown up at home. patrick ford, for instance, the editor of the _irish world_, who is such a shape of dread to some englishmen, came to america in childhood, and has no personal knowledge nor recollection of irish wrongs. of the part this large irish community plays in stimulating agitation--both agrarian and political--at home i need not speak; englishmen are very familiar with it, and are very indignant over it. the irish-americans not only send over a great deal of american money to their friends at home, but they send over american ideas, and foremost among them american hostility to large landowners, and american belief in home rule. now, to me, one of the most curious things in the english state of mind about the irish problem is the apparent expectation that this irish-american interference is transient, and will probably soon die out. it is quite true, as englishmen are constantly told, that "the best americans," that is, the literary people and the commercial magnates, whom travelling englishmen see on the atlantic coast, dislike the irish anti-english agitation. but it is also true that the disapproval of the "best americans" is not of the smallest practical consequence, particularly as it is largely due to complete indifference to, and ignorance of, the whole subject. there are probably not a dozen of them who would venture to express their disapproval publicly. the mass of the population, particularly in the west, sympathize, though half laughingly, with the efforts of the transplanted irish to "twist the british lion's tail," and all the politicians either sympathize with them, or pretend to do so. i am not now expressing any opinion as to whether this state of things is good or bad. what i wish to point out is that this irish-american influence on irish affairs is very powerful, and may, for all practical purposes, be considered permanent, and must be taken into account as a constant element in the irish problem. i will indeed venture on the assertion that it is the appearance of the irish-americans on the scene which has given the irish question its present seriousness. the attempts of the irish at physical resistance to english authority have been steadily diminishing in gravity during the present century--witness the descent from the rebellion of to smith o'brien's rebellion and the fenian rising of . on the other hand the power of the irish to act as a disturbing agency in english politics has greatly increased, and the reason is that the stream of irish discontent is fed by thousands of rills from the united states. every emigrant's letter, every irish-american newspaper, every returned emigrant with money in his pocket and a good coat on his back, helps to swell it, and there is not the slightest sign, that i can see, of its drying up. where mr. dicey is most formidable to the home rulers, as it seems to me, is in his chapter on "home rule as federalism," which is the form in which the irish ask for it. he attacks this in two ways. one is by maintaining that the necessary conditions for a federal union between great britain and ireland do not exist. this disposes at one blow of all the experience derived from the working of the foreign federations, on which the advocates of home rule have relied a good deal. the other is what i may call predictions that the federation even if set up would not work. either the state of facts on which all other federations have been built does not exist in ireland, or if it now exists, will not, owing to the peculiarities of irish character, continue to exist. in other words, the federation will either fail at the outset, or fail in the long run. no one can admire more than i do the force and ingenuity and wealth of illustration with which mr. dicey supports this thesis. but unfortunately the arguments by which he assails irish federalism might be, or might have been, used against all federations whatever. they might have been used, as i shall try to show, against the most successful of them all, the government of the united states. i was reminded, while reading mr. dicey's account of the impossibility of an anglo-irish federation, of mr. madison's rehearsal in the _federalist_ (no. ) of the objections made to the federal constitution after the convention had submitted it to the states. these objections covered every feature in it but one; and that, the mode of electing the president, curiously enough, is the only one which can be said to have utterly failed. a more impressive example of the danger of _à priori_ attacks on any political arrangement, history does not contain. mr. madison says: "this one tells me that the proposed constitution ought to be rejected, because it is not a confederation of the states, but a government over individuals. another admits that it ought to be a government over individuals to a certain extent, but by no means to the extent proposed. a third does not object to the government over individuals, or to the extent proposed, but to the want of a bill of rights. a fourth concurs in the absolute necessity of a bill of rights, but contends that it ought to be declaratory not of the personal rights of individuals, but of the rights reserved to the states in their political capacity. a fifth is of opinion that a bill of rights of any sort would be superfluous and misplaced, and that the plan would be unexceptionable but for the fatal power of regulating the times and places of election. an objector in a large state exclaims loudly against the unreasonable equality of representation in the senate. an objector in a small state is equally loud against the dangerous inequality in the house of representatives. from one quarter we are alarmed with the amazing expense, from the number of persons who are to administer the new government. from another quarter, and sometimes from the same quarter, on another occasion the cry is that the congress will be but the shadow of a representation, and that the government would be far less objectionable if the number and the expense were doubled. a patriot in a state that does not import or export discerns insuperable objections against the power of direct taxation. the patriotic adversary in a state of great exports and imports is not less dissatisfied that the whole burden of taxes may be thrown on consumption. this politician discovers in the constitution a direct and irresistible tendency to monarchy. that is equally sure it will end in aristocracy. another is puzzled to say which of these shapes it will ultimately assume, but sees clearly it must be one or other of them. whilst a fourth is not wanting, who with no less confidence affirms that the constitution is so far from having a bias towards either of these dangers, that the weight on that side will not be sufficient to keep it upright and firm against the opposite propensities. with another class of adversaries to the constitution, the language is, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments are intermixed in such a manner as to contradict all the ideas of regular government and all the requisite precautions in favour of liberty. whilst this objection circulates in vague and general expressions, there are not a few who lend their sanction to it. let each one come forward with his particular explanation, and scarcely any two are exactly agreed on the subject. in the eyes of one the junction of the senate with the president in the responsible function of appointing to offices, instead of vesting this power in the executive alone, is the vicious part of the organization. to another the exclusion of the house of representatives, whose numbers alone could be a due security against corruption and partiality in the exercise of such a power, is equally obnoxious. with a third the admission of the president into any share of a power which must ever be a dangerous engine in the hands of the executive magistrate is an unpardonable violation of the maxims of republican jealousy. no part of the arrangement, according to some, is more inadmissible than the trial of impeachments by the senate, which is alternately a member both of the legislative and executive departments, when this power so evidently belonged to the judiciary department. we concur fully, reply others, in the objection to this part of the plan, but we can never agree that a reference of impeachments to the judiciary authority would be an amendment of the error; our principal dislike to the organization arises from the extensive powers already lodged in that department. even among the zealous patrons of a council of state, the most irreconcilable variance is discovered concerning the mode in which it ought to be constituted." mr. madison's challenge to the opponents of the american constitution to agree on some plan of their own, and his humorous suggestion that if the american people had to wait for some such agreement to be reached they would go for a long time without a government, are curiously applicable to the opponents of irish home rule. they are very fertile in reasons for thinking that neither the gladstone plan nor any other plan can succeed, but no two of them, so far as i know, have yet hit upon any other mode of pacifying ireland, except the use of force for a certain period to maintain order, and oddly enough, even when they agree on this remedy, they are apt to disagree about the length of time during which it should be tried. mr. dicey, in conceding the success of the american constitution, seems to me unmindful, if i may use the expression, of the judgments he would probably have passed on it had it been submitted to him at the outset were he in the frame of mind to which a prolonged study of the irish problem has now brought him. the supreme court, for instance, which he now recognizes as an essential feature of the federal constitution, and the absence of which in the gladstonian arrangement he treats as a fatal defect, would have undoubtedly appeared to him a preposterous contrivance. it would have seemed to him impossible that a legislature like congress, with the traditions of parliamentary omnipotence still strong in the minds of the members, would ever submit to have its acts nullified by a board composed of half a dozen elderly lawyers. nor would he have treated as any more reasonable the expectation that the state tribunals, which had existed in each colony from its foundation, and had earned the respect and confidence of the people, would quietly submit to have their jurisdiction curtailed, their decisions overruled, causes torn from their calendar, and prisoners taken out of their custody by new courts of semi-foreign origin, which the state neither paid nor controlled. he would, too, very probably have been most incredulous about the prospect of the growth of loyalty on the part of new-yorkers and massachusetts men to a new-fangled government, which was to make itself only slightly felt in their daily lives, and was to sit a fortnight away in an improvised village in the midst of a virginian forest. he would, too, have ridiculed the notion that state legislatures would refrain, in obedience to the constitution, from passing any law which local sentiment strongly favoured or local convenience plainly demanded, such as a law impairing the obligation of obnoxious contracts, or levying duties on imports or exports. the possibility that the state militia could ever be got to obey federal officers, or form an efficient part of a federal army, he would have scouted. on the feebleness of the front which federation would present to a foreign enemy he would have dwelt with emphasis, and would have pointed with confidence to the probability that in the event of a war some of the states would make terms with him or secretly favour his designs. national allegiance and local allegiance would divide and perplex the feelings of loyal citizens. unless the national sentiment predominated--and it could not predominate without having had time to grow--the federation would go to pieces at any of those crises when the interests or wishes of any of the states conflicted with the interests or wishes of the union. that the national sentiment could grow at all rapidly, considering the maturity of the communities which composed the union and the differences of origin, creed, and manners which separated them, no calm observer of human nature would believe for one moment. the american constitution is flecked throughout with those flaws which a lawyer delights to discover and point out, and which the framers of a federal contract can only excuse by maintaining that they are inevitable. it is true that mr. dicey does not even now acknowledge the success of the american constitution to be complete. he points out that if the "example either of america or of switzerland is to teach us anything worth knowing, the history of these countries must be read as a whole. it will then be seen that the two most successful confederacies in the world have been kept together only by the decisive triumph through force of arms of the central power over real or alleged state rights" (p. ). it is odd that such objectors do not see that the decisive triumph of the central power in the late civil war in america was, in reality, a striking proof of the success of the federation. the armies which general grant commanded, and the enormous resources in money and devotion from which he was able to draw, were the product of the federal union and of nothing else. one of the greatest arguments its founders used in its favour was that if once established it would supply overwhelming force for the suppression of any attempt to break it up. they did not aim at setting up a government which neither foreign malice nor domestic treason, would ever assail, for they knew that this was something beyond the reach of human endeavour. they tried to set up one which, if attacked either from within or from without, would make a successful resistance, and we now know that they accomplished their object. somewhat the same answer may be made to the objection, which is supposed to have fatal applicability to the case of ireland, that among the "special faults of federalism" is that it does not provide "sufficient protection of the legal rights of unpopular minorities," and that "the moral of it all is that the [american] federal government is not able to protect the rights of individuals against strong local sentiment" (p. of mr. dicey's book). he says, moreover, if i understand the argument rightly, that it was bound to protect free speech in the states because "there is not and never was a word in the articles of the constitution forbidding american citizens to criticize the institutions of the state." it would seem from this as if mr. dicey were under the impression that in america the citizen of a state has a right to do in his state whatever he is not forbidden to do by the federal constitution, and in doing it has a right to federal protection. but the federal government can only do what the constitution expressly authorizes it to do, and the constitution does not authorize it to protect a citizen in criticizing the institutions of his own state. this arrangement, too, is just as good federalism as the committal of free speech to federal guardianship would have been. the goodness or badness of the federal system is in no way involved in the matter. the question to what extent a minority shall rely on the federation for protection, and to what extent on its own state, is a matter settled by the contract which has created the federation. the settlement of this is, in fact, the great object of a constitution. until it is settled somehow, either by writing or by understanding, there is, and can be, no federation. if i, as a citizen of the state of new york, could call on the united states government to protect me under all circumstances and against all wrongs, it would show that i was not living under a federation at all, but under a centralized republic. the reason why i have to rely on the united states for protection against some things and not against others is that it was so stipulated when the state of new york entered the union. there is nothing in the nature of the federal system to prevent the united states government from protecting my freedom of speech. nor is there anything in the federal system which forbids its protecting me against the establishment of a state church, which, as a matter of fact, it does not do. nor is there anything in the federal system compelling the government to protect me against the establishment of an order of nobility, which, as a matter of fact, it does do. the reason why it does not do one of these things and does the other is simply and solely that it was so stipulated, after much discussion, in the contract. most thinking men are to-day of opinion that the united states ought to have exclusive jurisdiction of marriage, so that the law of marriage might be uniform in all parts of the union. the reason why they do not possess such jurisdiction is not that congress is not fully competent to pass such a law or the federal courts to execute it, but that no such jurisdiction is conferred by the constitution. in fact it seems to me just as reasonable to cite the ease of divorce in various states of the union as a defect in the federal system, as to cite the oppression of local minorities in matters not placed under federal authority by the organic law. if one may judge from a great deal of writing on american matters which one sees in english journals and the demands for federal interference in america in state affairs which they constantly make, the greatest difficulty irish home rule has to contend with is the difficulty which men bred in a united monarchy and under an omnipotent parliament experience in grasping what i may call the federal idea. the influence of association on their minds is so strong that they can hardly conceive of a central power, worthy of the name of a government, standing by and witnessing disorders or failures of justice in any place within its borders, without stepping in to set matters right, no matter what the constitution may say. they remind me often of an old verger in westminster abbey during the american civil war who told me that "he always knew a government without a head couldn't last." permanence and peace were in his mind inseparably linked with kingship. that even mr. dicey has not been able to escape this influence appears frequently in his discussions of federalism. he, of course, thoroughly understands the federal system as a jurist, but when he comes to discuss it as a politician he has evidently some difficulty in seeing how a government with a power to enforce _any_ commands can be restrained by contract from enforcing _all_ commands which may seem to be expedient or salutary. consequently the cool way in which the federal government here looks on at local disorders seems to him a sign, not of the fidelity of the president and congress to the federal pact, but of some inherent weakness in the federal system. the true way to judge the federal system, however, either in the united states or elsewhere, is by observing the manner in which it has performed the duties assigned to it by the constitution. if the government at washington performs these faithfully, its failure to prevent lawlessness in new york or the oppression of minorities in connecticut is of no more consequence than its failure to put down brigandage in macedonia. possibly it would have been better to saddle it with greater responsibility for local peace; but the fact is that the framers of the constitution decided not to do so. they did not mean to set up a government which would see that every man living under it got his due. they could not have got the states to accept such a government. they meant to set up a government which should represent the nation worthily in all its relations with foreigners, which should carry on war effectively, protect life and property on the high seas, furnish a proper currency, put down all resistance to its lawful authority, and secure each state against domestic violence on the demand of its legislature. there is no common form for federal contracts, and no rules describing what such a contract must contain in order that the government may be federal and not unitarian. there is no hard and fast line which must, under the federal system, divide the jurisdiction of the central government from the jurisdiction of each state government. the way in which the power is divided between the two must necessarily depend on the traditions, manners, aims, and needs of the people of the various localities. the federal system is not a system manufactured on a regulation model, which can be sent over the world like iron huts or steam launches, in detached pieces, to be put together when the scene of operation is reached. therefore i am unable to see the force of the argument that, as the conditions under which all existing federations were established differ in some respects from those under which the proposed federal union between england and ireland would have to be established, therefore the success of these confederations, such as it is, gives them no value as precedents. a system which might have worked very well for the new england states would not have worked well for a combination which included also the middle and southern states. and the framers of the american constitution were not so simple-minded as to inquire, either before beginning their labours or before ending them--as mr. dicey would apparently have the english and irish do--whether this or that style of constitution was "the correct thing" in federalism. assuming that the people desired to form a nation as regarded the world outside, they addressed themselves to the task of discovering how much power the various states were willing to surrender for this purpose. that was ascertained, as far as it could be ascertained, by assembling their delegates in convention, and discussing the wishes and fears and suggestions of the different localities in a friendly and conciliatory spirit. they had no precedents to guide them. there had not existed a federal government, either in ancient or modern times, whose working afforded an example by which the imagination or the understanding of the american people was likely to be affected in the smallest degree. they, therefore, had to strike out an entirely new path for themselves, and they ended by producing an absolutely new kind of federation, which was half unitarian, that is, in some respects a union of states, and in others a centralized government; and it was provided for a territory one end of which was more than a month's distance from the other. it is not in its details, therefore, but in the manner of its construction, that the american constitution furnishes anything in the way of guidance or suggestion to those who are now engaged in trying to find a _modus vivendi_ between england and ireland. the same thing may be said of the swiss constitution and of the austro-hungarian constitution. both of them contain many anomalies--that is, things that are not set down in the books as among the essentials of federalism. but both are adapted to the special wants of the people who live under them, and were framed in reference to those wants. the austro-hungarian delegations are another exception to the rule. these delegations undoubtedly control the ministry of the empire, or at all events do in practice displace it by their votes. it is made formally responsible to them by the constitution. all that mr. dicey can say to this is that "the real responsibility of the ministry to the delegations admits of a good deal of doubt," and that, at all events, it is not like the responsibility of mr. gladstone or lord salisbury to the british parliament. this may be true, but the more mysterious or peculiar it is the better it illustrates the danger of speaking of any particular piece of machinery or of any particular division of power as an essential feature of a federal constitution. we are told by the critics of the gladstonian scheme that federalism is not "a plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." but whether it is or not once more depends on circumstances. federalism, like the british or french constitution, is an arrangement intended to satisfy the people who set it up by gratifying some desire or removing some cause of discontent. if that discontent be due to unity, federalism disunites; if it be due to disunion, federalism unites. in the case of the austro-hungarian empire, for instance, it clearly is a "plan for disuniting the parts of a united state." austria and hungary were united in the sense in which the opponents of home rule use the word for many years before , but the union did not work, that is, did not produce moral as well as legal unity. a constitution was therefore invented which disunites the two countries for the purposes of domestic legislation, but leaves them united for the purposes of foreign relations. this may be a queer arrangement. although it has worked well enough thus far, it may not continue to work well, but it does work well now. it has succeeded in converting hungary from a discontented and rebellious province and a source of great weakness to austria into a loyal and satisfied portion of the empire. in other words, it has accomplished its purpose. it was not intended to furnish a symmetrical piece of federalism. it was intended to conciliate the hungarian people. when therefore the professional federal architects make their tour of inspection and point out to the home ruler what flagrant departures from the correct federal model the austro-hungarian constitution contains, how improbable it is that so enormous a structure can endure, and how, after all, the hungarians have not got rid of the emperor, who commands the army and represents the brute force of the old _régime_, i do not think he need feel greatly concerned. this may be all true, and yet the austro-hungarian federalism is a valuable thing. it has proved that the federal remedy is good for more than one disease, that it can cure both too much unity and too little. the truth is that there are only two essentials of a federal government. one is an agreement between the various communities who are to live under it as to the manner in which the power is to be divided between the general and local governments; the other is an honest desire on the part of all concerned to make it succeed. as a general rule, whatever the parties agree on and desire to make work is likely to work, just as a unitarian government is sure to succeed if the people who live under it determine that it shall succeed. if a federal plan be settled in the only right way, by amicable and mutually respectful discussion between representative men, all the more serious obstacles are certain to be revealed and removed. those which are not brought to light by such discussions are pretty sure to be comparatively trifling, and to disappear before the general success of arrangement. but by a "mutually respectful discussion" i mean discussion in which good faith and intelligence of all concerned are acknowledged on both sides. in what i have said by way of criticism of a book which may be taken as a particularly full exposition of the legal criticism that may be levelled at mr. gladstone's scheme, i have not touched on the arguments against home rule which mr. dicey draws from the amount of disturbance it would cause in english political habits and arrangements. i freely admit the weight of these arguments. the task of any english statesman who gives home rule to ireland in the only way in which it can be given--with the assent of the british people--will be a very arduous one. but this portion of mr. dicey's book, producing, as it does, the distinctively english objections to home rule, is to me much the most instructive, because it shows the difficulty there would be in creating the state of mind in england about any federal relation to ireland which would be necessary to make it succeed. i do not think it an exaggeration to say that two-thirds of the english objections to home rule as federalism are unconscious expressions of distrust of irish sincerity or intelligence thrown into the form of prophecy, and prophets, as we all know, cannot be refuted. for instance, "the changes necessitated by federalism would all tend to weaken the power of great britain" (dicey, p. ). the question of the command of the army could not be arranged; the irish army could not be depended on by the crown (p. ); the central government would be feeble against foreign aggression, and the irish parliament would give aid to a foreign enemy (pp. - ). federalism would aggravate or increase instead of diminishing the actual irish disloyalty to the crown (pp. - ); the irish expectations of material prosperity from home rule are baseless or grossly exaggerated (p. ); the probability is, it would produce increased poverty and hardship; there would be frequent quarrels between the two countries over questions of nullification, secession, and federal taxation (p. ); neither side would acquiesce in the decision either of the privy council or of any other tribunal on these questions; home rulers would be the first to resist these decisions (p. ). irish federation "would soon generate a demand that the whole british empire should be turned into a confederacy" (p. ). finally, as "the one prediction which may be made with absolute confidence," "federalism would not generate the goodwill between england and ireland which, could it be produced, would be an adequate compensation even for the evils and inconveniences of a federal system" (p. ). now i do not myself believe these things, but what else can any advocate of home rule say in answer to them? they are in their very nature the utterances of a prophet--an able, acute, and fair-minded prophet, i grant, but still a prophet--and before a prophet the wisest man has to be silent, or content himself by answering in prophecy also. what makes the sceptical frame of mind in which mr. dicey approaches the home rule question so important is not simply that it probably represents that of a very large body of educated englishmen, but that it is one in which a federal system cannot be produced. faith, hope, and charity are political as well as social virtues. the minute you leave the region of pure despotism and try any form of government in which the citizen has in the smallest degree to co-operate in the execution of the laws, you have need of these virtues at every step. as soon as you give up the attempt to rule men by drumhead justice, you have to begin to trust in some degree to their intelligence, to their love of order, to their self-respect, and to their desire for material prosperity, and the nearer you get to what is called free government the larger this trust has to be. it has to be very large indeed in order to carry on such a government as that of great britain or of the united states; it has to be larger still in order to set up and administer a federal government. in such a government the worst that can happen is very patent. the opportunities which the best-drawn federal constitution offers for outbreaks of what americans call "pure cussedness"--that is, for the indulgence of anarchical tendencies and impulses--is greater than in any other. therefore, to set it up, or even to discuss it with any profit, your faith in the particular variety of human nature, which is to live under it, has to be great. no communities can live under it together and make it work which do not respect each other. i say respect, i do not say love, each other. the machine can be made to go a good while without love, and if it goes well it will bring love before long; but mutual respect is necessary from the first day. this is why mr. dicey's book is discouraging. the arguments which he addressed to englishmen would not, i think, be formidable but for the mood in which he finds englishmen, and that this mood makes against home rule there can be little doubt. i am often asked by americans why the english do not call an anglo-irish convention in the american fashion, and discuss the irish question with the irish, find out exactly what they will take to be quiet, and settle with them in a rational way. i generally answer that, in the first place, a convention is a constitution-making agency with which the english public is totally unfamiliar, and that, in the second place, englishmen's temper is too imperial, or rather imperious, to make the idea of discussion on equal terms with the irish at all acceptable. they are, in fact, so far from any such arrangement that--preposterous and even funny as it seems to the american mind--to say that an english statesman is carrying on any sort of communication with the representatives of the irish people is to bring against him, in english eyes, a very damaging accusation. when a man like mr. matthew arnold writes to the _times_ to contend that englishmen should find out what the irish want solely for the purpose of not letting them have it, and a journal like the _spectator_ maintains that the sole excuse for extending the suffrage in ireland, as it has lately been extended in england, was that the irish as a minority would not be able to make any effective use of it; and when another political philosopher writes a long and very solemn letter in which, while conceding that in governing ireland a sympathetic regard for irish feelings and interests should be displayed, he mentions, as one of the leading facts of the situation, that in "the irish character there is a grievous lack of independence, of self-respect, of courage, and above all of truthfulness"--when men of this kind talk in this way, it is easy to see that the mental and moral conditions necessary to the successful formation of a federal union are still far off. no federal government, and no government requiring loyalty and fidelity for its successful working, was ever set up by, or even discussed between, two parties, one of which thought the other so unreasonable that it should be carefully denied everything it asked for and as unfit for any sort of political co-operation as mendacity, cowardice, and slavishness could make it. finally let me say that there is nothing in mr. dicey's book which has surprised me more, considering with what singular intellectual integrity he attacks every point, than his failure to make any mention or to take any account of the large part which time and experience must necessarily play in bringing to perfection any political arrangement which is made to order, if i may use the expression, no matter how carefully it may be drafted. hume says on this point with great wisdom, "to balance the large state or society, whether monarchical or republican, on general laws, is a work of so great difficulty, that no human genius, however comprehensive, is able by the mere dint of reason or reflection to effect it. the judgments of many must unite in the work, experience must guide their labour, time must bring it to perfection, and the feeling of inconveniences must correct the mistakes which they inevitably fall into in their first trial and experiments."[ ] this has proved true of the american and swiss federations; it will probably prove true of the austro-hungarian federation and of any that may be set up by great britian [transcriber: sic.] and her colonies. it will prove still more true of any attempt that may be made at federation between great britain and ireland. no corrections which could be made in the gladstonian or any other constitution would make it work exactly on the lines laid down by its framers. even if it were revised in accordance with mr. dicey's criticism, it would probably be found, as in the case of the american constitution, that few of the dangers which were most feared for it had beset it, and that some of the inconveniences which were most distinctly foreseen as likely to arise from it were among the things which had materially contributed to its success. history is full of the gentle ridicule which the course of events throws on statesmen and philosophers. footnotes: [footnote : printed in the earlier part of this volume.] [footnote : essay on the rise and progress of the arts and sciences.] the "unionist" case for home rule. by r. barry o'brien. i am often asked, what are the best books to read on the irish question? and i never fail to mention mr. lecky's _leaders of public opinion in ireland_ and the _history of england in the eighteenth century_; mr. goldwin smith's _irish history and irish character, three english statesmen, the irish question_, and professor dicey's admirable work, _england's case against home rule_. indeed, the case for home rule, as stated in these books, is unanswerable; and it redounds to the credit of mr. lecky, mr. goldwin smith, and mr. dicey that their narrative of facts should in no wise be prejudiced by their political opinions. that their facts are upon one side and their opinions on the other is a minor matter. their facts, i venture to assert, have made more home rulers than their opinions can unmake. to put this assertion to the test i propose to quote some extracts from the works above mentioned. these extracts shall be full and fair. nothing shall be left out that can in the slightest degree qualify any statement of fact in the context. arguments will be omitted, for i wish to place facts mainly before my readers. from these facts they can draw their own conclusions. neither shall i take up space with comments of my own. i shall call my witnesses and let them speak for themselves. i.--mr. lecky. in the introduction to the new edition of the _leaders of public opinion in ireland_, published in --seventy-one years after mr. pitt's union, which was to make england and ireland one nation--we find the following "contrast" between "national life" in the two countries:-- "there is, perhaps, no government in the world which succeeds more admirably in the functions of eliciting, sustaining, and directing public opinion than that of england. it does not, it is true, escape its full share of hostile criticism, and, indeed, rather signally illustrates the saying of bacon, that 'the best governments are always subject to be like the finest crystals, in which every icicle and grain is seen which in a fouler stone is never perceived;' but whatever charges may be brought against the balance of its powers, or against its legislative efficiency, few men will question its eminent success as an organ of public opinion. in england an even disproportionate amount of the national talent takes the direction of politics. the pulse of an energetic national life is felt in every quarter of the land. the debates of parliament are followed with a warm, constant, and intelligent interest by all sections of the community. it draws all classes within the circle of political interests, and is the centre of a strong and steady patriotism, equally removed from the apathy of many continental nations in time of calm, and from their feverish and spasmodic energy in time of excitement. its decisions, if not instantly accepted, never fail to have a profound and calming influence on the public mind. it is the safety-valve of the nation. the discontents, the suspicions, the peccant humours that agitate the people, find there their vent, their resolution, and their end. "it is impossible, i think, not to be struck by the contrast which, in this respect, ireland presents to england. if the one country furnishes us with an admirable example of the action of a healthy public opinion, the other supplies us with the most unequivocal signs of its disease. the imperial parliament exercises for ireland legislative functions, but it is almost powerless upon opinion--it allays no discontent, and attracts no affection. political talent, which for many years was at least as abundant among irishmen as in any equally numerous section of the people, has been steadily declining, and marked decadence in this respect among the representatives of the nation reflects but too truly the absence of public spirit in their constituents. "the upper classes have lost their sympathy with and their moral ascendency over their tenants, and are thrown for the most part into a policy of mere obstruction. the genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of imperial politics. with great multitudes sectarian considerations have entirely superseded national ones, and their representatives are accustomed systematically to subordinate all party and all political questions to ecclesiastical interests; and while calling themselves liberals, they make it the main object of their home politics to separate the different classes of their fellow-countrymen during the period of their education, and the main object of their foreign policy to support the temporal power of the pope. with another and a still larger class the prevailing feeling seems to be an indifference to all parliamentary proceedings; an utter scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their ends; a blind, persistent hatred of england. every cause is taken up with an enthusiasm exactly proportioned to the degree in which it is supposed to be injurious to english interests. an amount of energy and enthusiasm which if rightly directed would suffice for the political regeneration of ireland is wasted in the most insane projects of disloyalty; while the diversion of so much public feeling from parliamentary politics leaves the parliamentary arena more and more open to corruption, to place-hunting, and to imposture. "this picture is in itself a very melancholy one, but there are other circumstances which greatly heighten the effect. in a very ignorant or a very wretched population it is natural that there should be much vague, unreasoning discontent; but the irish people are at present neither wretched nor ignorant. their economical condition before the famine was, indeed, such that it might well have made reasonable men despair. with the land divided into almost microscopic farms, with a population multiplying rapidly to the extreme limits of subsistence, accustomed to the very lowest standard of comfort, and marrying earlier than in any other northern country in europe, it was idle to look for habits of independence or self-reliance, or for the culture which follows in the train of leisure and comfort. but all this has been changed. a fearful famine and the long-continued strain of emigration have reduced the nation from eight millions to less than five, and have effected, at the price of almost intolerable suffering, a complete economical revolution. the population is now in no degree in excess of the means of subsistence. the rise of wages and prices has diffused comfort through all classes. ... probably no country in europe has advanced so rapidly as ireland within the last ten years, and the tone of cheerfulness, the improvement of the houses, the dress, and the general condition of the people must have struck every observer.[ ] ... if industrial improvement, if the rapid increase of material comforts among the poor, could allay political discontent, ireland should never have been so loyal as at present. "nor can it be said that ignorance is at the root of the discontent. the irish people have always, even in the darkest period of the penal laws, been greedy for knowledge, and few races show more quickness in acquiring it. the admirable system of national education established in the present century is beginning to bear abundant fruit, and, among the younger generation at least, the level of knowledge is quite as high as in england. indeed, one of the most alarming features of irish disloyalty is its close and evident connection with education. it is sustained by a cheap literature, written often with no mean literary skill, which penetrates into every village, gives the people their first political impressions, forms and directs their enthusiasm, and seems likely in the long leisure of the pastoral life to exercise an increasing power. close observers of the irish character will hardly have failed to notice the great change which since the famine has passed over the amusements of the people. the old love of boisterous out-of-door sports has almost disappeared, and those who would have once sought their pleasures in the market or the fair now gather in groups in the public-house, where one of their number reads out a fenian newspaper. whatever else this change may portend, it is certainly of no good omen for the future loyalty of the people. "it was long customary in england to underrate this disaffection by ascribing it to very transitory causes. the quarter of a century that followed the union was marked by almost perpetual disturbance; but this it was said was merely the natural ground swell of agitation which followed a great reform. it was then the popular theory that it was the work of o'connell, who was described during many years as the one obstacle to the peace of ireland, and whose death was made the subject of no little congratulation, as though irish discontent had perished with its organ. it was as if, the Æolian harp being shattered, men wrote an epitaph upon the wind. experience has abundantly proved the folly of such theories. measured by mere chronology, a little more than seventy years have passed since the union, but famine and emigration have compressed into these years the work of centuries. the character, feelings, and conditions of the people have been profoundly altered. a long course of remedial legislation has been carried, and during many years the national party has been without a leader and without a stimulus. yet, so far from subsiding, disloyalty in ireland is probably as extensive, and is certainly as malignant, as at the death of o'connell, only in many respects the public opinion of the country has palpably deteriorated. o'connell taught an attachment to the connection, a loyalty to the crown, a respect for the rights of property, a consistency of liberalism, which we look for in vain among his successors; and that faith in moral force and constitutional agitation which he made it one of his greatest objects to instil into the people has almost vanished with the failure of his agitation."[ ] few irish nationalists have drawn a weightier indictment against the union than this. after a trial of seventy years, mr. lecky sums up the case against the union in these pregnant sentences:-- "the imperial parliament allays no discontent, and attracts no affection;" "the genuine national enthusiasm never flows in the channel of imperial politics;" the people have "an utter scepticism about constitutional means of realizing their ends," and are imbued with "a blind, persistent hatred of england." worse still, neither the material progress of the country, nor the education of the people, has reconciled them to the imperial parliament. indeed, their disloyalty has increased with their prosperity and enlightenment. this is the story which mr. lecky has to tell. but why are the irish disloyal? mr. lecky shall answer the question. "the causes of this deep-seated disaffection i have endeavoured in some degree to investigate in the following essays. to the merely dramatic historian the history of ireland will probably appear less attractive than that of most other countries, for it is somewhat deficient in great characters and in splendid episodes; but to a philosophic student of history it presents an interest of the very highest order. in no other history can we trace more clearly the chain of causes and effects, the influence of past legislation, not only upon the material condition, but also upon the character of a nation. in no other history especially can we investigate more fully the evil consequences which must ensue from disregarding that sentiment of nationality which, whether it be wise or foolish, whether it be desirable or the reverse, is at least one of the strongest and most enduring of human passions. this, as i conceive, lies at the root of irish discontent. it is a question of nationality as truly as in hungary or in poland. special grievances or anomalies may aggravate, but do not cause it, and they become formidable only in as far as they are connected with it. what discontent was felt against the protestant established church was felt chiefly because it was regarded as an english garrison sustaining an anti-national system; and the agrarian difficulty never assumed its full intensity till by the repeal agitation the landlords had been politically alienated from the people."[ ] let those who imagine that the irish question can be completely settled by the redress of material grievances take those words to heart. but, it is said, scotch national sentiment is as strong as irish, why should not a legislative union be as acceptable to ireland as to scotland? mr. lecky shall answer this question too. "it is hardly possible to advert to the scotch union, without pausing for a moment to examine why its influence on the loyalty of the people should have ultimately been so much happier than that of the legislative union which, nearly a century later, was enacted between england and ireland. a very slight attention to the circumstances of the case will explain the mystery, and will at the same time show the extreme shallowness of those theorists who can only account for it by reference to original peculiarities of national character. the sacrifice of a nationality is a measure which naturally produces such intense and such enduring discontent that it never should be exacted unless it can be accompanied by some political or material advantages to the lesser country that are so great and at the same time so evident as to prove a corrective. such a corrective in the case of scotland, was furnished by the commercial clauses. the scotch parliament was very arbitrary and corrupt, and by no means a faithful representation of the people. the majority of the nation were certainly opposed to the union, and, directly or indirectly, it is probable that much corruption was employed to effect it; but still the fact remains that by it one of the most ardent wishes of all scottish patriots was attained, that there had been for many years a powerful and intelligent minority who were prepared to purchase commercial freedom even at the expense of the fusion of legislatures, and that in consequence of the establishment of free trade the next generation of scotchmen witnessed an increase of material well-being that was utterly unprecedented in the history of their country. nothing equivalent took place in ireland. the gradual abolition of duties between england and ireland was, no doubt, an advantage to the lesser country, but the whole trade to america and the other english colonies had been thrown open to irishmen between and . irish commerce had taken this direction; the years between and the rebellion of were probably the most prosperous in irish history, and the generation that followed the union was one of the most miserable. the sacrifice of nationality was extorted by the most enormous corruption in the history of representative institutions. it was demanded by no considerable section of the irish people. it was accompanied by no signal political or material benefit that could mitigate or counteract its unpopularity, and it was effected without a dissolution, in opposition to the votes of the immense majority of the representatives of the counties and considerable towns, and to innumerable addresses from every part of the country. can any impartial man be surprised that such a measure, carried in such a manner, should have proved unsuccessful?"[ ] in the _leaders of public opinion in ireland_ mr. lecky traces the current of events which have led to the present situation. he shows how the treaty of limerick was shamelessly violated, and how the native population was oppressed and degraded. "the position of ireland was at this time [ ] one of the most deplorable that can be conceived.... the roman catholics had been completely prostrated by the battle of the boyne and by the surrender of limerick. they had stipulated indeed for religious liberty, but the treaty of limerick was soon shamelessly violated, and it found no avengers. sarsfield and his brave companions had abandoned a country where defeat left no opening for their talents, and had joined the irish brigade which had been formed in the service of france.... but while the irish roman catholics abroad found free scope for their ambition in the service of france, those who remained at home had sunk into a condition of utter degradation. all catholic energy and talent had emigrated to foreign lands, and penal laws of atrocious severity crushed the catholics who remained."[ ] mr. lecky's account of these "penal laws" is upon the whole, i think, the best that has been written. "the last great protestant ruler of england was william iii., who is identified in ireland with the humiliation of the boyne, with the destruction of irish trade, and with the broken treaty of limerick. the ceaseless exertions of the extreme protestant party have made him more odious in the eyes of the people than he deserves to be; for he was personally far more tolerant than the great majority of his contemporaries, and the penal code was chiefly enacted under his successors. it required, indeed, four or five reigns to elaborate a system so ingeniously contrived to demoralize, to degrade, and to impoverish the people of ireland. by this code the roman catholics were absolutely excluded from the parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the bench, and from the bar. they could not vote at parliamentary elections or at vestries; they could not act as constables, or sheriffs, or jurymen, or serve in the army or navy, or become solicitors, or even hold the positions of gamekeeper or watchman. schools were established to bring up their children as protestants; and if they refused to avail themselves of these, they were deliberately assigned to hopeless ignorance, being excluded from the university, and debarred, under crushing penalties, from acting as schoolmasters, as ushers, or as private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to obtain the instruction they were refused at home. they could not marry protestants, and if such a marriage were celebrated it was annulled by law, and the priest who officiated might be hung. they could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from protestants, or hold life-annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent. if any catholic leaseholder by his industry so increased his profits that they exceeded this proportion, and did not immediately make a corresponding increase in his payments, any protestant who gave the information could enter into possession of his farm. if any catholic had secretly purchased either his old forfeited estate, or any other land, any protestant who informed against him might become the proprietor. the few catholic landowners who remained were deprived of the right which all other classes possessed of bequeathing their lands as they pleased. if their sons continued catholics, it was divided equally between them. if, however, the eldest son consented to apostatize, the estate was settled upon him, the father from that hour became only a life-tenant, and lost all power of selling, mortgaging, or otherwise disposing of it. if the wife of a catholic abandoned the religion of her husband, she was immediately free from his control, and the chancellor was empowered to assign to her a certain proportion of her husband's property. if any child, however young, professed itself a protestant, it was at once taken from the father's care, and the chancellor could oblige the father to declare upon oath the value of his property, both real and personal, and could assign for the present maintenance and future portion of the converted child such proportion of that property as the court might decree. no catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to those of another person; and therefore a catholic who died while his children were minors had the bitterness of reflecting upon his death-bed that they must pass into the care of protestants. an annuity of from twenty to forty pounds was provided as a bribe for every priest who would become a protestant. to convert a protestant to catholicism was a capital offence. in every walk of life the catholic was pursued by persecution or restriction. except in the linen trade, he could not have more than two apprentices. he could not possess a horse of the value of more than five pounds, and any protestant, on giving him five pounds, could take his horse. he was compelled to pay double to the militia. he was forbidden, except under particular conditions, to live in galway or limerick. in case of war with a catholic power, the catholics were obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. the legislature, it is true, did not venture absolutely to suppress their worship, but it existed only by a doubtful connivance--stigmatized as if it were a species of licensed prostitution, and subject to conditions which, if they had been enforced, would have rendered its continuance impossible. an old law which prohibited it, and another which enjoined attendance at the anglican worship, remained unrepealed, and might at any time be revived; and the former was, in fact, enforced during the scotch rebellion of . the parish priests, who alone were allowed to officiate, were compelled to be registered, and were forbidden to keep curates or to officiate anywhere except in their own parishes. the chapels might not have bells or steeples. no crosses might be publicly erected. pilgrimages to the holy wells were forbidden. not only all monks and friars, but also all catholic archbishops, bishops, deacons, and other dignitaries, were ordered by a certain day to leave the country; and if after that date they were found in ireland they were liable to be first imprisoned and then banished; and if after that banishment they returned to discharge their duty in their dioceses, they were liable to the punishment of death. to facilitate the discovery of offences against the code, two justices of the peace might at any time compel any catholic of eighteen years of age to declare when and where he last heard mass, what persons were present, and who officiated; and if he refused to give evidence they might imprison him for twelve months, or until he paid a fine of twenty pounds. any one who harboured ecclesiastics from beyond the seas was subject to fines which for the third offence amounted to confiscation of all his goods. a graduated scale of rewards was offered for the discovery of catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters; and a resolution of the house of commons pronounced 'the prosecuting and informing against papists' 'an honourable service to the government.' "such were the principal articles of this famous code--a code which burke truly described as 'well digested and well disposed in all its parts; a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance, and as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people, and the debasement in them of human nature itself, as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.'"[ ] the effects of these laws mr. lecky has described thus: "the economical and moral effects of the penal laws were, however, profoundly disastrous. the productive energies of the nation were fatally diminished. almost all catholics of energy and talent who refused to abandon their faith emigrated to foreign lands. the relation of classes was permanently vitiated; for almost all the proprietary of the country belonged to one religion, while the great majority of their tenants were of another. the catholics, excluded from almost every possibility of eminence, deprived of their natural leaders, and consigned by the legislature to utter ignorance, soon sank into the condition of broken and dispirited helots. a total absence of industrial virtues, a cowering and abject deference to authority, a recklessness about the future, a love of secret illegal combinations, became general among them. above all, they learned to regard law as merely the expression of force, and its moral weight was utterly destroyed. for the greater part of a century, the main object of the legislature was to extirpate a religion by the encouragement of the worst, and the punishment of some of the best qualities of our nature. its rewards were reserved for the informer, for the hypocrite, for the undutiful son, or for the faithless wife. its penalties were directed against religious constancy and the honest discharge of ecclesiastical duty. "it would, indeed, be scarcely possible to conceive a more infamous system of legal tyranny than that which in the middle of the eighteenth century crushed every class and almost every interest in ireland."[ ] but laws were not only passed against the native race and the national religion. measures were taken to destroy the industries of the country, and to involve natives and colonists, protestants and catholics, in common ruin. mr. lecky shall tell the story. "the commercial and industrial condition of the country was, if possible, more deplorable than its political condition, and was the result of a series of english measures which for deliberate and selfish tyranny could hardly be surpassed. until the reign of charles ii. the irish shared the commercial privileges of the english; but as the island had not been really conquered till the reign of elizabeth, and as its people were till then scarcely removed from barbarism, the progress was necessarily slow. in the early stuart reigns, however, comparative repose and good government were followed by a sudden rush of prosperity. the land was chiefly pasture, for which it was admirably adapted; the export of live cattle to england was carried on upon a large scale, and it became a chief source of irish wealth. the english landowners, however, took the alarm. they complained that irish rivalry in the cattle market was reducing english rents; and accordingly, by an act which was first passed in , and was made perpetual in , the importation of cattle into england was forbidden. "the effect of a measure of this kind, levelled at the principal article of the commerce of the nation, was necessarily most disastrous. the profound modification which it introduced into the course of irish industry was sufficiently shown by the estimate of sir w. petty, who declares that before the statute three-fourths of the trade of ireland was with england, but not one-fourth of it since that time. in the very year when this bill was passed another measure was taken not less fatal to the interest of the country. in the first navigation act, ireland was placed on the same terms as england; but in the act as amended in she was omitted, and was thus deprived of the whole colonial trade. with the exception of a very few specified articles no european merchandise could be imported into the british colonies except directly from england, in ships built in england, and manned chiefly by english sailors. no articles, with a few exceptions, could be brought from the colonies to europe without being first unladen in england. in this exclusion of ireland was confirmed, and in it was rendered more stringent, for it was enacted that no goods of any sort could be imported directly from the colonies to ireland. it will be remembered that at this time the chief british colonies were those of america, and that ireland, by her geographical position, was naturally of all countries most fitted for the american trade. "as far, then, as the colonial trade was concerned, ireland at this time gained nothing whatever by her connection with england. to other countries, however, her ports were still open, and in time of peace a foreign commerce was unrestricted. when forbidden to export their cattle to england, the irish turned their land chiefly into sheep-walks, and proceeded energetically to manufacture the wool. some faint traces of this manufacture may be detected from an early period, and lord strafford, when governing ireland, had mentioned it with a characteristic comment. speaking of the irish he says, 'there was little or no manufactures amongst them, but some small beginnings towards a cloth trade, which i had and so should still discourage all i could, unless otherwise directed by his majesty and their lordships. it might be feared that they would beat us out of the trade itself by underselling us, which they were able to do.' with the exception, however, of an abortive effort by this governor, the irish wool manufacture was in no degree impeded, and was indeed mentioned with special favour in many acts of parliament; and it was in a great degree on the faith of this long-continued legislative sanction that it was so greatly expanded. the poverty of ireland, the low state of civilization of a large proportion of its inhabitants, the effects of the civil wars which had so recently convulsed it, and the exclusion of its products from the english colonies, were doubtless great obstacles to manufacturing enterprise; but, on the other hand, irish wool was very good, living was cheaper, taxes were lighter than in england, a spirit of real industrial energy began to pervade the country, and a considerable number of english manufacturers came over to colonize it. there appeared for a time every probability that the irish would become an industrial nation, and, had manufactures arisen, their whole social, political, and economical condition would have been changed. but english jealousy again interposed. by an act of crushing and unprecedented severity, which was introduced in and carried in , the export of the irish woollen manufactures, not only to england, but also to all other countries, was absolutely forbidden. "the effects of this measure were terrible almost beyond conception. the main industry of the country was at a blow completely and irretrievably annihilated. a vast population was thrown into a condition of utter destitution. several thousands of manufacturers left the country, and carried their skill and enterprise to germany, france, and spain. the western and southern districts of ireland are said to have been nearly depopulated. emigration to america began on a large scale, and the blow was so severe that long after, a kind of chronic famine prevailed."[ ] mr. lecky relates with pride how the penal code was relaxed, and the commercial restrictions were removed, while the irish parliament, essentially a protestant and landlord body, still existed, and shows how the cause of catholic emancipation was retarded by the union. "the relief bill of ' naturally suggests a consideration of the question so often agitated in ireland, whether the union was really a benefit to the roman catholic cause. it has been argued that catholic emancipation was an impossibility as long as the irish parliament lasted; for in a country where the great majority were roman catholics, it would be folly to expect the members of the dominant creed to surrender a monopoly on which their ascendency depended. the arguments against this view are, i believe, overwhelming. the injustice of the disqualification was far more striking before the union than after it. in the one case, the roman catholics were excluded from the parliament of a nation of which they were the great majority; in the other, they were excluded from the parliament of an empire in which they were a small minority. grattan, plunket, curran, burrowes, and ponsonby were the great supporters of catholic emancipation, and the great opponents of the union. clare and duigenan were the two great opponents of emancipation, and the great supporters of the union. at a time when scarcely any public opinion existed in ireland, when the roman catholics were nearly quiescent, and when the leaning of government was generally liberal, the irish protestants admitted their fellow-subjects to the magistracy, to the jury-box, and to the franchise. by this last measure they gave them an amount of political power which necessarily implied complete emancipation. even if no leader of genius had arisen in the roman catholic ranks, and if no spirit of enthusiasm had animated their councils, the influence possessed by a body who formed three fourths of the population, who were rapidly rising in wealth, and who could send their representatives to parliament, would have been sufficient to ensure their triumph. if the irish legislature had continued, it would have been found impossible to resist the demand for reform; and every reform, by diminishing the overgrown power of a few protestant landholders, would have increased that of the roman catholics. the concession accorded in was, in fact, far greater and more important than that accorded in , and it placed the roman catholics, in a great measure, above the mercy of protestants. but this was not all. the sympathies of the protestants were being rapidly enlisted in their behalf. the generation to which charlemont and flood belonged had passed away, and all the leading intellects of the country, almost all the opposition, and several conspicuous members of the government, were warmly in favour of emancipation. the rancour which at present exists between the members of the two creeds appears then to have been almost unknown, and the real obstacle to emancipation was not the feelings of the people, but the policy of the government. the bar may be considered on most subjects a very fair exponent of the educated opinion of the nation; and wolf tone observed, in , that it was almost unanimous in favour of the catholics; and it is not without importance, as showing the tendencies of the rising generation, that a large body of the students of dublin university in presented an address to grattan, thanking him for his labours in the cause. the roman catholics were rapidly gaining the public opinion of ireland, when the union arrayed against them another public opinion which was deeply prejudiced against their faith, and almost entirely removed from their influence. compare the twenty years before the union with the twenty years that followed it, and the change is sufficiently manifest. there can scarcely be a question that if lord fitzwilliam had remained in office the irish parliament would readily have given emancipation. in the united parliament for many years it was obstinately rejected, and if o'connell had never arisen it would probably never have been granted unqualified by the veto. in when the question was brought forward in parliament, sixty-one out of ninety-three irish members, forty-five out of sixty-one irish county members, voted in its favour. year after year grattan and plunket brought forward the case of their fellow-countrymen with an eloquence and a perseverance worthy of their great cause; but year after year they were defeated. it was not till the great tribune had arisen, till he had moulded his co-religionists into one compact and threatening mass, and had brought the country to the verge of revolution, that the tardy boon was conceded. eloquence and argument proved alike unavailing when unaccompanied by menace, and catholic emancipation was confessedly granted because to withhold it would be to produce a rebellion."[ ] many people will think that this is a sufficiently weighty condemnation of the union, but what follows is a still graver reflection on that untoward measure. "in truth the harmonious co-operation of ireland with england depends much less upon the framework of the institutions of the former country than upon the dispositions of its people and upon the classes who guide its political life. with a warm and loyal attachment to the connection pervading the nation, the largest amount of self-government might be safely conceded, and the most defective political arrangement might prove innocuous. this is the true cement of nations, and no change, however plausible in theory, can be really advantageous which contributes to diminish it. theorists may argue that it would be better for ireland to become in every respect a province of england; they may contend that a union of legislatures, accompanied by a corresponding fusion of characters and identification of hopes, interests, and desires, would strengthen the empire; but as a matter of fact this was not what was effected in . the measure of pitt centralized, but it did not unite, or rather, by uniting the legislatures it divided the nations. in a country where the sentiment of nationality was as intense as in any part of europe, it destroyed the national legislature contrary to the manifest wish of the people, and by means so corrupt, treacherous, and shameful that they are never likely to be forgotten. in a country where, owing to the religious difference, it was peculiarly necessary that a vigorous lay public opinion should be fostered to dilute or restrain the sectarian spirit, it suppressed the centre and organ of political life, directed the energies of the community into the channels of sectarianism, drove its humours inwards, and thus began a perversion of public opinion which has almost destroyed the elements of political progress. in a country where the people have always been singularly destitute of self-reliance, and at the same time eminently faithful to their leaders, it withdrew the guidance of affairs from the hands of the resident gentry, and, by breaking their power, prepared the ascendency of the demagogue or the rebel. in two plain ways it was dangerous to the connection: it incalculably increased the aggregate disloyalty of the people, and it destroyed the political supremacy of the class that is most attached to the connection. the irish parliament, with all its faults, was an eminently loyal body. the irish people through the eighteenth century, in spite of great provocations, were on the whole a loyal people till the recall of lord fitzwilliam, and even then a few very moderate measures of reform might have reclaimed them. burke, in his _letters on a regicide peace_, when reviewing the elements of strength on which england could confide in her struggle with revolutionary france, placed in the very first rank the co-operation of ireland. at the present day, it is to be feared that most impartial men would regard ireland, in the event of a great european war, rather as a source of weakness than of strength. more than seventy years have passed since the boasted measure of pitt, and it is unfortunately incontestable that the lower orders in ireland are as hostile to the system of government under which they live as the hungarian people have ever been to austrian, or the roman to papal rule; that irish disloyalty is multiplying enemies of england wherever the english tongue is spoken; and that the national sentiment runs so strongly that multitudes of irish catholics look back with deep affection to the irish parliament, although no catholic could sit within its walls, and although it was only during the last seven years of its independent existence that catholics could vote for its members. among the opponents of the union were many of the most loyal, as well as nearly all the ablest men in ireland; and lord charlemont, who died shortly before the measure was consummated, summed up the feelings of many in the emphatic sentence with which he protested against it. 'it would more than any other measure,' he said, 'contribute to the separation of two countries the perpetual connection of which is one of the warmest wishes of my heart.' "in fact, the union of was not only a great crime, but was also, like most crimes, a great blunder. the manner in which it was carried was not only morally scandalous; it also entirely vitiated it as a work of statesmanship. no great political measure can be rationally judged upon its abstract merits, and without considering the character and the wishes of the people for whom it is intended. it is now idle to discuss what might have been the effect of a union if it had been carried before , when the parliament was still unemancipated; if it had been the result of a spontaneous movement of public opinion; if it had been accompanied by the emancipation of the catholics. carried as it was prematurely, in defiance of the national sentiment of the people and of the protests of the unbribed talent of the country, it has deranged the whole course of political development, driven a large proportion of the people into sullen disloyalty, and almost destroyed healthy public opinion. in comparing the abundance of political talent in ireland during the last century with the striking absence of it at present, something no doubt may be attributed to the absence of protection for literary property in ireland in the former period, which may have directed an unusual portion of the national talent to politics, and something to the colonial and indian careers which have of late years been thrown open to competition; but when all due allowances have been made for these, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. few impartial men can doubt that the tone of political life and the standard of political talent have been lowered, while sectarian animosity has been greatly increased, and the extent to which fenian principles have permeated the people is a melancholy comment upon the prophesies that the union would put an end to disloyalty in ireland."[ ] mr. lecky's views as to what ought to have been done in deserve to be set forth. "while, however, the irish policy of pitt appears to be both morally and politically deserving of almost unmitigated condemnation, i cannot agree with those who believe that the arrangement of could have been permanent. the irish parliament would doubtless have been in time reformed, but it would have soon found its situation intolerable. imperial policy must necessarily have been settled by the imperial parliament, in which ireland had no voice; and, unlike canada or australia, ireland is profoundly affected by every change of imperial policy. connection with england was of overwhelming importance to the lesser country, while the tie uniting them would have been found degrading by one nation and inconvenient to the other. under such circumstances a union of some kind was inevitable. it was simply a question of time, and must have been demanded by irish opinion. at the same time, it would not, i think, have been such a union as that of . the conditions of irish and english politics are so extremely different, and the reasons for preserving in ireland a local centre of political life are so powerful, that it is probable a federal union would have been preferred. under such a system the irish parliament would have continued to exist, but would have been restricted to purely local subjects, while an imperial parliament, in which irish representatives sat, would have directed the policy of the empire."[ ] mr. goldwin smith. none of the recent opponents of home rule have written against that policy with more brilliance and epigrammatic keenness than mr. goldwin smith. but no one has stated with more force the facts and considerations which, operating on men's mind for years past, have made the liberal party home rulers now. his _coup d'oeil_ remains the most pointed indictment ever drawn from the historical annals of ireland against the english methods of governing that country. twenty years ago he anticipated the advice recently given by mr. gladstone. in he wrote:-- "i have myself sought and found in the study of irish history the explanation of the paradox, that a people with so many gifts, so amiable, naturally so submissive to rulers, and everywhere but in their own country industrious, are in their own country bywords of idleness, lawlessness, disaffection, and agrarian crime."[ ] he explains the paradox thus: "but it is difficult to distinguish the faults of the irish from their misfortunes. it has been well said of their past industrial character and history,--'we were reckless, ignorant, improvident, drunken, and idle. we were idle, for we had nothing to do; we were reckless, for we had no hope; we were ignorant, for learning was denied us; we were improvident, for we had no future; we were drunken, for we sought to forget our misery. that time has passed away for ever.' no part of this defence is probably more true than that which connects the drunkenness of the irish people with their misery. drunkenness is, generally speaking, the vice of despair; and it springs from the despair of the irish peasant as rankly as from that of his english fellow. the sums of money which have lately been transmitted by irish emigrants to their friends in ireland seem a conclusive answer to much loose denunciation of the national character, both in a moral and an industrial point of view.... there seems no good reason for believing that the irish kelts are averse to labour, provided they be placed, as people of all races require to be placed, for two or three generations in circumstances favourable to industry."[ ] he shows that the irish have not been so placed. "still more does justice require that allowance should be made on historical grounds for the failings of the irish people. if they are wanting in industry, in regard for the rights of property, in reverence for the law, history furnishes a full explanation of their defects, without supposing in them any inherent depravity, or even any inherent weakness. they have never had the advantage of the training through which other nations have passed in their gradual rise from barbarism to civilization. the progress of the irish people was arrested at almost a primitive stage, and a series of calamities, following close upon each other, have prevented it from ever fairly resuming its course. the pressure of overwhelming misery has now been reduced; government has become mild and just; the civilizing agency of education has been introduced; the upper classes are rapidly returning to their duty, and the natural effect is at once seen in the improved character of the people. statesmen are bound to be well acquainted with the historical sources of the evil with which they have to deal, especially when those evils are of such a nature as, at first aspect, to imply depravity in a nation. there are still speakers and writers who seem to think that the irish are incurably vicious, because the accumulated effects of so many centuries cannot be removed at once by a wave of the legislator's wand. some still believe, or affect to believe, that the very air of the island is destructive of the characters and understandings of all who breathe it."[ ] elsewhere he adds, referring to the land system: "how many centuries of a widely different training have the english people gone through in order to acquire their boasted love of law."[ ] of the "training" through which the irish went, he says-- "the existing settlement of land in ireland, whether dating from the confiscations of the stuarts, or from those of cromwell, rests on a proscription three or four times as long as that on which the settlement of land rests over a considerable part of france. it may, therefore, be considered as placed upon discussion in the estimation of all sane men; and, this being the case, it is safe to observe that no inherent want of respect for property is shown by the irish people if a proprietorship which had its origin within historical memory in flagrant wrong is less sacred in their eyes than it would be if it had its origin in immemorial right."[ ] the character which he gives of irish landlordism deserves to be quoted: "the cromwellian landowners soon lost their religious character, while they retained all the hardness of the fanatic and the feelings of puritan conquerors towards a conquered catholic people. 'i have eaten with them,' said one, 'drunk with them, fought with them; but i never prayed with them.' their descendants became, probably, the very worst upper class with which a country was ever afflicted. the habits of the irish gentry grew beyond measure brutal and reckless, and the coarseness of their debaucheries would have disgusted the crew of comus. their drunkenness, their blasphemy, their ferocious duelling, left the squires of england far behind. if there was a grotesque side to their vices which mingles laughter with our reprobation, this did not render their influence less pestilent to the community of which the motive of destiny had made them social chiefs. fortunately, their recklessness was sure, in the end, to work, to a certain extent, its own cure; and in the background of their swinish and uproarious drinking-bouts, the encumbered estates act rises to our view."[ ] mr. goldwin smith deals with agrarian crime thus: "the atrocities perpetrated by the whiteboys, especially in the earlier period of agrarianism (for they afterwards grew somewhat less inhuman), are such as to make the flesh creep. no language can be too strong in speaking of the horrors of such a state of society. but it would be unjust to confound these agrarian conspiracies with ordinary crime, or to suppose that they imply a propensity to ordinary crime either on the part of those who commit them, or on the part of the people who connive at and favour their commission. in the districts where agrarian conspiracy and outrage were most rife, the number of ordinary crimes was very small. in munster, in , out of crimes, were whiteboy, or agrarian, and even of the remainder, many, being crimes of violence, were probably committed from the same motive. "in plain truth, the secret tribunals which administered the whiteboy code were to the people the organs of a wild law of social morality by which, on the whole, the interest of the peasant was protected. they were not regular tribunals; neither were the secret tribunals of germany in the middle ages, the existence of which, and the submission of the people to their jurisdiction, implied the presence of much violence, but not of much depravity, considering the wildness of the times. the whiteboys 'found in their favour already existing a general and settled hatred of the law among the great body of the peasantry.'[ ] we have seen how much the law, and the ministers of the law, had done to deserve the peasant's love. we have seen, too, in what successive guises property had presented itself to his mind: first as open rapine; then as robbery carried on through the roguish technicalities of an alien code; finally as legalized and systematic oppression. was it possible that he should have formed so affectionate a reverence either for law or property as would be proof against the pressure of starvation?"[ ] "a people cannot be expected to love and reverence oppression because it is consigned to the statute-book, and called law."[ ] these extracts are taken from _irish history and irish character_, which was published in . but in mr. goldwin smith wrote a series of letters to the _daily news_, which were republished in under the title of _the irish question_; and these letters form, perhaps, the most statesmanlike and far-seeing pronouncement that has ever been made on the irish difficulty. in the preface mr. goldwin smith begins: "the irish legislation of the last forty years, notwithstanding the adoption of some remedial measures, has failed through the indifference of parliament to the sentiments of irishmen; and the harshness of english public opinion has embittered the effects on irish feeling of the indifference of parliament. occasionally a serious effort has been made by an english statesman to induce parliament to approach irish questions in that spirit of sympathy, and with that anxious desire to be just, without which a parliament in london cannot legislate wisely for ireland. such efforts have hitherto met with no response; is it too much to hope that it will be otherwise in the year now opening?"[ ] the only comment i shall make on these words is: they were penned more than half a century after mr. pitt's union, which was to shower down blessings on the irish people. mr. goldwin smith's first letter was written on the rd of november, , the day of the execution of the fenians allen, larkin, and o'brien. he says-- "there can be no doubt, i apprehend, that the irish difficulty has entered on a new phase, and that irish disaffection has, to repeat an expression which i heard used in ireland, come fairly into a line with the other discontented nationalities of europe. active fenianism probably pervades only the lowest class; passive sympathy, which the success of the movement would at once convert into active co-operation, extends, it is to be feared, a good deal higher. "england has ruin before her, unless she can hit on a remedy, and overcome any obstacles of class interest or of national pride which would prevent its application, the part of russia in poland, or of austria in italy--a part cruel, hateful, demoralizing, contrary to all our high principles and professions, and fraught with dangers to our own freedom. our position will be worse than that of russia in this respect, that, while her poland is only a province, our fenianism is an element pervading every city of the united kingdom in which irish abound, and allying itself with kindred misery, discontent, and disorder. wretchedness, the result of misgovernment, has caused the irish people to multiply with the recklessness of despair, and now here are their avenging hosts in the midst of us, here is the poison of their disaffection running through every member of our social frame. not only so, but the same wretchedness has sent millions of emigrants to form an irish nation in the united states, where the irish are a great political power, swaying by their votes the councils of the american republic, and in immediate contact with those transatlantic possessions of england, the retention of which it is now patriotic to applaud, and will one day be patriotic to have dissuaded. " ... that ireland is not at this moment, materially speaking, in a particularly suffering state, but, on the contrary, the farmers are rather prosperous, and wages, even when allowance is made for the rise in the price of provisions, considerably higher than they were, only adds to the significance of this widespread disaffection. "the fenian movement is not religious, nor radically economical (though no doubt it has in it a socialistic element), but national, and the remedy for it must be one which cures national discontent. this is the great truth which the english people have to lay to heart."[ ] mr. goldwin smith then dispels the notion that the irish question is a religious one. "when fenianism first appeared, the orangemen, in accordance with their fixed idea, ascribed it to the priests. they were undeceived, i was told, by seeing a priest run away from the fenians in fear of his life."[ ] neither was it a question of the land. "the land question, no doubt, lies nearer to the heart of the matter, and it is the great key to irish history in the past; but i do not believe that even this is fundamental." he then states what is "fundamental."[ ] "the real root of the disaffection which exhibits itself at present in the guise of fenianism, and which has been suddenly kindled into flame by the arming of the irish in the american civil war, but which existed before in a nameless and smouldering state, is, as i believe, the want of national institutions, of a national capital, of any objects of national reverence and attachment, and consequently of anything deserving to be called national life. the english crown and parliament the irish have never learnt, nor have they had any chance of learning, to love, or to regard as national, notwithstanding the share which was given them, too late, in the representation. the greatness of england is nothing to them. her history is nothing, or worse. the success of irishmen in london consoles the irish in ireland no more than the success of italian adventurers in foreign countries (which was very remarkable) consoled the italian people. the drawing off of irish talent, in fact, turns to an additional grievance in their minds. dublin is a modern tara, a metropolis from which the glory has departed; and the viceroyalty, though it pleases some of the tradesmen, fails altogether to satisfy the people. 'in ireland we can make no appeal to patriotism, we can have no patriotic sentiments in our schoolbooks, no patriotic emblems in our schools, because in ireland everything patriotic is rebellious.' these were the words uttered in my hearing, not by a complaining demagogue, but by a desponding statesman. they seemed to me pregnant with fatal truths. "if the craving for national institutions, and the disaffection bred in this void of the irish people's heart, seem to us irrational and even insane, in the absence of any more substantial grievance, we ought to ask ourselves what would become of our own patriotism if we had no national institutions, no objects of national loyalty and reverence, even though we might be pretty well governed, at least in intention, by a neighbouring people whom we regarded as aliens, and who, in fact, regarded us pretty much in the same light. let us first judge ourselves fairly, and then judge the irish, remembering always that they are more imaginative and sentimental, and need some centre of national feeling and affection more than ourselves."[ ] and all this was written sixty-seven years after the union of . mr. goldwin smith then deals with the subject of the irish and scotch unions much in the same way as mr. lecky. "the incorporation of the scotch nation with the english, being conducted on the right principles by the great whig statesman of anne, has been perfectly successful. the attempt to incorporate the irish nation with the english and scotch, the success of which would have been, if possible, a still greater blessing, being conducted by very different people and on very different principles, has unhappily failed. what might have been the result if even the hanoverian sovereigns had done the personal duty to their irish kingdom which they have unfortunately neglected, it is now too late to inquire. the irish union has missed its port, and, in order to reach it, will have to tack again. we may hold down a dependency, of course, by force, in russian and austrian fashion; but force will never make the hearts of two nations one, especially when they are divided by the sea. once get rid of this deadly international hatred, and there will be hope of real union in the future."[ ] mr. goldwin smith finally proposes a "plan" by which the "deadly international hatred" might be got rid of, and a "real union" brought about. here it is. " . the residence of the court at dublin, not merely to gratify the popular love of royalty and its pageantries, which no man of sense desires to stimulate, but to assure the irish people, in the only way possible as regards the mass of them, that the sovereign of the united kingdom is really their sovereign, and that they are equally cared for and honoured with the other subjects of the realm. this would also tend to make dublin a real capital, and to gather and retain there a portion of the irish talent which now seeks its fortune elsewhere. " . an occasional session (say once in every three years) of the imperial parliament in dublin, partly for the same purposes as the last proposal, but also because the circumstances of ireland are likely to be, for some time at least, really peculiar, and the personal acquaintance of our legislators with them is the only sufficient security for good irish legislation. there could be no serious difficulty in holding a short session in the irish capital, where there is plenty of accommodation for both houses. " . a liberal measure of local self-government for ireland. i would not vest the power in any single assembly for all ireland, because ulster is really a different country from the other provinces. i would give each province a council of its own, and empower that council to legislate (subject, of course, to the supremacy of the imperial parliament) on all matters not essential to the political and legal unity of the empire, in which i would include local education. the provincial councils should of course be elective, and the register of electors might be the same as that of electors to the imperial parliament. in england itself the extension of local institutions, as political training schools for the masses, as checks upon the sweeping action of the great central assembly, and as the best organs of legislation in all matters requiring (as popular education, among others, does) adaptation to the circumstances of particular districts, would, i think, have formed a part of any statesmanlike revision of our political system. here, also, much good might be done, and much evil averted, by committing the present business of quarter sessions, other than the judicial business, together with such other matters as the central legislative might think fit to vest in local hands, to an assembly elected by the county."[ ] thus it will be seen that twenty years ago mr. goldwin smith anticipated mr. chamberlain's scheme of provincial councils, and got a good way on the road to an irish parliament. * * * * * mr. dicey. a fairer controversalist, or an abler supporter of the "paper union," than mr. dicey there is not; nevertheless no man has fired more effective shots into mr. pitt's unfortunate arrangement of . how well has the "failure" of that arrangement been described in these pithy sentences--"eighty-six years have elapsed since the conclusion of the treaty of union between england and ireland. the two countries do not yet form an united nation. the irish people are, if not more wretched (for the whole european world has made progress, and ireland with it), yet more conscious of wretchedness, and irish disaffection to england is, if not deeper, more widespread than in . an act meant by its authors to be a source of the prosperity and concord which, though slowly, followed upon the union with scotland, has not made ireland rich, has not put an end to irish lawlessness, has not terminated the feud between protestants and catholics, has not raised the position of irish tenants, has not taken away the causes of irish discontent, and has, therefore, not removed irish disloyalty. this is the indictment which can fairly be brought against the act of union."[ ] what follows reflects honour on mr. dicey as an honest opponent who does not shrink from facts; but what a wholesale condemnation of the policy of the imperial parliament! "on one point alone (it may be urged) all men, of whatever party or of whatever nation, who have seriously studied the annals of ireland are agreed--the history is a record of incessant failure on the part of the government, and of incessant misery on the part of the people. on this matter, if on no other, de beaumont, froude, and lecky are at one. as to the guilt of the failure or the cause of the misery, men may and do differ; that england, whether from her own fault or the fault of the irish people, or from perversity of circumstances, has failed in ireland of achieving the elementary results of good government is as certain as any fact of history or of experience. every scheme has been tried in turn, and no scheme has succeeded or has even, it may be suggested, produced its natural effects. oppression of the catholics has increased the adherents and strengthened the hold of catholicism. protestant supremacy, while it lasted, did not lead even to protestant contentment, and the one successful act of resistance to the english dominion was effected by a protestant parliament supported by an army of volunteers, led by a body of protestant officers. the independence gained by a protestant parliament led, after eighteen years, to a rebellion so reckless and savage that it caused, if it did not justify, the destruction of the parliament and the carrying of the union. the act of union did not lead to national unity, and a measure which appeared on the face of it (though the appearance, it must be admitted, was delusive) to be a copy of the law which bound england and scotland into a common country inspired by common patriotism, produced conspiracy and agitation, and at last placed england and ireland further apart, morally, than they stood at the beginning of the century. the treaty of union, it was supposed, missed its mark because it was not combined with catholic emancipation. the catholics were emancipated, but emancipation, instead of producing loyalty, brought forth the cry for repeal. the repeal movement ended in failure, but its death gave birth to the attempted rebellion in . suppressed rebellion begot fenianism, to be followed in its turn by the agitation for home rule. the movement relies, it is said, and there is truth in the assertion, on constitutional methods for obtaining redress. but constitutional measures are supplemented by boycotting, by obstruction, by the use of dynamite. a century of reform has given us mr. parnell instead of grattan, and it is more than possible that mr. parnell may be succeeded by leaders in whose eyes mr. davitt's policy may appear to be tainted with moderation. no doubt, in each case the failure of good measures admits, like every calamity in public or private life, of explanation, and after the event it is easy to see why, for example, the poor law, when extended to ireland, did not produce even the good effects such as they are which in england are to be set against its numerous evils; or why an emigration of unparalleled proportions has diminished population without much diminishing poverty; why the disestablishment of the anglican church has increased rather than diminished the hostility to england of the catholic priesthood; or why two land acts have not contented irish farmers. it is easy enough, in short, and this without having any recourse to theory of race, and without attributing to ireland either more or less of original sin than falls to the lot of humanity, to see how it is that imperfect statesmanship--and all statesmanship, it should be remembered, is imperfect--has failed in obtaining good results at all commensurate with its generally good intentions. failure, however, is none the less failure because its causes admit of analysis. it is no defence to bankruptcy that an insolvent can, when brought before the court, lucidly explain the errors which resulted in disastrous speculations. the failure of english statesmanship, explain it as you will, has produced the one last and greatest evil which misgovernment can cause. it has created hostility to the law in the minds of the people. the law cannot work in ireland because the classes whose opinion in other countries supports the actions of the courts, are in ireland, even when not law-breakers, in full sympathy with law-breakers."[ ] no home ruler has described the evils of english misrule in ireland with such vigour as this. "bad administration, religious persecution, above all, a thoroughly vicious land tenure, accompanied by such sweeping confiscations as to make it, at any rate, a plausible assertion that all land in ireland has during the course of irish history been confiscated at least thrice over, are admittedly some of the causes, if they do not constitute the whole cause, of the one immediate difficulty which perplexes the policy of england. this is nothing else than the admitted disaffection to the law of the land prevailing among large numbers of irish people. the existence of this disaffection, whatever be the inference to be drawn from it, is undeniable. a series of so-called coercion acts, passed both before and since the act of union, give undeniable evidence, if evidence were wanted, of the ceaseless and, as it would appear, almost irrepressible resistance in ireland offered by the people to the enforcement of the law. i have not the remotest inclination to underrate the lasting and formidable character of this opposition between opinion and law, nor can any jurist who wishes to deal seriously with a serious and infinitely painful topic, question for a moment that the ultimate strength of law lies in the sympathy, or at the lowest the acquiescence, of the mass of the population. judges, constables, and troops become almost powerless when the conscience of the people permanently opposes the execution of the law. severity produces either no effect or bad effects; executed criminals are regarded as heroes or martyrs; and jurymen and witnesses meet with the execration and often with the fate of criminals. on such a point it is best to take the opinion of a foreigner unaffected by prejudices or passions from which no englishman or irishman has a right to suppose himself free. "'quand vous en êtes arroês à ce point, croyez bien que dans cette voie de regueurs tous vos efforts pour rétabler l'ordre et la paix seront inutiles. en vain, pour réprimer des crimes atroces, vous appellerez à votre aide toutes les sévérités du code de dracon; en vain vous ferez des lois cruelles pour arrêter le cours de révoltantes cruautés; vainement vous frapperez de mort le moindre délit se rattachant à ces grands crimes; vainement, dans l'effroi de votre impuissance, vous suspendrez le cours des lois ordinaries proclamerez des comtés entiers en état de suspicion légale, voilerez le principe de la liberté individuelle, créerez des cours martiales, des commissions extraordinaires, et pour produire de salutaires impressions de terreur, multiplierez à l'excès les exécutions capitales.'"[ ] the next passage is a trenchant condemnation of the "union." "there exists in europe no country so completely at unity with itself as great britain. fifty years of reform have done their work, and have removed the discontents, the divisions, the disaffection, and the conspiracies which marked the first quarter, or the first half of this century. great britain, if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. the distraction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise, in part at least, from the connection with ireland. neither englishmen nor irishmen are to blame for the fact that it is difficult for communities differing in historical associations and in political conceptions to keep step together in the path of progress. for other evils arising from the connection the blame must rest on english statesmen. all the inherent vices of party government, all the weaknesses of the parliamentary system, all the evils arising from the perverse notion that reform ought always to be preceded by a period of lengthy and more than half factitious agitation met by equally factitious resistance, have been fostered and increased by the interaction of irish and english politics. no one can believe that the inveterate habit of ruling one part of the united kingdom on principles which no one would venture to apply to the government of any other part of it, can have produced anything but the most injurious effect on the stability of our government and the character of our public men. the advocates of home rule find by far their strongest arguments for influencing english opinion, in the proofs which they produce that england, no less than ireland, has suffered from a political arrangement under which legal union has failed to secure moral union. _these arguments, whatever their strength, are, however, it must be noted, more available to a nationalist than to an advocate of federalism_."[ ] the words which i have italicised are an expression of opinion; but nothing can alter the damning statement of fact--"legal union has failed to secure moral union." nevertheless, mr. dicey advocates the maintenance of this legal union as it stands. "on the whole, then, it appears that, whatever changes or calamities the future may have in store, the maintenance of the union is at this day the one sound policy for england to pursue. it is sound because it is expedient; it is sound because it is just."[ ] i shall not discuss the question of home rule with the eminent writers whose works i have cited. it is enough that they demonstrate the failure of the union. so convinced was mr. lecky, in , of its failure, that he suggested a readjustment of the relations of the two countries on a federal basis;[ ] and mr. goldwin smith, in , contended that the irish difficulty could only be settled by the establishment of provincial councils, and an occasional session of the imperial parliament in dublin. mr. dicey clings to the existing union while demonstrating its failure, because he has persuaded himself that the only alternative is separation. irishmen may be pardoned for acting on mr. dicey's facts, and disregarding his prophecies. the mass of irishmen believe, with grattan, that the ocean protests against separation as the sea protests against such a union as was attempted in .[ ] footnotes: [footnote : omissions here and elsewhere are merely for purposes of space. in some places the omitted parts would strengthen the irish case; in no place would they weaken it.] [footnote : lecky, _leaders of public opinion in ireland_, new edit. ( ), introduction, pp. viii., xiv.] [footnote : lecky, _leaders of public opinion in ireland_, new edit. ( ), introduction, pp. xiv., xv.] [footnote : lecky, _history of england in the eighteenth century_, vol. ii. pp. , .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. , .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. - .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. , .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. - .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. - .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. - .] [footnote : _leaders of public opinion_, pp. , .] [footnote : goldwin smith, _three english statesmen_, p. .] [footnote : _irish history and irish character_, pp. , .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : _irish history and irish character_, p. .] [footnote : _irish history and irish character_, pp. , .] [footnote : sir george cornewall lewis, _irish disturbances_, p. .] [footnote : _irish history and irish character_, pp. - .] [footnote : ibid., pp. , ] [footnote : _the irish question_, preface, pp. iii., iv.] [footnote : _the irish question_, pp. - .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : _the irish question_, pp. - .] [footnote : _irish question_, p. .] [footnote : _the irish question_, pp. - .] [footnote : dicey, _england's case against home rule_, p. .] [footnote : dicey, _england's case against home rule_, pp. - .] [footnote : dicey, _england's case against home rule_, pp. - .--the foreigner is de beaumont.] [footnote : dicey, _england's case against home rule_, pp. , .] [footnote : ibid., p. .] [footnote : i hope i am not doing mr. lecky an injustice in this statement. i rely on the extract quoted from the _leaders of public opinion in ireland,_ at p. of this volume; but see introduction, p. xix.] [footnote : irish house of commons, january th, .] ireland's alternatives. by lord thring.[ ] ireland is a component member of the most complex political body the world has yet known; any inquiry, then, into the fitness of any particular form of government for that country involves an investigation of the structures of various composite nations, or nations made up of numerous political communities more or less differing from each other. from the examination of the nature of the common tie, and the circumstances which caused it to be adopted or imposed on the component peoples, we cannot but derive instruction, and be furnished with materials which will enable us to take a wide view of the question of home rule, and assist us in judging between the various remedies proposed for the cure of irish disorders. the nature of the ties which bind, or have bound, the principal composite nations of the world together may be classified as-- . confederate unions. . federal unions. . imperial unions. a confederate union may be defined to mean an alliance between the governments of independent states, which agree to appoint a common superior authority having power to make peace and war and to demand contributions of men and money from the confederate states. such superior authority has no power of enforcing its decrees except through the medium of the governments of the constituent states; or, in other words, in case of disobedience, by armed force. a federal union differs from a confederate union in the material fact that the common superior authority, instead of acting on the individual subjects of the constituent states through the medium of their respective governments, has a power, in respect of all matters within its jurisdiction, of enacting laws and issuing orders which are binding directly on the individual citizens. the distinguishing characteristics of an imperial union are, that it consists of an aggregate of communities, one of which is dominant, and that the component communities have been brought into association, not by arrangement between themselves, but by colonization, cession, and by other means emanating from the resources or power of the dominant community. the above-mentioned distinction between a government having communities only for its subjects, and incapable of enforcing its orders by any other means than war, and a government acting directly on individuals, must be constantly borne in mind, for in this lies the whole difference between a confederate and federal union; that is to say, between a confederacy which, in the case of the united states, lasted a few short years, and a federal union which, with the same people as subjects, has lasted nearly a century, and has stood the strain of the most terrible war of modern times. the material features of the constitution of the united states have been explained in a previous article.[ ] all that is necessary to call to mind here is, that the government of the united states exercises a power of taxation throughout the whole union by means of its own officers, and enforces its decrees through the medium of its own courts. a supreme court has also been established, which has power to adjudicate on the constitutionality of all laws passed by the legislature of the united states, or of any state, and to decide on all international questions. switzerland was till an example of a confederate union or league of semi-independent states, which, unlike other confederacies, had existed with partial interruptions for centuries. this unusual vitality is attributed by mill[ ] to the circumstance that the confederate government felt its weakness so strongly that it hardly ever attempted to exercise any real authority. its present government, finally settled in , but based on fundamental laws passed in , is a federal union formed on the pattern of the american constitution. it consists of a federal assembly comprising two chambers--the upper chamber composed of forty-four members chosen by the twenty-two cantons, two for each canton; the lower consisting of members chosen by direct election at the rate of one deputy for every , persons. the chief executive authority is deputed to a federal council consisting of seven members elected for three years by the federal assembly, and having at their head a president and vice-president, who are the first magistrates of the republic. there is also a federal tribunal, having similar functions to those of the supreme court of the united states of america, consisting of nine members elected for six years by the federal assembly. the empire of germany is a federal union, differing from the united states and switzerland in having an hereditary emperor as its head. it comprises twenty-six states, who have "formed an eternal union for the protection of the realm, and the care of the welfare of the german people."[ ] the king of prussia, under the title of german emperor, represents the empire in all its relations to foreign nations, and has the power of making peace and war, but if the war be more than a defensive war he must have the assent of the upper house. the legislative body of the empire consists of two houses--the upper, called the bundesrath, representing the several component states in different proportions according to their relative importance; the lower, the reichstag, elected by the voters in electoral districts, which are distributed amongst the constituent states in unequal numbers, regard being had to the population and circumstances of each state. the austro-hungarian empire is a federal union, differing alike in its origin and construction from the federal unions above mentioned. in the beginning austria and hungary were independent countries--austria a despotism, hungary a constitutional monarchy, with ancient laws and customs dating back to the foundation of the kingdom in . in the sixteenth century the supreme power in both countries--that is to say, the despotic monarchy in austria and the constitutional monarchy in hungary--became vested in the same person; as might have been anticipated, the union was not a happy one. if we dip into heeren's _political system of europe_ at intervals selected almost at random, the following notices will be found in relation to austria and hungary:--between and "political unity in the austrian monarchy was to have been enforced especially in the principal country (hungary), for this was regarded as the sole method of establishing power; the consequence was an almost perpetual revolutionary state of affairs."[ ] again, in the next chapter, commenting on the period between and : "hungary, in fact the chief, was treated like a conquered province; subjected to the most oppressive commercial restraints, it was regarded as a colony from which austria exacted what she could for her own advantage. the injurious consequences of this internal discord are evident." coming to modern times we find that oppression followed oppression with sickening monotony, and that at last the determination of austria to stamp out the constitution in hungary gave rise to the insurrection of , which austria suppressed with the assistance of russia, and as a penalty declared the hungarian constitution to be forfeited, and thereupon hungary was incorporated with austria, as ireland was incorporated with great britain in . both events were the consequences of unsuccessful rebellions; but the junction which, in the case of hungary, was enforced by the sword, was in ireland more smoothly carried into effect by corruption. hungary, sullen and discontented, waited for austria's calamity as her opportunity, and it came after the battle of sadowa. austria had just emerged from a fearful conflict, and count beust[ ] felt that unless some resolute effort was made to meet the views of the constitutional party in hungary, the dismemberment of the empire must be the result. now, what was the course he took? was it a tightening of the bonds between austria and hungary? on the contrary, to maintain the unity of the empire he dissolved its union and restored to hungary its ancient constitutional privileges. austria and hungary each had its own parliament for local purposes. to manage the imperial concerns of peace and war, and the foreign relations, a controlling body, called the delegations, was established, consisting of members, of whom half represent and are chosen by the legislature of austria, and the other half by that of hungary; the upper house of each country returning twenty members, and the lower house forty.[ ] ordinarily the delegates sit and vote in two chambers, but if they disagree the two branches must meet together and give their final vote without debate, which is binding on the whole empire.[ ] the question arises, what is the magnetic influence which induces communities of men to combine together in federal unions? undoubtedly it is the feeling of nationality; and what is nationality? mr. mill says,[ ] "a portion of mankind may be said to constitute a nationality if they are united among themselves by common sympathies which do not exist between them and any others; which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than other people; desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be a government by themselves or a portion of themselves exclusively." he then proceeds to state that the feeling of nationality may have been generated by various causes. sometimes it is the identity of race and descent; community of language and community of religion greatly contribute to it; geographical limits are one of its causes; but the strongest of all is identity of political antecedents: the possession of a national history and consequent community of recollections--collective pride and humiliation, pleasure and regret--connected with the same incidents in the past. the only point to be noted further in reference to the foregoing federal unions, is that the same feeling of nationality which, in the united states, switzerland, and the german empire, produced a closer legal bond of union, in the case of austria-hungary operated to dissolve the amalgamation formed in of the two states, and to produce a federal union of states in place of a single state. one conclusion seems to follow irresistibly from any review of the construction of the various states above described: that the stability of a nation bears no relation whatever to the legal compactness or homogeneity of its component parts. russia and france, the most compact political societies in europe, do not, to say the least, rest on a firmer basis than germany and switzerland, the inhabitants of which are subjected to the obligations of a double nationality. above all, no european nation, except great britain, can for a moment bear comparison with the united states in respect of the devotion of its people to their constitution. an imperial union, though resembling somewhat in outward form a federal union, differs altogether from it both in principle and origin. its essential characteristic is that one community is absolutely dominant while all the others are subordinate. in the case of a federal union independent states have agreed to resign a portion of their powers to a central government for the sake of securing the common safety. in an imperial union the dominant or imperial state delegates to each constituent member of the union such a portion of local government as the dominant state considers the subordinate member entitled to, consistently with the integrity of the empire. the british empire furnishes the best example of an imperial union now existing in the world. her majesty, as common head, is the one link which binds the empire together and connects with each other every constituent member. the indian empire and certain military dependencies require no further notice in these pages; but a summary of our various forms of colonial government is required to complete our knowledge of the forms of home rule possibly applicable to ireland. the colonies, in relation to their forms of government, may be classified as follows:-- i. crown colonies, in which laws may be made by the governor alone, or with the concurrence of a council nominated by the crown. . colonies possessing representative institutions, but not responsible government, in which the crown has only a veto on legislation, but the home government retains the control of the executive. . colonies possessing representative institutions and responsible government, in which the crown has only a veto on legislation, and the home government has no control over any public officer except the governor. the british colonial governments thus present an absolute gradation of rule; beginning with absolute despotism and ending with almost absolute legal independence, except in so far as a veto on legislation and the presence of a governor named by the crown mark the dependence of the colony on the mother country. it is to be remembered, moreover, that the colonies which have received this complete local freedom are the great colonies of the earth--nations themselves possessing territories as large or larger than any european state--namely, canada, the cape, new south wales, victoria, queensland, south australia, new zealand, tasmania. and this change from dependence to freedom has been effected with the good-will both of the mother country and the colony, and without it being imputed to the colonists, when desiring a larger measure of self-government, that they were separatists, anarchists, or revolutionists. such are the general principles of colonial government, but one colony requires special mention, from the circumstance of its constitution having been put forward as a model for ireland; this is the dominion of canada. the government of canada is, in effect, a subordinate federal union; that is to say, it possesses a central legislature, having the largest possible powers of local self-government consistent with the supremacy of the empire, with seven inferior provincial governments, exercising powers greater than those of an english county, but not so great as those of an american state. the advantage of such a form of government is that, without weakening the supremacy of the empire or of the central local power, it admits of considerable diversities being made in the details of provincial government, where local peculiarities and antecedents render it undesirable to make a more complete assimilation of the governments of the various provinces. materials have now been collected which will enable the reader to judge of the expediency or inexpediency of the course taken by mr. gladstone's government in dealing with ireland. three alternatives were open to them-- . to let matters alone. . to pass a coercion bill. . to change the government of ireland, and at the same time to pass a land bill. the two last measures are combined under the head of one alternative, as it will be shown in the sequel that no effective land bill can be passed without granting home rule in ireland. now, the short answer to the first alternative is, that no party in the state--conservative, whig, radical, unionist, home ruler, parnellite--thought it possible to leave things alone. that something must be done was universally admitted. the second alternative has found favour with the present government, and certainly is a better example of the triumph of hope over experience, than even the proverbial second marriage. eighty-six years have elapsed since the union. during the first thirty-two years only eleven years, and during the last fifty-four years only two years have been free from special repressive legislation; yet the agitation for repeal of the union, and general discontent, are more violent in than in any one of the eighty-six previous years. in the name of common-sense, is there any reason for supposing that the coercion bill of will have a better or more enduring effect than its numerous predecessors? the _primâ facie_ case is at all events in favour of the contention that, when so many trials of a certain remedy have failed, it would be better not to try the same remedy again, but to have recourse to some other medicine. what, then, was the position of mr. gladstone's government at the close of the election of ? what were the considerations presented to them as supreme supervisors and guardians of the british empire? they found that vast colonial empire tranquil and loyal beyond previous expectation--the greater colonies satisfied with their existing position; the lesser expecting that as they grew up to manhood they would be treated as men, and emancipated from childish restraints. the channel islands and the isle of man were contented with their sturdy dependent independence, loyal to the backbone. one member only stood aloof, sulky and dissatisfied, and though in law integrally united with the dominant community, practically was dissociated from it by forming within parliament (the controlling body of the whole) a separate section, of which the whole aim was to fetter the action of the entire supreme body in order to bring to an external severance the practical disunion which existed between that member and great britain. this member--ireland--as compared with other parts of the empire, was small and insignificant; measured against great britain, its population was five millions to thirty-one millions, and its estimated capital was only one twenty-fourth part of the capital of the united kingdom. measured against australia, its trade with great britain was almost insignificant. its importance arose from the force of public opinion in great britain, which deemed england pledged to protect the party in ireland which desired the union to be maintained, and from the power of obstructing english legislation through the medium of the irish contingent, willing and ready on every occasion to intervene in english debates. the first step to be taken obviously was to find out what the great majority of irish members wanted. the answer was, that they would be contented to quit the british parliament on having a parliament established on college green, with full powers of local government, and that they would accept on behalf of their country a certain fixed annual sum to be paid to the imperial exchequer, on condition that such sum should not be increased without the consent of the irish representatives. here there were two great points gained without any sacrifice of principle. ireland could not be said to be taxed without representation when her representatives agreed to a certain fixed sum to be paid till altered with their consent; while at the same time all risk of obstruction to english legislation by irish means was removed by the proposal that the irish representatives should exercise local powers in dublin instead of imperial powers at westminster. on the basis of the above arrangement the bill of mr. gladstone was founded. absolute local autonomy was conferred on ireland; the assent of the irish members to quit the imperial parliament was accepted; and the bill provided that after a certain day the representative irish peers should cease to sit in the house of lords, and the irish members vacate their places in the house of commons. provisions were then made for the absorption in the irish legislative body of both the irish representative peers and irish members. the legislative supremacy of the british parliament was maintained by an express provision excepting from any interference on the part of irish legislature all imperial powers, and declaring any enactment void which infringed that provision; further, an enactment was inserted for the purpose of securing to the english legislature in the last resource the absolute power to make any law for the government of ireland, and therefore to repeal, or suspend, the irish constitution. technically these reservations of supremacy to the english legislature were unnecessary, as it is an axiom of constitutional law that a sovereign legislature, such as the queen and two houses of parliament in england, cannot bind their successors, and consequently can repeal or alter any law, however fundamental, and annul any restrictions on alteration, however strongly expressed. practically they were never likely to be called into operation, as it is the custom of parliament to adhere, under all but the most extraordinary and unforeseen circumstances, to any compact made by act of parliament between itself and any subordinate legislative body. the irish legislature was subjected to the same controlling power which has for centuries been applied to prevent any excess of jurisdiction in our colonial legislatures, by a direction that an appeal as to the constitutionality of any laws which they might pass should lie to the judicial committee of the privy council. this supremacy of the imperial judicial power over the action of the colonial legislatures was a system which the founders of the american constitution copied in the establishment of their supreme court, and thereby secured for that legislative system a stability which has defied the assaults of faction and the strain of civil war. the executive government of ireland was continued in her majesty, and was to be carried on by the lord lieutenant on her behalf, by the aid of such officers and such council as her majesty might from time to time see fit. the initiative power of recommending taxation was also vested in the queen, and delegated to the lord lieutenant. these clauses are co-ordinate and correlative with the clause conferring complete local powers on the irish legislature, while it preserves all imperial powers to the imperial legislature. the governor is an imperial officer, and will be bound to watch over imperial interests with a jealous scrutiny, and to veto any bill which may be injurious to those interests. on the other hand, as respects all local matters, he will act on and be guided by the advice of the irish executive council. the system is self-acting. the governor, for local purposes, must have a council which is in harmony with the legislative body. if the governor and a council, supported by the legislative body, do not agree, the governor must give way, unless he can, by dismissing his council, and dissolving the legislative body, obtain both a council and a legislative body which will support his views. as respects imperial questions, the case is different; here the last word rests with the mother country, and in the last resort a determination of the executive council, backed by the legislative body, to resist imperial rights, must be deemed an act of rebellion on the part of the irish people, and be dealt with accordingly. in acceding to the claims of the national party for home rule in ireland another question had to be considered: the demands of the english garrison, as it is called--or, in plain words, of the class of irish landlords--for protection. they urged that to grant home rule in ireland would be to hand them over to their enemies, their tenants, and to lead to an immediate, or to all events a proximate, confiscation of their properties. without admitting the truth of these apprehensions to the full extent, or indeed to any great extent, it was undoubtedly felt by the framers of the home rule bill that a moral obligation rested on the imperial government to remove, if possible, "the fearful exasperations attending the agrarian relations in ireland," rather than leave a question so fraught with danger, so involved in difficulty, to be determined by the irish government on its first entry on official existence. hence the land bill, the scheme of which was to frame a system under which the tenants, by being made owners of the soil, should become interested as a class in the maintenance of social order, while the landlords should be enabled to rid themselves on fair terms of their estates, in cases where, from apprehension of impending changes, or for pecuniary reasons, they were desirous of relieving themselves from the responsibilities of ownership. of the land scheme brought into parliament in , it need only here be said that it proposed to lend the irish government per cent. stock at - / per cent. interest, the irish government undertaking to purchase, from any irish landlord desirous of selling, his estate at (as a general rule) twenty years' purchase on the net rental. the money thus disbursed by the irish government was repaid to them by an annuity, payable by the tenant for forty-nine years, of per cent. on a capital sum equal to twenty times the gross rental; the result being that, were the bill passed into law, the tenant would become immediate owner of the land, subject to the payment of an annuity considerably less than the previous rent--that the irish government would make a considerable profit on the transaction, inasmuch as it would receive from the tenant interest calculated on the basis of the _gross_ rental, whilst it would pay to the english government interest calculated on the basis of the _net_ rental--and that the english government would sustain no loss if the interest were duly received by them. the effect of such a plan appears almost magical: ireland is transformed at one stroke from a nation of landlords into a nation of peasant proprietors--apparently without loss to any one, and with gain to everybody concerned, except the british government, who neither gain nor lose in the matter. the practicability, however, of such a scheme depends altogether on the security against loss afforded to the british tax-payer, for he is industrious and heavily burdened, and cannot be expected to assent to any plan which will land him in any appreciable loss. here it is that the plan of mr. gladstone's land bill differs from all other previous plans. act after act has been passed enabling the tenant to borrow money from the british government on the security of the holding, for the purpose of enabling him to purchase the fee-simple. in such transactions the british government becomes the mortgagee, and can only recover its money, if default is made in payment, by ejecting the tenant and becoming the landlord. in proportion, then, as any existing purchase act succeeds, in the same proportion the risk of the british taxpayer increases. he is ever placed in the most invidious of all lights; instead of posing as the generous benefactor who holds forth his hand to rescue the landlord and tenant from an intolerable position, he stands forward either as the grasping mortgagee or as the still more hated landlord, who, having deprived the tenant of his holding, is seeking to introduce another man into property which really belongs to the ejected tenant. such a position may be endurable when the number of purchasing tenants is small, but at once breaks down if agrarian reform in ireland is to be extended so far as to make any appreciable difference in the relations of landlord and tenant; still more, if it become general. now, what is the remedy of such a state of things? surely to interpose the irish government between the irish debtor and his english creditor, and to provide that the irish revenues in bulk, not the individual holdings of each tenant, shall be the security for the english creditor. this was the scheme embodied in the land act of . the punctual payment of all money due from the government of ireland to the government of great britain was to have been secured by the continuance in the hands of the british government of the excise and customs duties, and by the appointment of an imperial receiver-general, assisted by subordinate officers, and protected by an imperial court. this officer would have received not only all the imperial taxes, but also the local taxes; and it would have been his duty to satisfy the claims of the british government before he allowed any sum to pass into the irish exchequer. in effect, the british government, in relation to the levying of imperial taxes, would have stood in the same relation to ireland as congress does to the united states in respect to the levying of federal taxes. the fiscal unity of great britain and ireland would have been in this way secured, and the british government protected against any loss of interest for the large sums to be expended in carrying into effect in ireland any agrarian reform worthy of the name. the irish bills of , as above represented, had at least three recommendations: . they created a state of things in ireland under which it was possible to make a complete agrarian reform without exposing the english exchequer to any appreciable risk. . they enabled the irish to govern themselves as respects local matters, while preserving intact the supremacy of the british parliament and the integrity of the empire. . they enabled the british parliament to govern the british empire without any obstructive irish interference. to the first of these propositions no attempt at an answer has been made. the land bill was never considered on its merits; indeed, was never practically discussed, but was at once swept into oblivion by the wave which overwhelmed the home rule bill. the contention against the second proposition was concerned in proving that the supremacy of the british parliament was not maintained: the practical answer to this objection has been given above. pushed to its utmost, it could only amount to proof that an amendment ought to have been introduced in committee, declaring, in words better selected than those introduced for that purpose in the bill, that nothing in the act should affect the supremacy of the british parliament. in short, the whole discussion here necessarily resolved itself into a mere verbal squabble as to the construction of a clause in a bill not yet in committee, and had no bottom or substance. it was also urged that the concession of self-government to ireland was but another mode of handing over the loyalist party--or, as it is sometimes called, the english garrison--to the tender mercies of the parnellites. the reply to this would seem to be, that as respects property the land bill effectually prevented any interference of the irish parliament with the land; nay, more, enabled any irishman desirous of turning his land into money to do so on the most advantageous terms that ever had been--and with a falling market it may be confidently prophesied ever can be--offered to the irish landlord; while as respect life and liberty, were it possible that they should be endangered, it was the duty of the imperial officer, the lord lieutenant, to take means for the preservation of peace and good order; and behind him, to enforce his behests, stand the strong battalions who, to our sorrow be it spoken, have so often been called upon to put down disturbance and anarchy in ireland. competing plans have been put forward, with more or less detail, for governing ireland. the suggestion that ireland should be governed as a _crown_ colony need only be mentioned to be rejected. it means in effect, that ireland should sink from the rank of an equal or independent member of the british empire to the grade of the most dependent of her colonies, and should be governed despotically by english officials, without representation in the english parliament or any machinery of local self-government. another proposal has been to give four provincial governments to ireland, limiting their powers to local rating, education, and legislation in respect of matters which form the subjects of private bill legislation at present; in fact, to place them somewhat on the footing of the provinces of canada, while reserving to the english parliament the powers vested in the dominion of canada. such a scheme would seem adapted to whet the appetite of the irish for nationality, without supplying them with any portion of the real article. it would supply no basis on which a system of agrarian reform could be founded, as it would be impossible to leave the determination of a local question, which is a unit in its dangers and its difficulties, to four different legislatures; above all, the hinge on which the question turns--the sufficiency of the security for the british taxpayer--could not be afforded by provincial resources. indeed, no alternative for the land bill of has been suggested which does not err in one of the following points: either it pledges english credit on insufficient security, or it requires the landowners to accept irish debentures or some form of irish paper money at par; in other words, it makes english taxes a fund for relieving irish landlords, or else it compels the irish landowner, if he sells at all, to sell at an inadequate price. before parting with canada, it may be worth while noticing that another, and more feasible, alternative is to imitate more closely the canadian constitution, and to vest the central or dominion powers in a central legislature in dublin, parcelling out the provincial powers, as they have been called, amongst several provincial legislatures. this scheme might be made available as a means of protecting ulster from the supposed danger of undue interference from the central government, and for making, possibly, other diversities in the local administration of various parts of ireland in order to meet special local exigencies. a leading writer among the dissentient liberals has intimated that one of two forms of representative colonial government might be imposed on ireland--either the form in which the executive is conducted by colonial officials, or the form of the great irresponsible colonies. the first of these forms is open to the objection, that it perpetuates those struggles between english executive measures and irish opinion which has made ireland for centuries ungovernable, and led to the establishment of the union and destruction of irish independence in ; the second proposal would destroy the fiscal unity of the empire--leave the agrarian feud unextinguished, and aggravate the objections which have been urged against the home rule bill of . a question still remains, in relation to the _form_ of the home rule bill of , which would not have deserved attention but for the prominence given to it in some of the discussions upon the subject. the bill of provides "that the legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of ireland," but subjects their power to numerous exceptions and restrictions. the act establishing the dominion of canada enumerates various matters in respect of which the legislature of canada is to have exclusive power, but prefaces the enumeration with a clause "that the dominion legislature may make laws for the peace, order, and good government of canada in relation to all matters not within the jurisdiction of the provincial legislatures, although such matters may not be specially mentioned." in effect, therefore, the difference between the irish bill and the canadian act is one of expression and not of substance, and, although the bill is more accurate in its form, it would scarcely be worth while to insist on legislating by exception instead of by enumeration if, by the substitution of the latter form for the former, any material opposition would be conciliated. what, then, are the conclusions intended to be drawn from the foregoing premises? . that coercion is played out, and can no longer be regarded as a remedy for the evils of irish misrule. . that some alternative must be found, and that the only alternative within the range of practical politics is some form of home rule. . that there is no reason for thinking that the grant of home rule to ireland--a member only, and not one of the most important members, of the british empire--will in any way dismember, or even in the slightest degree risk the dismemberment of the empire. . that home rule presupposes and admits the supremacy of the british parliament. . that theory is in favour of home rule, as the nationality of ireland is distinct, and justifies a desire for local independence; while the establishment of home rule is a necessary condition to the effectual removal of agrarian disturbances in ireland. . that precedent is in favour of granting home rule to ireland--_e.g._ the success of the new constitution in austria-hungary, and the happy effects resulting from the establishment of the dominion of canada. . that the particular form of home rule granted is comparatively immaterial. . that the home rule bill of may readily be amended in such a manner as to satisfy all real and unpartisan objectors. . that the land bill of is the best that has ever been devised, having regard to the advantages offered to the new irish government, the landlord, and the tenant. footnotes: [footnote : reprinted by permission, with certain omissions, from the _contemporary review_, august, .] [footnote : "home rule and imperial unity:" _contemporary review_, march, .] [footnote : mill on _representative government_, p. .] [footnote : see _statesman's year-book_: switzerland and germany.] [footnote : heeren's _political system of europe_, p. .] [footnote : _memoirs of count beust_, vol. i., introduction, p. xliii.] [footnote : _statesman's year-book._] [footnote : the emperor of austria is the head of the empire, with the title of king in hungary. austria-hungary is treated as a federal, not as an imperial union, on the ground that austria was never rightfully a dominant community over hungary.] [footnote : _representative government_, p. .] the past and future of the irish question[ ] by james bryce, m.p. for half a century or more no question of english domestic politics has excited so much interest outside england as that question of resettling her relations with ireland, which was fought over in the last parliament, and still confronts the parliament that has lately been elected. apart from its dramatic interest, apart from its influence on the fortune of parties, and its effect on the imperial position of great britain, it involves so many large principles of statesmanship, and raises so many delicate points of constitutional law, as to deserve the study of philosophical thinkers no less than of practical politicians in every free country. the circumstances which led to the introduction of the government of ireland bill, in april, , are familiar to americans as well as englishmen. ever since the crowns and parliaments of great britain and ireland were united, in a.d. , there has been in ireland a party which protested against that union as fraudulently obtained and inexpedient in itself. for many years this party, led by daniel o'connell, maintained an agitation for repeal. after his death a more extreme section, which sought the complete independence of ireland, raised the insurrection of , and subsequently, under the guidance of other hands, formed the fenian conspiracy, whose projected insurrection was nipped in the bud in , though the conspiracy continued to menace the government and the tranquillity of the island. in the home rule party was formed, demanding, not the repeal of the union, but the creation of an irish legislature, and the agitation, conducted in parliament in a more systematic and persistent way than heretofore, took also a legitimate constitutional form. to this demand english and scotch opinion was at first almost unanimously opposed. at the general election of , which, however, turned mainly on the foreign policy of lord beaconsfield's government, not more than three or four members were returned by constituencies in great britain who professed to consider home rule as even an open question. all through the parliament, which sat from till , the nationalist party, led by mr. parnell, and including at first less than half, ultimately about half, of the irish members, was in constant and generally bitter opposition to the government of mr. gladstone. but during these five years a steady, although silent and often unconscious, process of change was passing in the minds of english and scotch members, especially liberal members, due to their growing sense of the mistakes which parliament committed in handling irish questions, and of the hopelessness of the efforts which the executive was making to pacify the country on the old methods. the adoption of a home rule policy by one of the great english parties was, therefore, not so sudden a change as it seemed. the process had been going on for years, though in its earlier stages it was so gradual and so unwelcome as to be faintly felt and reluctantly admitted by the minds that were undergoing it. in the spring of the question could be no longer evaded or postponed. it was necessary to choose between one of two courses; the refusal of the demand for self-government, coupled with the introduction of a severe coercion bill, or the concession of it by the introduction of a home rule bill. there were some few who suggested, as a third course, the granting of a limited measure of local institutions, such as county boards; but most people felt, as did mr. gladstone's ministry, that this plan would have had most of the dangers and few of the advantages of either of the two others. how the government of ireland bill was brought into the house of commons on april th, amid circumstances of curiosity and excitement unparalleled since ; how, after debates of almost unprecedented length, it was defeated in june, by a majority of thirty; how the policy it embodied was brought before the country at the general election, and failed to win approval--all this is too well known to need recapitulation here. but the causes of the disaster have not been well understood, for it is only now--now, when the smoke of the battle has cleared away from the field--that these causes have begun to stand revealed in their true proportions. besides some circumstances attending the production of the bill, to which i shall refer presently, and which told heavily against it, there were three feelings which worked upon men's minds, disposing them to reject it. the first of these was dislike and fear of the irish nationalist members. in the previous house of commons this party had been uniformly and bitterly hostile to the liberal government. measures intended for the good of ireland, like the land act of , had been ungraciously received, treated as concessions extorted, for which no thanks were due--inadequate concessions, which must be made the starting-point for fresh demands. obstruction had been freely practised to defeat not only bills restraining the liberty of the subject in ireland, but many other measures. some few members of the irish party had systematically sought to delay all english and scotch legislation, and, in fact, to bring the work of parliament to a dead stop. much violent language had been used, even where the provocation was slight. the outbreaks of crime which had repeatedly occurred in ireland had been, not, indeed, defended, but so often passed over in silence by nationalist speakers, that english opinion was inclined to hold them practically responsible for disorders which, so it was thought, they had neither wished nor tried to prevent. (i am, of course, expressing no opinion as to the justice of this view, nor as to the excuses to be made for the parliamentary tactics of the irish party, but merely stating how their conduct struck many englishmen.) there could be no doubt as to the hostility which they, still less as to that which their fellow-countrymen in the united states, had expressed toward england, for they had openly wished success to russia while war seemed impending with her, and the so-called mahdi of the soudan was vociferously cheered at many a nationalist meeting. at the election of they had done their utmost to defeat liberal candidates in every english and scotch constituency where there existed a body of irish voters, and had thrown some twenty seats or more into the hands of the tories. now, to many englishmen, the proposal to create an irish parliament seemed nothing more or less than a proposal to hand over to these irish members the government of ireland, with all the opportunities thence arising to oppress the opposite party in ireland and to worry england herself. it was all very well to urge that the tactics which the nationalists had pursued when their object was to extort home rule would be dropped, because superfluous, when home rule had been granted; or to point out that an irish parliament would contain different men from those who had been sent to westminster as mr. parnell's nominees. neither of these arguments could overcome the suspicious antipathy which many englishmen felt, nor dissolve the association in their minds between the nationalist leaders and the forces of disorder. the parnellites (thus they reasoned) are bad men; what they seek is therefore likely to be bad, and whether bad in itself or not, they will make a bad use of it. in such reasonings there was more of sentiment and prejudice than of reason, but sentiment and prejudice are proverbially harder than arguments to expel from minds where they have made a lodgment. the internal condition of ireland supplied more substantial grounds for alarm. as everybody knows, she is not, either in religion or in blood, or in feelings and ideas, a homogeneous country. three-fourths of the people are roman catholics, one-fourth protestants, and this protestant fourth subdivided into bodies not fond of one another, who have little community of sentiment. besides the scottish colony in ulster, many english families have settled here and there through the country. they have been regarded as intruders by the aboriginal celtic population, and many of them, although hundreds of years may have passed since they came, still look on themselves as rather english than irish. the last fifty years, whose wonderful changes have in most parts of the world tended to unite and weld into one compact body the inhabitants of each part of the earth's surface, connecting them by the ties of commerce, and of a far easier and swifter intercourse than was formerly possible, have in ireland worked in the opposite direction. it has become more and more the habit of the richer class in ireland to go to england for its enjoyment, and to feel itself socially rather english than irish. thus the chasm between the immigrants and the aborigines has grown deeper. the upper class has not that irish patriotism which it showed in the days of the national irish parliament ( - ), and while there is thus less of a common national feeling to draw rich and poor together, the strife of landlords and tenants has continued, irritating the minds of both parties, and gathering them into two hostile camps. as everybody knows, the nationalist agitation has been intimately associated with the land agitation--has, in fact, found a strong motive-force in the desire of the tenants to have their rents reduced, and themselves secured against eviction. now, many people in england assumed that an irish parliament would be under the control of the tenants and the humbler class generally, and would therefore be hostile to the landlords. they went farther, and made the much bolder assumption that as such a parliament would be chosen by electors, most of whom were roman catholics, it would be under the control of the catholic priesthood, and hostile to protestants. thus they supposed that the grant of self-government to ireland would mean the abandonment of the upper and wealthier class, the landlords and the protestants, to the tender mercies of their enemies. such abandonment, it was proclaimed on a thousand platforms, would be disgraceful in itself, dishonouring to england, a betrayal of the very men who had stood by her in the past, and were prepared to stand by her in the future, if only she would stand by them. it was, of course, replied by the defenders of the home rule bill, that what the so-called english party in ireland really stood by was their own ascendency over the irish masses--an oppressive ascendency, which had caused most of the disorders of the country. as to religion, there were many protestants besides mr. parnell himself among the nationalist leaders. there was no ill-feeling (except in ulster) between protestants and roman catholics in ireland. there was no reason to expect that either the catholic hierarchy or the priesthood generally would be supreme in an irish parliament, and much reason to expect the contrary. as regards ulster, where, no doubt, there were special difficulties, due to the bitter antagonism of the orangemen (not of the protestants generally) and catholics, mr. gladstone had undertaken to consider any special provisions which could be suggested as proper to meet those difficulties. these replies, however, made little impression. they were pronounced, and pronounced all the more confidently the more ignorant of ireland the speaker was, to be too hypothetical. to many englishmen the case seemed to be one of two hostile factions contending in ireland for the last sixty years, and that the gift of self-government might enable one of them to tyrannize over the other. true, that party was the majority, and, according to the principles of democratic government, therefore entitled to prevail. but it is one thing to admit a principle and another to consent to its application. the minority had the sympathy of the upper classes in england, because the minority contained the landlords. it had the sympathy of a part of the middle class, because it contained the protestants. and of those englishmen who were impartial as between the irish factions, there were some who held that england must in any case remain responsible for the internal peace and the just government of ireland, and could not grant powers whose possession might tempt the one party to injustice, and the other to resist injustice by violence. there was another anticipation, another forecast of evils to follow, which told most of all upon english opinion. this was the notion that home rule was only a stage in the road to the complete separation of the two islands. the argument was conceived as follows: "the motive passions of the irish agitation have all along been hatred toward england and a desire to make ireland a nation, holding her independent place among the nations of the world. this design was proclaimed by the young irelanders of and by the fenian rebels of ; it has been avowed, in intervals of candour, by the present nationalists themselves. the grant of an irish parliament will stimulate rather than appease this thirst for separate national existence. the nearer complete independence seems, the more will it be desired. hatred to england will still be an active force, because the amount of control which england retains will irritate irish pride, as well as limit irish action; while all the misfortunes which may befall the new irish government will be blamed, not on its own imprudence, but on the english connection. and as the motives for seeking separation will remain, so the prospect of obtaining it will seem better. agitation will have a better vantage-ground in an irish parliament than it formerly had among the irish members of a british legislature; and if actual resistance to the queen's authority should be attempted, it will be attempted under conditions more favourable than the present, because the rebels will have in their hands the machinery of irish government, large financial resources, and a _prima facie_ title to represent the will of the irish people. as against a rebellious party in ireland, england has now two advantages--an advantage of theory, an advantage of fact. the advantage of theory is that she does not admit ireland to be a distinct nation, but maintains that in the united kingdom there is but one nation, whereof some inhabit great britain and some ireland. the advantage of fact is that, through her control of the constabulary, the magistrates, the courts of justice, and, in fine, the whole administrative system of ireland, she can easily quell insurrectionary movements. by creating an irish parliament and government she would strip herself of both these advantages." i need hardly say that i do not admit the fairness of this statement of the case, because some of the premises are untrue, and because it misrepresents the nature of the irish government which mr. gladstone's bill would have created. but i am trying to state the case as it was sedulously and skilfully presented to englishmen. and it told all the more upon english waverers, because the considerations above mentioned seemed, if well founded, to destroy and cut away the chief ground on which home rule had been advocated, viz. that it would relieve england from the constant pressure of irish discontent and agitation, and bring about a time of tranquillity, permitting good feeling to grow up between the peoples. if home rule was, after all, to be nothing more than a half-way house to independence, an irish parliament only a means of extorting a more complete emancipation from imperial control, was it not much better to keep things as they were, and go on enduring evils, the worst of which were known already? hence the advocates of the bill denied not the weight of the argument, but its applicability. separation, they urged, is impossible, for it is contrary to the nature of things, which indicates that the two islands must go together. it is not desired by the irish people, for it would injure them far more than it could possibly injure england, since ireland finds in england the only market for her produce, the only source whence capital flows to her. a small revolutionary party has, no doubt, conspired to obtain it. but the only sympathy they received was due to the fact that the legitimate demand of ireland for a recognition of her national feeling and for the management of her own local affairs was contemptuously ignored by england. the concession of that demand will banish the notion even from those minds which now entertain it, whereas its continued refusal may perpetuate that alienation of feeling which is at the bottom of all the mischief, the one force that makes for separation. it is no part of my present purpose to examine these arguments and counter arguments, but only to show what were the grounds on which a majority of the english voters refused to pronounce in favour of the home rule bill. the reader will have observed that the issues raised were not only numerous, but full of difficulty. they were issues of fact, involving a knowledge both of the past history of ireland and of her present state. they were also issues of inference, for even supposing the broad facts to be ascertained, these facts were susceptible of different interpretations, and men might, and did, honestly draw opposite conclusions from them. a more obscure and complicated problem, or rather group of problems, has seldom been presented to a nation for its decision. but the nation did not possess the requisite knowledge. closely connected as ireland seems to be with england, long as the irish question has been a main trouble in english politics, the english and scottish people know amazingly little about ireland. even in the upper class, you meet with comparatively few persons who have set foot on irish soil, and, of course, far fewer who have ever examined the condition of the island and the sources of her discontent. irish history, which is, no doubt, dismal reading, is a blank page to the english. in january, , one found scarce any politicians who had ever heard of the irish parliament of . and in that year, , an englishman anxious to discover the real state of the country did not know where to go for information. what appeared in the english newspapers, or, rather, in the one english newspaper which keeps a standing "own correspondent" in dublin, was (as it still is) a grossly and almost avowedly partisan report, in which opinions are skilfully mixed with so-called facts, selected, consciously or unconsciously, to support the writer's view. the nationalist press is, of course, not less strongly partisan on its own side, so that not merely an average englishman, but even the editor of an english newspaper, who desires to ascertain the true state of matters and place it before his english readers, has had, until within the last few months, when events in ireland began to be fully reported in great britain, no better means at his disposal for understanding ireland than for understanding bulgaria. i do not dwell upon this ignorance as an argument for home rule, though, of course, it is often so used. i merely wish to explain the bewilderment in which englishmen found themselves when required to settle by their votes a question of immense difficulty. many, on both sides, simply followed their party banners. tories voted for lord salisbury; thorough-going admirers of mr. gladstone voted for mr. gladstone. but there was on the liberal side a great mass who were utterly perplexed by the position. contradictory statements of fact, as well as contradictory arguments, were flung at their heads in distracting profusion. they felt themselves unable to determine what was true and who was right. but one thing seemed clear to them. the policy of home rule was a new policy. they had been accustomed to censure and oppose it. only nine months before, the irish nationalists had emphasized their hostility to the liberal party by doing their utmost to defeat liberal candidates in english constituencies. hence, when it was proclaimed that home rule was the true remedy which the liberal party must accept, they were startled and discomposed. now, the english are not a nimble-minded people. they cannot, to use a familiar metaphor, turn round in their own length. their momentum is such as to carry them on for some distance in the direction wherein they have been moving, even after the order to stop has been given. they need time to appreciate, digest, and comprehend a new proposition. timid they are not, nor, perhaps, exceptionally cautious, but they do not like to be hurried, and insist on looking at a proposition for a good while before they come to a decision regarding it. it is one of the qualities which make them a great people. as has been observed, this proposition was novel, was most serious, and raised questions which they felt that their knowledge was insufficient to determine. accordingly, a certain section of the liberal party refused to accept it. a great number, probably the majority, of these doubtful men abstained from voting. others voted against the home rule liberal candidates, not necessarily because they condemned the policy, but because, as they were not satisfied that it was right, they deemed delay a less evil than the committal of the nation to a new departure, which might prove irrevocable. it must not, however, be supposed that it was only hesitation which drove many liberals into the host arrayed against the irish government bill. i have already said that among the leaders there were some, and those men of great influence, who condemned its principles. this was true also of a considerable, though a relatively smaller, section of the rank and file. and it was only what might have been expected. the proposal to undo much of the work done in , to alter fundamentally the system which had for eighty-six years regulated the relations of the two islands, by setting up a parliament in ireland, was a proposal which not only had not formed a part of the accepted creed of the liberal party, but fell outside party lines altogether. it might, no doubt, be argued, as was actually done, and as those who understand the history of the liberal party have more and more come to see, that liberal principles recommended it, since they involve faith in the people, and faith in the curative tendency of local self-government. but this was by no means axiomatic. taking the whole complicated facts of the case, and taking liberalism as it had been practically understood in england, a man might in july, , deem himself a good liberal and yet think that the true interests of both peoples would be best served by maintaining the existing parliamentary system. similarly, there was nothing in toryism or tory principles to prevent a fair-minded and patriotic tory from approving the home rule scheme. it was a return to the older institutions of the monarchy, and not inconsistent with any of the doctrines which the tory party had been accustomed to uphold. the question, in short, was one of those which cut across ordinary party lines, creating new divisions among politicians; and there might have been and ought to have been liberal home rulers and tory home rulers, liberal opponents of home rule and tory opponents of home rule. but here comes in a feature, a natural but none the less a regrettable feature, of the english party system. as the object of the party in opposition is to turn out the party in power and seat itself in their place, every opposition regards with the strongest prejudice the measures proposed by a ruling ministry. cases sometimes occur where these measures are so obviously necessary, or so evidently approved by the nation, that the opposition accepts them. but in general it scans them with a hostile eye. human nature is human nature; and when the defeat of government can be secured by defeating a government bill, the temptation to the opposition to secure it is irresistible. now, the tory party is far more cohesive than the liberal party, far more obedient to its leaders, far less disposed to break into sections, each of which thinks and acts for itself. accordingly, that division of opinion in the tory party which might have been expected, and which would have occurred if those who composed the tory party had been merely so many reflecting men, and not members of a closely compacted political organization, did not occur. liberals were divided, as such a question would naturally divide them. tories were not divided; they threw their whole strength against the bill. i am far from suggesting that they did so against their consciences. whatever may be said as to two or three of the leaders, whose previous language and conduct seemed to indicate that they would themselves, had the election of gone differently, have been inclined to a home rule policy, many of the tory chiefs, as well as the great mass of the party, honestly disapproved mr. gladstone's measure. but their party motives and party affiliations gave it no chance of an impartial verdict at their hands. they went into the jury-box with an invincible prepossession against the scheme of their opponents. when all these difficulties are duly considered, and especially when regard is had to those which i have last enumerated, the suddenness with which the new policy was launched, and the fact that as coming from one party it was sure beforehand of the hostility of the other, no surprise can be felt at its fate. those who, in england, now look back over the spring and summer of are rather surprised that it should come so near succeeding. to have been rejected by a majority of only thirty in parliament, and of little over ten per cent. of the total number of electors who voted at the general election, is a defeat far less severe than any one who knew england would have predicted. that the decision of the country is regarded by nobody as a final decision goes without saying. it was not regarded as final, even in the first weeks after it was given. this was not because the majority was comparatively small, for a smaller majority the other way would have been conclusive. it is because the country had not time enough for full consideration and deliberate judgment. the bill was brought in on april th, the elections began on july st; no one can say what might have been the result of a long discussion, during which the first feelings of alarm (for alarm there was) might have worn off. and the decision is without finality, also, because the decision of the country was merely against the particular plan proposed by mr. gladstone, and not in favour of any alternative plan for dealing with ireland, most certainly not for the coercive method which has since been adopted. one particular solution of the irish problem was refused. the problem still stands confronting us, and when other modes of solving it have been in turn rejected, the country may come back to this mode. we may now turn from the past to the future. yet the account which has been given of the feelings and ideas arrayed against the bill does not wholly belong to the past. they are the feelings to which the opponents of any plan of self-government for ireland still appeal, and which will have to be removed or softened down before it can be accepted by the english. in particular, the probability of separation, and the supposed dangers to the protestants and the landlords from an irish parliament, will continue to form the themes of controversy so long as the question remains unsettled. what are the prospects of its settlement? what is the position which it now occupies? how has it affected the current politics of england? it broke up the liberal party in parliament. the vast numerical majority of that party in the country supported, and still supports, mr. gladstone and the policy of irish self-government. but the dissentient minority includes many men of influence, and constitutes in the house of commons a body of about seventy members, who hold the balance between parties. for the present they are leagued with the tory ministry to resist home rule, and their support insures a parliamentary majority to that ministry. but it is, of course, necessary for them to rally to lord salisbury, not only on irish questions, but on all questions; for, under our english system, a ministry defeated on any serious issue is bound to resign, or dissolve parliament. now, to maintain an alliance for a special purpose, between members of opposite parties, is a hard matter. agreement about ireland does not, of itself, help men to agree about foreign policy, or bimetallism, or free trade, or changes in land laws, or ecclesiastical affairs. when these and other grave questions come up in parliament, the tory ministry and their liberal allies must, on every occasion, negotiate a species of concordat, whereby the liberty of both is fettered. one party may wish to resist innovation, the other to yield to it, or even to anticipate it. each is obliged to forego something in order to humour the other; neither has the pleasure or the credit of taking a bold line on its own responsibility. there is, no doubt, less difference between the respective tenets of the great english parties than there was twenty years ago, when mr. disraeli had not yet completed the education of one party, and economic laws were still revered by the other. but, besides its tenets, each party has its tendencies, its sympathies, its moral atmosphere; and these differ so widely as to make the co-operation of tories and liberals constrained and cumbrous. moreover, there are the men to be considered, the leaders on each side, whose jealousies, rivalries, suspicions, personal incompatibilities, neither old habits of joint action nor corporate party feeling exist to soften. on the whole, therefore, it is unlikely that the league of these two parties, united for one question only, and that a question which will pass into new phases, can be durable. either the league will dissolve, or the smaller party will be absorbed into the larger. in england, as in america, third parties rarely last. the attraction of the larger mass is irresistible, and when the crisis which created a split or generated a new group has passed, or the opinion the new group advocates has been either generally discredited or generally adopted, the small party melts away, its older members disappearing from public life, its younger ones finding their career in the ranks of one of the two great standing armies of politics. if the dissentient, or anti-home rule, liberal party lives till the next general election, it cannot live longer, for at that election it will be ground to powder between the upper and nether millstones of the regular liberals and the regular tories. the irish struggle of has had another momentous consequence. it has brought the nationalist or parnellite party into friendly relations with the mass of english liberals. when the home rule party was founded by mr. butt, some fifteen years ago, it had more in common with the liberal than with the tory party. but as it demanded what both english parties were then resolved to refuse, it was forced into antagonism to both; and from onward (mr. butt being then dead) the antagonism became bitter, and, of course, specially bitter as toward the statesmen in power, because it was they who continued to refuse what the nationalists sought. mr. parnell has always stated, with perfect candour, that he and his friends must fight for their own hand unhampered by english alliances, and getting the most they could for ireland from the weakness of either english party. this position they still retain. if the tory party will give them home rule, they will help the tory party. however, as the tory party has gained office by opposing home rule, this contingency may seem not to lie within the immediate future. on the other hand, the gladstonian liberals have lost office for their advocacy of home rule, and now stand pledged to maintain the policy they have proclaimed. the nationalists have, therefore, for the first time since the days immediately following the union of a.d. (a measure which the whigs of those days resisted), a great english party admitting the justice of their claim, and inviting them to agitate for it by purely constitutional methods. for such an alliance the english liberals are hotly reproached, both by the tories and by the dissentients who follow lord harrington and mr. chamberlain. they are accused of disloyalty to england. the past acts and words of the nationalists are thrown in their teeth, and they are told that in supporting the irish claim they condone such acts, they adopt such words. they reply by denying the adoption, and by pointing out that the tories themselves were from till in a practical, and often very close, though unavowed, parliamentary alliance with the nationalists in the house of commons. the student of history will, however, conceive that the liberals have a stronger and higher defence than any _tu quoque_. issues that involve the welfare of peoples are far too serious for us to apply to them the same sentiments of personal taste and predilection which we follow in inviting a dinner party, or selecting companions for a vacation tour. if a man has abused your brother, or got drunk in the street, you do not ask him to go with you to the yellowstone park. but his social offences do not prevent you from siding with him in a political convention. so, in politics itself, one must distinguish between characters and opinions. if a man has shown himself unscrupulous or headstrong, you may properly refuse to vote him into office, or to sit in the same cabinet with him, because you think these faults of his dangerous to the country. but if the cause he pleads be a just one, you have no more right to be prejudiced against it by his conduct than a judge has to be swayed by dislike to the counsel who argues a case. there were moderate men in america, who, in the days of the anti-slavery movement, cited against it the intemperate language of many abolitionists. there were aristocrats in england, who, during the struggle for the freedom and unity of italy, sought to discredit the patriotic party by accusing them of tyrannicide. but the sound sense of both nations refused to be led away by such arguments, because it held those two causes to be in their essence righteous. in all revolutionary movements there are elements of excess and violence, which sober men may regret, but which must not disturb our judgment as to the substantial merits of an issue. the revolutionist of one generation is, like garibaldi or mazzini, the hero of the next; and the verdict of posterity applauds those who, even in his own day, were able to discern the justice of the cause under the errors or faults of its champion. doubly is it the duty of a great and far-sighted statesman not to be repelled by such errors, when he can, by espousing a revolutionary movement, purify it of its revolutionary character, and turn it into a legitimate constitutional struggle. this is what mr. gladstone has done. if his policy be in itself dangerous and disloyal to the true interests of the people of our islands, let it be condemned. but if it be the policy which has the best promise for the peace, the prosperity, and the mutual good will of those peoples, he and those who follow him would be culpable indeed were they to be deterred by the condemnation which they have so often expressed, and which they still express, for some of the past acts of a particular party, from declaring that the aims of that party were substantially right aims, and from now pressing upon the country what their conscience approves. however, as the home rule liberals and nationalists, taken together, are in a minority (although a minority which obtains recruits at many bye-elections) in the present parliament, it is not from them that fresh proposals are expected. they will, of course, continue to speak, write, and agitate on behalf of the views they hold. but practical attempt to deal with irish troubles must for the present come from the tory ministry; for in the english system of government those who command a parliamentary majority are responsible for legislation as well as administration, and are censured not merely if their legislation is bad, but if it is not forthcoming when events call for it. why, it may be asked, should lord salisbury's government burn its fingers over ireland, as so many governments have burnt their fingers before? why not let ireland alone, giving to foreign affairs and to english and scottish reforms all the attention which these too much neglected matters need? well would it be for england, as well as for english ministries, if ireland could be simply let alone, her maladies left to be healed by the soft, slow hand of nature. but irish troubles call aloud to be dealt with, and that promptly. they stand in the way of all other reforms, indeed of all other business. letting alone has been tried, and it has succeeded no better, even in times less urgent than the present, than the usual policy of coercion followed by concession, or concession followed by coercion. there are three aspects of the irish question, three channels by which the troubles of the "distressful island" stream down upon us, forcing whoever now rules or may come to rule in england to attempt some plan for dealing with them. i will take them in succession. the first is the parliamentary difficulty. in the british house of commons, with its six hundred and seventy members, there are nearly ninety irish nationalists. they are a well-disciplined body, voting as one man, though capable of speaking enough for a thousand. they have no interest in english or scotch or colonial or indian affairs, but only in irish, and look upon the vote which they have the right of giving upon the former solely as a means of furthering their own irish aims. they are, therefore, in the british parliament not merely a foreign body, indifferent to the great british and imperial issues confided to it, but a hostile body, opposed to its present constitution, seeking to discredit it in its authority over ireland, and to make more and more palpable and incurable the incompetence for irish business whereof they accuse it. several modes of doing this are open to them. they may, as some of the more actively bitter among them did in the parliaments of and , obstruct business by long and frequent speeches, dilatory motions, and all those devices which in america are called filibustering. the house of commons may, no doubt, try to check these tactics by more stringent rules of procedure, but the attempts already made in this direction have had but slight success, and every restriction of debate, since it trenches on the freedom of english and scotch no less than of irish members, injures parliament as a whole. they may disgust the british people with the house of commons by keeping it (as they have done in former years) so constantly occupied with irish business as to leave it little time for english and scotch measures. they may throw the weight of their collective vote into the scale of one or other british party, according to the amount of concession it will make to them, or, by always voting against the ministry of the day, they may cause frequent and sudden changes of government. this plan also they have followed in time past; for the moment it is not so applicable, because the tories and dissentient liberals, taken together, possess a majority in the house of commons. but at any moment the alliance of those two sections may vanish, or another general election may leave tories and liberals so nearly balanced that the irish vote could turn the scale. whoever reflects on the nature of parliamentary government will perceive that it is based on the assumption that the members of the ruling assembly, however much they may differ on other subjects, agree in desiring the strength, dignity, and welfare of the assembly itself, and in caring for the main national interests which it controls. he will therefore be prepared to expect countless and multiform difficulties in working such a government, where a large section of the assembly seeks not to use, but to make useless, its forms and rules--not to preserve, but to lower and destroy, its honour, its credit, its efficiency. in vain are irish members blamed for these tactics, for they answer that the interests of their own country require them to seek first her welfare, which can in their view be secured only by removing her from the direct control of what they deem a foreign assembly. now that the demand for irish self-government has obtained the sympathy of the bulk of english liberals, they are unlikely forthwith to resume the systematic obstruction of past years. but they will be able, without alienating their english friends, to render the conduct of parliamentary business so difficult that every english ministry will be forced either to crush them, if it can, or to appease them by a series of concessions. the second difficulty is that of maintaining social order in ireland. what that difficulty is, and whence it arises, every one knows. it is chronic, but every second or third winter, when there has been a wet season, or the price of live stock declines, it becomes specially acute. the tenants refuse to pay rents which they declare to be impossible. the landlords, or the harsher among them, try to enforce rents by evictions; evictions are resisted by outrages and boycotting. popular sentiment supports those who commit outrages, because it considers the tenantry to be engaged in a species of war, a righteous war, against the landlord. evidence can seldom be obtained, and juries acquit in the teeth of evidence. thus the enforcement of the law strains all the resources of authority, while a habit of lawlessness and discontent is transmitted from generation to generation. of the remedies proposed for this chronic evil the most obvious is the strengthening of the criminal law. we have been trying this for more than one hundred years, since whiteboyism appeared, and trying it in vain. since the union, coercion acts, of more or less severity, have been almost always in force in ireland, passed for two or three years, then dropped for a year or two, then renewed in a form slightly varying, but always with the same result of driving the disease in for a time, but not curing it. mr. gladstone proposed to buy out the landlords and then leave an irish parliament to restore social order, with that authority which it would derive from having the will of the people behind it; because he held that when the people felt the law to be of their own making, and not imposed from without, their sentiment would be enlisted on its side, and the necessity for a firm government recognized. this plan, has, however, been rejected, so the choice was left of a fresh coercion act, or of some scheme, necessarily a costly scheme, for getting rid of the source of trouble by transferring the land of ireland to the peasantry. the present government, while guided by sir m. hicks-beach, who had some knowledge of ireland, did its best to persuade the landlords to accept reduced rents, while the nationalist leaders, on their side, sought to restrain the people from outrages. but the armistice did not last. the ministry yielded to the foolish counsels of its more violent supporters, and entrusted irish affairs to the hands of a chief secretary without previous knowledge of the island. an unusually severe coercion act has been brought in and passed by the aid of the dissentient liberals. and we now see this act administered with a mixture of virulence and incompetence to which even the dreary annals of irish misgovernment present few parallels. the feeling of the english people is rising against the policy carried out in their name. so far from being solved, the problem of social order becomes every day more acute. there remains the question of a reform of local government. for many years past, every english ministry has undertaken to frame a measure creating a new system of popular rural self-government in england. it is the first large task of domestic legislation which we ask from parliament. when such a scheme is proposed, can ireland be left out of it? should she be left out, the argument that she is being treated unequally and unfairly, as compared with england, would gain immense force; because the present local government of ireland is admittedly less popular, less efficient, altogether less defensible, than even that of england which we are going to reform. if, therefore, the theory that the imperial parliament is both anxious and able to do its duty by ireland is to be maintained, ireland, too, must have her scheme of local government. and a scheme of local government is a large project, the discussion of which must pass into a discussion of the government of the island as a whole. since, then, we may conclude that whatever ministry is in power will be bound to take up the state of ireland--since parliament and the nation will be occupied with the subject during the coming sessions fully as much as they have been during those that have recently passed--the next inquiry is, what will the tendency of opinion and legislation be? will the reasons and forces described above bring us to home rule? and if so, when, how, and why? there are grounds for answering these questions in the negative. a majority of the house of commons, including the present ministry and such influential liberals as mr. bright, lord hartington, mr. chamberlain, stand pledged to resist it, and seem--such is the passion which controversy engenders--more disposed to resist it than they were in . but this ground is less strong than it may appear. we have had too many changes of opinion--ay, and of action too--upon irish affairs not to be prepared for further changes. a ministry in power learns much which an opposition fails to learn. home rule is an elastic expression, and some of those who were loudest in denouncing mr. gladstone's bill will find it easy to explain, should they bring in a bill of their own for giving self-government to ireland, that their measure is a different thing, and free from the objections brought against his. nor, if such a conversion should come, need it be deemed a dishonest one, for events are potent teachers, and governments now seek rather to follow than to form opinion. although a decent interval must be allowed, no one will be astonished if the tory leaders should move ere long in the direction indicated. toryism itself, as has been remarked already, contains nothing opposed to the idea. far greater obstacles exist in the aversion which (as already observed) so many englishmen of both parties have entertained for any scheme which should seem to leave the protestant minority at the mercy of the peasant and roman catholic majority, and to carry us some way toward the ultimate separation of the islands. these alarms are genuine and deep-seated. one who (like the present writer) thinks them, if not baseless, yet immensely overstrained, is, of course, convinced that they may be allayed. but time must first pass, and the plan that is to allay them may have to be framed on somewhat different lines from those of mr. gladstone's measure. it is even possible that a conflict more sharp and painful than any of recent years may intervene before a settlement is reached. nevertheless, great as are the obstacles in the way, bitter as are the reproaches with which mr. gladstone is pursued by the richer classes in england, there is good reason to believe that the current is setting toward his policy. in proceeding to state the grounds for this view, i must frankly own that i am no longer (as in most of the preceding pages) merely setting forth facts on which impartial men in england would agree. the forecast which i seek to give may be tinged by my own belief that the grant of self-government is the best, if not the only method, now open to us of establishing peace between the islands, relieving the english parliament of work it is ill fitted to discharge, allowing ireland opportunities to learn those lessons in politics which her people so much need. the future, even the near future, is more than usually dim. yet, if we examine those three branches of the irish question which have been enumerated above, we shall see how naturally, in each of them, the concession of self-government seems to open, i will not say the most direct, but the least dangerous way, out of our troubles. the parliamentary difficulty arises from the fact that the representatives of ireland have the feelings of foreigners sitting in a foreign assembly, whose honour and usefulness they do not desire. while these are their feelings they cannot work properly in it, and it cannot work properly with them. the inconvenience may be endured, but the english will grow tired of it, and be disposed to rid themselves of it, if they see their way to do so without greater mischief. there are but two ways out of the difficulty. one is to get rid of the irish members altogether; the other is to make them, by the concession of their just demands, contented and loyal members of a truly united parliament. the experience of the parliament of , which was mainly occupied with irish business, and began, being a strongly liberal parliament, with a bias toward the irish popular party, showed how difficult it is for a house of commons which is ignorant of ireland to legislate wisely for it. in the house of lords there is not a single nationalist; indeed, up till , that exalted chamber contained only one peer, lord dalhousie (formerly member for liverpool), who had ever said a word in favour of home rule. the more that england becomes sensible, as she must become sensible, of the deficiencies of the present machinery for appreciating the needs and giving effect to the wishes of irishmen, the more disposed will she be to grant them some machinery of their own. as regards social order, i have shown that the choice which lies before the opponents of home rule is either to continue the policy of coercing the peasantry by severe special legislation, or to remove the source of friction by buying out the landlords for the benefit of the tenants. the present ministry have chosen the former alternative, but they dangle before the eyes of their supporters some prospect that they may ultimately revert to the latter. now, the only way that has yet been pointed out of buying out the landlords, without imposing tremendous liabilities of loss upon the british treasury, is the creation of a strong home rule government in dublin. supposing, however, that some other plan could be discovered, which would avoid the fatal objections to which an extension of the plan of the (salisbury) land purchase act of is open, such a plan would remove one of the chief objections to an irish parliament, by leaving no estates for such a parliament to confiscate. as for coercion every day, i might say, every bye-election shows us how it becomes more and more odious to the british democracy. they dislike severity; they dislike the inequality involved in passing harsher laws for ireland than those that apply to england and scotland. they find themselves forced to sympathize with acts of violence in ireland which they would condemn in great britain, because these acts seem the only way of resisting harsh and unjust laws. when the recoil comes, it will be more violent than in former days. the wish to discover some other course will be very strong, and the obvious other course will be to leave it to an irish authority to enforce social order in its own way--probably a more rough-and-ready way than that of british officials. the notion which has possessed most englishmen, that irish self-government would be another name for anarchy, is curiously erroneous. conflicts there may be, but a vigorous rule will emerge. lastly, as to local government. if a popular system is established in ireland--one similar to that which it is proposed to establish in england--the control of its assemblies and officials will, over four-fifths of the island, fall into nationalist hands. their power will be enormously increased, for they will then command the machinery of administration, and the power of taxing. what with taxing landlords, aiding recalcitrant tenants, stopping the wheels of any central authority which may displease or oppose them, they will be in so strong a position that the creation of an irish parliament may appear to be a comparatively small further step, may even appear (as the wisest nationalists now think it would prove) in the light of a check upon the abuse of local powers. these eventualities will unquestionably, when english opinion has realized them, make such a parliament as the present pause before it commits rural local government to the irish democracy. but it could not refuse to do something; and if it tried to restrain popular representative bodies by the veto of a bureaucracy in dublin, there would arise occasions for quarrel and irritation more serious than now exist.[ ] those who once begin to repair an old and tottering building are led on, little by little, into changes they did not at starting contemplate. so it will be if once the task is undertaken of reforming the confessedly bad and indefensible system of irish administration. we may stop at some half-way house on the way, but home rule stands at the end of the road. supposing, then, that the nationalist party, retaining its present strength and unity, perseveres in its present demands, there is every prospect that these demands will be granted. but will it persevere? there are among the english dissentients those who prophesy that it will break up, as such parties have broken up before--will lose hope and wither away. or the support of the irish peasantry may be withdrawn--a result which some english politicians expect from a final settlement of the land question in the interest of the tenants. any of these contingencies is possible, but at present most improbable. the moment when long-cherished aims begin to seem attainable is not that at which men are disposed to abandon them. there are, however, other reasons which suggest the likelihood of a change in english sentiment on the whole matter. the surprise with which the bill of last april was received has worn off. the alarm is wearing off too. those who set their teeth at what seemed to them a surrender to the parnellites and their irish-american allies, having relieved their temper by an emphatic no, have begun to ponder things more calmly. the english people are listening to the arguments from irish history that are now addressed to them. they will be moved by the solid grounds of policy which that history suggests; will understand that what they have deemed insensate hatred is the natural result of long misgovernment, and will disappear with time and the removal of its causes. many of the best minds of both nations will be at work to discover some method of reconciling irish self-government with imperial supremacy and union free from the objections brought against the bills of . it is reasonable to expect that they may greatly improve upon these measures, which were prepared under pressure from a clamorous opposition. what mr. disraeli once called the historical conscience of the country will appreciate those great underlying principles to which mr. gladstone's policy appeals. it has been accused of being a policy of despair; and may have commended itself to some who supported it as being simply a means of ridding england of responsibility. but to others it seemed, and more truly, a policy of faith; not, indeed, of thoughtless optimism, but of faith according to the definition which calls it "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." faith, by which nations as well as men must live, means nothing less than a conviction that great principles, permanent truths of human nature, lie at the bottom of all sound politics, and ought to be boldly and consistently applied, even when temporary difficulties surround their application. such a principle is the belief in the power of freedom and self-government to cure the faults of a nation, in the tendency of responsibility to teach wisdom, and to make men see that justice and order are the surest sources of prosperity. such a principle is the perception that national hatreds do not live on of themselves, but will expire when oppression has ceased, as a fire burns out without fuel. such a principle is the recognition of the force of national sentiment, and of the duty of allowing it all the satisfaction that is compatible with the maintenance of imperial unity. such, again, is the appreciation of those natural economic laws which show that nations, when disturbing passions have ceased, follow their own permanent interests, and that an island which finds its chief market in england and draws its capital from england will prefer a connection with england to the poverty and insignificance of isolation. it is the honour of mr. gladstone to have built his policy of conciliation upon principles like these, as upon a rock; and already the good effects are seen in the new friendliness which has arisen between the english masses and the people of ireland, and in the better temper with which, despite the acrimony of some prominent politicians, the relations of the two peoples are discussed. when one looks round the horizon it is still far from clear; nor can we say from which quarter fair weather will arrive. but the air is fresher, and the clouds are breaking overhead. * * * * * postscript. what has happened since the above paragraphs were written, ten months ago, has confirmed more quickly and completely than the writer expected the forecasts they contain. home rule is no longer a word of terror, even to those english and scotch voters who were opposed to it in july, . most sensible men in the tory and dissentient liberal camps have come to see that it is inevitable; and, while they continue to resist it for the sake of what is called consistency, or because they do not yet see in what form it is to be granted, they are disposed to regard its speedy arrival as the best method of retreat from an indefensible position. the repressive policy which the present ministry are attempting in ireland--for in the face of their failures one cannot say that they are carrying out any policy--is rendering coercion acts more and more detested by the english people. the actualities of ireland, the social condition of her peasantry, the unwisdom of the dominant caste, the incompetence of the bureaucracy which affects to rule her, are being, by the full accounts we now receive, brought home to the mind of england and scotland as they never were before, and produce their appropriate effect upon the heart and conscience of the people. the recognition by the liberal party of the rights of ireland, the visits of english liberals to ireland, the work done by irishmen in english constituencies, are creating a feeling of unity and reciprocal interest between the masses of the people on both sides of the channel without example in the seven hundred years that have passed since strongbow's landing. this was the thing most needed to make home rule safe and full of promise, because it affords a guarantee that in such political contests as may arise in future, the division will not be, as heretofore, between the irish people on the one side and the power of britain on the other, but between two parties, each of which will have adherents in both islands. we may now at last hope that national hatreds will vanish; that england will unlearn her arrogance and ireland her suspicion; that the basis is being laid for a harmonious co-operation of both nations in promoting the welfare and greatness of a common empire. many of the irish patriots of and desired separation, because they thought that ireland, attached to england, could never be more than the obscure satellite of a greater state. when ireland has been heartily welcomed by the democracy of great britain as an equal partner, the ground for any such desire will have disappeared, and union will rest on a foundation firmer than has ever before existed. ireland will feel, when those rights of self-government have been secured for which she has pleaded so long, that she owes them, not only to her own tenacity and courage, but to the magnanimity, the justice, and the freely given sympathy of the english and scottish people. _october_, . footnotes: [footnote : this article, which originally appeared in the american _new princeton review_, has been added to in a few places, in order to bring its narrative of facts up to date.] [footnote : the experience of the last few months, which has shown us rural boards of guardians and municipal bodies over four-fifths of ireland displaying their zeal in the nationalist cause, has amply confirmed this anticipation, expressed nearly a year ago.] some arguments considered.[ ] by john morley. it is a favourite line of argument to show that we have no choice between the maintenance of the union and the concession to ireland of national independence. the evils of irish independence are universally reckoned by englishmen to be so intolerable that we shall never agree to it. the evils of home rule are even more intolerable still. therefore, it is said, if we shall never willingly bring the latter upon our heads, _à fortiori_ we ought on no account to invite the former. the business in hand, however, is not a theorem, but a problem; it is not a thesis to be proved, but a malady to be cured; and the world will thank only the reasoner who winds up, not with q.e.d., but with q.e.f. to reason that a patient ought not to take a given medicine because it may possibly cause him more pain than some other medicine which he has no intention of taking, is curiously oblique logic. the question is not oblique; it is direct. will the operation do more harm to his constitution than the slow corrosions of a disorder grown inveterate? are the conditions of the connection between england and ireland, as laid down in the act of union, incapable of improvement? is the present working of these conditions more prosperous and hopeful, or happier for irish order and for english institutions, than any practicable proposal that it is within the compass of statesmanship to devise, and of civic sense to accept and to work? that is the question. some people contend that the burden of making out a case rests on the advocate of change, and not on those who support things as they are. but who supports things as they are? things as they are have become insupportable. if you make any of the constitutional changes that have been proposed, we are told, parliamentary government, as englishmen now know it, is at an end; and our critic stands amazed at those "who deem it a slighter danger to innovate on the act of union than to remodel the procedure of the house of commons." as if that were the alternative. great changes in the rules may do other good things, but no single competent authority believes that in this particular they will do the thing that we want. we cannot avoid constitutional changes. it is made matter of crushing rebuke that the irish proposals of the late government were an innovation on the old constitution of the realm. but everybody knows that, while ancient forms have survived, the last hundred years have witnessed a long succession of silent but most profound innovations. it was shortsighted to assume that the redistribution of political power that took place in - was the last chapter of the history of constitutional change. it ought to have been foreseen that new possessors of power, both irish and british, would press for objects the pursuit of which would certainly involve further novelties in the methods and machinery of government. every given innovation must be rigorously scrutinized, but in the mere change or in the fact of innovation there is no valid reproach. when one of the plans for the better government of ireland is described as depriving parliamentary institutions of their elasticity and strength, as weakening the executive at home, and lessening the power of the country to resist foreign attack, no careful observer of the events of the last seven years can fail to see that all this evil has already got its grip upon us. mr. dicey himself admits it. "great britain," he says, "if left to herself, could act with all the force, consistency, and energy given by unity of sentiment and community of interests. the obstruction and the uncertainty of our political aims, the feebleness and inconsistency with which they are pursued, arise in part at least from the connection with ireland." so then, after all, it is feebleness and inconsistency, not elasticity and strength, that mark our institutions as they stand; feebleness and inconsistency, distraction and uncertainty. the supporter of things as they are is decidedly as much concerned in making out a case as the advocate of change. the strength of the argument from nationality is great, and full of significance; but nationality is not the whole essence of either the argument from history or the argument from self-government. their force lies in considerations of political expediency as tested by practical experience. the point of the argument from the lessons of history is that for some reason or another the international concern, whose unlucky affairs we are now trying to unravel, has always been carried on at a loss: the point of the argument from self-government is that the loss would have been avoided if the irish shareholders had for a certain number of the transactions been more influentially represented on the board. that is quite apart from the sentiment of pure nationality. the failure has come about, not simply because the laws were not made by irishmen as such, but because they were not made by the men who knew most about ireland. the vice of the connection between the two countries has been the stupidity of governing a country without regard to the interests or customs, the peculiar objects and peculiar experiences, of the great majority of the people who live in it. it is not enough to say that the failures of england in ireland have to a great extent flowed from causes too general to be identified with the intentional wrong-doing either of rulers or of subjects. we readily admit that, but it is not the point. it is not enough to insist that james i., in his plantations and transplantations, probably meant well to his irish subjects. probably he did. that is not the question. if it is "absolutely certain that his policy worked gross wrong," what is the explanation and the defence? we are quite content with mr. dicey's own answer. "ignorance and want of sympathy produced all the evils of cruelty and malignity. an intended reform produced injustice, litigation, misery, and discontent. the case is noticeable, for it is a type of a thousand subsequent english attempts to reform and improve ireland." this description would apply, with hardly a word altered, to the wrong done by the encumbered estates act in the reign of queen victoria. that memorable measure, as mr. gladstone said, was due not to the action of a party, but to the action of a parliament. sir robert peel was hardly less responsible for it than lord john russell. "we produced it," said mr. gladstone, "with a general, lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention of taking capital to ireland. what did we do? we sold the improvements of the tenants" (house of commons, april ). it is the same story, from the first chapter to the last, in education, poor law, public works, relief acts, even in coercion acts--lazy, uninformed, and irreflective good intention. that is the argument from history. when we are asked what good law an irish parliament would make that could not equally well be made by the parliament at westminster, this is the answer. it is not the will, it is the intelligence, that is wanting. we all know what the past has been. why should the future be different? "it is an inherent condition of human affairs," said mill in a book which, in spite of some chimeras, is a wholesome corrective of the teaching of our new jurists, "that no intention, however sincere, of protecting the interests of others can make it safe or salutary to tie up their own hands. still more obviously true is it, that by their own hands only can any positive and durable improvement of their circumstances in life be worked out" (_repres. government_, p. ). it is these wise lessons from human experience to which the advocate of home rule appeals, and not the wild doctrine that any body of persons claiming to be united by a sense of nationality possesses _an inherent and divine right_ to be treated as an independent community. it is quite true that circumstances sometimes justify a temporary dictatorship. in that there is nothing at variance with liberalism. but the parliamentary dictatorship in ireland has lasted a great deal too long to be called temporary, and its stupid shambling operations are finally and decisively condemned by their consequences. that is a straightforward utilitarian argument, and has nothing whatever to do with inherent and divine rights, or any other form of political moonshine. there are some who believe that an honest centralized administration of impartial officials, and not local self-government, would best meet the real wants of the people. in other words, everything is to be for the people, nothing by the people--which has not hitherto been a liberal principle. something, however, may be said for this view, provided that the source of the authority of such an administration be acceptable. austrian administration in lombardy was good rather than bad, yet it was hated and resisted because it was austrian and not italian. no rational person can hold for an instant that the source of a scheme of government is immaterial to its prosperity. more than that, when people look for success in the government of ireland to "honest centralized administration," we cannot but wonder what fault they find with the administration of ireland to-day in respect of its honesty or its centralization. what administration ever carried either honesty or centralization to a higher pitch than the irish administration of mr. forster? what could be less successful? those who have been most directly concerned in the government of ireland, whether english or irish, even while alive to the perils of any other principle, habitually talk of centralization as the curse of the system. here, again, why should we expect success in the future from a principle that has so failed in the past? again, how are we to get a strong centralized administration in the face of a powerful and hostile parliamentary representation? it is very easy to talk of the benefits that might have been conferred on ireland by such humanity and justice as was practised by turgot in his administration of the generality of limoges. but turgot was not confronted by eighty-six limousin members of an active sovereign body, all interested in making his work difficult, and trusted by a large proportion of the people of the province with that as their express commission. it is possible to have an honest centralized administration of great strength and activity in india, but there is no parliament in india. if india, or any province of it, ever gets representative government and our parliamentary system, from that hour, if there be any considerable section of indian feeling averse from european rule, the present administrative system will be paralyzed, as the preliminary to being revolutionized. it is conceivable, if any one chooses to think so, that a body of impartial officials could manage the national business in ireland much better without the guidance of public opinion and common sentiment than with it. but if you intend to govern the country as you think best--and that is the plain and practical english of centralized administration--why ask the country to send a hundred men to the great tribunal of supervision to inform you how it would like to be governed? the executive cannot set them aside as if they were a hundred dummies; in refusing to be guided, it cannot escape being harassed, by them. you may amend procedure, but that is no answer, unless you amend the irish members out of voice and vote. they will still count. you cannot gag and muzzle them effectually, and if you could, they would still be there, and their presence would still make itself incessantly felt. partly from a natural desire to lessen the common difficulties of government, and partly from a consciousness, due to the prevailing state of the modern political atmosphere, that there is something wrong in this total alienation of an executive from the possessors of parliamentary power, the officials will incessantly be tempted to make tacks out of their own course; and thus they lose the coherency and continuity of absolutism without gaining the pliant strength of popular government. this is not a presumption of what would be likely to happen, but an account of what does happen, and what justified mr. disraeli in adding a weak executive to the alien church and the absentee aristocracy, as the three great curses of ireland. nothing has occurred since to render the executive stronger, but much to the contrary. there is, and there can be, no weaker or less effective government in the world than a highly centralized system working alongside of a bitterly inimical popular representation. i say nothing of the effect of the fluctuations of english parties on irish administration. i say nothing of the tendency in an irish government, awkwardly alternating with that to which i have just adverted, to look over the heads of the people of ireland, and to consider mainly what will be thought by the ignorant public in england. but these sources of incessant perturbation must not be left out. the fault of irish centralization is not that it is strong, but that it is weak. weak it must remain until parliament either approves of the permanent suspension of the irish writs, or else devises constitutional means for making irish administration responsible to irish representatives. if experience is decisive against the policy of the past, experience too, all over the modern world, indicates the better direction for the future. i will not use my too scanty space in repeating any of the great wise commonplaces in praise of self-government. here they are superfluous. in the case of ireland they have all been abundantly admitted in a long series of measures, from catholic emancipation down to lord o'hagan's jury law and the franchise and redistribution acts of a couple of years ago. the principle of self-government has been accepted, ratified, and extended in a hundred ways. it is only a question of the form that self-government shall take. against the form proposed by the late ministry a case is built up that rests on a series of prophetic assumptions. these assumptions, from the nature of the case, can only be met by a counter-statement of fair and reasonable probabilities. let us enumerate some of them. . it is inferred that, because the irish leaders have used violent language and resorted to objectionable expedients against england during the last six years, they would continue in the same frame of mind after the reasons for it had disappeared. in other words, because they have been the enemies of a government which refused to listen to a constitutional demand, therefore they would continue to be its enemies after the demand had been listened to. on this reasoning, the effect is to last indefinitely and perpetually, notwithstanding the cessation of the cause. our position is that all the reasonable probabilities of human conduct point the other way. the surest way of justifying violent language and fostering treasonable designs, is to refuse to listen to the constitutional demand. . the irish, we are told, hate the english with an irreconcilable hatred, and would unquestionably use any constitution as an instrument for satisfying their master passion. irrational hatred, they say, can be treated by rational men with composure. the czechs of bohemia are said to be irreconcilable, yet the south germans bear with their hatred; and if we cannot cure we might endure the antipathy of ireland. now, as for the illustration, i may remark that the hatred of the czechs would be much too formidable for german composure, if the czechs did not happen to possess a provincial charter and a special constitution of their own. if the irish had the same, their national dislike--so far as it exists--might be expected to become as bearable as the germans have found the feeling of the czechs. but how deep does irish dislike go? is it directed against englishmen, or against an english official system? the answers of every impartial observer to the whole group of such questions as these favour the conclusion that the imputed hatred of england in ireland has been enormously exaggerated and overcoloured by ascendency politicians for good reasons of their own; that with the great majority of irishmen it has no deep roots; that it is not one of those passionate international animosities that blind men to their own interests, or lead them to sacrifice themselves for the sake of injuring their foe; and, finally, that it would not survive the amendment of the system that has given it birth.[ ] . it is assumed that there is a universal desire for separation. that there is a strong sentiment of nationality we of course admit; it is part of the case, and not the worst part. but the sentiment of nationality is a totally different thing from a desire for separation. scotland might teach our pseudo-unionists so much as that. nowhere in the world is the sentiment of nationality stronger, yet there is not a whisper of separation. that there is a section of irishmen who desire separation is notorious, but everything that has happened since the government of ireland bill was introduced, including the remarkable declarations of mr. parnell in accepting the bill (june ), and including the proceedings at chicago, shows that the separatist section is a very small one either in ireland or in america, and that it has become sensibly smaller since, and in consequence of, the proposed concession of a limited statutory constitution. the irish are quite shrewd enough to know that separation, if it were attainable--and they are well aware that it is not--would do no good to their markets; and to that knowledge, as well as to many other internal considerations, we may confidently look for the victory of strong centripetal over very weak centrifugal tendencies. even if we suppose these centrifugal tendencies to be stronger than i would allow them to be, how shall we best resist them--by strengthening the hands and using the services of the party which, though nationalist, is also constitutional; or by driving that party also, in despair of a constitutional solution, to swell the ranks of extremists and irreconcilables? . whatever may be the ill-feeling towards england, it is at least undeniable that there are bitter internal animosities in ireland, and a political constitution, our opponents argue, can neither assuage religious bigotry nor remove agrarian discontent. it is true, no doubt, that the old feud between protestant and catholic might, perhaps, not instantly die down to the last smouldering embers of it all over ireland. but we may remark that there is no perceptible bad blood between protestant and catholic, outside of one notorious corner. second, the real bitterness of the feud arose from the fact that protestantism was associated with an exclusive and hostile ascendency, which would now be brought to an end. whatever feeling about what is called ulster exists in the rest of ireland, arises not from the fact that there are protestants in ulster, but that the protestants are anti-national. third, the catholics would no longer be one compact body for persecuting, obscurantist, or any other evil purposes; the abatement of the national struggle would allow the catholics to fall into the two natural divisions of clerical and liberal. what we may be quite sure of is that the feud will never die so long as sectarian pretensions are taken as good reasons for continuing bad government. it is true, again, that a constitution would not necessarily remove agrarian discontent. but it is just as true that you will never remove agrarian discontent without a constitution. mr. dicey, on consideration, will easily see why. here we come to an illustration, and a very impressive illustration it is, of the impotence of england to do for ireland the good which ireland might do for herself. nobody just now is likely to forget the barbarous condition of the broad fringe of wretchedness on the west coast of ireland. of this lord dufferin truly said in that no legislation could touch it, that no alteration in the land laws could effectually ameliorate it, and that it must continue until the world's end unless something be contrived totally to change the conditions of existence in that desolate region. parliament lavishly pours water into the sieve in the shape of relief acts. even in my own short tenure of office i was responsible for one of these terribly wasteful and profoundly unsatisfactory measures. instead of relief, what a statesman must seek is prevention of this great evil and strong root of evil; and prevention means a large, though it cannot be a very swift, displacement of the population. but among the many experts with whom i have discussed this dolorous and perplexing subject, i never found one of either political party who did not agree that a removal of the surplus population was only practicable if carried out by an irish authority, backed by the solid weight of irish opinion. any exertion of compulsory power by a british minister would raise the whole country-side in squalid insurrection, government would become impossible, and the work of transplantation would end in ghastly failure. it is misleading and untrue, then, to say that there is no possible relation between self-government and agrarian discontent, misery, and backwardness; and when mr. dicey and others tell us that the british parliament is able to do all good things for ireland, i would respectfully ask them how a british parliament is to deal with the congested districts. nearly as much may be said of the prevention of the mischievous practice of subdivision. some contend that the old disposition to subdivide is dying out; others, however, assure us that it is making its appearance even among the excellent class who purchased their holdings under the church act. that act did not prohibit subdivision, but it is prohibited in the act of . still the prohibition can only be made effective, if operations take place on anything like a great scale, on condition that representative, authorities resident on the spot have the power of enforcing it, and have an interest in enforcing it. some of the pseudo-unionists are even against any extension of local self-government, and if it be unaccompanied by the creation of a central native authority they are right. what such people fail to see is that, in resisting political reconstruction, they are at the same time resisting the only available remedies for some of the worst of agrarian maladies. the ruinous interplay between agrarian and political forces, each using the other for ends of its own, will never cease so long as the political demand is in every form resisted. that, we are told, is all the fault of the politicians. be it so; then the government must either suppress the politicians outright, or else it must interest them in getting the terms of its land settlement accepted and respected. home rule on our scheme was, among other things, part of an arrangement for "settling the agrarian feud." it was a means of interposing between the irish tenant and the british state an authority interested enough and strong enough to cause the bargain to be kept. it is said that the irish authority would have had neither interest nor strength enough to resist the forces making for repudiation. would those forces be any less irresistible if the whole body of the irish peasantry stood, as land purchase _minus_ self-government makes them to stand, directly face to face with the british state? this is a question that our opponents cannot evade, any more than they can evade that other question, which lies unnoticed at the back of all solutions of the problem by way of peasant ownership--whether it is possible to imagine the land of ireland handed over to irishmen, and yet the government of ireland kept exclusively and directly by englishmen? such a divorce is conceivable under a rule like that of the british in india: with popular institutions it is inconceivable and impossible. . it is argued that home rule on mr. gladstone's plan would not work, because it follows in some respects the colonial system, whereas the conditions at the root of the success of the system in the colonies do not exist in ireland. they are distant, ireland is near; they are prosperous, ireland is poor; they are proud of the connection with england, ireland resents it. but the question is not whether the conditions are identical with those of any colony; it is enough if in themselves they seem to promise a certain basis for government. it might justly be contended that proximity is a more favourable condition than distance; without it there could not be that close and constant intercommunication which binds the material interests of ireland to those of great britain, and so provides the surest guarantee for union. if ireland were suddenly to find herself as far off as canada, then indeed one might be very sorry to answer for the union. again, though ireland has to bear her share of the prevailing depression in the chief branch of her production, it is a great mistake to suppose that outside of the margin of chronic wretchedness in the west and south-west, the condition not only of the manufacturing industries of the north, but of the agricultural industry in the richer parts of the middle and south, is so desperately unprosperous as to endanger a political constitution. under our stupidily [transcriber: sic] centralized system, irishmen have no doubt acquired the enervating trick of attributing every misfortune, great or small, public or private, to the government. when they learn the lessons of responsibility, they will unlearn this fatal habit, and not before. i do not see, therefore, that the differences in condition between ireland and the colonies make against home rule. what i do see is ample material out of which would arise a strong and predominant party of order. the bulk of the nation are sons and daughters of a church which has been hostile to revolution in every country but ireland, and which would be hostile to it there from the day that the cause of revolution ceased to be the cause of self-government. if the peasantry were made to realize that at last the land settlement, wisely and equitably made, was what it must inexorably remain, and what no politicians could help them to alter, they would be as conservative as the peasantry under a similar condition in every other spot on the surface of the globe. there is no reason to expect that the manufacturers, merchants, and shopkeepers of ireland would be less willing or less able to play an active and useful part in the affairs of their country than the same classes in england or scotland. it will be said that this is mere optimist prophesying. but why is that to be flung aside under the odd name of sentimentalism, while pessimist prophesying is to be taken for gospel? the only danger is lest we should allot new responsibilities to irishmen with a too grudging and restrictive hand. for true responsibility there must be real power. it is easy to say that this power would be misused, and that the conditions both of irish society and of the proposed constitution must prevent it from being used for good. it is easy to say that separation would be a better end. life is too short to discuss that. separation is not the alternative either to home rule or to the _status quo_. if the people of ireland are not to be trusted with real power over their own affairs, it would be a hundred times more just to england, and more merciful to ireland, to take away from her that semblance of free government which torments and paralyzes one country, while it robs the other of national self-respect and of all the strongest motives and best opportunities of self-help. the _status quo_ is drawing very near to its inevitable end. the two courses then open will be home rule on the one hand, and some shy bungling underhand imitation of a crown colony on the other. we shall have either to listen to the irish representatives or to suppress them. unless we have lost all nerve and all political faculty we shall, before many months are over, face these alternatives. liberals are for the first; tories at present incline to the second. it requires very moderate instinct for the forces at work in modern politics to foresee the path along which we shall move, in the interests alike of relief to great britain and of a sounder national life for ireland. the only real question is not whether we are to grant home rule, but how. footnotes: [footnote : the following pages, with one or two slight alterations, are extracted, by the kind permission of mr. james knowles, from two articles which were published in the _nineteenth century_ at the beginning of the present year, in reply to professor dicey's statement of the english case against home rule.] [footnote : the late j.e. cairnes, after describing the clearances after the famine, goes on to say, "i own i cannot wonder that a thirst for revenge should spring from such calamities; that hatred, even undying hatred, for what they could not but regard as the cause and symbol of their misfortunes--english rule in ireland--should possess the sufferers.... the disaffection now so widely diffused throughout ireland may possibly in some degree be fed from historical traditions, and have its remote origin in the confiscations of the seventeenth century; but all that gives it energy, all that renders it dangerous, may, i believe, be traced to exasperation produced by recent transactions, and more especially to the bitter memories left by that most flagrant abuse of the rights of property and most scandalous disregard of the claims of humanity--the wholesale clearances of the period following the famine."--_political essays_, p. .] lessons of irish history in the eighteenth century. by w.e. gladstone. ireland for more than seven hundred years has been part of the british territory, and has been with slight exceptions held by english arms, or governed in the last resort from this side the water. scotland was a foreign country until , and possessed absolute independence until . yet, whether it was due to the standing barrier of the sea, or whatever may have been the cause, much less was known by englishmen of ireland than of scotland. witness the works of shakespeare, whose mind, unless as to book-knowledge, was encyclopædic, and yet who, while he seems at home in scotland, may be said to tell us nothing of ireland, unless it is that-- "the uncivil kerns of ireland are in arms."[ ] during more recent times, the knowledge of scotland on this side the border, which before was greatly in advance, has again increased in afar greater degree than the knowledge of ireland. it is to mr. lecky that we owe the first serious effort, both in his _leaders of public opinion_ and in his _history of england in the eighteenth century_, to produce a better state of things. he carefully and completely dovetailed the affairs of ireland into english history, and the debt is one to be gratefully acknowledged. but such remedies, addressing themselves in the first instance to the lettered mind of the country, require much time to operate upon the mass, and upon the organs of superficial and transitory opinion, before the final stage, when they enter into our settled and familiar traditions. meantime, since ireland threatens to absorb into herself our parliamentary life, there is a greatly enhanced necessity for becoming acquainted with the true state of the account between the islands that make up the united kingdom, and with the likelihoods of the future in ireland, so far as they are to be gathered from her past history. that history, until the eighteenth century begins, has a dismal simplicity about it. murder, persecution, confiscation too truly describe its general strain; and policy is on the whole subordinated to violence as the standing instrument of government. but after, say, the reign of william iii., the element of representation begins to assert itself. simplicity is by degrees exchanged for complexity; the play of human motives, singularly diversified, now becomes visible in the currents of a real public life. it has for a very long time been my habit, when consulted by young political students, to recommend them carefully to study the characters and events of the american independence. quite apart from the special and temporary reasons bearing upon the case, i would now add a twin recommendation to examine and ponder the lessons of irish history during the eighteenth century. the task may not be easy, but the reward will be ample. the mainspring of public life had, from a venerable antiquity, lain _de jure_ within ireland herself. the heaviest fetter upon this life was the law of poynings; the most ingenious device upon record for hamstringing legislative independence, because it cut off the means of resumption inherent in the nature of parliaments such as were those of the three countries. but the law of poynings was an irish law. its operation effectually aided on the civil side those ruder causes, under the action of which ireland had lain for four centuries usually passive, and bleeding at every pore. the main factors of her destiny worked, in practice, from this side the water. but from the reign of anne, or perhaps from the revolution onwards, "novus sæcorum nascitur ordo." of the three great nostrums so liberally applied by england, extirpation and persecution had entirely failed, but confiscation had done its work. the great protestant landlordism of ireland[ ] had been strongly and effectually built up. but, like other human contrivances, while it held ireland fast, it had also undesigned results. the repressed principle of national life, the struggles of which had theretofore been extinguished in blood, slowly sprang up anew in a form which, though extremely narrow, and extravagantly imperfect, was armed with constitutional guarantees; and, the regimen of violence once displaced, these guarantees were sure to operate. what had been transacted in england under plantagenets and stuarts was, to a large extent, transacted anew by the parliament of ireland in the eighteenth century. that parliament, indeed, deserves almost every imaginable epithet of censure. it was corrupt, servile, selfish, cruel. but when we have said all this, and said it truly, there is more to tell. it was alive, and it was national. even absenteeism, that obstinately clinging curse, though it enfeebled and distracted, could not, and did not, annihilate nationality. the irish legislation was, moreover, compressed and thwarted by a foreign executive; but even to this tremendous agent the vital principle was too strong eventually to succumb. mr. lecky well observes that the irish case supplied "one of the most striking examples upon record"[ ] of an unconquerable efficacy in even the most defective parliament. i am, however, doubtful whether in this proposition we have before us the whole case. this efficacy is not invariably found even in tolerably constructed parliaments. why do we find it in a parliament of which the constitution and the environment were alike intolerable? my answer is, because that parliament found itself faced by a british influence which was entirely anti-national, and was thus constrained to seek for strength in the principle of nationality. selfishness is a rooted principle of action in nations not less than in single persons. it seems to draw a certain perfume from the virtue of patriotism, which lies upon its borders. it stalks abroad with a semblance of decency, nay, even of excellence. and under this cover a paramount community readily embraces the notion, that a dependent community may be made to exist not for its own sake, but for the sake of an extraneous society of men. with this idea, the european nations, utterly benighted in comparison with the ancient greeks, founded their transmarine dependencies. but a vast maritime distance, perhaps aided by some filtration of sound ideas, prevented the application of this theory in its nakedness and rigour to the american colonies of england. in ireland we had not even the title of founders to allege. nay, we were, in point of indigenous civilization, the junior people. but the maritime severance, sufficient to prevent accurate and familiar knowledge, was not enough to bar the effective exercise of overmastering power. and power was exercised, at first from without, to support the pale, to enlarge it, to make it include ireland. when this had been done, power began, in the seventeenth century, to be exercised from within ireland, within the precinct of its government and its institutions. these were carefully corrupted, from the multiplication of the boroughs by james i. onwards, for the purpose. the struggle became civil, instead of martial; and it was mainly waged by agencies on the spot, not from beyond the channel. when the rule of england passed over from the old violence into legal forms and doctrines, the irish reaction against it followed the example. and the legal idea of irish nationality took its rise in very humble surroundings; if the expression may be allowed, it was born in the slums of politics. ireland reached the nadir of political depression when, at and after the boyne, she had been conquered not merely by an english force, but by continental mercenaries. the ascendant protestantism of the island had never stood so low in the aspect it presented to this country; inasmuch as the irish parliament, for the first time, i believe, declared itself dependent upon england,[ ] and either did not desire, or did not dare, to support its champion molyneux, when his work asserting irish independence was burned in london. it petitioned for representation in the english parliament, not in order to uplift the irish people, but in order to keep them down. in its sympathies and in its aims the overwhelming mass of the population had no share. it was swift who, by the _drapier's letters_, for the first time called into existence a public opinion flowing from and representing ireland as a whole. he reasserted the doctrine of molyneux, and denounced wood's halfpence not only as a foul robbery, but as a constitutional and as a national insult. the patience of the irish protestants was tried very hard, and they were forced, as sir charles duffy states in his vivid book, to purchase the power of oppressing their roman catholic fellow-countrymen at a great price.[ ] their pension list was made to provide the grants too degrading to be tolerated in england. the presbyterians had to sit down under the episcopal monopoly; but the enjoyment of that monopoly was not left to the irish episcopalians. in the time of henry viii. it had been necessary to import an english archbishop browne[ ] and an english bishop bale, or there might not have been a single protestant in ireland. it was well to enrich the rolls of the church of ireland with the piety and learning of ussher, and to give her in bedell one name, at least, which carries the double crown of the hero and the saint. but, after the restoration, by degrees the practice degenerated, and englishmen were appointed in numbers to the irish episcopate in order to fortify and develop by numerical force what came to be familiarly known as the english interest. so that the primate boulter, during his government of ireland, complains[ ] that englishmen are still less than one-half the whole body of bishops, although the most important sees were to a large extent in their hands. the same practice was followed in the higher judicial offices. fitzgibbon was the first irishman who became lord chancellor.[ ] the viceroy, commonly absent, was represented by lords justices, who again were commonly english; and primate boulter, a most acute and able man, jealous of an irish speaker in that character, recommends that the commander of the forces should take his place.[ ] when, later on, the viceroy resided, it was a rule that the chief secretary should be an englishman. on the occasion when lord castlereagh was by way of exception admitted to that office, an apology was found for it in his entire devotion to english policy and purposes. "his appointment," says lord cornwallis, "gives me great satisfaction, as he is so very unlike an irishman!"[ ] resources were also found in the military profession, and among the voters for the union we find the names of eight[ ] english generals. the arrangements under poynings's law, and the commercial proscription, drove the iron ever deeper and deeper into the souls of irishmen. it is but small merit in the irish parliament of george i. and george ii., if under these circumstances a temper was gradually formed in, and transmitted by, them, which might one day achieve the honours of patriotism. it was in dread of this most healthful process, that the english government set sedulously to work for its repression. the odious policy was maintained by a variety of agencies; by the misuse of irish revenue, a large portion of which was unhappily under their control; by maintaining the duration of the irish house of commons for the life of the sovereign; and, worst of all, by extending the range of corruption within the walls, through the constant multiplication of paid offices tenable by members of parliament without even the check of re-election on acceptance. thus by degrees those who sat in the irish houses came to feel both that they had a country, and that their country had claims upon them. the growth of a commercial interest in the roman catholic body must have accelerated the growth of this idea, as that interest naturally fell into line with the resistance to the english prescriptive laws. but the rate of progress was fearfully slow. it was hemmed in on every side by the obstinate unyielding pressure of selfish interests: the interest of the established church against the presbyterians; the interest of the protestant laity, or tithe-payers, against the clergy; the bold unscrupulous interest of a landlords' parliament against the occupier of the soil; which, together with the grievance of the system of tithe-proctors, established in ireland through the whiteboys the fatal alliance between resistance to wrong and resistance to law, and supplied there the yet more disastrous facility of sustaining and enforcing wrong under the name of giving support to public tranquillity. yet, forcing on its way amidst all these difficulties by a natural law, in a strange haphazard and disjointed method, and by a zigzag movement, there came into existence, and by degrees into steady operation, a sentiment native to ireland and having ireland for its vital basis, and yet not deserving the name of irish patriotism, because its care was not for a nation, but for a sect. for a sect, in a stricter sense than may at first sight be supposed. the battle was not between popery and a generalized protestantism, though, even if it had been so, it would have been between a small minority and the vast majority of the irish people. it was not a party of ascendency, but a party of monopoly, that ruled. it must always be borne in mind that the roman catholic aristocracy had been emasculated, and reduced to the lowest point of numerical and moral force by the odious action of the penal laws, and that the mass of the roman catholic population, clerical and lay, remained under the grinding force of many-sided oppression, and until long after the accession of george iii. had scarcely a consciousness of political existence. as long as the great bulk of the nation could be equated to zero, the episcopal monopolists had no motive for cultivating the good-will of the presbyterians, who like the roman catholics maintained their religion, with the trivial exception of the _regium donum_, by their own resources, and who differed from them in being not persecuted, but only disabled. and this monopoly, which drew from the sacred name of religion its title to exist, offered through centuries an example of religious sterility to which a parallel can hardly be found among the communions of the christian world. the sentiment, then, which animated the earlier efforts of the parliament might be _iricism_, but did not become patriotism until it had outgrown, and had learned to forswear or to forget, the conditions of its infancy. neither did it for a long time acquire the courage of its opinions; for, when lucas, in the middle of the century, reasserted the doctrine of molyneux and of swift, the grand jury of dublin took part against him, and burned his book.[ ] and the parliament,[ ] prompted by the government, drove him into exile. and yet the smoke showed that there was fire. the infant, that confronted the british government in the parliament house, had something of the young hercules about him. in the first exercises of strength he acquired more strength, and in acquiring more strength he burst the bonds that had confined him. "es machte mir zu eng, ich mussie fort."[ ] the reign of george iv. began with resolute efforts of the parliament not to lengthen, as in england under his grandfather, but to shorten its own commission, and to become septennial. surely this was a noble effort. it meant the greatness of their country, and it meant also personal self-sacrifice. the parliament which then existed, elected under a youth of twenty-two, had every likelihood of giving to the bulk of its members a seat for life. this they asked to change for a _maximum_ term of seven years. this from session to session, in spite of rejection after rejection in england, they resolutely fought to obtain. it was an english amendment which, on a doubtful pretext; changed seven years to eight. without question some acted under the pressure of constituents; but only a minority of the members had constituents, and popular exigencies from such a quarter might have been bought off by an occasional vote, and could not have induced a war with the executive and with england so steadily continued, unless a higher principle had been at work. the triumph came at last; and from onwards the commons never wholly relapsed into their former quiescence. true, this was for a protestant house, constituency, and nation; but ere long they began to enlarge their definition of nationality. flood and lucas, the commanders in the real battle, did not dream of giving the roman catholics a political existence, but to their own constituents they performed an honourable service and gave a great boon. those, who had insincerely supported the measure, became the dupes of their own insincerity. in the very year of this victory, a bill for a slight relaxation of the penal laws was passed, but met its death in england.[ ] other bills followed, and one of them became an act in . a beginning had thus been made on behalf of religious liberty, as a corollary to political emancipation. it was like a little ray of light piercing its way through the rocks into a cavern and supplying the prisoner at once with guidance and with hope. resolute action, in withholding or shortening supply, convinced the executive in dublin, and the ministry in london, that serious business was intended. and it appeared, even in this early stage, how necessary it was for a fruitful campaign on their own behalf to enlarge their basis, and enlist the sympathies of hitherto excluded fellow-subjects. it may seem strange that the first beginnings of successful endeavour should have been made on behalf not of the "common protestantism," but of roman catholics. but, as mr. lecky has shown, the presbyterians had been greatly depressed and distracted, while the roman catholics had now a strong position in the commerce of the country, and in dublin knocked, as it were, at the very doors of the parliament. there may also have been an apprehension of republican sentiments among the protestants of the north, from which the roman catholics were known to be free. not many years, however, passed before the softening and harmonizing effects, which naturally flow from a struggle for liberty, warmed the sentiment of the house in favour of the presbyterians. a bill was passed by the irish parliament in , which greatly mitigated the stringency of the penal laws. moreover, in its preamble was recited, as a ground for this legislation, that for "a long series of years" the roman catholics had exhibited an "uniform peaceable behaviour." in doing and saying so much, the irish parliament virtually bound itself to do more.[ ] in this bill was contained a clause which repealed the sacramental test, and thereby liberated the presbyterians from disqualification. but the bill had to pass the ordeal of a review in england, and there the clause was struck out. the bill itself, though mutilated, was wisely passed by a majority of to . even in this form it excited the enthusiastic admiration of burke.[ ] nor were the presbyterians forgotten at the epoch when, in - , england, under the pressure of her growing difficulties, made large commercial concessions to ireland. the dublin parliament renewed the bill for the removal of the sacramental test. and it was carried by the irish parliament in the very year which witnessed in london the disgraceful riots of lord george gordon, and forty-eight years before the imperial parliament conceded, on this side the channel, any similar relief. other contemporary signs bore witness to the growth of toleration; for the volunteers, founded in , and originally a protestant body, after a time received roman catholics into their ranks. these impartial proceedings are all the more honourable to irish sentiment in general, because lord charlemont, its champion out of doors, and flood, long the leader of the independent party in the parliament, were neither of them prepared to surrender the system of protestant ascendency. in order to measure the space which had at this period been covered by the forward movement of liberality and patriotism, it is necessary to look back to the early years of the georgian period, when whiggism had acquired a decisive ascendency, and the spirits of the great deep were let loose against popery. but the temper of proscription in the two countries exhibited specific differences. extravagant in both, it became in ireland vulgar and indecent. in england, it was tilburina,[ ] gone mad in white satin; in ireland it was tilburina's maid, gone mad in white linen. the lords justices of ireland, in , recommended the parliament to put an end to all other distinctions in ireland "but that of protestant and papist."[ ] and the years that followed seem to mark the lowest point of constitutional depression for the roman catholic population in particular, as well as for ireland at large. the commons, in , prayed for measures to discover any papist enlisting in the king's service, in order that he might be expelled "and punished with the utmost severity of the law."[ ] when an oath of abjuration had been imposed which prevented nearly all priests from registering, a bill was passed by the commons in for branding the letter p on the cheek of all priests, who were unregistered, with a red-hot iron. the privy council "disliked" this punishment, and substituted for it the loathsome measure by which safe guardians are secured for eastern harems. the english government could not stomach this beastly proposal; and, says mr. lecky,[ ] unanimously restored the punishment of branding. the bill was finally lost in ireland, but only owing to a clause concerning leases. it had gone to england winged with a prayer from the commons that it might be recommended "in the most effectual manner to his majesty," and by the assurance of the viceroy in reply that they might depend on his due regard to what was desired.[ ] in the same year passed the act which declared the title of the british parliament to make laws for the government of ireland. on the accession of george ii., a considerable body of roman catholics offered an address of congratulation. it was received by the lords justices with silent contempt, and no one knows whether it ever reached its destination. finally, the acute state-craft of primate boulter resisted habitually the creation of an "irish interest," and above all any capacity of the roman catholics to contribute to its formation; and in the first year of george ii. a clause was introduced in committee into a harmless bill[ ] for the regulation of elections, which disfranchised at a single stroke all the roman catholic voters in ireland who up to that period had always enjoyed the franchise. it is painful to record the fact that the remarkable progress gradually achieved was in no way due to british influence. for nearly forty years from the arrival of archbishop boulter in ireland, the government of ireland was in the hands of the primates. the harshness of administration was gradually tempered, especially in the brief viceroyalty of lord chesterfield; but the british policy was steadily opposed to the enlargement of parliamentary privilege, or the creation of any irish interest, however narrow its basis, while the political extinction of the mass of the people was complete. the pecuniary wants, however, of the government, extending beyond the hereditary revenue, required a resort to the national purse. the demands which were accordingly made, and these alone, supplied the parliament with a vantage-ground, and a principle of life. the action of this principle brought with it civilizing and humanizing influences, which had become clearly visible in the early years of george iii., and which were cherished by the war of american independence, as by a strong current of fresh air in a close and murky dungeon. the force of principles, and the significance of political achievements, is to be estimated in no small degree by the slenderness of the means available to those who promote them. and the progress brought about in the irish parliament is among the most remarkable on record, because it was effected against the joint resistance of a hostile executive and of an intolerable constitution. of the three hundred members, about two-thirds were nominated by individual patrons and by close corporations. what was still worse, the action of the executive was increasingly directed, as the pulse of the national life came to beat more vigorously, to the systematic corruption of the parliament borough pensions and paid offices. in the latter part of the century, more than one-third of the members of parliament were dismissible at pleasure from public emoluments. if the base influence of the executive allied itself with the patriotic party, everything might be hoped. for we must bear in mind not only the direct influence of this expenditure on those who were in possession, but the enormous power of expectancy on those who were not. conversely, when the government were determined to do wrong, there were no means commonly available of forcing it to do right, in any matter that touched either religious bigotry or selfish interest. with so miserable an apparatus, and in the face of the ever-wakeful executive sustained by british power, it is rather wonderful how much than how little was effected. i am not aware of a single case in which a measure on behalf of freedom was proposed by british agency, and rejected by the irish parliament. on the other hand, we have a long list of the achievements of that parliament due to a courage and perseverance which faced and overcame a persistent english opposition. among other exploits, it established periodical elections, obtained the writ of habeas corpus, carried the independence of the judges, repealed the test act, limited the abominable expenditure on pensions, subjected the acceptance of office from the crown to the condition of re-election, and achieved, doubtless with the powerful aid of the volunteers, freedom of trade with england, and the repeal of poynings's act, and of the british act of .[ ] all this it did without the manifestation, either within the walls or among the roman catholic population, of any disposition to weaken the ties which bound ireland to the empire. all this it did; and what had the british parliament been about during the same period, with its vastly greater means both of self-defence and of action? it had been building up the atrocious criminal code, tampering in the case of wilkes with liberty of election, and tampering with many other liberties; driving, too, the american colonies into rebellion, while, as to good legislation, the century is almost absolutely blank, until between and we have the establishment of irish freedom, the economical reform of mr. burke, the financial reforms of mr. pitt, the new libel law of mr. fox, and the legislative constitution of canada, in which both these great statesmen concurred. but we have not yet reached the climax of irish advancement. when, in and , the legislative relations of the two countries were fundamentally rectified by the formal acknowledgment of irish nationality, the beginning of a great work was accomplished; but its final consummation, though rendered practicable and even easy, depended wholly on the continuing good intention of the british cabinet. the acts of and required a supplemental arrangement, to obviate those secondary difficulties in the working of the two legislatures, which supplied mr. pitt with his main parliamentary plea for the union. what was yet more important was the completion of the scheme in ireland itself. and this under three great heads: ( ) the purification of parliament by a large measure of reform; ( ) the abolition of all roman catholic disabilities; ( ) the establishment of a proper relation between the legislative and the executive powers. it is often urged, with cynical disregard to justice and reason, that with the grattan parliament we had corruption, coercion, discontent, and finally rebellion. but the political mischiefs, which disfigure the brief life of the grattan parliament, and the failure to obtain the two first of the three great purposes i have named, were all in the main due to the third grand flaw in the irish case after . i mean the false position, and usually mischievous character, of the irish executive, which, with its army of placemen and expectants in parliament, was commonly absolute master of the situation. well does mr. swift macneill,[ ] in his very useful work, quote the words of mr. fox in : "the advantages, which the form of a free government seemed to promise, have been counteracted by the influence of the executive government, and of the british cabinet." there were five viceroys between and . then came a sixth, lord westmoreland, the worst of them all, whose political judgment was on a par with his knowledge of the english language.[ ] the great settlement of - was in the main worked by men who were radically adverse to its spirit and intention. but they were omnipotent in their control of the unreformed. parliament of ireland, more and more drenched, under their unceasing and pestilent activity, with fresh doses of corruption. westmoreland and his myrmidons actually persuaded pitt, in , that irish protestantism and its parliament were unconquerably adverse to the admission of roman catholics to the franchise; but when the proposal was made from the throne in , notwithstanding the latent hostility of the castle, the parliament passed the bill with little delay, and "without any serious opposition."[ ] the votes against it were one and three on two divisions[ ] respectively. a minority of sixty-nine supported, against the government, a clause for extending the measure to seats in parliament. that clause, lost by a majority of ninety-four, might apparently have been carried, but for "dublin castle," by an even larger majority. i shall not here examine the interesting question, whether the mission of lord fitzwilliam was wholly due to the action of those whig statesmen who were friendly to the war, but disinclined to a junction with mr. pitt except on condition of a fundamental change in the administration of ireland. nor shall i dwell upon his sudden, swift, and disastrous recall. but i purpose here to invite attention to the most remarkable fact in the whole history of the irish parliament. when the viceroy's doom was known, when the return to the policy and party of ascendency lay darkly lowering in the immediate future, this diminutive and tainted irish parliament, with a chivalry rare even in the noblest histories, made what can hardly be called less than a bold attempt to arrest the policy of retrogression adopted by the government in london. lord fitzwilliam was the declared friend of roman catholic emancipation, which was certain to be followed by reform; and he had struck a death-blow at bigotry and monopoly in the person of their heads, mr. beresford and mr. cooke. the bill of emancipation was introduced on the th of february,[ ] with only three dissentient voices. on the th, when the london cabinet had declared dissent from the proceedings of their viceroy without recalling him, sir l. parsons at once moved an address, imploring him to continue among them, and only postponed it at the friendly request of mr. ponsonby.[ ] on the nd of march, when the recall was a fact, the house voted that lord fitzwilliam merited "the thanks of that house, and the confidence of the people."[ ] on the th the duke of leinster moved, and the house of peers carried, a similar resolution.[ ] at this epoch i pause. here there opens a new and disastrous drama of disgrace to england and misery to ireland. this is the point at which we may best learn the second and the greatest lesson taught by the history of ireland in the eighteenth century. it is this, that, awful as is the force of bigotry, hidden under the mask of religion, but fighting for plunder and for power with all the advantages of possession, of prescription, and of extraneous support, there is a david that can kill this goliath. that conquering force lies in the principle of nationality. it was the growing sense of nationality that prompted the irish parliament to develop its earlier struggles for privilege on the narrow ground into a genuine contest for freedom, civil and religious, on a ground as broad as ireland, nay, as humanity at large. if there be such things as contradictions in the world of politics, they are to be found in nationality on the one side, and bigotry of all kinds on the other, but especially religious bigotry, which is of all the most baneful. whatever is given to the first of these two is lost to the second. i speak of a reasonable and reasoning, not of a blind and headstrong nationality; of a nationality which has regard to circumstances and to traditions, and which only requires that all relations, of incorporation or of independence, shall be adjusted to them according to the laws of nature's own enactment. such a nationality was the growth of the last century in ireland. as each irishman began to feel that he had a country, to which he belonged, and which belonged to him, he was, by a true process of nature, drawn more and more into brotherhood, and into the sense of brotherhood, with those who shared the allegiance and the property, the obligation and the heritage. and this idea of country, once well conceived, presents itself as a very large idea, and as a framework for most other ideas, so as to supply the basis of a common life. hence it was that, on the coming of lord fitzwilliam, the whole generous emotion of the country leapt up with one consent, and went forth to meet him. hence it was that religious bigotry was no longer an appreciable factor in the public life of ireland. hence it was that on his recall, and in order to induce acquiescence in his recall, it became necessary to divide again the host that had, welcomed him--to put one part of it in array as orangemen, who were to be pampered and inflamed; and to quicken the self-consciousness of another and larger mass by repulsion and proscription, by stripping roman catholics of arms in the face of licence and of cruelty, and, finally, by clothing the extreme of lawlessness with the forms of law. within the last twelve months we have seen, in the streets of belfast, the painful proof that the work of beresford and of castlereagh has been found capable for the moment of revival. to aggravate or sustain irish disunion, religious bigotry has been again evoked in ireland. if the curse be an old one, there is also an old cure, recorded in the grand pharmacopoeia of history; and if the abstract force of policy and prudence are insufficient for the work, we may yet find that the evil spirit will be effectually laid by the gentle influence of a living and working irish nationality. _quod faxit deus._ footnotes: [footnote : _ henry vi._, act iii. sc. .] [footnote : lecky's _history of england in the eighteenth century_, chap, vii. vol. ii, p. .] [footnote : lecky's _history of england in the eighteenth century_, vol. ii. p. .] [footnote : duffy's _bird's-eye view_, p. .] [footnote : duffy's _bird's-eye view_, p. .] [footnote : see ball's _history of the church of ireland_, a valuable work, deserving of more attention than it seems to have received.] [footnote : boulter's _letters_, i. , _et alibi_.] [footnote : lecky's _history of england in the eighteenth century_, ii.] [footnote : boulter's _letters_, vol. ii.] [footnote : cornwallis's _correspondence_, ii. .] [footnote : grattan's _life and times_, v. .] [footnote : lecky, ii. .] [footnote : duffy, p. .] [footnote : schiller's _wallenstein_.] [footnote : lecky, iv. .] [footnote : lecky, iv. - ; brown, _laws against catholics_, pp. - .] [footnote : lecky, pp. - .] [footnote : sheridan's _critic_, act iii. sc. i.] [footnote : plowden's _history_ ( ), ii. .] [footnote : brown, _laws against catholics_, p. .] [footnote : lecky, i. .] [footnote : plowden, i. .] [footnote : geo. ii. c. ix. sect .] [footnote : see lecky, vi. .] [footnote : _the irish parliament_, p. . cassell: .] [footnote : see lecky, vi. , .] [footnote : lecky, vi. .] [footnote : plowden's _historical review_, ii. .] [footnote : ibid., ii. .] [footnote : plowden's _historical review_, ii. .] [footnote : ibid., ii. .] [footnote : ibid., ii. .] printed by william clowes and sons, limited, london and beccles. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | the original book for this e-text is full of inconsistent | | hyphenation, punctuation and capitalization, which has | | been preserved. this e-text contains irish dialect, with | | unusual spelling. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for | | a complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * ireland as it is and as it would be under home rule. sixty-two letters written by the special commissioner of the birmingham daily gazette, between march and august, . _with map of ireland showing the places visited._ birmingham: birmingham daily gazette company, limited, high street. london: , fleet street, e.c. printed by the birmingham gazette co., ltd., and , high street, birmingham. [illustration] special commissioner's preface. irish loyalists will not soon forget the early part of . arriving in dublin in march, it at once became evident that the industrial community regarded home rule, not with the academical indifference attributed to the bulk of the english electorate, but with absolute dismay; not as a possibility which might be pleasantly discussed between friends, but as a wholly unnecessary measure, darkly iniquitous, threatening the total destruction of all they held dear. english lukewarmness was hotly resented, but the certainty that england must herself receive a dangerous if not a mortal wound, was scant comfort to men who felt themselves on the eve of a hopeless struggle for political, nay, even for material existence. this was before the vast demonstrations of belfast and dublin, before the memorable function in the albert hall, london, before the hundreds of speakers sent forth by the irish unionist alliance had visited england, spreading the light of accurate knowledge, returning to ireland with tidings of comfort and joy. the change in public feeling was instant and remarkable. although from day to day the passage of the bill through the commons became more and more a certainty, the irish unionists completely discarded their fears, resuming their normal condition of trust and confidence. mr. h.l. barnardo, j.p., of dublin, aptly expressed the universal feeling when he said:-- "we have been to england, and we know three things,--that the bill will pass the commons, that the lords will throw it out, and that the english people don't care if they do." this accounted for the renewed serenity of the well-doing classes, whose air and attitude were those of men thankful for having narrowly escaped a great danger. the rebound was easily observable in cities like dublin and belfast, where also was abundantly evident the placid resignation of the separatist forces, whose discontent with the actual bill and profound distrust of its framer, superadded to an ever-increasing qualmishness inevitably arising from acquaintance with the prospective statesmen of an irish legislature, caused them to look forward to the action of the lords with ill-disguised complacency. in regions more remote the scattered loyalists lacked the consolation arising from numbers and propinquity to england, and accordingly their tremors continued, and, in a smaller degree, continue still. to them the bill is a matter of life and death; and while their industry is crippled, their mental peace is destroyed by the ever-present torture of suspense. as to the merits of the case for home rule, i would earnestly ask fair-minded opponents to remember that during my wanderings i met with numbers of intelligent and honourable men, both scots and english, who having come to ireland as earnest, nay, even by their own confession, as bigoted gladstonians, had changed their opinions on personal acquaintance with the facts, and strove with all the energy of conscientious men who had unwittingly led others astray, to repair, so far as in them lay, the results of their former political action. and it should be especially noted that of all those i so met who had arrived in ireland as home rulers, not one retained his original faith. a very slight process of inductive reasoning will develop the suggestiveness of this incontestible fact. readers will hardly require to be reminded that the letters were written, not in studious retirement with ample time at command, but for a daily paper, at the rate of nearly eight newspaper columns a week, in the intervals of travel and inquiry, often under grave difficulties and with one eye on the inexorable clock. the precepts of the master were of necessity ignored:-- _sæpe stylum vertas, iterum quæ digna legi sint scripturus; neque, te ut miretur turba labores contentus paucis lectoribus._ but before committing them to paper, the facts were sifted with scrupulous care, and where personal investigation was impracticable, nothing was adduced except upon evidence of weight and authority sufficient to prove anything. and as during a six months' hue and cry of the nationalist press of ireland, aided and abetted by some english prints, no single statement was in any degree shaken, the letters have re-appeared precisely as at first. r.j.b., special commissioner of the _birmingham daily gazette_. [illustration] [illustration] editor's review. the _birmingham daily gazette_ of august , , thus summed up the labours of its special commissioner:--we publish to-day the last of our special commissioner's letters on "ireland as it is." his task has been an arduous one, and not without a strong element of personal danger. that he has been kept under the close observation of the irish police; that they have frequently given him timely warning of personal danger; that he has dared to go to places in county clare when the police warned him to refrain, and his native car-driver refused to venture, are facts which he has modestly abstained from bringing into the prominence they deserved. we must necessarily speak of the merits of his labour with a certain measure of reserve, but the many letters which lie before us are at least a gratifying proof that his work has been appreciated, and that it has cast new lights upon the irish problem. to the simple direction, "state nothing that you cannot stand by," he has been faithful even beyond our most sanguine hopes. a stranger in a strange land seeking information wherever it can be found, and compelled on many occasions to accept the statements made to him, may easily be led into error. it is to the credit of our commissioner that he has withheld some of the most sensational stories retailed to him, because he had not an opportunity of verifying them in detail. the notorious father humphreys, of tipperary, will not soon forget his experience of giving the lie to the _gazette_; neither will those who organised an "indignation" meeting at tuam be likely to congratulate themselves upon having stung our commissioner into retaliation. it may be recalled as an illustration of the desperate efforts made to discredit him that after he had attended a nationalist meeting at dundalk he was denounced as a "liar" and a "pimp" because he had stated that he was invited to address the score of persons who had "met in their thousands" to shake the foundations of the british empire. his assailants fiercely declared that he was not invited to speak; he was only informed that he might address the meeting if he desired to do so! our commissioner has travelled about four thousand miles since he started last march. he has taken no lop-sided view of ireland. the prosperous north has been contrasted with the stagnant south, and the causes of their difference have been explained. the splendid work of industrial development inaugurated in the poverty-stricken west by that greatest of all irish secretaries, mr. balfour, has been compared with the mischievous encouragements of idleness, the lavish professions of sentimental sympathy, and the dogged refusals of substantial help since the present government took office. above all, our commissioner has provided conclusive evidence that irish nationalism is a mere delusive sham--a paltry euphemism for the predatory passion which a succession of professional agitators have aroused in the hearts of the people. if the land question could be settled, there would be an end of the clamour for independence and of the insensate shrieking against british rule. with a definite stake in the country the peasantry upon whom the nationalist agitation mainly relies would cease to place their faith in the impecunious and blatant scoundrelism which fattens upon the discord and misery which it provokes in the name of patriotism. our commissioner believes that the priests, who have an even stronger hold upon the people than the politicians, would find their power weakened if it were possible to greatly extend the system of peasant proprietary which it was the purpose of the land purchase of to foster. land hunger lies at the root of irish disaffection, and the romish hierarchy have found in the deep-rooted prejudices and the ignorant superstitions of the people a foundation upon which they have reared an appalling superstructure of social and spiritual tyranny. politicians have taught the peasantry to believe that they have been robbed of the land which is their only means of subsistence in a country that is destitute of mineral wealth, that lacks capital, and is overshadowed by the enormous commercial energy of great britain. the priests have adopted the theses of politicians, and have brought the terrors of their sacred calling into play in order to make themselves the masters of the people. home rule would be the signal for a ghastly civil war, ruinous to ireland, and fatal to that spirit of religious toleration by which the roman catholics and the protestants have obtained equal rights of citizenship under the rule of the queen and the imperial parliament. the cultured roman catholics of england and ireland look with pain and regret at the insensate bigotry and domineering intolerance which made the exposures in county meath possible. they see in these wild claims of absolutism in the domain of temporal as well as spiritual affairs, a grave danger to all pure religion. they perceive that the revival of the old sectarian passions in ireland cannot fail to react on great britain, and even if the keltic priesthood triumphed over the ulster protestants their victory would be a fatal one to all who hold by the roman catholic faith in england. home rule would bring misery and disaster in its train, and even the parnellite section of the irish people, who have shaken off clerical domination, tremble at the prospect of it while nine-tenths of their co-religionists are destitute of personal freedom. we must find the solution of ireland's disaffection in another way, and mainly by a bold handling of the agrarian question, which lies at the root of all. the task before the unionist party is not a light one. they must crush the nationalist conspiracy, and uproot the fantastic hopes which unscrupulous men have implanted in the minds of an ignorant and credulous people. they must extend the noble system of practical aid to ireland so successfully inaugurated by mr. balfour in his light railway, fishery, and agricultural development schemes. and they must mitigate the friction between owners and occupiers of the soil by making it easy and profitable for tenants and landlords alike to avail themselves of british credit in terminating a relationship which has been fraught with occasions of bitter hostility and mistrust. under such a policy we can see bright prospects of a happy future for the sister island, but under the policy of home rule we see only the lowering clouds of civil war and the dark shadows of reawakened religious animosity. [illustration] contents. page no. .--the spirit of the capital dublin, march th no. .--panic and disaster dublin, march th no. .--ulster's preparations for war belfast, april st no. .--mr. balfour's welcome belfast, april th no. .--has mr. morley lied? ballymena, april th no. .--the exodus of industry dublin, april th mr. balfour in dublin dublin, april th no. .--bad for england, ruinous to ireland limerick, april th no. .--terrorism at tipperary tipperary, april th no. .--tyranny and terrorism oolagh, co. tipperary, april th no. .--defying the land league cork, april th no. .--the cry for peace and quietness tralee, co. kerry, april th no. .--english ignorance and irish perversity limerick, april nd no. .--the curse of county clare rathkeale, co. limerick, april th no. .--lawlessness and laziness killaloe, co. clare, april th no. .--the peril to english trade ennis, co. clare, april th no. .--civil war in county clare bodyke, co. clare, may nd no. .--rent at the root of nationalism bodyke, co. clare, may nd no. .--hard facts for english readers gort, co. galway, may th no. .--indolence and improvidence athenry, co. galway, may th no. .--religion at the bottom of the irish question tuam, co. galway, may th no. .--mr. balfour's fisheries galway town, may th no. .--the land league's reign at loughrea loughrea, may th no. .--the reign of indolence salthill, may th no. .--the aran islands galway, may th no. .--the priests and outrage moycullen, connemara, may rd no. .--the connemara railway oughterard, connemara, may rd no. .--cultivating irish industry athenry, may th no. .--could we reconquer ireland? barna, co. galway, may th no. .--what rack-rent means mullingar, co. westmeath, june st no. .--the "union of hearts" athlone, june rd no. .--the "union of hearts" westport, june th no. .--home rule and irish immigration castlebar, june th no. .--tuam's indignation meeting ballina, june th no. .--why ireland does not prosper oughewall, june th no. .--in a congested district newport, co. mayo, june th no. .--irish improvidence the stumbling block mulranney, co. mayo, june th no. .--on achil island achil sound, june th no. .--the achil islanders dugort, achil island, june nd no. .--irish unfitness for self-government castlereagh, june th no. .--object lessons in irish self-government roscommon, june th no. .--the changed spirit of the capital dublin, june th no. .--at a nationalist meeting dundalk, july st no. .--in the prosperous north newry, july th no. .--the prosperous north armagh, july th no. .--a picture of romish "toleration" monaghan, july th no. .--a bit of foreign opinion enniskillen, july th no. .--the loyalists and the lawless clones, july th no. .--a search for "orange rowdyism" belfast, july th no. .--the constitution of the orange lodges portadown, july th no. .--the hollowness of home rule warrenpoint, july th no. .--the irish press on "finality" strabane, july nd no. .--how the priests control the people raphoe, co. donegal, july th no. .--what they think in county donegal stranorlar, co. donegal, july th no. .--a sample of irish "loyalty" killygordon, july th no. .--a truly patriotic priest donegal, august st no. .--do-nothing donegal donegal, august rd no. .--barefooted and dilatory ballyshannon, august th no. .--the truth about bundoran sligo, august th no. .--irish nationalism is not patriotism birmingham, august th no. .--land hunger: its cause, effect, and remedy birmingham, august th no. .--clerical domination and its consequences birmingham, august th no. .--civil war a certainty of home rule birmingham, august th [for a general index the reader is referred to the end of the volume.] ireland as it is and as it would be under home rule. ireland as it is and as it would be under home rule no. .--the spirit of the capital. by the spirit of the capital i do not mean, as an irishman would tell you, jameson's whiskey, nor yet the vivifying soul of guinness's double stout, but the mental posture of the dwellers in dublin with reference to home rule. there can be no doubt of the interest prevailing in the irish metropolis. the people are wrought into a fever-heat of expectancy and intense nervous excitement. home rule is the only topic of conversation. in hotels, on the steamers, in railway carriages, on tramcars, in the market-place, on the steps of the temples, at the corners of the streets, in the music halls, the wondering stranger hears of home rule, home rule, home rule, first, last, midst, and without end. obviously so much discussion shows difference of opinion, divergency of conception, conflicting interests. it is borne in upon you that the irish people are far from agreed as to what home rule means, and that every individual has his own pet notion, the various theories differing as widely as the education and social position of their proposers. but the most striking feature in the attitude of dublin is undoubtedly the intense, the deep-rooted, the perfervid hatred of the bill shown by the better sort of people, the nervous anxiety of the law-abiding classes, the undisguised alarm of everybody who has anything to lose, whether commercial men, private traders, manufacturers, or the representatives of learning and culture. the mere shadow of home rule has already seriously affected stocks and securities, has brought about withdrawal of capital, and is sending both english and irish commercial travellers home empty-handed. sir howard grubb, maker of the great telescope of the lick observatory, america, an irishman whose scientific and commercial successes are a glory to his country, and whose titular honours have been won by sheer force of merit, declares that the passing of the home rule bill will be the signal heralding his departure to england, with plant and working staff, and that he has been preparing for this since . one of the largest booksellers in the city tells me that, acting in conjunction with others of the trade, during the last six weeks no orders have been given to english travellers, adding--and thoughtful people should find this highly suggestive--"the dublin unionists are the people who have the money and the education. the people who have money to spend are becoming excessively careful. they know not what may be in store, but they fear that if home rule becomes law they will be ruined, and more than ninety-five per cent. of my customers are unionists." further inquiry confirmed the statement that the book-buying community are practically unionists to a man. the same figures hold good among the irish quakers. ninety-five per cent. is the proportion given to me by an eminent friend, no stranger to birmingham, intimately known to alderman white and three generations of the cadbury family. he said, "irish quakers are unionists, because they are on the spot, because they understand the subject, because they know what will follow, because they share the dangers of the threatened revolution. what may be the proportion of home rulers among the english friends i do not know, but probably the gladstonians have a majority, for precisely opposite reasons to those i have stated, that is,--they are not on the spot, do not understand the matter, are unable to see what will take place, and regard themselves as safe, whatever happens." the irish quakers have issued a manifesto which should weigh with their english brethren and with the country at large. the quakers know their way about. their piety has not blunted their perceptive faculties, has not taken the edge off their keenness. their reputation for shrewdness is equal to their reputation for integrity, which is saying a good deal. with them the innocence of the dove is happily combined with considerable wisdom of the serpent. and at least ninety-five per cent. of the irish quakers are earnest unionists. but although the deep concern of the respectable classes of the irish capital is calculated to fill the wandering englishman with grave uneasiness, it is not all tragedy. the dubliners must have their fun, and, like the parisians, will sport with matters of heaviest import. the poorer classes treat the universal subject lightly, as beseems men who have nothing to lose and everything to gain. the prevailing trait in their mental attitude is incredulousness. you cannot make them believe that the bill will pass. "we'll get home rule when a pair o' white wings sprouts out o' me shoulders an' i fly away like a blackbird," said an old market woman with great emphasis; and a dublin jackeen, piloting an american over the city, said: "this, sorr, is college green, an' that, sorr, is thrinity college, an' that sorr,"--here he pointed to the grand pile opposite the college--"that sorr, is the grate buildin' in which the irish parliament is _not_ going to meet!" at one of the music halls an old woman (ireland) is represented as buying a coffin for a deceased son named "home rule" bill, when the following conversation occurs:-- "is it an oak or an elm coffin ye want?" "ah, thin, just a chape deal coffin, shure--wid a few archangels on the lid." "will ye want any trimmings?" "arrah, what d'ye mane by trimmin's?" "trimmings for the coffin." "bad luck to yer trimmin's. what would i want wid them? sure 'twas 'trimmin's' that kilt him!" it is hoped that saxon readers will see this subtle joke when i explain that "delirium" should come before "trimmin's." underneath the incredulity of the lower classes--and be it observed that their incredulity is obviously based on an instinctive feeling that the claims and arguments of their own party are alike preposterous--underneath this vein of unbelief is a vein of extraordinary credulity. poverty is to be at once and for ever abolished. "the millions an' millions that john bull dhrags out iv us, to kape up his grandeur, an' to pay soldiers to grind us down, we'll put into our own pockets, av you plaze," was the answer vouchsafed to an inquiry as to what advantages were expected from the passing of the home rule bill. the speaker was a political barber. another of the craft said, in answer to the same query, "well, sorr, i think we have a right to our indipindence. sure, we'd be as sthrong as switzerland or belgium." a small farmer from the outlying district thought that rents would be lowered, that money would be advanced to struggling tenants, that great public works would be instituted, and plainly intimated that all these good things and many more had been roundly promised by the home rule leaders, and that he, for one, fully believed that all would duly come to pass, once the bill were carried, which happy event he never expected to see. every man was to be a kind of king in his own country, evictions were to be utterly unknown; the peasantry were to live rent free, under a visionary scheme of which he had all the absurd particulars; the old sporting maxim reminding farmers that landlord shooting begins on january st and ends on december st was to become obsolete by reason of a complete extinction of the species--only an odd one being occasionally dug out of the bogs along with trunks of bog-oak and skeletons of the great irish elk; while the family pig, which, having for ages occupied a responsible position in the matter of "rint," is understood to be an inveterate landlord-hater, will be released from his delicate situation, will be relieved from his harassing anxieties, will no longer be sacrificed to the exigencies of the occasion; but, on the contrary, will peacefully expire of old age, surrounded by every tribute of respect. the dirtiest of the dubliners hold opinions as to the marvellous results of home rule more adapted to their own positions and pursuits, but apparently on the same plane, no whit higher in the scale of intelligence. they regard the english as their natural enemies, and the lower you go the more truculent they become. one and all they hold the belief, industriously instilled by agitators, that the poverty of ireland is due to the aggrandisement of england, that the bulk of irish taxation flows into english coffers, and is used for english purposes to the exclusion of ireland, and this they have swallowed and insist upon, in defiance of common reason and the evidence of their senses. the instinct of patriotism is not _en évidence_. the dominant passion is cupidity, and nothing higher; sheer greed of gain, lust of possession, and nothing nobler. selfishness and the hope of plunder are the actuating impulses at the poll; crass ignorance and bitter prejudice the mental disposition of the lower class of voters. four hours' slumming convinced me of this, and must convince anyone. "we'll bate the english into the say," said a resident in the sweet region yclept summer hill. "whin we get the police in our hands an' an army of our own, we'd sweep them out o' the counthry av we only held cabbage-shtalks. ireland for the irish, an' to hell wid john bull! thim's my sintiments." and those are the "sintiments" of his class. i have spent days among the irish home rulers without having once heard of the union of hearts. the phrase serves well enough to tickle the simple souls of the long-eared but short-headed fraternity of pseudo-philosophical-philanthropists across the water, but it has no currency in ireland. like the country folks the city slummers believe that unheard-of advantages would follow the great bill, and, unconsciously parodying sancho panza, say in effect, "now blessings light on him who first invented home rule! it covers a man all over, thoughts and all, like a cloak; it is meat for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, heat for the cold, and cold for the hot." the bare thought of the coming paradise illuminates their dirty visages. like the lunatic, the lover, and the poet, they are of imagination all compact, and, unlike the character mentioned by the bard, they "can hold a fire in their hands, by thinking on the frosty caucasus, and cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast; and wallow naked in december snow by thinking on fantastic summer's heat." meanwhile, they lounge about in idleness, hugging their misery, discussing the "bating" of the unionist party, or, as i saw them yesterday evening, listening to the crooning of an ancient female gutter-snipe, a dun-coloured heap of decrepit wretchedness, chanting the great future of the irish parliament in a picturesque and extraordinary doggerel anent the "larned reprisintatives of the oirish na-a-tion. promiscu-o-ous they shtand in em-u-la-a-tion." the small shopkeepers, once ardent nationalists, seem to be changing their minds. one of them confided to me the fact that he and his fellows, brought actually face to face with the possibility that the end of their aspirations and agitations would be attained, were beginning to ask whether, after all, taxation would be remitted, whether indeed the rates would not be heavier, and whether the moneyed people would remain in the country at all. hearing on all sides these and similar confessions, accompanied by urgent admonitions of secrecy, you begin to ask whether the past conduct of these enlightened voters had any more substantial basis than a cantankerous and unreasonable discontent, superadded to an irishman's natural love of fighting. the leaders of the separatist party have made the most frantic efforts to win over the police, but apparently without much success. the dublin constabulary, a body of , men, is totally separate and distinct from the royal irish constabulary, but i have reason to believe that the feeling of both forces is averse to home rule. said a sergeant yesterday, "john bull may have faults, but," and here he winked expressively, "but--he pays!" then he went on--"i am a westmeath man, a roman catholic, an' as good an irishman as any of thim; an' i'd like home rule if it was local self-government, what they call the gas an' wather management, or the like of that. but although i've the highest respect for my counthry, an' for my counthrymen, i'd like to feel that my pay was in better hands, and--what is of more importance--my pension, afther years' service." here was a complete lack of confidence, but my friend had more to say. he referred to the provisions of the bill, spoke of the six years' arrangement, and on this point exhibited great native shrewdness. "how do we know we'll be employed for six years, once the irish leaders get matters in their own hands? they may promise fairly enough, but they would be subject to several influences which might prevint thim kaping their promise. first of all, when they had the power, they would naturally like to manage things their own way--an' not to be altogether bound down so hard an' fast by their engagement with the english parliament. then, although they profess such friendship, they don't altogether like us. we may tell them we are nationalists, an' that we're runnin' over with patriotism; but they'll tell us that we stood by at evictions, an' that we fired on the people at mitchelstown. but the greatest thing of all is this--all their counthry friends, all the terrorisers, the men that mutilated the cattle, the village ruffians that for years have been doin' their work, an' actin' as their spies--all these will have to be provided for. the same with our officers, but their case is still worse. they have had to pass a regular military examination, which means an expensive education. they will get the go-by an' the dirty kick-out, in order that the friends of the ruling party, who have been so long in the desert, may be furnished with posts. 'tis human nature, sorr." wherefore, the constabulary, it would seem, may be trusted to take care of themselves, but the situation is suggestive of serious complications, once the bill were passed. a full private this morning told me that without the security of the british exchequer the force would not hold together for four-and-twenty hours, a statement which, whatever be its value, is at least an indication of the amount of trust which some of the irish people, and those not the worst informed, are disposed to place in the distinguished assembly which, according to the authority hereinbefore-mentioned is _not_ to meet on college green. a never-ending complaint which follows you everywhere is the supineness of the english electorate. men whose interests are seriously threatened, such as the better class of shopkeepers, are unable to understand the comparative calmness of the british public at large. passionately they ask why england leaves them to their fate, and strongly they urge that prompt and decided action should be taken, if not for the sake of ireland, then in the interests of england herself. disruption, pure and simple, the breaking up of the empire, with panic and general ruin, are in their opinion the sure and certain concomitants of the bill now before the house. they declare that englishmen as a whole, whether gladstonians or unionists, fail to realise the gravity of the situation, and they lose no opportunity of saying whenever they hear an english accent, "we don't want it, we don't want it!" not always do they trouble to say what is the thing they so emphatically reject. "pardon me, sir, but are you english?" receiving an affirmative the rejoinder comes at once, and forcefully, "we don't want it, we don't want it! tell the english people that if they knew all they would not entertain the idea for a moment." the phrase meets you everywhere, is roared at you in chorus in commercial rooms, haunts you in your sleep, and, if they would own it, must be painfully suggestive to gladstonian visitors. but there are none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not hear. it is impossible to withhold sympathy with the indignation and mental anxiety of these industrious men, who have made dublin what she is, and whose only notion of happiness is the fulfilment of duty, their sole means of acquiring wealth or middleclass comfort, hard and honest work. that the backbone of the city should stand with their fortunes subject to the will of a few unscrupulous agitators is indeed, as they say, an inscrutable dispensation of providence. help, however, is at hand. as hercules hangs backward in their need they have determined to help themselves. during the easter recess both ireland and england will be made to ring with denunciations of home rule, denunciations uttered for the most part by irishmen. orators will go forth throughout the length and breadth of both islands, with the object of laying the truth of the matter before the people--demonstrating the dire results which the most intelligent almost unanimously predict. there will be no lack of funds--catholics and protestants are subscribing, among the former the grandson of daniel o'connell, the great liberator of ireland. money is literally pouring into the offices of the irish unionist alliance. little roman catholic tralee, in the heart of kerry, one of the most disturbed districts, has sent several hundreds. in three weeks the subscriptions have reached £ , . that ought to be enough to enable irish unionists not, as one said to me, "to enlighten the english people. we do not presume to so much. but we will try to let some of the darkness out." dublin, march th. no. .--panic and disaster. the situation is becoming hourly more serious. the over-excited condition of men's minds is rapidly ripening into a panic. the impending second reading is driving the respectable population of ireland into absolute despair. the capital is inundated by men from all parts of the kingdom anxious to know the worst, running hither and thither, asking whether, even at the eleventh hour, anything may be done to avert the dreaded calamity. an eminent solicitor assures me that during the last four-and-twenty hours a striking change of opinion has taken place. red-hot home rulers when confronted with the looming actuality are on all sides abandoning their loudly proclaimed political opinions. my friend's business--he is, or has been, an ardent home ruler--is chiefly connected with land conveyancing, and he declares that his office is besieged by people anxious to "withdraw their charges" on land and house property, that is, to recall their money advanced on mortgage, however profitable the investment, however apparently solid the security. he instanced the case of an estate in cavan, bearing three mortgages of respectively £ , , £ , , and £ , , and leaving to the borrower a clear income of £ , a year after all claims were paid. the three lenders are strenuously endeavouring to realise, the thousand-pounder being prostrate with affright, but although the investments under normal conditions would fetch a good premium, not a penny can be raised in any direction. the lenders are home rulers, and eighty per cent. of the population of cavan are roman catholic. the same story is heard everywhere, with "damnable iteration." the cause of charity is suffering severely. the building of additions to the rotunda hospital and the hospital for consumptives, at a cost of twenty thousand pounds, has been definitely abandoned, although three-quarters of the money has been raised. the building trade is at a complete standstill. on every hand contracts are thrown up, great works are put aside. mr. kane, high sheriff of kildare, declines to proceed with the building of his new mansion, which was to cost many thousand pounds. mr. john jameson, the eminent distiller, who also contemplated the construction of a palatial residence, which would take years to build, has dropped the idea. the project for the formation of a great donegal oyster-bed company, which long bade fair to prosper, and to confer a boon on the starving peasantry of the coast, has been cast to the winds. among the shoals of similar occurrences which confront you at every turn, some contain an element almost of humour. a dublin architect tells a quaint story of this kind. it may not be generally known in england that the roman catholics of ireland can borrow money from john bull for the erection of "glebe-houses," at per cent., repayable in years. in a certain recent case the priest thought the builder's estimate too high, and, without absolutely declining the contract, intimated that he would "wait a while." said the architect, "better make up your mind before june, or you may have the irish legislature to deal with." this argument acted like magic. the good father instantly saw its cogency, and, like every other patriotic nationalist whose personal interest is involved, preferred to place himself in english hands rather than in those of his own countrymen, and incontinently accepted the contract, begging the architect to proceed with all haste. a run on the post office savings bank threatens to clear out every penny of irish money, and why? because it has dawned on the small hoarders, the thrifty and industrious members of the lower classes, that the post office is to be transferred to the irish legislature. a friend tells me that yesterday his catholic cook begged for an interview. she had money in the post office savings bank, and thereanent required advice, asking if it would be safe till to-morrow! following up this hint, pregnant with meaning, though delivered in jest, i found that the feeling of insecurity is spreading like wild fire, to the intense indignation of those patriots who have no savings, and who are alive to the fact that under the provisions of the proposed act the four millions supposed to be lying in the post office savings bank would constitute the entire working capital, as distinguished from current income, of the college green legislature. the master of a small sub-office told me that the withdrawals at his little place amounted to £ per week, rising latterly to £ per day, and that it was necessary to get money from london to meet the demands. concurrently with this i learn that the dublin savings bank, an institution managed by merchants of the city, for the encouragement of thrift, is receiving the money so withdrawn, and this confidence is explained by the well-known fact that the directors have publicly declared that on the passing of the home rule bill they will pay s. in the pound and close the bank, in addition to which significant ultimatum they have, in writing, declared to mr. gladstone, that this course of action is due to the fact that they repudiate the security of the proposed irish legislature. to put the thing in a nutshell it may be said that not a single irishman in or out of the country is willing to trust the irish legislature with a single penny of his own money. a curious feature of the nationalist character is the profound contempt expressed for nationalist m.p.'s. englishmen are accustomed to speak of their own members, representing their own opinions, with respect. not so in dublin. a rabid nationalist said to me, "i am an irishman to the backbone. i am a home ruler out-and-out. but do you think i'd trust my property with either of the two tims? do you think such men as tim harrington and tim healy are fit to be trusted with the spending of - / millions of money per annum? they have their job, and they work well at their job, and the irish people have backed them up out of pure divilment. 'tis mighty fine to take a rise out of john bull, to harass him, to worry him, to badger him out of his seven sinses. the half of the voters never were serious, or voted as they were told by men who expatiated on the wrongs which have been dinned into them from infancy. but to trust these orators with their money! bedad, we're not all out such omadhauns (idiots) as that! paddy is not altogether such a fool as he looks." although public feeling has suddenly deepened in intensity, the change has been for some time in progress. i am enabled to state on irrefragable authority, that lord houghton's sudden departure from dublin on sunday week was entirely due to his alarm at the shifting aspect of affairs, which rendered instant conference with mr. gladstone a matter of urgent necessity. and it should be especially noted that this change is most apparent not in the protestant north, not among the irreconcilable black and heretic ulsterites, but in nationalist dublin, in the roman catholic south--not simply among the moneyed classes and well-to-do shopkeepers of dublin, but among the industrious poor, and the small farmers of the region round about. the opinions and feelings of the better classes have ever been dead against the bill, and the best portion of the poorer people are assuredly moving in the same direction. that such is the simple fact is undeniable. it is thrust upon you whether you will or no. you are compelled to believe it, whatever your political creed. it manifests itself in a variety of ways. mr. love, of kildare, a landed proprietor, now in dublin, says that on sunday last dr. gowing, parish priest of kill, denounced home rule from the altar, and advised the people to have none of it. the dubliners are beginning to publicly ridicule their nationalist members. a bog-oak carving represents a typical irishman driving a "conthrairy pig," which is supposed to stand for tim harrington. the interesting animal is deviating from the right way, gazing fixedly at a milestone which bears the legend, "ix. miles to college green." his master gives him a cut of the whip and a jerk of the rope, and thus addresses the wayward tim, "arrah, don't be wastin' yer larnin', radin' milestones. ye're not goin' to dublin--ye're goin' to bray!" a phoenix park orator who sang amusing songs finished his appeal for coppers thus, "sure, home rule is a splindid thing--an iligant thing intirely, an' a blind man could see the goodness iv it wid his two eyes. didn't ye all know tim harrington whin he hadn't the price iv his breakfast? didn't ye know him whin he would dhrop on his two marrowbones and thank god for the price of a shmell of calamity-wather" (whiskey). "an' now look at him! d'ye mind the iligant property he has outside dublin? an ye'll all get the like o' that, every bosthoon among yez, av ye get home rule. but yez must sind _me_ to parlimint. sure i have ivery quollification. wasn't i born among yez? wasn't i rared among yez? don't i know what yez wants? an' didn't i go many a day widout a male? aye, that i did, an' could do it again! sind _me_ to parlimint, till i get within whisperin' distance of misther gladstone--within whisperin' distance, d'ye mind me? ye'll all get lashins of dhrink, an' free quarthers at the castle. an' all ye have to do is to pay me, an' pay me well." here the speaker laid his finger along his nose and broke into a comic song having reference to "the broad atlantic," which he chanted in a brogue almost as broad as the atlantic itself. the better class of vacillating nationalists are ready to give a plausible reason for the faith that is in them. you cannot catch an irish home ruler napping, nor will he admit that he was ever wrong. he will talk to the average englishman about irish rights and irish wrongs, irish virtues and irish abstinence from crime with a reckless disregard for truth that can only be born of a firm belief that irish newspapers are never read outside ireland, and will then walk off and plume himself on the assumption that because he met no point-blank contradiction he has duped his victim into believing the most absurd mass of wild misinformation that was ever crammed down the throats of the most gullible of his rustic countrymen. it must be admitted that they are shrewd critics of the bill, of which every individual citizen, whatever his conviction, has an annotated copy in his tail-pocket. the dublin change of front is ascribed to the "insulting manner in which the bill is drafted." the nationalists, one and all, roundly declare, in terms which admit of no qualification, that the present bill means no less than separation, and while admitting that this is their dearest aspiration, declare that england will only have herself to thank. they complain that the word "parliament" is never used in the bill when referring to the irish legislature, but console themselves with the reflection that the supremacy of parliament proper is only mentioned in the preamble, which they rejoice to believe is not part of the bill, and therefore is not binding in law. the treasury clauses they declare to have been drawn by a deadly enemy of ireland, but here again they find salvation in the alleged inconsistency of the various provisions of the bill. they accept with exceeding great joy the provision which will enable them to deprive of their property, rights, and privileges all existing corporations whether incorporated under royal charter or otherwise, pointing out that this means ownership and control of the bank of ireland, trinity college, and all the churches and cathedrals, which hereafter are to be wrested from protestant hands and devoted to the propagandism of the roman catholic faith; and that the bill confers these powers is, they say, made clearly evident by the clause that places these matters in the hands of an executive "directed by irish act." by virtue of his position they have already nominated archbishop walsh on this executive, with other ecclesiastics of like kidney. this they admit is a good mouthful, but they scornfully assert that while mr. gladstone has left them income-tax to pay, he has also loaded them with the post office, a greek gift, which under the best english management is worked at a loss of fifty thousand pounds a year! the two home rulers who in my hearing so ruthlessly dissected the bill made merry over the clause which excludes the irish government from all control of the "foreign mails or submarine telegraphs or through-lines in connection therewith," pouring on the unhappy sentence whole cataracts of ridicule. "we have the thing in our hands, and we are not to control its working," said they. "the cable between england and america passes through ireland, will be worked by our servants, by people who will look to us as their paymasters, and we are to have no control!" the preposterous absurdity of the notion tickled the entire company. "but if england does not please us, can we not cut the cable? can we not order our own paid servants to cease transmitting messages, or to transmit only such as have survived the inspection of the accredited officials of the irish people?" it was thought that this was reasonable and a possible, nay a probable conjuncture, and might be used as a weapon to damage english trade. "let them go round or lay another cable," said one patriot. this sort of discussion, more or less reasonable, is everywhere heard, and should be of some value in indicating the use irishmen expect to make of the act. not a single friendly syllable, not a word of amicable fellowship with england, not a scintilla of gratitude for favours past or to come, nothing but undisguised animosity, and a fixed resolution to make every clause of the act a battlefield. i speak that i do know and testify that i have seen. my personal relations with the irish people have been and continue to be of the most gratifying kind. in the homes of the highest, in the great manufactories, even in the lowest slums i have seen much that is attractive in the irish character--much that excites warm interest, and is calculated to attach you to the people. i have conversed with scores of home rulers of all shades, and to the query as to whether ultimate separation is hoped for, i have received an invariable affirmative. true it is that the answer varied in terms from the blunt "yes" of the uncompromising man to the more or less veiled assent of the more cautious, but the result was in substance ever the same. talk about the union of hearts, the pacification of ireland, the brotherly love that is to ensue, and the unionists turn away with undissembled impatience, the home rulers with a chuckle and a sneer. as well tell reasonable irishmen that the world is flat, or that a straight line between two given points is the longest, or that the sun moves round the moon, or any other inane absurdity contrary to the evidence of science and their senses. the english gladstonians who babble about brotherly love and conciliation should move about dublin in disguise. disguise would in their case be necessary to get at the truth, for paddy is a shrewd trickster, and delights in humbugging this species of visitor, whom he calls "the slobbering saxon." then if they would return and still vote for home rule they are no less than traitors to their country and enemies to their fellow-country men. the weather is very fine, and the fashionable resorts are fairly well frequented, but trade daily grows worse. wholesale houses, says a high authority, are "not dull, but stone dead." the pious irish fast and pray during the week, and the great roman catholic retreat at milltown is crowded to the limits of its accommodation. the ladies wear a kind of half-mourning, a stylish sort of reminder of original sin. sackcloth and ashes in catholic dublin consist of fetching brown, grey, or tan costumes, set off with huge bunches of fragrant violets, tied with a bow the exact shade of the flower, or a dull shade of purple, a sort of lenten lugubriousness particularly becoming to blonde penitents. the ladies are indefatigable in their efforts against home rule, and one distinguished canvasser for signatures to the roman catholic petition has been warned by the police, as she values her life, to leave dublin for a time. the ruffian class, needless to say, has undergone no change, but still demands the bill, and this delicate lady, for years foremost in every good and charitable work, is driven from her home by threatening letters--that accursed resort to anonymous intimidation which so discredits the irish claim to superior courage and chivalry. the catholics of dublin are signing numerously, but the number of signatories by no means represents the opponents of the bill. englishmen cannot be brought to realise for one moment the system of terrorism and intimidation which prevails even in the very heart of the capital. parnellite spies are everywhere and know everything, and woe to the helpless man who dares to have a mind of his own. and not only are the poor coerced and deprived of the liberty of the subject, but the wealthiest manufacturers--men whose firms are of the greatest magnitude--will caution you against using their names in connection with anything that could give a clue to their real sentiments. this difficulty arises everywhere and information can only be extracted after a promise that its source shall never be disclosed. the priests are credited with unheard-of influence among the poor. "at the present moment the ruffians are held in leash. the order has gone forth that pending the home rule debate they are to 'be good.' but if i sign that petition, although here in dublin, the thing would be known at tralee, miles away, before i reached home--and a hundred to one that the first blackguard that passed would put a match in my thatch, would burn my stacks, would hough or mutilate my cattle." the speaker was a roman catholic farmer from kerry. mr. morley, in stating that the prosecution of the rev. robert eager had ceased and determined, was utterly wrong. the rector's cousin, mr. w.j. eager, also of tralee, told me that threatening letters with coffins and cross-bones were still pouring in in profusion. mr. eager was calmly requested to give up land which he had held for years to a man who had previously rented it, and as the good parson failed to see the force of this argument he is threatened with a violent death. in england such a thing could only happen in a pantomime, but some of the irish think it the quintessence of reasonable action. these are the class that support the bill; these are the men mr. gladstone and his conglomeration of cranks and faddists hope to satisfy. a brilliant kind of prospect for poor john bull. mr. john morley should accompany me in my peregrinations among the intelligent voters who have placed him and his great chief in power, along with the galaxy of minor stars which rise with the grand man's rising and set at his setting. "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 cramfull o' coal that the castle folks won't allow us to dig, bad scran to them. whin we get the bill wu'll sink thim mines an' send the castle to blazes." but the quaintest, the funniest, the most sweetly ingenuous of the lot was the reason given by a gentleman of patriarchal age and powerful odour, whom i encountered in hamilton's lane. he said, "ye see, sorr, this is the way iv it. 'tis the americans we'll look to, by raison that they're mostly our own folks. they're powerful big invintors, but bedad, they haven't the wather power to work the invintions. now _we_ have the wather power, an' the invintions 'll be brought over here to be worked. an' that'll give the poor folks imploymint." the poor man's ignorance was doubtless dense, his credulity amusing, his childlike simplicity interesting. but the darkness of his ignorance was no blacker, the extent of his credulity no more amazing, than the ignorance and credulity of english gladstonian speakers, who, with a primitive methodist accent and a salvation army voice, proclaim, with a bible twang, their conviction that home rule means the friendship of ireland. dublin, march th. no. .--ulster's preparations for war. ulster will fight, and fight to the death. the people have taken a resolution--deep, stern, and irrevocable. outwardly they do not seem so troubled as the dubliners. they are quiet in their movements, moderate in their speech. they show no kind of alarm, for they know their own strength, and are fully prepared for the worst. they speak and act like men whose minds are made up, who will use every constitutional means of maintaining their freedom, and, these failing, will take the matter in their own strong hands. meanwhile they preserve external calm, and systematically make their arrangements. if ever they went through a talking stage, that is now over. they have passed the time of discussion, and are preparing for action. if ever they showed heat, that period also is past. they have reached the cold stage, in which men act on ascertained principles and not in the frenzy of passion. there is nothing hysterical about the belfast men. they are by no means the kind of people who run hither and thither wringing their hands. neither are they men who will sit down under oppression. and oppression is what they expect from a dublin government. mr. gladstone and his tribe may pooh-pooh this notion, but the feeling in ulster is strong and immovable. the tens of thousands of protestants thickly scattered over other provinces feel more strongly still; as well they may, for they have not the numbers, the organisation, the unity which is strength, that characterise the province of ulster. they hold that home rule is at the bottom a religious movement, that by circuitous methods, and subterranean strategy, the religious re-conquest of the island is sought; that the ignorant peasantry, composing the large majority of the electorate, are entirely in the hands of the priests, and that these black swarms of papists have a congenital hatred of england, which must bring about separation. these are the opinions of thousands of eminent men whose ability is beyond argument, who have lived all their lives on the spot, who from childhood have had innumerable facilities for knowing the truth, whose interests are bound up with the prosperity of ireland, and who, on every ground, are admittedly the best judges. said mr. albert quill, the dublin barrister:-- "mr. gladstone, who in eighty-four years has spent a week in ireland, puts aside sir edward harland, who has built a fleet of great ships in an irish port, and sneers at the opinion of the belfast deputation who have lived all their lives in ireland." a roman catholic unionist, an eminent physician, said to me:-- "i fear that catholicism would ultimately lose by the change, although at first it would undoubtedly obtain a strong ascendant. the bulk of the irish catholics have a deep animosity to the english people, whom they regard as heretics, and the protestants of ireland would in self-defence be compelled to band themselves together, for underneath the specious surface of the home rule movement are the teeth and claws of the tiger. persecution would follow separation, which is inevitable if the present bill be carried. a dublin parliament would make a protestant's life a burden. this would react in time, and catholicism would suffer in the long run. and for this reason, amongst others, i am against home rule." but what are the belfast men doing? _imprimis_ they are working in what may be called the regular english methods. unionist clubs are springing up in all directions. the earl of ranfurly opened three in one evening, and others spring up almost every day. the ulster anti-repeal and loyalist association will during the month of april hold over three hundred meetings in england, all manned by competent speakers. the irish unionist association and the conservative association are likewise doing excellent work, which is patent to everybody. but other associations which do not need public offices are flourishing like green bay trees, and their work is eminently suggestive. by virtue of an all-powerful introduction, i yesterday visited what may be called the ulster war department, and there saw regular preparation for an open campaign, the preliminaries for which are under eminently able superintendence. the tables are covered with documents connected with the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions of war. one of them sets forth the particulars of a german offer of , mauser rifles, the arm last discarded by the prussian government, with , , cartridges. as the first , mausers were manufactured by the national arms and ammunition company, sparkbrook, birmingham, it may be interesting to record that the quoted price was s. each, the cartridges being thrown in for nothing. another offer referred to , stand of arms, with , , cartridges. a third document, the aspect of which to a native of brum was like rivers of water in a thirsty land, was said to have been summarily set aside by reason of the comparative antiquity of the excellent weapon offered, notwithstanding the tempting lowness of the quoted price. a novel and unexpected accession of information was the revelation of a deep and sincere sympathy among the working men of england, who, with gentlemen of position and rifle volunteers by hundreds and thousands, are offering their services in the field, should civil war ensue. the letters were shown to me, all carefully filed, and sufficient liberty was permitted to enable me to be satisfied as to the tenour of their contents. among the more important was a short note from a distinguished personage, offering a contribution of £ , with his guarantee of a force of two hundred men. this also was from england, a fact which the scoffers at ulster will do well to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. the guarantee fund for the first campaign now amounts to nearly a million and a half, which the best financial authority of belfast tells me is "as good as the bank of england." what the dublin police-sergeant said of john bull may also be said of the ulsterman--"he may have faults, but--he pays!" funds for current purposes are readily forthcoming, £ , being already in hand, while promises of a whole year's income seem thick as autumnal leaves in vallombrosa. no means is left untried, no stone is left unturned to render abortive what the dry and caustic northerners call the home ruin bill, or the bill for the _bitter_ government of ireland. moving hourly among people accurately and minutely acquainted with the local position, you cannot fail to be struck by the marvellous unanimity with which all irish unionists predict the exact result of such a bill as constitutes the present bone of contention, and their precise agreement as to concerted action should the crisis arise. they ridicule the english notion that they intend to take the field at once. nothing of the kind. they will await the imposition of taxes by a dublin parliament, and will steadfastly refuse to pay. the money must then be collected by force of arms, that is, by the royal irish constabulary, who will be met by men who under their very noses are now becoming expert in battalion drill, having mastered company drill, with manual and firing exercise; and whose numbers--i love to be particular--amount to the respectable total of one hundred and sixty-four thousand six hundred and fourteen, all duly enrolled and pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, most of them already well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with splendid and effective weapons, which before this appears in print will have been landed from a specially chartered steamer, and instantly distributed from a spot i am forbidden to indicate, by an organisation specially created for the purpose. all these particulars--and more--were furnished by gentlemen of high position and unimpeachable integrity, whose statements, of themselves sufficient, were abundantly confirmed by the exhibition under restrictive pledges, of undeniable documentary proofs, with partial but satisfactory glimpses of the work actually in hand. no vapouring here, no breathless haste, not a suspicion of excitement. nothing but a cold, emotionless, methodical, business-like precision, a well-considered series of commercial transactions, conducted by men specially acquainted with the articles required and regularly trained to office routine. english home rulers, unable to see a yard in front of them, whose training and instincts are of the goody-goody, milk and water type,--the lily-livered weaklings, who measure the courage of others by their own,--may be excused their inability to conceive the situation. they cannot understand the dour, unyielding spirit of the ulsterman in a matter which affects his property, his religion, his freedom. a party backboneless as the globerigina ooze, and, like that sub-atlantic production, only held together by its own sliminess, must ever fail to realise the grit which means resistance, sacrifice, endurance; cannot grasp the outlines of the ulster character and spirit, which resemble those which actuated the scottish covenanters, the puritan army of cromwell, or even--and this illustration should be especially grateful to gladstonians--the dutch boers of the transvaal. but although the surface is placid the depths are turbulent. if dublin is simmering, belfast is boiling. the breed is different. the northerner is not demonstrative, is slow to anger, but being moved is not easily appeased. the typical irishman, with his cutaway coat, his pipe stuck in his conical caubeen, his "sprig of shillelagh," or bludgeon the donnybrook fair hero who "shpinds half a-crown, mates wid a frind an' (for love) knocks him down" is totally unknown in these regions. the men who by their ability and industry have lifted ireland out of the slough, given her prosperity and comparative affluence, marched hand in hand with the english people, have only seen, with wonder, the rollicking kelt, devoid of care, forethought, and responsibility, during their trips to the south and west--or wherever home rulers most do congregate. strange it is, but perfectly true, that in most cases an irishman's politics may be determined by outward and visible signs, so plain that he who runs may read. in dundalk, which should be a thriving port, you see in and around the town long rows of low thatch-covered cabins, with putrid dunghills "convaynient," dirty, half-fed, barefooted children, and--magnificent catholic churches. home rule rules the roost. as you move northwards, the symptoms of poverty gradually disappear. scarva, the annual meeting ground of , to , orangemen, who on july , the day after the anniversary of the battle of the boyne, fight the battle o'er again, with a king william and a king james, mounted respectively on their regulation white and bay chargers--scarva is neat, clean and civilised. bessbrook, the quaker colony, is, as might be expected, a model community. lurgan is well built, smart, trim, and delightful, a wealthy manufacturing place with the general aspect of leamington. as the train steamed into the station an american traveller took a general survey of the district, and said to the general company-- "i reckon this is a unionist place." a fierce-looking man from dundalk admitted the soft impeachment. "thought so. can spot a home rule town far off as i can see it. mud huts, whitewashed cabins with no upstairs, muck-heaps, and bad fences. can spot a home ruler as far as i can see him. darned if i couldn't track him by scent, like a foxhound. that's the rank and file--very rank, i should say, most of them. and old j. bull concludes to let the dunghill folks, powerful lazy beggars they seem, come top-sawyer over the fellows that built a place like this, eh?" the newry man, taking off his hat, revealing a head of hair like a disorderly halo, took from the lining a little paper which called upon the irish peasantry to remember their wrongs, referred to the time when englishmen could murder irishmen with impunity, stated that the thing had often been done, and called upon every male from fifteen to fifty to enrol himself in the irish independent army--referring to the protestants as "a cruel and bloody minority." the yankee returned the bill contemptuously. "you think this a question of counting noses. now, i'm a sympathiser of home rule, but if i was j.b. it would be different. i'm hanged if i would not stick to my clean, clever, faithful friends, though they were outnumbered by twenty to one. an' i'm a republican, mind ye that. ye might ask me to put the muck-heap men at the head of affairs--ye might ask till doomsday, but ye'd never get it. an' any man's a fool that would do it." a placard announcing the formation of an irish army of independence, and calling on the people to enrol themselves, has been extensively circulated, and it is said that the roman catholics, like the protestants, are industriously drilling, north, south, east and west. i am careful to use the term protestants, as the force available is drawn from the general body of nonconformists. orangemen are members of the church of ireland, and have always been regarded as conservative. on the contrary, presbyterians and methodists are considered to be advanced liberals, and herein lies a popular english fallacy--gladstonians often refer to the orange agitation against the disestablishment of the irish church, which they would fain compare with the present opposition to home rule, forgetting or ignoring the fact that the strength of ulster resides in the nonconformist bodies, and that these were all in favour of disestablishment, leaving the orangemen in a hopeless minority. now, however, the nonconformists have joined their forces with those of the orange bodies, which creates a very different aspect of affairs. the english home rulers say the opposition will end in smoke. it is said that the most insane are sometimes wiser than they dream, just as liars sometimes speak truth by accident. the movement will end in smoke, but it will be the smoke of battle. every man who supports the home rule bill incurs the stigma of blood-guiltiness. the bill that succeeds home rule will be the butchers' bill. no doubt mr. gladstone will explain away the "painful occurrences which we all deplore," and will endeavour to transfer the blame to other shoulders. his talent for explanation is unapproachable, but unhappily he cannot explain the slain to life again. in a former letter i pointed out how cleverly the nationalists dissect the bill, how they point out that its proposals are insulting to ireland, how they prove that its provisions are inconsistent and unworkable, how they propose to discount the trumpery restrictions and the gimcrack "safeguards" of the proposed measure, how in short, they tear the bill to rags, laugh its powers to scorn, and hold its authors in high derision. the belfast men do not discuss the bill, do not examine it clause by clause, do not quibble over the purport of this or the probable effect of that, do not ask how the customs are to be collected, or who is to pay for this, that, or the other. they descend to no details, enter into no particulars, point out no minor fallacies, argue no questions of the ultimate effect of any one section of the bill. they reject the measure as a whole. the principle is bad, radically rotten, and cannot be amended. with the home rulers they agree that the bill means separation, and therefore they put it away _en bloc_. they will have no part with the unclean thing, but cast it to the winds, bundle it out neck and crop, kick it downstairs, treat it with immeasurable contempt. they are well versed in the broad principles of constitutional law, as it at present exists; will tell you that the irish constabulary is the only force that can be brought against them for the collection of the taxes, which they will absolutely refuse; declare that the military can only be used against them for this purpose by act of parliament; cite the preamble of the army bill, which shows that there is no standing army, but only a force renewed in its functions from year to year; show that the monarch has ceased to be generalissimo of the british troops since such a year, refer to the sad case of charles i., who would fain have collected ship-money from a certain john hampden, and endeavoured to use the english army for this laudable purpose, meeting a fate at once horrible and instructive. then comes the application. similar causes, say they, will bring about similar effects, and if the quality and temper of the people be considered their arguments seem reasonable. the irish army of independence is already a subject of mockery. "ten of our men would make a hundred of them run like hares. on the th ult. a party of orangemen were fired upon near stewartstown, and although unarmed they stormed the hill whence came the shots, while the heroic riflemen who had fired bullets, luckily without effect, showed that if too cowardly to fight, they were not too lazy to run." this occurrence, of which i had the description from authority, would have excited some attention in england, but here it is lightly passed over as nothing exceptional. "we are holding back our men. the other party are egging us on to outbreak, in the hope that our cause will be discredited, and that lord salisbury's visit in may might be hindered." there is a mutual repugnance between the two peoples, but the character of the repulsion is different. the roman catholics manifest an unmistakable hatred--the term is no whit too strong--a hatred of the social and intellectual superiority of their fellow-countrymen, who in turn look upon the catholics (as a whole) with mistrust, mingled with contempt. as well ask brother jonathan to submit to the rule of the negro, as well ask the london trader to put his interests in the hands of a seven dials' syndicate, as well ask mr. gladstone and his followers to listen to reason or to talk common sense, as to expect the powerful and influential protestants of belfast and ulster generally to entrust their future to a legislature elected by the most illiterate electorate in the three kingdoms, and under the thumb of the priests--who wield a despotic power which people in england cannot be made to understand. a short time ago the dublin freemasons held a bazaar in aid of a charity whose object was the complete care of orphan children. the catholic archbishop immediately fulminated a decree that whosoever patronised the show would incur the terrors of the church, which means that they would perish everlastingly. some poor folks, servant girls and porters and the like, who were sent by their mistresses or called by their honest avocations, dared to enter the accursed precincts, and emerging alive, rushed to confession, that the leprosy of masonic charity might be washed from their souls by absolution. absolution was refused. the wretched outcasts were referred to the bishop, who in this dire emergency had sole power to unlock the gates of heaven. do english people know what an irish catholic feels when refused absolution? i trow not, and that therefore they cannot justly estimate the power of the priests. another illustration. a friend of mine made some purchases and sent a man for them, one of five hundred catholics in his employ. the poor fellow halted two hundred yards from the contaminating circle, and by the aid of a policeman, got the parcel brought to him--without risking his immortal soul. the bazaar realised twenty-two thousand pounds. the ireland of the harp and vesper bell, free from the dominion of england, having the prestige of an independent catholic state, the ireland of excommunication by bell, book, and candle, the ireland of the priest and pope--that, and no other, according to ulstermen, is the ultimate end of home rule. they will have none of it, their determination is announced, and they will stand by what they say. from what i have seen and heard i am convinced that ulster means business, and also has the power to win. the irish unionists are worthy co-partners in the great fight, and englishmen should stand with them shoulder to shoulder. but with or without english aid, ulster may be trusted to hold its own. belfast, april st. no. .--mr. balfour's welcome. arriving in the northern capital from dublin you are apt to experience a kind of chill, akin to that felt by the boy of easy-going parents who, visiting the house of a staid and sober uncle, said to his little cousins, "at home we can fight with pillows, and let off crackers in the kitchen, and ride on the poker and tongs across the dining-room tables, and shy oranges at the chimney ornaments, and cut the sofas and pull out the stuffing, but here we get no fun at all!" the effervescence of the sunny south is conspicuous by its absence, and be it observed that the political south and the geographical south of ireland are entirely different, the ulstermen invariably using the term to denote an imaginary line across the country just above dundalk. the mention of this town reminds me of a cork commercial traveller's description of the dundalk festivities in connection with the visit of our famous citizen, mr. egan, on the occasion of his release--"there was a murtherin' big crowd o' the greatest ruffians ye ever clapped your two eyes on. some o' them had long sticks with a lump o' tow on the end, steeped in petroleum or something equally inflammable, an' whin they got the word to march--the hero was in a brake--they lit up and walked away in procession without looking at him at all, or taking any notice of him, which was moighty strange, i thought. they went on an' on, a lot o' rapscallions ye wouldn't like to meet in a lonely lane, and whin the brake stopped, for some reason or other, the whole o' them were unconscious of it, an' marched on without the grate man, leaving him an' his brake alone. i had the curiosity to go to the meetin'. there were two factions in the town, an' only one of them was riprisinted, the others stood aloof. they are at daggers drawn, flyin' at each other's throat, although catholics and home rulers, an' this meetin' was the funniest thing at all! the chairman was a common fellow that made money some way, an' ye may say he liked to hear himself spake. an' be the powdhers o' war, he had the convaniences for speech-makin', for he had a jaw like a bulldog, an' a mouth on him ye couldn't span with your two hands." further description proceeded in the same strain, and even allowing for the exuberancies of my friend's southern imagination, and his wide command of figurative language, this account of the kind of people who constitute ninety-nine hundredths of mr. gladstone's allies should give home rulers pause. there is no lack of enthusiasm here, but the people mind their work, and do not bubble over every five minutes. they certainly showed warmth on monday morning, and never was popular ruler, victorious general, or famous statesman welcomed with more spontaneous burst of popular acclaim. york street was literally full of all classes of people, save and except the typical irish poor. of the tens of thousands who filled royal avenue, donegal place, and the broad road to the north counties railway, i saw none poorly clad. all were well dressed, orderly, respectable, and wonderfully good-humoured, besides being the tallest and best-grown people i have ever seen in a fairly extensive european experience. i was admitted to the station with a little knot, comprising the marquess of ormonde, lord londonderry, the gigantic dr. kane, head of the ulster orangemen, and colonel saunderson, full as ever of fun and fight. it was at first intended to keep the people outside, and a strong detachment of police guarded the great gates, but in vain. they were swept away by mere pressure, and the people occupied the place to the number of many thousands, mostly wearing primroses. as the train steamed in there was a tremendous rush and cheering--genuine british cheering, such as that with which birmingham used on great occasions to greet john bright--rendering almost inaudible the numerous explosions of fog-signals which perhaps by way of salute had been placed at the entrance to the station. there was a mocking shout of "dynamite," followed by a roar of laughter, and despite the frantic efforts of the railway men, who humanely struggled to avoid the seemingly impending sacrifices _à la_ juggernaut, the more active members of the crowd storming the train, instantly sprang aloft and manned the tops of the carriages with a solid mass of vociferating humanity. soon mr. balfour's face appeared, and a moment after he was standing amidst the throng, swayed hither and thither by loyalists who shook his hands, patted him on the back, deafened him with their cheers. out came the horses, dashing through the people, snorting and plunging like so many gladstonians, but happily injuring no one. in went the men, mr. balfour laughing merrily, and looking uncommonly fit, lifting his soft brown hat in mute recognition of the magnificent welcome accorded by men who are perhaps among the most competent judges of his merit as a benefactor of ireland. away went the carriage, amid tumultuous shouting of "no home rule," and "god save the queen." this went on for miles, from the northern counties' terminus to victoria street, when lord londonderry signalled to quicken the pace, and after a short speech at the albert memorial, the _cortége_ disappeared over the bridge, and i returned to meet the english working men who arrived an hour later. splendid it was to hear the six hundred miners from newcastle-on-tyne shouting "old ireland for ever!" while the generous irishmen responded with "rule britannia" and cheers for old england. cheers for belfast and newcastle alternated with such stentorian vigour, each side shouting for the other, that you might have been excused for imagining that the union of hearts was an accomplished fact, and that brotherly love had begun and must ever continue. said a miner, "we're all surprised to see that the people here are just like englishmen. an' i'm blest if they aren't more loyal than the english themselves." from monday morning the city has been resounding with beat of drum and the shrill sounds of the fife. the houses are swathed in bunting, and the public buildings were already covered with banners when i arrived on friday last. this, however is not characteristic belfast form. the belfasters _can_ rejoice, and whatever they do, is thoroughly done, but work is their vocation, as befits their grave and sober mood. they are great at figures, and by them they try to show that they, and not the dubliners, should be first considered. they are practical, and although not without sentiment, avoid all useless manifestation of mere feeling. they are mainly utilitarian, and prefer mathematical proof, on which they themselves propose to rely, in proving their case. here is an instance. a belfast accountant, who is also a public officer, has collected a number of comparative figures on which he bases the claims of belfast to prior consideration. the figures are certainly exact, and are submitted as evidence of the superior business management, and larger, keener capacity of protestant belfast as compared with those of catholic dublin. beginning with the functions of the dublin lord mayor, secretary, and so forth, which cost £ , a year, it is shown that the same work in belfast--which is rather larger than dublin--costs only £ . let us tabulate a few representative cases:-- dublin. belfast. mayor, &c. £ , £ town clerk, secretaries of committees, law agents , , treasurer, accountants, stock registrar , , fire brigade, salaries and lighting , , coroners, sanitary officials , , wages of sanitary staff , , surveyors (borough & waterworks) and secretaries , , clerks of peace and revision officers , , ------ ------ totals £ , £ , this discrepancy is everywhere observable. the dublin gas management costs £ , against £ , in belfast, with the result that the ulster city gasworks yielded in a profit of £ , , charging s. d., while the dubliners charge s. d. and make no profit at all. the belfast markets yield a profit of about £ , , while on the dublin markets and abattoir there was a deficit of £ , to be made good by the ratepayers. dublin, with property amounting to £ , a year and old-established royal bounties, owes nearly twice as much as belfast, which latter city spends more on what may be called the advance of civilisation. in belfast spent £ , on a public park--government providing for this matter in dublin--£ , on public libraries, and £ , on baths and workhouses, against £ , and £ , for like purposes in dublin. "therefore," say the belfast men, "we will not have our affairs managed by these incompetent men, who, besides their demonstrated incapacity to deal with finance, are dependent for their position on the illiterates of the agricultural districts, who are to a man under the thumb of the priests, and who, moreover, have shown that their rapacity is equal to their lack of integrity, and whose leading doctrine is the repudiation of lawful contracts," a point on which commercial ulster is excessively severe. one thing is certain--ulster will never pay taxes levied by an irish legislature in which ulster would be utterly swamped. all classes are of this opinion, from the earl of ranfurly, who during a long interview repeatedly expressed his conviction that the passing of any home rule bill would be fraught with most lamentable results, to the humble trimmer of a suburban hedge who, having admitted that he was from the county roscommon, and (therefore) a catholic home ruler, claimed to know the ulster temper in virtue of years' residence in or near belfast, and said-- "what they say they mane, an' the divil himself wouldn't tur-r-n thim. ah, but they're a har-r-d-timpered breed, ivery mother's son o' them. ye can comether (gammon) a roscommon man, but a bilfast man, whillaloo!" he stopped in sheer despair of finding words to express the futility of attempting to take in a belfast man. "an' whin ye ax thim for taxes, an' they say they won't pay--ye might jist as well whistle jigs to a milestone! 'tis thrue what i tell ye." as for to-day, the magnificence of the pageant beggars description. whether regarded from a scenic point of view or with respect to numbers and enthusiasm, never since belfast was belfast has the city looked upon a sight approaching it. from early morning brass bands and fife bands commenced to enter the city from every point of the compass, and wherever you turned the air resounded with the inspiring rattle of the drum. monday's display of bunting was sufficiently lavish to suggest the impossibility of exhibiting any more, but the belfasters accomplished the feat, and the bright sunshine on the brilliant colours of the myriad banners was strongly reminiscent of paris _en fête_ under the empire. the belfast streets are long, straight, and wide, and mostly intersect at right angles. much of the concourse was thus visible from any moderate coign of vantage, and from the grand stand in donegal place the sight was truly wonderful. the vast space, right, left, and front, was from o'clock closely packed with a mighty multitude that no man could number, and locomotion became every moment so painful as to threaten total stagnation. the crowd was eminently respectable and perfectly orderly, and submitted to the passage of innumerable musical organisations with charming good humour. never have i seen or heard of such an assemblage of bands, all uniformed, all preceded by gorgeous banners bearing all kinds of loyal and party mottoes, all marching in splendid military fashion, and of themselves numerous enough to furnish a very considerable demonstration. many of the tunes were of a decidedly martial character, and strange to english ears, such as the "boyne water," the "orange lily" and the "protestant boys," the last being a version of the "lillibulero" so often mentioned by scott. all these tunes, more or less distasteful to nationalists, were interspersed with others less debatable, such as "rule britannia," "the old folks at home," "the last rose of summer," "god save the queen," and "see the conquering hero comes," which last generally accompanied the portrait of orange william, the "glorious, pious, and immortal," mounted on his famous white charger, which noble animal is depicted in the attitude erroneously believed to be peculiar to that of bonaparte when crossing the alps. the earl of beaconsfield was also to the fore with primroses galore; indeed, the favourite flower was invariably worn by the ladies, who were greatly in evidence. "our god, our country, and our empire" was the motto over mr. balfour, with a huge "welcome" in white on scarlet ground, the whole surrounded by immense union jacks. the familiar red, white, and blue bore the brunt of the decorative responsibilities, although here and there the green flag of ireland hung cheek by jowl with the english standard, emphasising the friendliness of the present union. as time went on the crowd became more and more dense, and a breathless pressman, who reached his post at twelve o'clock, stated that the seething myriads of donegal place and the adjacent streets were "hardly a circumstance" to what he had seen in the york road, where the people awaited the hero of the hour. things were getting serious at . , and then it was that the active members of the crowd swarmed on the railings, balancing themselves in most uncomfortable situations, and maintaining their spiky seats with a tenacious martyrdom which spoke volumes for the determination of the ulster character. on and ever on went the bands in seemingly endless procession, although merely assembling for the great march past, and therefore only a fraction of the impending multitude. some enterprising men climbed the trees bordering the square, driving away the little flocks of sparrows which till then had conducted a noisy committee meeting in the branches, heedless of the drumming and general uproar, but which now dispersed without so much as a vote of thanks to the chair. at . a foam of white faces broke over the roofs of the lofty buildings around, protected by stone balustrades. at the same moment a shout of "they are coming" was heard, followed fey a thunderous roar of cheering. mr. balfour slowly emerged from york road, amid immense acclamation, his carriage, piloted by the corporation, moving inch by inch through the solid mass with inconceivable difficulty. over and over again the line of vehicles stopped dead, and it was clear that the horses had much trouble to maintain their gravity. as the carriage with sir daniel dixon (the lord mayor of belfast), sir samuel black (town clerk), and lord londonderry neared the grand stand, the pressmen agreed that nothing equal to this demonstration had ever before been held within the british islands. mr. balfour having gained the platform the procession proper commenced, headed by the banner of the belfast harbour commissioners, while the people broke into a chorus, asserting that britons never, never shall be slaves. this at . precisely. next came the belfast water commissioners, the belfast board of guardians, the provincial corporate bodies, and the provincial boards of guardians. a tremendous tumult of voices accompanied all these, but when the trinity college graduates arrived the din became overpowering. their standard was halted opposite mr. balfour, and the young fellows burst into wild and uncontrollable enthusiasm. the medical students of queen's college, belfast, with the _alumni_ of the methodist and presbyterian college succeeding, gave "god save the queen" with great vigour, and came in a close second; but nothing quite touched the trinity college men. the scottish unionist clubs, a fine body, two thousand strong, confirmed the statement that scots who understand the situation are against home rule. most of these men work in the shipbuilding yards of belfast. the belfast unionist clubs and the provincial unionist clubs were, of course, heartily greeted, returning the applause with interest, and the independent order of rechabites showed that their alleged exclusive partiality for cold water had not diminished their lung power. the british order of ancient free gardeners, the loyal order of ancient shepherds, and the independent order of oddfellows reminded the brutal saxon who might be present of his native shore, the men being of the familiar sturdy type, marching in dense columns, all gloriously arrayed. there was none of the artful spreading over the ground which i observed in the great birmingham demonstration which was to "end or mend" the lords; and another point of divergency consists in the fact that the belfast demonstration, which was incomparably larger, was perfectly spontaneous, and not due to organisation. baronets and other gentlemen of distinction headed the unionist clubs, walking through the streets in such manner as was never known before. magistrates and presbyterian ministers tramped with the rank and file. sir william ewart, bart., mr. thomas sinclair, j.p.--a great name in the city--and the rev. dr. lynd were especially prominent. some of the teetotallers wore white sashes, which were perhaps more conspicuous than the gaudy colours affected by the orangemen, and one body of unionists from the suburban clubs waved white handkerchiefs, a feature which for obvious reasons can never occur in nationalist processions. the shepherds have a pastoral dress, each man carrying a crook, and the marshals of the lodges bore long halberds. the van of each column was preceded by a stout fellow, who dexterously raising a long staff in a twirling fashion peculiar to ireland, shouted, "faugh-a-ballagh," which being interpreted signifies "clear the way." the oddfellows marched to the tune known in england as "we won't go home till morning," which is the same as "marlborough goes to war," the favourite air of the great napoleon. all this time mr. balfour is standing at my elbow as i write, bareheaded, acknowledging the finest reception ever accorded to any man in ireland, not excepting dan o'connell and parnell. the funeral of the uncrowned king was a comparatively small affair, while the respectability of the crowd was of course immeasurably below that of the belfast concourse. an old man somehow got near the platform and presented mr. balfour with a bunch of orange lilies, saying that was the flower the people would fight under. the young men's christian association cheered lustily for the union to the tune of three thousand strong. the central presbyterian association marched past singing "god is our refuge and our strength," and the church of ireland young men's society, headed by the clergy, superintended by the bishop of the diocese from the stand, made a brave and gallant show. hour after hour glides by, and still the teeming multitude moves on, and still mr. balfour stands uncovered. no joke to be a hero nowadays. the "young irelands" gave a grand cheer, and passed in brave array, singing with the y.m.c.a. "hold the fort" and "god save the queen." dr. kane, the bishop of clogher, captain somerset maxwell, colonel saunderson, and the earl of erne, grand master of the orangemen of ireland, received a stupendous reception as they followed the young men christians, mustered in overwhelming force. the "marseillaise" here broke out with considerable severity, and mr. balfour broke out into a broad smile, which ran over into a laugh, as the too familiar strains of "ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay" made the welkin ring. then came "the march of the men of harlech," mixed with "home sweet home" and "the boyne water," till the senses reeled again. at . the two miles of orangemen seemed likely to go on for ever, and mr. balfour said to me, "i think this demonstration undoubtedly the greatest ever seen, and if you like you may convey that as my message to the unionists of birmingham. they will know what the effect of this will be. i need say no more." i asked mr. balfour if he thought the bill would pass, and he replied, "tell the birmingham men what i have said already. they will require no more." at . the procession was in full swing, but mr. balfour seemed to have had about enough and showed symptoms of making a move, and, as a preliminary, put on his hat. this was the signal for cheering, which perhaps surpassed anything that had gone before. the great ex-irish-secretary effaced himself; and colonel saunderson, backed by lord salisbury's son and several irish peers, essayed to fill the gap. i ventured in my timid way to tap the gallant colonel on the shoulder with a view to tapping his sentiments, which proved to be exultant. he told me of the wire he had received from lord salisbury, and spoke of the meeting in the botanic gardens which had taken place while i had watched the procession. then he said, "tell the birmingham people through the _gazette_ that as we have the last prime minister and the present chief of the opposition with us, we cannot be called revolutionary. as for this meeting, it will speak for itself. i think it the biggest thing ever known." during the procession a copy of the home rule bill was burnt on the top of a pole in front of the grand stand. after exactly four hours of watching, i accepted the proffered aid of an irish friend who agreed to lead me by roundabout ways to the telegraph office. after many narrow passages and devious turns, we struck the royal avenue, a long, long way from our starting place. here we took the still advancing procession in flank. it was now . , and my friend said, "by jabers, there's forty million more of them. i believe the procession reaches all round the world, and moves in a continuous band." and, sure enough, they were coming on as fresh as ever, but i felt that four hours and a quarter of bands and drums was enough at once, so i made a dash for the wires before they should be absolutely blocked. my account is not, perhaps, quite perfect, but it was pencilled under extraordinary circumstances--ten people talking to me at once, a lady's umbrella in my side, a thousand people leaning on my right elbow, and five hundred bands sounding in my ear. surely it may be said to have been written under fire. belfast, april th. no. .--has mr. morley lied? before leaving belfast i obtained incontrovertible evidence anent the growing fears of mr. gladstone's government. mr. morley has denied the existence of any such nervousness, and has repudiated the assertion that precautions have been taken. but what is the truth of the matter? let us see whether his statement is borne out by facts. in february certain military officers received a confidential communication having reference to the defence of the belfast barracks. they were requested to examine and report upon the possibility of these buildings being tenable against a _coup de main_, were ordered to examine the loop-holes for musketry, to prepare plans of the same, and to duly submit them to the proper authorities, giving their opinion as to the practicability and sufficiency of existing arrangements in the event of the buildings being assaulted by organised bodies of armed civilians, during the absence of soldiers who might be about the city, taking their walks abroad, after the regulation manner permitted to mr. thomas atkins under ordinary circumstances. the order was executed, the plans were duly furnished, and if mr. morley is still unaware of the fact, i have much pleasure in imparting the information which i have on the best authority attainable in an imperfect world. he may rely on this statement as being absolutely undeniable, and to descend to particulars, i will add that plans were made of the tram stables barracks, the willow bank barracks, and the victoria barracks. as i have said, the instructions were marked confidential, and the irish secretary may have relied on this magic word in formulating his denials. the alternative hypothesis is, of course, obvious enough. the work may have been ordered and executed without mr. morley's knowledge, but it has been done, and, after proper inquiry, he will not venture to deny it. the circumstance is a curious commentary on the gladstonian affectation of perfect security, and the scornful references of home rulers to the alleged determination of ulstermen, in the last resource, to push matters to extremity. i could tell him more than this. it would be easy to adduce other instances of governmental nervousness, but prudential and confidential considerations intervene. however, while in the vein, let me submit for serious contemplation the fact that up to the morning postal delivery of wednesday, april , , written offers of personal assistance in the matter of armed resistance to the exact number of ten thousand and five have reached a certain ulster organisation from england and scotland, the roll including five generals, with a percentage of victoria cross men. this statement is made on the authority of the earl of ranfurly, who told me that the matter was within his personal knowledge, and that the whole of these communications were entirely spontaneous and altogether unsolicited, and that nobody in ireland was in any way responsible for their existence. lord ranfurly also said that while the hearty friendship and co-operation of these gentlemen were warmly appreciated by irish loyalists, he was quite certain that their generous aid would never be required, for that home rule was now defunct, dead, and buried, and beyond the possibility of resurrection. it may be remarked, in passing, that this is the feeling of the best-informed irish home rulers, and that many in my hearing have offered to back their opinion by laying odds. the rejection of the bill so far from exasperating the nationalist party, would positively come as a relief. to say that they are lukewarm is only to fairly indicate a state of feeling which is rapidly degenerating into frigidity. they declare that the bill is unworkable, and while maintaining their abstract right to demand whatever they choose, believe that, taking one consideration with another, the lot of autonomic ireland would not be a happy one. mr. richard patterson, j.p., the great ironmonger of belfast, observes that "according to mr. gladstone the only people who really understand ulster are those who have never been in it." my interview with him was both instructive and interesting. he is one of the harbour commissioners, and a gentleman of considerable scientific attainments, as well as a great public and commercial man. he belongs to the reform club and, with his fellow-members, was up to a devoted follower of mr. gladstone. the name of his firm, established in on the very ground it now occupies, is a household word in ireland, and mr. patterson himself has the respect and esteem of his bitterest political opponents. he pointed out the unfairness and injustice of mr. gladstone's reference to religion, when turning a deaf ear to the belfast deputation. "the report of the chamber of commerce," he said, "was a purely business statement, and had no element of party feeling. the fact that the protestant members of the chamber outnumber the catholics is in no respect due to religious intolerance, which in this body is totally unknown. anybody who pays a guinea a year may be elected a member, whatever his religion, whatever his circumstances, providing he is a decent member of society, which is the only qualification required. members are certainly elected by ballot, but during the many years i have belonged to the chamber not a single person has been black-balled. if the protestants are more numerous, the fact simply demonstrates their superior prosperity, arising only from their more steady application to hard work. we live on terms of perfect friendship with our catholic countrymen, and we assiduously cultivate the sentiment. it is only when a weak and ignorant pandering to disloyalty excites opposition that enmity begins. only let us alone, that is all we ask. we were going on beautifully until mr. gladstone and his accomplices upset everything." speaking of the difference between the ulster men and the irish kelts, mr. patterson said, "prosperity or the reverse is indicative of the breed. the southern irish had more advantages than the ulstermen. they had better land, better harbours, a far more productive country, and yet they always seethe in discontent. put , northerners in cork, and in twenty years the southern port could knock liverpool out of time." addressing himself to the home rule bill, he declared that the practical, keen-witted merchants of belfast dismissed the whole concoction as unworthy of sober consideration, and declared that an awful responsibility rested on mr. gladstone. said this experienced j.p.: "the belfast riots of were terrible. forty people were killed in the streets, and what i saw in my capacity of magistrate was dreadful in the extreme. the injuries from gun-shot wounds were almost innumerable, and many a local doctor gained experience in this line which is unknown to many an army surgeon. the riots began with the ruffian class, from which this great city is not entirely free, and gradually rose upwards to the shipbuilding yards. all this disturbance and awful loss of life were entirely due to the production of mr. gladstone's first bill. and now they tell us that a worse bill--for it is a worse bill--might become law without any inconvenience. i submit to any reasonable man that if the mere menace of a bill cost forty lives in belfast alone, the loss of life all over ireland, once the bill were passed, would be enormous. and all this will be attributable to the action of mr. gladstone, who has never been in ulster." walking down royal avenue i met colonel saunderson, radiant after the great demonstration of two days ago, wearing a big bunch of violets in place of tuesday's bouquet of primroses. he stopped to express good wishes to the _gazette_, and said that the belfasters were proud of birmingham, which city he regarded as being the most advanced and enlightened in the world. while he so spake, up came the mighty dr. kane, idol of the ulsterites, towering over the gallant colonel's paltry six feet one, and looking down smilingly from his altitude in infinite space on my own discreditable five feet ten. he agreed with the colonel as to the merits of birmingham, and added that every unionist in belfast cherished a deep sentiment of gratitude to the hardware city, requesting me to explode the misleading statements of the separatist press, which asserts that tuesday's procession consisted of orangemen. "the first two hours," said the reverend doctor, "consisted of bodies who do not processionise, and who never perform in public, in or out of belfast, methodists, presbyterians, and the like, while the , or , orangemen who came in at the tail of the show were a mere fraction of the whole. colonel saunderson, the earl of erne, and myself stood up in our carriage and cheered the radical reform club, a thing we certainly have never done before." here the colonel laughed, and said-- "the union of hearts, doctor." "yes, the union of hearts and no mistake, as the grand old man will find--to his cost. all classes are united against the common enemy" (mr. gladstone). "but tell me something--how is it that the english people are deceived by that arch-professor of cant? tell me that!" i requested the good doctor to ask me something easier, and he doubtless would have done so, but at this moment up came the famous dr. traill, the admirable crichton of ireland, and with my usual thirst for knowledge, i ventured to suggest that the mathematical intellect of the trinity college examiner might possibly grapple with the problem. the learned professor smiled, gripped my unworthy fin, shook out some words of greeting, wagged his head hopelessly, and--bolted like a rocket. dr. traill is said to be equally versed in law, physic, and divinity, to sport with trigonometry, and to amuse his lighter moments with the differential calculus. but "this knowledge was too wonderful for him, he could not attain unto it," and to avoid confession of defeat, he fled with lightning speed. this erudite doctor is well known in england, especially among riflemen. colonel saunderson describes him as a wonderful shot at a thousand yards, and thinks he was once one of the irish eight at wimbledon. i met him on the stand on tuesday, when he amusingly described his adventures on the continent. "the poor poles," he said, "wished to take me to their collective bosom, and to fall on my individual neck, the moment they found i was an irishman. they said we were brothers in misfortune!" whereat this learned pundit laughed good-humouredly. it may be that dr. traill is the long-range rifleman of whom a land league man remarked, on hearing that the marksman had made a long series of bull's eyes-- "the saints betune us an' harm--but wouldn't he make an iligant tenant!" dr. kane was not surprised to see the professor run away. he said, "i cannot understand it all. i must and will cross the channel immediately to investigate this strange phenomenon. i have always considered the english a people of superior mental force, men who could not be easily deceived. that they should pin their faith to a man who has proved to demonstration that home rule is impossible, who more than any other has branded the nationalist party with ignominy, i cannot understand." the doctor perhaps momentarily forgot that the english do not pin their faith to mr. gladstone, that the adverse majority are dead against him, and that this majority is daily increasing by leaps and bounds. gallant captain leslie, whom i saw earlier in the day, more accurately hit the situation. this splendid old soldier said, "the english people are not to be blamed. living under social conditions of perfect freedom and friendship they do not understand the conditions prevailing in ireland; they cannot be expected to understand a state of things differing so widely from anything within the circle of their own experience. but all the same, if they grant home rule, if they listen to the disloyal party rather than to their loyal friends, if they truckle to treason rather than support their own supporters, the consequences will be disastrous to england, and where the disasters will stop is a piece of knowledge which 'passes the wit of man.'" running up to ballymena, i encountered several interesting personalities, each of whom had his own view of the all-absorbing subject, and looked at the matter from his own standpoint. an irish-american of high culture, a man of science, looked up from what he regarded as "the most interesting book in existence," which turned out to be thompson's "evolution of sex," and said that once home rule were in force the blackguard american-irish would return in shoals, and that the fenians of america might be expected to "boss the show." "how is it," he asked, "that the english people listen to what appears the chief argument of separatist orators--that agitation will come to an end, that the irish will be content to rest and be thankful? clearly while money and power can be had by agitation, so long will agitation continue. that seems so obvious to me, that i wonder at the patience of the north of england men--i was among them during the general election--in listening quietly to this argument, if it be one at all. and with all their experience of the past to enlighten them into the bargain. was not the disestablishment of the church to remove all cause of discontent? then it was the land. you gave several land acts, most favourable laws, very one-sided, all in favour of the tenant, far beyond what english, scotch, or welsh farmers hope to get. have you satisfied irishmen yet? no, and you never will. the more you give, the more they ask. they never will be content. ''tis not their nature to.' england now suffers for her own weak good nature. the true curse of ireland is laziness. i left belfast at twenty, but i am well acquainted with ireland. in the north they work and prosper. in the south they do nothing but nurse their grievances. twenty years' firm government, as lord salisbury said, would enrich the country. do the right thing by them--put them level with england and scotland, and then put down your foot. let them know that howling will do no good, and they'll stop it like a shot. paddy is mighty 'cute, and knows when he has a _man_ to deal with. put a noodle over him and that noodle's life will be a burden. and serve him right. fools must expect fools' reward." a catholic priest i met elsewhere was very chary of his opinions, and confined himself to the "hope that england would see her way to compensate the church and the country for centuries of extortion and oppression." this he thought was a matter of "common honesty." he did not exactly suggest a perpetual church-rate for the benefit of the catholics of ireland, but the thing is on the cards, and may be proposed by mr. gladstone later on. something ought to be done, something substantial, for the gentlemen educated under the maynooth grant. mr. bull has admitted the principle, and his sense of fair play will doubtless lead him to do the right thing, always, of course, under compulsion, which is now usually regarded as the mainspring of that estimable gentleman's supposed virtuous actions. ballymena is a smart looking place, trig and trim, thriving and well-liking, a place to look upon and live. the people are all well-clad, and prosperous, well-fed and well-grown. the men are mostly big, the women mostly beautiful; the houses are of stone, handsome and well-built. on the bleaching grounds you see long miles of linen--irish miles, of course--and all the surroundings are pleasant. after this, no need to say the place is one of the blackest, most unionist, protestant, and loyal in the whole country. a number of buff placards issued by nationalists attract respectful attention. the same bill is stuck all over belfast--in the high street, on the hoardings facing the heretic meeting houses, everywhere. it purports to present the sentiments of the great duke of wellington _re_ the roman catholics of ireland, and is to the effect that in moments of danger and difficulty the roman catholics had caused the british empire to float buoyant when other empires were wrecked; that the roman catholics of ireland, and they only, had saved our freedom, our constitution, our institutions, and in short that it is to the irish roman catholics that we owe everything worth having. alone they did it. the priest, in short, has made mr. bull the man he is. can anybody in england "go one better" than this? these extracts are plainly taken from some speech on the roman catholic emancipation bill, and refer to the valour of the irish soldiery, whose bravery in fighting for a protestant cause was doubtless invaluable to the cause of liberty. there is an apocryphal story concerning alfred de musset, who on his death-bed is reported to have conveyed to a friend with his last breath his last, his only wish, to wit:-- "don't permit me to be annotated." the iron duke might have said the same if he had thought of it. he could not know that, shorn of his context, divorced from his drift, he would be placarded in his native land as an agent in the cause of sedition and disloyalty. this truly grand old man, who, in his determination to uphold the dignity and unity of the empire "stood four-square to all the winds that blew," would scarcely have sided with the modern g.o.m. and his satellites, horsewhipped healy and breeches o'brien. one word as to the alleged "intolerance of the fanatic orangemen of belfast." the placards above-mentioned were up on tuesday last. they are large and boldly printed, and attracted crowds of readers--but not a hand was raised to deface them, to damage them, to do them any injury whatever. i watched them for four-and-twenty hours, and not a finger was lifted against any one in the high street or elsewhere, so far as i could ascertain. there are twenty thousand orangemen in the city, and the protestants outnumber the papists by three to one. yet the placard was treated with absolute respect, and although i entered several groups of readers i heard no words of criticism--no comment, unfavourable or otherwise, no gesture of dissent. the people seemed to be interested in the bill, and desirous of giving it respectful consideration. i have seen liberal birmingham, when in the days of old it assembled round tory posters--but the subject becomes delicate; better change our ground. it is, however, only fair to say that the gladstonians of birmingham, who, as everybody knows, formed the extreme and inferior wing of the old radical party, can hardly teach the belfast men tolerance. ballymena, april th. no. .--the exodus of industry. derry is a charming town, unique, indescribable. take equal parts of amsterdam and antwerp, add the rhine at cologne, and waterloo bridge, mix with the wall of chester and the old guns of peel castle, throw in a strong infusion of wales, with about twenty nottingham lace factories, stir up well and allow to settle, and you will get the general effect. the bit of history resulting in the raising of the siege still influences derry conduct and opinions. the 'prentice boys of derry, eight hundred strong, are ardent loyalists, and having once beaten an army twenty-five thousand strong, believe that for the good of the country, like the orator who had often "gone widout a male," they too could "do it again." they do not expect to be confronted with the necessity, but both the boys and the orangemen of derry, with all their co-religionists, are deeply pledged to resist a dublin parliament. "we would not take the initiative, but would merely stand on our own defence, and offer a dogged resistance. we have a tolerable store of arms, although this place was long a proclaimed district, and we have fifteen modern cannon, two of which are six-pounders, the rest mostly four-pounders, and one or two two-pounders, which are snugly stored away, for fear of accident." thus spake one who certainly knows, and his words were amply confirmed from another quarter. derry makes shirts. the industrious derryans make much money, and in many ways. they catch big salmon in the middle of the town, and outside it they have what mr. gladstone would call a "plethora" of rivers. they ship unnumbered emigrants to the far west, and carry the produce of the surrounding agriculturists to glasgow and liverpool. they also make collars and cuffs, but this is mere sport. their real vocation is the making of shirts, which they turn out by the million, mostly of high quality. numbers of great london houses have their works at derry. welch, margeston and co. among others. the derry partner, mr. robert greer, an englishman forty years resident in the town, favoured me with his views _re_ home rule, thus:-- "the bill would be ruinous to ireland, but not to the same extent as to england. being an englishman, i may be regarded as free from the sectarian animosity which actuates the opposing parties, but i cannot close my eyes to the results of the bill, results of which no sane person, in a position to give an opinion, can have any doubt. we are so convinced that the bill would render our business difficult, not to say impracticable, that our london partners say they will remove the works, plant, machinery, and all, to the west of scotland or elsewhere. "about , girls are employed in the mill, and , to , women at their own homes all over the surrounding country. "mr. gladstone may think he knows best, but here the unanimous opinion is that trade will be fatally injured. ireland is no mean market for english goods, and the market will be closed because ireland will have no money to spend. go outside the manufacturing towns and what do you see? chronic poverty. manufacturers will remove to the continent, to america--anywhere else--leaving the peasantry only. the prospective taxes are alarming. we know what would be one of the very first acts of a dublin parliament. they would curry favour with the poor, the lazy districts, by an equalisation of the poor rate. in derry, where everybody works for his bread, the rate is about sixpence in the pound. there are districts where it runs to ten shillings in the pound. the wealthy traders, the capitalists, the manufacturers of the north will have to pay for the loafers of the south. the big men would gather up their goods and chattels and clear out. there are other reasons for this course." here mr. greer made the inevitable statement that englishmen out of ireland did not understand the question; and another large manufacturer chipped in with:-- "leave us alone, and we get on admirably. there is no intolerance; everybody lives comfortably with his neighbour. but pass the bill and what happens? the catholic employés would become unmanageable, would begin to kick over the traces, would want to dictate terms, would attempt to dominate the protestant section, which would rebel, and trouble would ensue. they would not work together. it is impracticable to say: employ one faith only and home rule means that catholicism is to hold the sway. the nationalist leaders foster this spirit, otherwise there would be no home rule. the workpeople would act as directed by the priest, even in matters connected with employment. you have no idea what that means to us. it means ruin. the people do not know their own mind, and their ignorance is amazing. my porter says that when the bill becomes law, which will take place in one month from date, he will have a situation in dublin at a thousand a year, and both he and others sincerely believe in such a changed state of things for catholics alone." i went over welch, margetson's works, a wonderful place, where were hundreds of women, clean and well-dressed, working at the various departments of shirt-making. the highest class of mill hands i ever saw, working in large and well-ventilated rooms, many getting a pound a week. another firm over the way employs one thousand five hundred more. and according to the best authority, that of the owners, all this is to leave the country when ireland gets home rule. a very intelligent catholic farmer living a few miles out of donegal said, "farmers look at the bill in the light of the land question. we're not such fools as to believe in gladstone or his bill for anythin' else. shure, gladstone never invints anythin' at all, but only waits till pressure is put on him. shure, iverythin' has to be dhragged out iv him, an' if he settles the land question, divil thank him, 'tis because he knows he's bate out an' out, an' _has_ to do it, whether he will or no. an' now he comes bowin' an' scrapin' an' condiscindin' to relave us--whin we kicked it out o' his skin. ah! the divil sweep him an' his condiscinshun." ingratitude, thy name is irish tenant! misther o'doherty proceeded to say that landlords were all right now, under compulsion. but the tenantry demanded that they should be released entirely from the landlords' yoke. he said that the agriculturists were not in touch with the whole question of home rule, nor would they consider any subject but that of the land. the nationalists had preached prairie value, and the people were tickled by the idea of driving out landowners and protestants. all the evicted tenants, all the men who have no land, all the ne'er-do-weels would expect to be satisfied. ulster is tillage--the south is mostly grazing. ulster had been profitably cultivated by black protestants, and their land was coveted by the priests for their own people. my friend admitted that, although born a catholic, his religious opinions were liberal. i asked him if the protestant minority would be comfortable under a dublin parliament. he shook his head negatively--"under equal laws they are friendly enough, but they do not associate, they do not intermarry, they have little or nothing to do with each other. they are like oil and wather in the same bottle, ye can put them together but they won't mix. and the protestant minority has always been the best off, simply because they are hard workers. a full-blooded irishman is no worker. he likes to live from hand to mouth, and that satisfies him. when he has enough to last him a day through he drops work at once. the protestants have scotch blood, and they go on working with the notion that they'll be better off than their father, who was better off than their grandfather. and that's the whole of it." mr. j. gilbert kennedy, of donegal, holds similar views of irish indolence. he told me that although living in a congested district he could not obtain men to dig in his gardens, except when thereto driven by sheer necessity, and that having received a day's pay they would not return to work so long as their money lasted. "they will put up with semi-starvation, cold, and nakedness most patiently. their endurance is most commendable. they will bear anything, only--don't ask them to work." mrs. kennedy said that with crowds of poor girls around her, she was compelled to obtain kitchen maids and so forth from belfast. "they will not be servants, and when they afford casual help, they do it as a great favour." a scotsman who employs five hundred men in the mechanical work said: "i have been in ireland fifteen years, and have gone on fairly smoothly, but with a world of management. for the sake of peace i have not five protestants in the place; and i would have none if i could help it. it is, however, necessary to have protestant foremen. irishmen are not born mechanics. in scotland and england men take to the vice and the lathe like mother's milk, but here it is labour and pain. irishmen are not capable of steady, unremitting work. they want a day on and a day off. they wish to be traders, cattle-drovers, pig-jobbers, that they may wander from fair to fair. my men have little to do beyond minding machines; otherwise i must have scots or english. discharge a man and the most singular things occur. in a late instance i had seven written requests from all sorts of quarters to take the man back, although before discharge he had been duly warned. the entire neighbourhood called on me--the man's father, wife, mother, the priest, a protestant lady, three whiskey-sellers, two presbyterians, the church of ireland parson, god knows who. this lasted a fortnight, and then threatening letters set in; coffins, skulls, and marrow-bones were chalked all over the place, with my initials. indeed you may say they are a wonderful people." mr. e.t. herdman, j.p., of sion mills, co. tyrone, should know something of the irish people. the model village above-named belongs to him. travellers to londonderry viâ the great northern will remember how the great herdman flax-spinning mills, with their clean, prosperous, almost palatial appearance, relieve the melancholy aspect of the peaty landscape about the rivers mourne and derg. mr. herdman pays in wages some £ , a year, a sum of which the magnitude assumes colossal proportions in view of the surrounding landscape. the people of the district speak highly of the herdman family, who are their greatest benefactors, but they failed to return mr. e.t. herdman, who contested east donegal in . the people were willing enough, but the priests stepped in and sent a nationalist. said mr. herdman, "home rule would be fatal to england. the irish people have more affinity with the americans or the french than with the english, and the moment international difficulties arise ireland would have to be reconquered by force of arms. and complications would arise, and in my estimation would arise very early." a landowner i met at beragh, county tyrone, held somewhat original opinions. he said, "i refused to identify myself with any unionist movement. if we're going to be robbed, let us be robbed; if our land is going to be confiscated, let it be confiscated. the british government is going to give us something, if not much, by way of compensation; and my opinion is, that if the grand old man lives five years longer he'll propose to give the irish tenants the fee-simple of the lands without a penny to pay. that's my view, begad. i'm a sportsman, not a politician, and my wife says i'm a fool, and very likely she knows best. but, begad, i say let us have prairie value to-day, for to-morrow the g.o.m. will give us nothing at all." the most extraordinary curiosity of derry, the _lusus naturæ_ of which the citizens justly boast, is _the_ protestant home ruler of brains and integrity who, under the familiar appellation of john cook, lives in waterloo place. reliable judges said, "mr. cook is a man of high honour, and the most sincere patriot imaginable, besides being a highly-cultured gentleman." so excited was i, so eager to see an irish home ruler combining these qualities with his political faith, that i set off instanter in search of him, and having sought diligently till i found him, intimated a desire to sit at his patriotic feet. he consented to unburden his nationalist bosom, and assuredly seemed to merit the high character he everywhere bears. having heard his opinion on the general question, i submitted that mr. bull's difficulty was lack of confidence, and that he might grant a home rule bill, if the irish leaders were men of different stamp. he said they were "clever men not overburdened with money," and admitted that a superior class would have been more trustworthy, but relied on the people. "if the first administrators of the law were dishonest, the people would replace them by others. the keystone of my political faith is trust in the people. the irish are keen politicians, and may be trusted to keep things square." i submitted that the patriots were in the pay of the irish-americans, who were no friends of england-- "the present nationalist members are not purists, but to take money for their services, to accept £ a year is no more disgraceful than the action of the lord chancellor who takes £ , . the american-irish cherish a just resentment. they went away because they were driven out of the country by the land system of that day. and the irish people must be allowed to regenerate themselves. it cannot be done by england. better let them go to hell in their own way than attempt to spoon-feed them. but the injustice of former days does not justify the injustice to the landlords proposed by the present bill. it is a bad bill, an unjust bill, and would do more harm than good. england should have a voice in fixing the price, 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 four per cent. interest came lower than their rent. but they have quite ceased to buy, and for the stipulated three years will pay their rent as usual, and why? because they expect the irish legislature to give them even better terms--or even to get the land for nothing. retributive justice is satisfied. for the last twenty years the landlords have suffered fearfully. the present bill is radically unsound, and i trust it will never become law." and this was all that the one specimen of a protestant home ruler i have found in ireland could say in favour of his views! his intelligence and probity compelled him to denounce mr. gladstone's bill as "unjust" and radically unsound, and his patriotism caused him to pray that it might never become law! i left him more unionist than ever. the great orange leader of derry, mr. john guy ferguson, once grand ruler, and of world-wide fame, deprecated appeal to arms, except under direst necessity. "i should recommend resistance to all except the queen's troops. before all things a sincere loyalist, i should never consent to fire a shot on them. others think differently, and in case of pressure and excitement the most regrettable things might happen. the people of derry are full of their great victory of , and believe that their one hundred and five days' resistance saved england from catholic tyranny. the bishop of derry, as you know, had ordered that the troops of king james should be admitted when the thirteen prentice boys closed the gate on the very nose of his army." i saw the two white standards taken from the catholic troops flanking the high altar of the cathedral; which also contains the grandly-carved case of an organ taken from a wreck of the spanish armada in , just a century before the siege. the people have ever before them these warlike spoils, which may account for their martial spirit. an old prentice boy told me of the great doings of , how a catholic publican, one o'donnell, endeavoured to prevent the annual marching of the boys, who on the anniversary of the raising of the siege, parade the walls, fire guns, and burn traitor lundy in effigy; how , men in sleeve-waistcoats entered the town to stop the procession, how the military intervened, and forbade both marching and burning; how the boys seized the town hall, and in face of , soldiers and police burnt an effigy hanging from a high window, which the authorities could not reach; how colonel hillier broke down the doors and stormed the hall at the bayonet's point, to search both sexes for arms. gleefully he produced an alphabetical rhyme, which he thought rather appropriate to the present time, and which ended as follows:--"x is the excellent way they (the authorities) were beaten, and exceeding amount of dirt they have eaten. y is the yielding to blackguards unshorn, which cannot and will not much longer be borne. z is the zeal with which england put down the protestant boys who stood up for the crown." in lord mayor dawson of dublin wished to lecture at derry, but the boys took the hall and held it, declining to permit the "colleague of carey" (on the dublin town council) to speak in the city. there you have the present spirit of derry. two miles outside the town i came on a fine home ruler, who had somewhere failed to sell a pig. "sorra one o' me 'll do any good till we get home rule." he paid £ a year for two acres of land with a house. "'tis the one-half too much, av i paid fifty shillings, i'd be aisy," he said. truly a small sum to stand between him and affluence. i failed to sympathise with this worthy man, but my spirits fell as i walked through a collar factory, and thought of mr. gladstone. the dislocation of the shirt trade is less serious. few irish patriots have any personal interest in this particular branch of industry. dublin, april th. mr. balfour in dublin. mr. balfour is the most popular man in ireland, and his dublin visit will be for ever memorable. the leinster hall, which holds several thousands, was packed by half-past five; ninety minutes before starting time, and the multitude outside was of enormous proportions. the people were respectable, quiet, good-humoured, as are unionist crowds in general, though it was plain that the dubliners are more demonstrative than the belfast men. the line of police in hawkins street had much difficulty in regulating the surging throng which pressed tumultuously on the great entrance without the smallest hope of ever getting in. the turmoil of cheering and singing was incessant, and everyone seemed under the influence of pleasurable excitement. as you caught the eye of any member of the crowd he would smile with a "what-a-day-we're-having" kind of expression. the college students were in great form, cheering with an inexhaustible vigour, every man smoking and carrying a "thrifle iv a switch." portraits of mr. balfour found a ready sale, and tussaud's great exhibition of waxworks next door to the hall was quite unable to compete with the living hero. messrs. burke and hare, parnell and informer carey, tim healy and breeches o'brien, mr. gladstone and palmer the poisoner, with other benefactors and philanthropists, were at a discount. the outsiders were waiting to see mr. balfour, but they were disappointed. lord iveagh's carriage suddenly appeared in poolbeg street at the pressmen's entrance, and the hero slipped into the hall almost unobserved. inside, the enthusiasm was tremendous. the building is planned like the birmingham town hall, and the leading features of the auditorium are similar. the orchestra was crowded to the ceiling, the great gallery was closely packed, the windows were occupied, and every inch of floor was covered. a band played "god save the queen," "rule britannia," and the "boyne water." the word "union," followed by the names of balfour, abercorn, iveagh, hartington, chamberlain, and goschen, was conspicuous on the side galleries, and over mr. balfour's head was a great banner bearing the rose, thistle, and shamrock, with the union jack and the english crown over all. boldly-printed mottoes in scarlet and white, such as "quis separabit?" "union is strength," "we won't submit to home rule," and "god bless balfour," abounded, and in the galleries and on the floor men waved the british flag. the people listened to the band, or amused themselves with patriotic songs and kentish fire, till mr. balfour arrived, when their cheering, loud and long, was taken up outside, and reverberated through the city. the preliminaries being over, the principal speaker rose amid redoubled applause, which gradually subsided to the silence of intense expectation. mr. balfour's first words fell like drops of water in a thirsty land, and never had a speaker a more eager, attentive, respectful audience. now and then stentorian shouts of assent encouraged him, but the listeners were mostly too much in earnest for noise. it was plain that they meant business, and that the demonstration was no mere empty tomfoolery. parnellites were there--a drop in the ocean--but their small efforts at interruption were smilingly received. true, there was once a shout of "throw him out," but a trumpet-like voice screamed "give him a wash, 'tis what he mostly needs, the crathur," upon which a roar of laughter proclaimed that the offender was forgiven. the outsiders continued their singing and cheering, and when mr. balfour concluded sent up a shout the like of which dublin has seldom heard, if ever. succeeding speakers were well received, the audience holding their ground. mr. j. hall, of cork, evoked great cheering by the affirmation that protestants desired no advantage, no privilege, unshared by their catholic brethren. similar points made by other speakers met with an instant and hearty confirmation that was unmistakable. lord sligo pointed out that firmness and integrity were nowhere better understood than in ireland, and said that while william o'brien, the great nationalist, visited cork under a powerful escort of police, who with the utmost difficulty prevented the populace from tearing him to pieces; on the other hand, mr. balfour had passed through the length and breadth of the land, visiting the poverty-stricken and disturbed districts of the west, with no other protection beyond that afforded by "his tender-hearted sister." mr. balfour rose to make a second speech, and the enthusiasm reached its climax. the great ex-secretary seemed touched, and although speaking slowly showed more than his usual emotion. when he concluded the people sent up a shout such as england never hears--an original shout, long drawn out on a high musical note, something like the unisonous tone of forty factory bulls. the students went outside, and with their friends formed in military columns--the outside files well armed with knobby sticks as a deterrent to possible parnellite enterprise. an extemporised arch of union jacks canopied mr. balfour in his carriage, which was drawn by hundreds of willing hands linked in long line. the column, properly marshalled, moved away, keeping step amid loud shouts of "right, left, right, left," until perfect uniformity was attained, and the disciplined force marched steadily on to college green, following the triumphal chariot with alternate verses of "god save the queen" and "rule britannia," each verse interpolated with great bursts of applause. at trinity college the glare of torches appeared, and simultaneously an organised attempt at groaning boomed in under the cheering. heedless of the rabble the column marched merrily on, not with the broken rush of an english mob, but with the irresistible force of unity in a concrete mass, with the multitudinous tramp of an army division. the yelling slummers hovered on each flank, frantic with impotent rage; willing to wound and yet afraid to strike, knowing that to themselves open conflict meant annihilation. a savage, unsavoury horde of rat-like ruffians, these same allies of mr. gladstone and mr. morley, a peculiarly repulsive residuum these dublin off-scourings. they screamed "to hell with balfour," "to hell with the english," "to hell with your unionists," "to hell with queen victoria." some of them sang a doggerel, beginning:-- let the english remember, we'll make them surrender, and chase them to their boats, and cut their ---- throats, and make a big flood of their bad black blood-- not precisely a poem to herald the famous "union of hearts" so confidently expected. the unionists tramped on cheering triumphantly, rejoicing in their strength, ignoring the taunting and jeering of the parnellite scum as beneath contempt. an old home ruler expressed disapprobation of his party. "what's the use of showing your teeth when you can't bite?" he said. "wait till we get the bill and then we will show them and the english what we can do." on through grafton street, nassau street, and into dawson street, always with great shouting and singing of "god save the queen," and "rule britannia," the torches still glaring in front. at morrisson's hotel, where parnell was arrested, a man shouted "three cheers for gladstone," but nobody responded. the rabble may use him, but they refused a single shout. on the other hand groans were given with leonine force both for morley and his master. arrived at st. stephen's green, the procession halted at lord iveagh's residence, and mr. balfour came on the balcony, receiving a welcome right royal. he made another speech amid cheering and groaning of tremendous energy, making himself tolerably well heard under abnormal conditions. when he said "this day shall never fade from my recollection," the lamp beside him was removed and all was over. back tramped the column, with its clouds of camp-followers, on the way cheering and sending to hell the member for south tyrone, with other prominent politicians who live on the line of march. the students held their sticks aloft, striking them together in time to their singing. a shindy had been predicted on the return to college green, and little groups of scots greys and gordon highlanders, the latter in their white uniforms, lounged about smoking their pipes in happy expectation, but beyond cheering at the statue of orange william in dame street, nothing whatever occurred, and presently the crowd began to disperse. seeing this, the police, who until now had been massed in strong force broke up into units, and moving leisurely about said, "good night, boys; you have had enough fun for one day. get to bed, all of you." then the young men who had composed the great loyalist column left the square in little bands, each singing "god save the queen," and every man feeling that he had deserved well of his country. the bill may be stone dead, but there is a satisfaction in the act of shovelling earth on the corpse. dublin, april th. no. .--bad for england, ruinous to ireland. home rule for ireland means damage and loss to english working men. during the late general election the working men candidates of birmingham, and of england generally, argued that once ireland were granted home rule the distressful land would immediately become a garden of eden, a sort of hibernian el-dorado; that the poverty which drove irishmen from their native shores would at once and for ever cease and determine, and that thenceforth--and here was the bribe--irishmen would cease to compete with the overcrowded artisans and labourers of england. that these statements are diametrically opposed to the truth is well known to all persons of moderate intelligence, and the personal statement of several great capitalists with reference to their course of action in the event of home rule becoming law tends to show that multitudes of the industrious classes of irish manufacturing towns will at once be thrown out of employment, and must of necessity flock to england, increasing the congestion of its great cities, competing with english labour, and inevitably lowering the rate of wages. hear what comfortable words mr. robert worthington can speak. mr. worthington is no politician; never has interfered with party questions; has always confined his attention to his business affairs. it was because of this that mr. balfour sent for him to confer anent the light railways, which have proved such a blessing to the country. it was mr. worthington who carried out most of these beneficent works. besides this, mr. worthington has built railways to the amount of three-quarters of a million in ireland alone. he has employed , men at one time, and his regular average exceeds , all the year round. he may therefore be said to know what he is talking about. i called on him at , dame street, before i left dublin, and he said, "the bill would be bad for england in every way, and would ruin ireland. the question is certainly one for the english working man. if he wishes to avoid the competition of armies of irish labourers and artisans he must throw out the bill. and this is how it will work-- "all the railways i have constructed in ireland have been built on county guarantees assisted by special grants from the imperial treasury. without these special grants the work could never have been undertaken at all. if home rule becomes law those special grants from the imperial treasury will be no longer available; and what will be the result? clearly that the work will not be undertaken; that the building of railways will come to an end, and that the irish peasants who have devoted themselves to railway work will go to england and try to find employment there. once a railway navvy, always a railway navvy, is a well-known and very true saying. "for my own part i shall be compelled to compete in england, having nothing to do in ireland, and i shall of course transport my staff and labourers across the channel. "the railways of ireland, fostered by english capital, resting on england's security, have given vast employment to my countrymen. but they would do so no longer. let us give an example to prove my point. "before the introduction of the home rule bill the railway stock to which i have referred stood at a premium of per cent. since the bill became public and has been the subject of popular discussion, i brought out the ballinrobe and claremorris railway--with what result? not one-seventh of the sum required has been subscribed, although in the absence of the bill the amount would certainly have been subscribed four times over, at a premium of per cent. what does this prove? "simply this--that the farmers and small shopkeepers who invest in this class of security will not trust their savings in the hands of the proposed irish legislature. the bill, therefore, stops progress, retards enterprise, drives away capital, and the workers must follow the money. that seems clear enough. everybody here concedes so much. more than this. i can say from my own experience, and from the reports of my agents and engineers in the south and west of ireland, that the nationalists do not want this bill. i do not speak of home rule, but of this bill only. all condemn its provisions, and universally concur in the opinion that once it were passed it would be succeeded by a more violent agitation than anything we have yet seen--an agitation having for its object the radical amendment of the measure. "there is a complete cessation of railway work. already the men are thinking of moving. but this is not all. i am now at a standstill, pulled up short by the bill. what is the effect on england? under ordinary circumstances i buy largely all kinds of railway material--steel rails, sleepers, fasteners, engines, and carriages. every year i send thousands and thousands of pounds to england for these things, and surely most of the money goes indirectly into the pockets of english working men, who are now suffering the loss of all this by reason of their apathy in this matter. i speak only as a man of business, anxious for the prosperity of my country. i do not discuss home rule; never did discuss it and never will. but i end where i began, and i repeat the bill will ruin ireland, will be bad for england, and i will add that the british government will soon be compelled to intervene to stave off irish bankruptcy. home rulers are now becoming afraid of the bill; artisans, farmers, and labourers think it a good joke. they relished the hunt, but they don't want the game. "returning to my own affairs, i say without hesitation that though the mere threat of the bill has paralysed my business, and that the passing of the bill would drive my men to england, yet--throw out the bill, deliver us from the impending dread, and during the next two years i shall myself expend £ , in railway material manufactured by british artisans. emphatically i repeat that home rule to the british working man means increased competition and direct pecuniary loss." mr. s. mcgregor, of , anglesea street, dublin, has been located in the city for years, and seems to have been a politician from the first. coming from the land o' cakes, he landed an advanced radical, and a devoted admirer of the grand auld mon. once on the spot a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. his shop has the very unusual feature of indicating his political views. her gracious majesty, lord beaconsfield, and mr. balfour look down upon you from neat frames. i am disposed to regard mr. mcgregor as the pluckiest man in ireland. a quiet, peaceful citizen he is, one who remembers the sawbath, and on weekdays concentrates his faculties on his occupation as a tailor and clothier. i did not seek the interview, which arose from a business call not altogether unconnected with a missing button, but his opinions and his information are well worth recording. mr. mcgregor said, "i thrust my opinions on none, but i have a right to my opinions, and i do not affect concealment. the great defect of the irish unionists is want of courage. they dare not for their lives come forward and boldly state their convictions. if lord emly or some other irish roman catholic nobleman had come forward earlier, it might have induced weak-kneed members of the party to do likewise. the unionists do not exercise the great influence they undoubtedly possess. they allow themselves to be terrorised into silence. let them have the courage of their opinions and they have nothing to fear. the masses of the industrial population are not in favour of home rule. the corner-men, who want to spend what they never earned, and the farmers, who hope to get the land for nothing, are the only hearty home rulers in ireland. i employ ten people, all roman catholics, some of them with me for twenty-five years. none of these are home rulers. i became a convert to conservatism by my intimate knowledge and personal acquaintance with many of the leaders of the fenian movement. i saw through the hollowness of the whole thing, and declined any connection therewith. poor henry rowles, who was to be told off by signal to shoot mr. foster, was one of my workmen. he died in prison, some said from sheer fright, but two or three of his friends were hanged. he was mixed up by marriage with the fenian party, and was drawn on and on like many another. i would rather not name the fenian leaders i knew, and the reason is this. i knew them too well. speaking of the unionist lack of courage, you must not be too much surprised. during the last fourteen years unionists have had to maintain a guerilla warfare for existence. but the strangest feature of the present position is this--the home rulers are kicking at the bill! a great home ruler of my acquaintance (mr. mcgregor referred me to him) is getting quite afraid. he is a farmer holding acres under lord besborough, and says that he trusts things will remain as they are. he has a good landlord, borrows money by the subvention, and has a perfect horror of the class of men who will obtain the upper hand in ireland. a nationalist over the way was about to extend the buildings you see there. plans were drafted, and offices were to be built. out comes the bill and in goes the project. he has no confidence in the irish nationalist leaders; but, strange to say he believes in mr. gladstone. he admits that the irish m.p.'s are not quite up to his ideal, but believes that the grand old man's genius for accommodation and ingenious dovetailing of imperial interests will pull the country through. meanwhile he lays out no penny of money. "i am a presbyterian, and what is more a united presbyterian, belonging to the presbyter of scotland. all scotch presbyterians are advanced radicals. we have four hundred members here. they came here worshippers of gladstone and home rulers to the tune of per cent. the congregation is now per cent. unionist or conservative out and out. of the four hundred we have only three home rulers. what will the english people say to that? tell them that our minister, who came here a home ruler, is now on a unionist mission in scotland--the rev. mr. procter, brother of procter, the cartoonist of _moonshine_ and the _sketch_, to wit. my workpeople, all steady, industrious people, ask but one thing--it is to be let alone." here mr. g.m. roche, the great irish wool-factor and famous amateur photographer, said-- "ah! we must have the bill. 'tis all we want to finish us up. we're never happy unless we're miserable; the bill will make us so and we'll never be properly discontented till we get it!" passing through the counties of louth, dublin, londonderry, monaghan, tyrone, donegal, and fermanagh, i met with many farmers whose statements amply confirmed the words of the descendant of the great sir boyle roche. these unhappy men had been divested of their last grievance, stripped of their burning wrongs, heartlessly robbed of their long-cherished injuries. it was bad enough before, when irishmen had nothing except grievances, but at least they had these, handed down from father to son, from generation to generation, along with the family physiognomy, two precious, priceless heirlooms, remarkable as being the only hereditary possessions upon which the brutal saxon failed to cast his blood-shot, covetous eye. and now the grievances are taken away, the _lares_ and _penates_ of the farmer's cabin are ruthlessly removed, and the melancholy peasant looks around for the immaterial antiquities bequeathed by his long-lost forefathers. "ah; don't the days seem lank and long, when all goes right and nothing goes wrong, and isn't our life extremely flat, when we've nothing whatever to grumble at." the irish farmer is with the poet, who hits his harrowing anguish to a hair. he folds his hands and looks about, uncertain what to do next. his rent has been lowered by per cent., he has compensation for improvements, fixity of tenure, and may borrow money to buy the land outright at a percentage, which will amount to less than his immortal rint. what is the unhappy man to do? his grievances have been his sole theme from boyhood's happy days, the basis of his conversation, his actuating motive, the very backbone of his personal entity. now they are gone, the fine gold has become dim, and the weapons of war have perished. once he could walk abroad with the proud consciousness that he was a wronged man, a martyr, a brave patriot struggling nobly against the adverse fates, a broth of a boy, whose melancholy position was noted by the gods, and whose manly bearing under proffered slavery established a complete claim to high consideration in olympus. but now, with heart bowed down with grief and woe, he walks heavily, and even as a man who mourneth for his mother, over the enfranchised unfamiliar turf. he peeps into the bog-hole, and does not recognise himself. he could pay the rent twice over, but he hates conventionalities, and would rather keep the money. he is constructed to run on grievances, and in no other grooves, and the strangeness of his present position is embarrassing. the tenants of lord leitrim, lord lifford, and the duke of abercorn make no complaint of their landlords. on the contrary, they distinctly state that all are individually kind and reasonable men, and while attributing their own improved position to the various land acts given to ireland, which leave the actual possessor of the land small option in the matter, they freely admit that these gentlemen willingly do more than is ordained by any act of parliament, and that over and above the provisions of the law, all three are fair-minded men, desirous of doing the right thing by their people and the country at large. other landlords there were on whose devoted heads were breathed curses both loud and deep. the late lord leitrim was exalted to the skies, but his murdered father was visited with blackest malediction. at clones, in the county monaghan, i met a sort of roadside specimen of the _agricola hibernicus_, who explained his position thus:--"ye see, we wor rayduced per cent., an' 'tis thrue what ye say; but then produce is rayduced per cent., so we're per cent. worse off than iver we wor before. we want another land act that'll go to the root. an' that we'll get from an oirish parliament an' only from that. 'tis not the tinints that's always the worst off. many's the time i seen thim that had a farrum of their own go to the dogs, while thim that had rint to pay sthruggled and sthrived an' made money an' bought the freeholders out. for whin they had nothin' to pay they did no work, an' then, bedad ivery mortial thing wint to the divil. an' that's how it'll be wid the lazy ones once we get home rule, which means the land for nothin' or next to nothin'. barney will kick up his heels and roar whirroo, but call again in a year an' ye'll see he hasn't enough money to jingle on a tombstone." my next from the new tipperary, whither i journey viâ kildare, kilkenny, and limerick, _en route_ for cork and the blood-taxed kerry, where kerry cows are cut and carved. now meditation on marauding moonlighters makes melancholy musing mine. limerick, april th. no. .--terrorism at tipperary. tipperary is irish, and no mistake. walking into town from limerick the first dwellings you reach are of the most primitive description, whether regarded as to sanitary arrangements or otherwise. the ground to the right slopes downwards, and the cabins are built with sloping floors. the architects of these aboriginal erections stuck up four brick walls, a hole in, a hole out, and a hole in the top, without troubling to level the ground. entering, you take a downward step, and if you walk to the opposite exit, you will need to hold on to the furniture, if any. if you slip on the front step you will fall head first into the back yard, and though your landing might be soft enough, it would have a nameless horror, far more killing than a stony fall. the women stand about frowsy and unkempt, with wild irish eyes, all wearing the shawl as a hood, many in picturesque tatters, like the cast-off rags of a scarecrow, rags and flesh alike unwashed and of evil odour. the children look healthy and strong, though some of them are almost _in puris naturalibus_. their faces are washed once a week; one of them said so, but the statement lacks confirmation, and is opposed to the evidence of the senses. scenes like these greet the visitor to old tipperary, that is, tipperary proper, if he enter from limerick. the town is said to be old, and in good sooth the dunghills seem to possess a considerable antiquity. in this matter the tipperary men are sentimental enough--conservative enough for anything. at tipperary, of all places, the brutal saxon will learn how much has been bequeathed to irishmen by their mighty forefathers. the eastern side is better. a grand new roman catholic church has just been built at a cost of £ , , and in front of the gilded railings--for they are gilt like the railings of paris--were dreadful old women, like macbethian witches, holding out their skinny hands for alms. smartly dressed young ladies, daughters of publicans and shopkeepers, passed in jauntily, took a splash in the holy water, crossed themselves all over, knocked off a few prayers, and tripped merrily away. the better parts of the town belong to mr. smith-barry, the knock-me-down cabins to mr. stafford o'brien, whose system is different. as the leases fall in the former has modern houses built, while the latter is in the hands of the middlemen, who sub-let the houses, and leave things to slide. the _laissez-aller_ policy is very suitable to the genius of the genuine irish, who may be said to rule the roost in tipperary. i interviewed all sorts and conditions of men, but every individual bound me down to closest secrecy. and although nobody said anything approaching high treason, their alarm on finding they had ventured to express to a stranger anything like their real opinion was very significant. the conversations took place last evening, and this morning before breakfast a young man called on me at the station hotel, limerick junction, three miles from tipperary, "on urgent business." "me father thinks he said too much, an' that ye moight put what he said in print, wid his name to it. ye promised ye wouldn't, an' me father has confidence, but he wishes to remoind ye that there's plinty in tipperary would curse him for spakin' wid an englishman, an' that dozens of thim would murther him or you for the price of a pot of porter." another messenger shortly arrived, bearing a letter in which the writer said that any mention of his name would simply ruin him, and that he might leave the country at once. and yet these men had only said what englishmen would account as nothing. new tipperary adjoins the old, to which it is on the whole superior. all the descriptions i have seen of the land league buildings are untrue and unfair. most of them were written by men who never saw the place, and who paraphrased and perpetuated the original error. it was described as a "mile or two from tipperary," and the buildings were called "tumble-down shanties of wood, warped and decaying, already falling to pieces." the place adjoins and interlocks with the old town; it is not separated by more than the breadth of a street, is largely built of stone, and comprises a stone arcade, which alone cost many thousands. some of the cottages are of wood, but they look well, are slated, and seem in good condition. the butter mart, a post and rail affair, with barbed wire decorations, is desolate enough, and nearly all the shops are shuttered. enamel plates with dillon street and emmett street still attest the glory that has departed, but the plate bearing parnell street escaped my research. the william o'brien arcade is scattered to the winds, save and except the sturdy stone walls, which (_à la_ macaulay's new-zealander) i surveyed with satisfaction, sketching the ruins of the structure from a broken bench in dillon street. a full and true history of the new tipperary venture has never been written. as in the present juncture the story is suggestive and instructive, i will try to submit the whole in a form at once concise and accurate. the particulars have been culled with great pains from many quarters and carefully collated on the spot, and may be relied on as minutely exact and undeniable. everyone admits mr. smith-barry's claim to the title of a good landlord, an excellent landlord, one of a thousand. before the _casus belli_ was found by william o'brien all was prosperity, harmony, and peace. mr. smith-barry owns about , acres of land situate in the fat and fertile plain of tipperary, known as the golden vale, with the best part of the county town itself. tipperary is a great butter centre. the people are ever driving to the butter factory, which seemed to be worked in the brittany way. donkey-carts driven by women, and bearing barrels of milk, abound on the limerick road. the land is so rich, grand meadows, and heavy dairy-ground, that the place prospered abundantly, and was by commercial men reckoned an excellent place for business. but they have changed all that. the tipperary folks were once thought as good as the bank of england. now they dislike to pay anything or anybody. their delicate sense of _meum_ and _tuum_ is blunted. they take all they can get, and pay as little as they can. they affect dunghills and dirt, and have a natural affinity for battle, murder, and sudden death. how did all this come about? first, as to mr. smith-barry's character. the most advanced nationalists, the fenian papers, the catholic clergy, all concurred in blessing him. the roman catholic bishop of cloyne, canon hegarty, p.p., and tim healy spoke of him in the character of a landlord in highest terms. sir charles russell, tim harrington, mr. o'leary (chairman of the clonakilty town commissioners, a violent nationalist), and canon keller (r.c.) unanimously agreed that mr. smith-barry must be exempted from the general condemnation of irish landlords. they said he was the "kindest of landlords," and that his tenants were "comfortable, respectable, and happy." they proclaimed his "generous and noble deeds," declaring that "there have been no cases of oppression or hardship, and the best and most kindly relations have existed." all these sayings are gathered from nationalist papers, which would supply thousands of similar character, and up to the time of o'brien's interference, none of an opposite sort. but, as serjeant buzfuz would have said, the serpent was on the trail, the viper was on the hearthstone, the sapper and miner was at work. thanks to the patriot's influence, the paradise was soon to become an inferno. a mr. ponsonby wanted his rents, or part of them. his tenants had lived rent-free for so long--some of them were seven years behind--that they naturally resented the proposed innovation. mr. smith-barry and others came to mr. ponsonby's assistance, and, endeavouring to settle the thing by arbitration, proposed that the landlord should knock off £ , of arrears, should make reductions of to per cent. in the rents, and make the tenants absolute owners in years. this was not good enough. judge gibson thought it "extravagantly generous," but the tipperary folks resented mr. smith-barry's connection with such a disgracefully tyrannical piece of business, and, at the instance of william o'brien, determined to make him rue the day he imagined it. they sent a deputation to remonstrate, and mr. smith-barry, while adhering to his opinion as to the liberality of the proposition, explained that he was only one of many, and that whatever he said or did would not change the course of events. the tipperary folks required him to repudiate the arrangement, to turn his back on his friend and himself, and--here is the cream of the whole thing, this is deliciously irish--they soberly, seriously, and officially proposed to mr. smith-barry that in addition to the per cent. abatement they had just received on their rent he should make a further remittance of per cent. to enable them to assist the ponsonby tenants in carrying on the war against their landlord, on whose side mr. smith-barry was fighting. they said in effect, "you have given us s. in the pound, to which we had no claim; now we want s. more, to enable us to smash the landlord combination, of which you are the leader." this occurred in the proceedings of a business deputation, and not in a comic opera. mr. smith-barry failed to see the sweet reasonableness of this delightful proposition, and then the fun began. o'brien to the rescue, whirroo! he rushed from dublin, and told the tipperary men to pay smith-barry no rent. if they paid a penny they were traitors, slaves, murderers, felons, brigands, and bosthoons. if they refused to pay they were patriots, heroes, angels, cherubim and seraphim, the whole country would worship them, they would powerfully assist the ponsonby folks in the next county, they would be saviours of ireland. and besides all this they would keep the money in their pockets. but this was a mere detail. the people took o'brien's advice, withholding mr. smith-barry's rent, keeping in their purses what was due to him, in order that somebody's tenants in the next county might get better terms. still mr. smith-barry held out, and the land league determined to make of him a terrible example. he owned most of the town. happy thought! let the shopkeepers leave his hated tenements. let their habitations be desolate and no man to dwell in their tents. the land league can build another tipperary over the way, the tenants can hop across, and mr. smith-barry will be left in the lurch! the end, it was thought, would justify the means, and some sacrifice was expected. things would not work smoothly at first. the homes of their fathers were void; new dunghills, comparatively flavourless, had to be made, the old accretions, endeared by ancestral associations, had to be abandoned, and the old effluvium weakened by distance was all that was left to them. the new town was off the main line of trade and traffic, but it was thought that these, with the old tipperary odour, would come in time. streets and marts were built by the land league at a cost of £ , or more. the people moved away, but they soon moved back again. the shopkeepers could do no business, so with bated breath and whispering humbleness they returned to mr. smith-barry. the mart was declared illegal, and the old one was re-opened. but while the agitation continued, the town was possessed by devils. terrorism and outrage abounded on every side. the local papers published the names of men who dared to avow esteem for mr. smith-barry, or who were supposed to favour his cause. the tipperary boys threw bombshells into their houses, pigeon-holed their windows with stones, threw blasts of gun-powder with burning fuses into their homes. they were pitilessly boycotted, and a regular system of spies watched their goings out and their comings in. if they were shopkeepers everything was done to injure them, and people who patronised them were not only placed on the black list but were assaulted on leaving the shops, and their purchases taken by violence and destroyed. broken windows and threats of instant death were so common as to be unworthy of mention, and the hundred extra armed policemen who were marched into the town were utterly powerless against the prevailing rowdyism of the nationalist party. honest men were coerced into acting as though dishonest, and one unfortunate man, who had in a moment of weakness paid half-a-year's rent, pitifully besought mr. smith-barry's agent to sue him along with the rest, and declared he would rather pay it over again than have it known that the money had been paid. "ye can pay a year's gale for six months, but ye can't rise again from the dead," said this pious victim to circumstances. at last the leaders were prosecuted, but before this the boys had great divarshun. these good gladstonians, these ardent home rulers, these patriotic purists, these famous members of the sans-shirt separatist section, set no limits to their sacrifices in the good cause, stuck at nothing that would exemplify their determination to bring about the union of hearts, were resolved to take their light from under a bushel and set it in a candlestick. they wrecked many houses and sorely beat the inmates. they burnt barns, and stacks, and homesteads, and in one case a poor man's donkey-cart with its load of oats. they exploded in people's homes metal boxes, leaden pipes, and glass bottles containing gun-powder, in such numbers as to be beyond reckoning. they burnt the doors and window sashes of the empty houses, knocked people down at dark corners with heavy bludgeons, and fired shots into windows by way of adding zest to the family hearth. poor john quinlan escaped five shots, all fired into his house. mr. bell, of pegsboro, beat this record with six. he was _believed_ to sympathise with mr. smith-barry! men with white masks pervaded the vicinity from the gentle gloaming till the witching morn, and woe to the weak among their opponents, or even among the neutrals, whom they might meet on their march! the tenants were great losers. a commercial man from dublin assured me that the agitation cost him £ , in bad debts. the people were inconvenienced, unsettled, permanently demoralised, their peaceful relations rudely interrupted, themselves and their commercial connections more or less discredited and injured, and the whole prosperous community impoverished, by the machinations of o'brien and bishop croke of thurles, a few miles away. the inferior clergy were of course in their element. father humphreys and others were notorious for the violence of their language. gladstonians who think home rule heralds the millennium, and who babble of brotherly love, should note the neat speech of good father haynes, who said, "we would, if we could, pelt them not only with dynamite, but with the lightnings of heaven and the fires of hell, till every british bulldog, whelp, and cur would be pulverised and made top-dressing for the soil." this is the feeling of the priests, and the people are under the priestly thumb. that this is so is proved by recent events in dublin. none but the parnellites could make head against the catholic party. in the recent conflict the parnellites were squelched. tim healy kicked and bit, but bishop walsh got him on the ropes, and tim "went down to avoid punishment." the priest holds tim in the hollow of his hand. tim and his tribe must be docile, must answer to the whistle, must keep to heel, or they will feel the lash. should they rebel, their constituencies, acting on priestly orders, will cast them out as unclean, and their occupation, the means by which they live, will be gone. tim and his congeries hate the clerics, but they fear the flagellum. they loathe their chains, but they must grin and bear them. they have no choice between that and political extinction. the opinion of tipperary men on the question of religious toleration is practically unanimous. pass home rule and the protestants must perforce clear out. as it is, they are entirely excluded from any elective position, their dead are hooted in the streets, their funeral services are mocked and derided by a jeering crowd. the other day a man was fined for insulting the venerable protestant pastor of cappawhite, near tipperary, while the old man was peacefully conducting the burial service of a member of his congregation. foul oaths and execrations being meekly accepted without protest, a more enterprising papist struck the pastor with a sod of turf, for which he was punished. but, returning to our muttons, let me conclude with three important points: ( ) mr. smith-barry built the town hall of tipperary at a cost of £ , , and gave the use thereof to the town commissioners for nothing. he spent £ , on a butter weigh-house, £ on a market yard, and tidied up the green at a cost of £ . he gave thirty acres of land for a park, and the ground for the catholic cathedral. he offered the land for a temperance hall (i think he promised to build it), on condition that it was not used as a political meeting-house. the catholic bishop declined to accede to this, and the project was abandoned. ( ) several dupes of the land league, for various outrages, were sentenced to punishment varying from one year's hard labour to seven years' penal servitude. ( ) o'brien, m.p., and dillon, m.p., who had brought about the trouble, were with others convicted of conspiracy, and were sentenced to six months' imprisonment. but this was in their absence, for soon after the trial commenced, being released on bail, they ran away, putting the salt sea between themselves and their deservings. heroes and martyrs of ireland, of whom the brutal briton hears so much, receive these patriots into your glorious company! the spirit of tipperary is ever the same. no open hostility now, but the fires of fanaticism are only smouldering, and only a breath is needed to revive the flame. every protestant i saw, and all the intelligent and enlightened catholics, concur that this is so, and that home rule would supply the needful impulse. these men also submit that they understand the matter better than mr. gladstone and his patch-work party. tipperary april th. no. .--tyranny and terrorism. the peasantry and small shopkeepers of this district can only be captured by stratagem, and this for two reasons. their native politeness makes them all things to all men, and their fear of consequences is ever before them. their caution is not the scotsman's ingrained discretion, but rather the result of an ever-present fear. english working men of directly opposite politics chum together in good fellowship, harbouring no animosity, agreeing to differ in a friendly way. it is not so in ireland. the irish labourer is differently situated. he dare not think for himself, and to boldly speak his mind would mean unknown misfortunes, affecting the liberty and perhaps the lives of himself and those nearest and dearest to him. that is, of course, assuming that his opinions were not approved by the village ruffians who watch his every movement, of whom he stands in deadly terror, and whom he dreads as almost divining his most secret thoughts. a direct query as to present politics would fail in every case. as well try to catch thames trout with a bent pin, or shoot snipe with a bow and arrow. my plan has been to lounge about brandishing a big red guide-book, a broad-brimmed hat, and an american accent; speaking of antiquities, shortest roads to famous spots, occasionally shmoking my clay dhudeen with the foinest pisantry in the wurruld and listening to their comments on the "moighty foine weather we're havin', glory be to god." they generally veer round to the universal subject, seeking up-to-date information. discovering my ignorance of the question, they explain the whole matter, incidentally disclosing their own opinions. the field workers of this district are fairly intelligent. most have been in england, working as harvesters, and some of the better-informed believe that in future they will be compelled to live in england altogether. a fine old man, living by the roadside near oolagh, said:--"i wint to england for thirty-four years runnin', and to the same place, in north staffordshire, first wid father, thin wid son. whin i got too ould an' stiff i sent me own son. first it was old micky, thin it was young micky. he's away four months, and brings back enough to help us thro' the winter, thanks be to god. the other time he mostly works at the big farrum beyant there. whin they cut up the big farrums into little ones, nayther meself nor micky will get anything, by raison we're dacent, harmless people. 'tis the murtherin' moonlighters will get the land, an' me son wouldn't demane himself by stoppin' in the counthry to work for them. first 'twas the landlords dhrove us away, next 'twill be the tenants. we're bound to be slaughtered some way, although 'twas said that when we 'bolished the landlords we'd end our troubles. but begorra, there's more ways o' killin' a dog than by chokin' him wid butther." there is a growing feeling among the farmers that the land will be heavily taxed to raise revenue, and that this means expatriation to the labouring classes, who will swarm to england in greater numbers than ever. another grand old man, named mulqueen, spoke english imperfectly, and it was only by dint of frequent repetition that his meaning could be mastered. well clothed and well groomed, he stood at his cottage door, the picture of well-earned repose. thirty-two years of constabulary service and twenty-one years in a private capacity had brought him to seventy-five, when he returned to end his days on his native spot, among irish-speaking people, and under the noble shadow of the galtee mountains. divested of the accent which flavoured his rusty english, mr. mulqueen's opinions were as follows:-- "i am a home ruler and i voted for a nationalist. but i am now doubtful as to the wisdom of that course. i see that irishmen quarrel at every turn, that they are splitting up already, that the country under their management would be torn to pieces, that the people would suffer severely, and that england would have to interfere to keep our leaders from each other's throats. it was irish disputes that brought the english here at first. in the event of an irish legislature irish disagreements would bring them here again. we'll never be able to govern ourselves until the people are more enlightened." i left this sensible and truly patriotic irishman with the wish that there were more like him. he was a pious catholic, and regretted to learn that i was otherwise, admitting in extenuation that this was rather a misfortune than a fault, and, with a parting hand-shake, expressing an earnest hope that "the golden gates of glory might open to receive my sowl, and that we might again convarse in the company of the blessed saints in the peaceful courts of heaven." this old-fashioned pious kindliness is hardly now the mode, and isolated instances can rarely be met with even in remote country districts. running down to limerick, i witnessed a warm contention between a unionist from belfast and a commercial traveller from mullingar, a hot home ruler, the latter basing his arguments on alleged iniquitous treatment of his father, a west meath farmer, and defending boycotting as "a bloodless weapon," which phrase he evidently considered unanswerable. the land league he contended was a fair combination to protect the interests of the tenants, and avowed that all evictions were unwarrantable acts of tyranny. the belfast man showed that these arguments were equally applicable to the other side, and asked the patriot if eviction were not likewise "a bloodless weapon," to which inquiry the mullingar man failed to find the proper answer, and, not coming up to time, was by his backers held to have thrown up the sponge. this incident is only valuable as showing the poor line of country hunted by the more brainy nationalists. a county clare man boasted of his collection of irish curiosities. "i have the pistol o'connell shot so-and-so with, i have the pistol grattan used when he met somebody else, i have the sword of wolfe tone, the pike that miles o'flanagan--" here the ulsterman broke in with-- "excuse me, sir. there's one thing i'd like to see if ye have it. like you, i am a pathriotic irishman, and take deloight in relics appertaining to the histhory of me counthry. tell me now, have ye the horsewhip, the thunderin' big horsewhip, that young mcdermot, of thrinity college, used when he administhered condign punishment to tim healy? have ye that, now?" the county clare man was completely knocked out. he discontinued the recital of his catalogue, and surveyed the scenery in dignified silence. his own friends chuckled. this was the most unkindest cut of all. irishmen love to see a splendid knockdown blow. they are full of fight, and their spirit must have vent. they fight for fun, for love, for anything, for nothing, with words, with blows, with tongues, with blackthorns, anywhere, anyhow, only let them fight. remove mr. bull, they will fight each other. heaven help the right when nobody stands by to see fair play! a mr. magrath, of killmallock, was inclined to take a jocose view of the situation. "faix, the english could never govern ireland, an' small blame to thim for that same. did ye see the divil's bit mountains as ye came down from dublin? ye did? av coorse, ye couldn't help but see them. did ye see the big bite he tuk out o' the range--ye can see the marks o' the divil's own teeth, an' the very shape of his gums, divil sweep him! shure, i seen it meself whin i wint to the curragh races wid barney maloney; an' by the same token, 'twas barney axplained it to me. didn't the divil take his bite, an' then didn't he dhrop it on the plain out there forninst ye, the big lump they call the rock iv cashel? av coorse he did. an' if the divil himself found ireland too hard a nut to crack, how can the english expect to manage us? anyway, 'tis too big a mouthful for misther bull." one gentleman stood at his shop door, and having looked carefully around, said, "ye niver know who ye're spakin' wid, an' ye niver know who's spyin' ye. ah, this is a terrible counthry since we all got upset wid this home rule question. did ye hear of sadleir, of tipperary? ye didn't? he was a savin', sthrivin' man, an' he married a woman wid money. he had a foine shop, wid ploughs, an' sickles, an' spades for the whole counthry round. 'twas a grand business he had, an' he made a powerful dale o' money. he was a quiet man, an' niver wint to the whiskey shops, where the boys they would be quarrellin' an' knockin' hell out iv each other. he introduced a timprance lecturer that towld the boys the poteen was pizenin' thim, an' 'twas wather they must dhrink. ha! ha! will i tell ye what owld sheela maguire said to the timprance man?" i admitted a delirious delight in discursive digression. "the timprance man had a wondherful glass that made iverything a thousand million times as big. what's this he called it? ye're right, 'twas a my-cross-scrope; ye hit it to a pop; bedad 'tis yerself has the larnin.' an' the people looked through it at the wather he put in a glass, an' they seen the wather all swimmin' wid snakes an' scorpions; 'twas enough to terrify the mortal sowl out o' ye. an' so sheela looked in an' saw them. an' the man put in the wather a good dhrop o' whiskey, an' he says, says he, 'now ye'll see the effect on animal life,' says he. an' sheela looked in again, an' she seen the snakes all doubled up, an' kilt, an' murthered an' says sheela, says she:-- "'may the divil fly away wid me,' says she, 'if i ever touch wather again till i first put in whiskey to kill them fellows!' "'twas poor sadleir, of tipperary town, brought the man down. sadleir must howld land; nothin' less would sarve him, an' he tuk from smith-barry a big houldin', an' paid the out-going tenant five thousand pounds for his interest. whin the throubles began he refused to join the land league, by raison that he'd put all his money in the land. they sent him terrible letthers wid skulls an' guns, an' coffins, an' they said will ye join? an' he said no, once. they smashed ivery pane o' glass in his house, an' they said will ye join? an' he said no, twice. they bate his servants next, an' said will ye join? an' he said no, three times. they threw explosives into the house, an' said will ye join? an' he broke down. he was afeard for his life. he wint in wid the rest, an' refused to pay rint', an' iv coorse he got evicted, an' lost his five thousand pounds he put into the farm, an' then he lost his business, an' before long he died with a broken heart. an' where did he die? just in the workhouse. 'twas all thro' william o'brien, the great frind iv oireland, that this happened. an' if o'brien an' his frinds got into power, why wouldn't it happen again? but we're afeard to breathe almost in this unfortunate counthry, god help us!" amid the varying opinions of the irish people there is one point on which they are unanimous. they have no confidence in their present leaders, whom they freely accuse of blackguardism, lying, and flagrant dishonesty. business men, although home rulers, agree that the destinies of the country should not be trusted to either or any of the jarring factions, which like unclean birds of evil omen hover darkling around, already disputing with horrid dissonance possession of the carcase on which they hope to batten. at the station hotel, limerick junction, a warm nationalist said to me, "the country will be ruined with those blackguards. we have a right to home rule, an abstract right to manage our own affairs, and i believe in the principle. but i want such men as andrew jameson, or jonathan hogg, or that other quaker, pym, the big draper. there we have honourable gentlemen, whom we or the english alike might trust, either as to ability or integrity. we might place ourselves in the hands of such men and close our eyes with perfect confidence. our misfortune is that our men, as a whole, are a long way below par. they inspire no confidence, they carry no weight, and nobody has any respect for them." here my friend mentioned names, and spoke of an irish m.p.'s conduct at sligo. i give his story exactly as i heard it, premising that my informant's _tout ensemble_ was satisfactory, and that he assured me i might rely on his words:--"at the imperial hotel a discussion arose--a merely political discussion--and blows were exchanged, the 'honourable gentleman' and others rolling about the floor like so many savage bull dogs in a regular rough-and-tumble fight. the poor 'boots' got his face badly bruised, and for some days went about in mourning. i see that this same member is bringing in a bill in the house of commons, and i read it through with great interest, because i remembered the row, which was hushed up, and never appeared in the papers. imagine any irishman, with any respect either for himself or his country, trusting either to a parcel of fellows like that." my friend spoke more moderately of the objectionable irish m.p.'s than they do of each other, but his opinions were obviously strong enough for anything. the attitude of the _freeman's journal_ moved him to contempt, and its abject subjection to the priesthood excited his disgust. he said, waving the despised sheet with indignity--"we have no paper now. we lost all when we lost parnell. he was a protestant, and could carry the english people, and with all his faults he had the training of a gentleman. look at the low-bred animals that represent us now. look at blank-blanky and his whole boiling. i swear i am ashamed to look an englishman in the face. the very thought of the irish members makes me puke." the mention of mr. jonathan hogg reminds me that this eminent dubliner submitted to me a point which i do not remember to have seen in print. said mr. hogg: "when the irish legislature has become an accomplished fact, which is extremely improbable, the land will be divided and sub-divided until the separate holdings will yield incomes below the amount required for the payment of income-tax. the effect of this will be that a large number of incomes now paying tax will disappear, each leaving a number of small incomes paying no tax, so that a larger tax must be levied on the remaining incomes to meet the deficiency. then the large manufacturers who can move away will certainly do so, and the country will suffer severely. employment will be scarce or altogether lacking, and the people will go to england, by their competition lowering the rate of wage." the mention of mr. andrew jameson reminds me of his opinion _re_ customs. he said to me "the bill nominally deprecates separation, and yet proposes to establish a custom house between the two countries, making ireland a foreign country at once." mr. john jameson, who was present along with mr. arundel, the business manager of the great j.j. concern, then expressed his fears anent the practicability of customs' collections on the irish coast. he said, "we have , coastguards at present, and this force is ample when backed by the royal irish constabulary, marching and patrolling in the interior. but when the constabulary are no longer engaged in the direct protection of british interests the little force of thirteen hundred coastguards must prove quite insufficient, and i doubt if even thirteen thousand would prove an adequate force. the irish people will have no interest in protecting the british government. their interest will be exactly the other way. grave difficulties attend the proposition having regard to the customs duties between the two countries." another eminent authority then present referred to the encouragement which the act would give to the enterprising smuggler, and thought that a small fleet of american steamers, smart built, fast little boats, would instantly spring into existence to carry on a splendidly paying trade--a trade, too, having untold fascination for the yankees, while the average irishman, as everybody knows, is a smuggler by nature, disposition, heredity, and divine right. it was also pointed out that, whereas huge quantities of spirits now pass to ireland through the ports of bristol and london, under the new dispensation irish merchants would order direct, which would inflict loss on england. the details of this loss were fully explained, but i omit them for the reason that experts will understand, while lay readers may safely accept a statement uttered in the presence of the two jamesons and receiving their assent. but my friend's conversation reminded me of something more, and i remembered a little story i heard in dublin respecting a daily disseminator of priest-ordered politics. it owed some rent for the premises it occupies on the thymy banks of the odorous liffey. it owed, i say, for owing, not paying, is the strong suit of the party it represents. it was pressed to pay, coaxed to plank down, soothered to shell out. a registered letter with premonitory twist of the screw "fetched" the patriot laggards. they or "it" paid up, but failed to look pleasant. in his hurry the glad recipient of the cash gave a receipt up to date instead of up to the time the rent was due. the immaculate organ of highly-rectified morality wished to hold the writer of the receipt to his pen-slip, to nobble the rent; and being reproached backed out with:-- "we thought you wanted to give it as a present." the landlord is a strong unionist. the rottenness of repudiation is spreading everywhere. lying and theft, under other names, would be, the dominant influences under the new _régime_. but it may be objected--if irishmen have no respect for their members, why did they elect them? if they object to home rule, why did they vote for it? and so on, and so on. these queries at first blush seem unanswerable, but they are not really so. attentive readers of later letters will discover the reason why. further, it may be remarked, in passing, that questions are more easily asked than answered. here is an instance. the facts are undeniable, staring us in the face:-- the base and bloody balfour, unaccompanied by men who have been called his black and brutal bloodhounds, moves about in ireland unmolested, with no other protection than that of his sister. the bright and brilliant o'brien, the purist-patriot, visiting the constituency of which he is the senior member, is with difficulty protected by a powerful force of the police he has so often affected to despise. other nationalist members dare not appear in nationalist quarters. how is this? to return to the objections given above. since the appearance of the bill, irishmen have been changing their minds. day by day they dread it more and more. they still believe that under certain conditions home rule would be a good thing for ireland. but they begin to see that the required conditions do not exist. they begin to see that they have been used by such men as o'brien and healy, they see the incompetency which has reduced the party paper to so low an ebb, they see the misery and degradation which the land league inflicted on the once thriving districts of tipperary; they saw their neighbours, poor, unlettered men, dupes of unscrupulous lying eloquence, men whom it was murder to deceive--they saw these men sentenced to long terms of penal servitude, while the instigators of the crimes for which they had suffered, availing themselves of the liberal english law, broke their bail, and, travelling first-class to paris, lived in the best hotels of that gay city on the plunder they had wiled from ignorant servant girls, being clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day, while their friends the felons trod the tireless wheel and the housemaids went on with their scrubbing. the irish people have seen these things and many more, and, as the french say, they have reflected. a very considerable proportion of the lower classes have already changed their minds, but--they dare not own it. so the process of education is comparatively slow. a small farmer said to me, "not an hour's walk from here, a small tinant like meself was suspicted to be a thraitor to the cause. he was a sthrivin' man, an' he had really no politics, an' only wanted to get lave to work his land, an' earn his bit an' sup. "he had two sthrappin' daughters, as nice, dacent young girls as ye'd see in a summer's day. they were seen spakin' to a pliceman--that was all they done--an' four men came that night, four ruffians wid white masks, an' havin' secured the father, they dhragged the young girls out of bed at the dead hour, an' stripped them to the skin. thin they cut off their hair close wid a knife, the way ye'd cut corn, an' scarified their bodies wid knives. would ye wondher we're careful?" i asked him whether a protestant could in his district hope to be elected to any public position, the board of guardians for instance (he was a good catholic). his answer was an unqualified no. then he took time, and shortly proposed the following statement of the position, which i present on account of its gem-like finish:-- "i wouldn't say but they'd put on a protestant av he paid for it by settlin' wid the priest that for certain considerations he would be contint wid a seat on the boord. an' thin he must renounce his political ideas, or promise never to mintion thim in public. but, begorra, he'd have to sell his birthright for a mess of pottage by makin' a decoy duck of himself!" in adding this great specimen to the immortal list of memorable mixed metaphors, i feel that my visit to ireland has not been quite in vain. oolagh, (co. tipperary), april th. no. .--defying the land league. "burn everything english except english coals." that was the first sentiment i heard in "rebel cork," and it certainly expresses the dominant feeling of the local nationalist party, who do not seem to have heard of the proposed union of hearts, or, if they have heard, they certainly have not heeded. nor will anyone who knows for one moment assert that the corkers entertain the idea. my hotel is a hotbed of sedition. it is the southern head-quarters of the parnellite party. the spacious entrance hall is a favourite resort of the leading cork nationalists, who air their views in public with much excited gesture, having its basis in whiskey-nourished hatred of english rule. they walk to the bar, suck in the liquid bliss, and return to the spot whence they may look upon the beauteous promenaders of patrick street. they prefer the kaleidoscopic change of the streets to the stationary beauty of the bar, and while admitting the unfleeting quality of the fixed stars they worship the procession of the equinoxes. on saturday last, the day o'brien died, the mayor of cork, with mayoral chain and hosts of satellites, might have been seen under the familiar portal, discussing the proposed public funeral of the lamented friend, once mayor of the city, and described as "a gentleman who had, by his courageous and outspoken utterances, obtained the distinguished honour of imprisonment by the british government." particulars were not given, as the first two incarcerations occurred under forster and trevelyan. the third, under balfour, was a term of fourteen days for assaulting a policeman. the corporation discussed the patriot's merits without descending to detail. outside, the newspaper boys were yelling "arrest of misther balfour-r-r," but the corporation were no buyers. the populace might be taken in, but official cork know it was the "wrong 'un," and clave to its hard-earned pence. public opinion here is much the same as in dublin, only hotter. respectable people who have anything to lose are, if possible, more seriously alarmed. the lower classes are, if possible, more bitter, more implacable in their animosity to everything english. nevertheless, the feeling against home rule is assuredly gaining ground, even among the most ardent nationalists. the great meeting of last wednesday showed what the unionists could do, how they could crowd a great platform with the intelligence of the country, and fill a great hall with the unionist rank and file. the loyalists have astonished themselves. they knew not their own strength. now they are taking fresh heart, determined to hold out to extremity. the separatists--for the corkers are separatists _au naturel_--are somewhat disconcerted, and try to minimise the effect of the meeting by sneering and contumely; but it will not do. they affect hilarity, but their laughter is not real. perhaps nothing shows the shallowness of men more than the tricks they think sufficient to deceive. and then the leaders are accustomed to a credulous public. the place is eminently religious. cork is the isle of saints--with a port and a garrison to enhance its sanctity. at certain seasons a big trade is done in candles, on which names are written, which being blessed and burnt have powerful influence in the heavenly courts. it costs a trifle to hallow the tallow, but no matter. a friend has seen a muddy little well, which is fine for sore eyes. offerings of old bottles and little headless images were planted around, but the favourite gift was a pin, stuck in the ground by way of fee. jolly mr. whicker, of dublin, who represents three birmingham houses, saw father mcfadden, of gweedore, waving his hat when in custody. a policeman insisted that this should cease, when a man in the crowd said to mr. whicker:-- "arrah, now, look at the holy man. he puts on his hat widout a wurrud, whin he could strike the man dead wid jist sayin' a curse. 'tis a good saint he is, to go wid the police, whin if he sthretched out his hand he could wither thim up, an' bur-rn thim like sthraws in the blazin' turf!" these people have votes, and to a man support the nationalist party. it is proposed to place ireland under a government governed by these good folks, who are in turn governed by their sacred medicine-men. a member of the firm of cooke brothers, a native of cork, in business in this city fifty years, said:-- "there can be no doubt that the bill means ruin for ireland, and therefore damage to england. the poor folks here believe the most extravagant things, and follow the agitators like a flock of sheep. they are undoubtedly wanting in energy. we have the richest land in ireland, wonderful pastures that turn out the most splendid cattle in the world, big salmon rivers, a most fruitful country, a land flowing with milk and honey. as the rents are judicially fixed there can be no ground for complaint, but the people will not help themselves. whether it is in the climate i cannot say, but i must reluctantly admit--and no one will gainsay my statement--that the people of the south, to put it mildly, are not a striving sort. "they want somebody else to do something for them. they get on a stick and wait till it turns to a horse before they ride. no act of parliament will help them, for they will not help themselves. "look at the magnificent country you saw from dublin to this city. compare it with the black and desolate bogs of ulster, and then ask yourself this question--how is it that the ulster people, with far worse land, worse harbours, worse position, and having the same laws, are prosperous and content to have no change? if the northerns and southerns would swop countries, ireland must develop into one of the most prosperous countries in the world. the ulster men are tremendously handicapped as against the munster folks, but--they are workers. some say that if they were here the climate would enervate them, but i do not find that my experience countenances this supposition. fifty years ago all the leading merchants and tradesmen of cork were catholics. it is not so now. what does that prove? i withhold my own opinion. "the southerners are better fixed than the ulstermen, but they are idle, and--this is very important--extremely sentimental." an avowed nationalist, one sullivan, completely bore out this last statement. "we want to manage our own business, and be ruled by irishmen. you say in england that we shall be poor, and so we may, but that is no argument at all. it might influence a nation of shopkeepers, but it has no weight with irishmen, who have a proper and creditable wish to make their country one of the nations of the world. the very servant girls feel this, and the poorest peasant woman now having what she calls a 'tay brakefast' is willing to go back to porridge if the country was once rid of the english. never you mind what will happen to us. cut us adrift, and that will be all we ask. if we need help we can affiliate with america or even france. the first is half our own people, the second understands the irish nation, which fought for centuries in the french armies, and, under marshal saxe, an irishman, routed the english at fontenoy." this gentleman was civil and moderate in tone, but he did not promise to walk down the ages arm-in-arm with england, attesting eternal amity by exchanging smokes and drinks. "we'll be very glad to see the english as tourists," he said. "and they will have to behave themselves, too," he added, reflectively. a large trader of patrick street has most serious misgivings as to the effect of the bill. he said:-- "i had just been over to england to make purchases. arriving here, i found the bill just out. i read it, and at once cancelled half my orders. we are reducing stock. what home rule would do for us i cannot contemplate. the mere threat amounts to partial paralysis. what the cork people want with home rule is beyond me. they have everything in their own hands. the city elections of all kinds are governed by the rural voters of five miles round. wealth and commercial capital are completely swamped by these obedient servants of the priests. mr. gladstone talks of an upper house, with a £ qualification. why, the qualification for the grand jury is £ . many of the twenty-pounders round here cannot read or write, and yet they will be qualified for the irish house of lords. a customer came up and said:--"gladstone wants to hand the capital and commerce of this country to men like tim healy, who expects to be prime minister, and who will succeed, if the bill passes and he can eat priestly dirt enough. i knew where he was reared in waterford, in a little tripe and drischeen shop." i rose to a point of order. would the honourable member now addressing the house kindly explain the technical term "drischeen shop?" "certainly. the drischeen is a sort of pudding, made of hog's blood and entrails, with a mixture of tansy and other things. tim would know them well for he was reared on them, which accounts for his characteristic career. do you know that the queenstown town commissioners call each other liars, and invite each other to come out and settle it on the landing? get the _cork constitution_, look over the file, and you'll drop on gems that will be the soul of your next letter. don't miss it. and that's the sort of folks mr. gladstone would trust with the fate of england as well as ireland, for their fates would be the same. you cannot separate them. the people of england do not seem to see through that. they will have an awful awakening. and serve them right. they make a pact with traitors; they offer their throats to the murderer, and they say, 'anything to oblige you. i know you won't hurt us much.' "the southern irish are the most lovable people in the world, with all their faults, if they were not led astray by hireling agitators, who ruin the country by playing on the people's ignorance, exciting the catholic hope of religious domination, and trusting to damage england as a great spreader of protestantism. a lie is no lie if told to a protestant. to keep a protestant out of heaven would be a meritorious action. and they would readily damage themselves if by doing so they could also damage england. englishmen hardly believe this, but every commercial traveller from an english house knows it is true." i tested a number of english commercials on this point. all confirmed the statement above given. many had been gladstonians, but now all were unionists. none of them knew an english or scotch commercial who, having travelled in ireland, remained a home ruler. such a person, they thought, did not exist. admitted that for business purposes the apparent _rara avis_ might possibly, though not probably, be found, all agreed that no englishman in his senses, with personal knowledge of the subject, could over support home rule. two gladstonians went from chester to tipperary to investigate the troubles: both returned converted. six men from a shop-fitting establishment in birmingham worked some weeks in dublin: all returned unionist to the core. this from mr. sibley, of grafton street, dublin, in whose splendid shop i met the duchess of leinster, handsomest woman in ireland, and therefore (say irishmen) handsomest in the world. she was buying books for mr. balfour, who, she said, was a great reader of everything connected with ireland or irish affairs. mr. sibley is a partner of mr. combridge, of new street, birmingham, and is a leading irish unionist. returning to the cancelling of orders, i will add that mr. richard patterson, j.p., of belfast, the largest buyer of hardware in ireland, has cancelled very largely, together with two other large firms, whose names he gave me. you will remember mr. john cook, the protestant home ruler, of derry. his manager, mr. smith, has written the birmingham factor of the house, to omit his usual visit, as the firm will have no orders for him. a strange comment on mr. cook's theories of confidence. mr. cook is an excellent, a high-minded man. he asked me how i would class him among his party. i called him a visionary in excelsis. every self-respecting saxon visitor to cork visits the famous castle of blarney, seven miles away, to see the scenery and kiss the blarney stone, the apparent source of home rule inspiration. there is a stone there that whoever kisses och! he never misses to grow eloquent. 'tis he may clamber to a lady's chamber, or become a member of parliament. a clever spouter he'll sure turn out, or an out-an'-outer to be let alone! don't hope to hindher him or to bewildher him-- sure, he's a pilgrim from the blarney stone! the walk is delightful, not unlike that from colwyn bay to conway, but more beautiful still, as instead of the london and north western railway a lovely river runs along the valley on your right. the cork and muskerry light railway occupies the roadside for the first four miles, relic of the beneficent balfour--winding by the river side for the rest of the journey, through fat meadows dotted with thriving kine, and having a background of richly-wooded hills. at carrickrohane your left is bounded by a huge precipitous rock, covered from base to summit with ivy and other greenery, a great grey building on the very brink of the abyss, flanked by scotch firs, peering over the precipice. a fine stone bridge, garrisoned by salmon-fishers, leads to the anglers' rest, and here i found a splendid character, one dennis mulcahy, who boasted of his successful resistance to the land league. having told me of his adventures in america, and how his oyster-bar experiences in the far west had opened his eyes to the fact that the irish people were being humbugged, he narrated his return to his native land, on his succession to a small farm left him by "an ould aunt he had." his language was so forcible and picturesque that i despair of conveying its effect, more especially as no pen can describe the rich brogue, which, notwithstanding his two years' residence in the states, was still thick enough to be cut with a knife. apart from its amusing side, his story has a moral, and may be instructively applied. "'twas at ballina i was, the toime o' the land lague. 'twas there captain moonlight started from, an' the whole disthrict was shiverin' in their shoes. i refused to subscribe to the land lague, an' they started to compil me, but, be the powers, they tackled the wrong tom-cat whin they wint to coarce dennis mulcahy. threatenin' letthers, wid pictures o' death's-heads, an' guns, an' pikes, an' coffins, was but a thrifle to the way they wint on. but they knew i had a thrifle of a sivin-shooter, an' bad luck to the one o' thim that dared mislist me at all. at last it got abroad that i was to get a batin' wid blackthorn sticks, for they wor tired the life out o' them, raisonin' wid me. well, says i, i'm here, says i, an' the first man that raises a hand to me, i'll invite him to his own inquist, says i, for, bedad, i'll perforate him like a riddle, says i. well, it wint on an' on, till one day i was stayin' at a bit of a shebeen outside the place, when a slip o' a girleen kem to me--i was sittin' on a bench in the back garden, the way i'd enjoy my pipe in the fresh air, an', says she, 'get out o' this, for there's a whole crew o' thim inside going to bate you.' that was six or seven o' a fine summer's night, an' i walked into the house an' took a look at thim--a thievin' heap o' blayguards as iver ye seen wid your two eyes." "i wint out again an' sat in the haggard, where i could kape my eye on the dure. prisintly out comes one o' thim, to commince the row, i suppose. "he spoke o' the land lague, an' i towld him i didn't agree wid it at all, and 'twas a thievin' invintion o' a set o' roguish schamers. "'ye'd betther mind yer manners,' says he, 'onless ye have yer revalver,' says he, lookin' at me maningly. "faix, 'tis here, says i, pullin' out the tool. "'but can ye handle it?' says he. "begorra, says i, i'd shoot a fly off yer nose; an' wid that i looked round for a mark, an' i seen in a three foreninst me a lump o' a crow sittin' annoyin' me. 'will ye quit yer dhrimandhru?' says i, to the botherin' ould rook. "'caw, caw, caw,' says he, vexin' me intirely. "bang! says i, an the dirty blackburd comes fluttherin' down, an' dhropped in the haggard like a log o' limestone. "ye should have seen that fellow! the landlord wid the whole rout o' thim runs out. 'what's the matter?' says he, starin' round like a sick cod-fish. "'i'm afther charmin' a burd out iv a three; 'tis a way i have,' says i, shovin' in a fresh cartridge from my waistcoat pocket, fair an' aisy, an' kapin' me back to the haystack. "'was it you kilt the jackdaw?' says he. "''twas meself,' says i, 'that did it,' says i. "'an' ye carry a murdherin' thing like that in a paceful counthry,' says he. ''tis yer american thrainin' says he, sneerin'. "i tuk off me hat an' giv' him a bow an' a scrape. 'is it yerself would insinse me into the rudiments o' polite larnin'?' says i. thin i looked him straight into the white iv his eye, an' give him the length o' my tongue. me blood was up whin i seen this spalpeen wid his dirty set o' vagabones waitin' to murther me if they ketched me unbeknownst. 'michael hegarty,' says i, 'where did ye scour up yer thievin' set o' rag-heaps?' says i. 'ye'd bate me wid blackthorns, would ye? come on, you and your dirty thribe, till i put sivin shots into yez. shure i could pick the eye out o' yez shure i could shoot a louse off yer ear,' says i. 'anger me,' says i, 'an' i'll murther the whole parish; raise a stick to me, an' i'll shlaughter the whole counthry side.' an' wid that i cocked me little shootin'-iron. "ye should have seen that shebeen-keeper; ye should have seen the whole o' them whin i raised me voice an' lifted me little colt! "they tumbled away through the dure, crossin' each other like threes ye'd cut down, lavin' the landlord, struck all iv a heap, the mug on him white as a new twelve-pinny, staggerin' on his two shin-bones, an' thrimblin' an' shiverin' wid fright, till ye'd think he'd shake the teeth out iv his head. "the murdherin' vilyans want shtandin' up to, an' they'll rispict ye. i had no further trouble. that was the last o' thim. 'tis the wake an' difinceless people they bate an' murther. i heerd there was talk o' shootin' me from the back iv a ditch; an' that one said, 'but av ye missed?' says he. 'what thin?' says he. "ye should sind ould gladstone an' morley an' the other ould women to carrignaheela till i give them a noggin' o' right poteen an' insinse thim into the way iv it. the only way o' managin' me counthrymin is to be the masther all out, an' 'tis thrue what i spake, an' sorra one o' me cares who hears me opinion. i'm the only man in the counthry that dares open his teeth, an' yet they all thrate me well now, an' the priest invites me to his house. an' all because i spake me mind, an' don't care three thraneens for the whole o' thim. 'twas in america i larned the secret." cork, april th. no. .--the cry for peace and quietness. "what's the next place to this?" i asked, as the southern and western railway deposited me at tralee. i was uncertain as to whether the place was a terminus, but the gintleman who dhrove the cyar i hailed marvelled greatly at my ignorance. he surveyed me from top to toe with a compassionate expression. no doubt he had heard much of the ignorance of the uncivilised english, but this beat the record. not to know that tralee was on the sea, not to know that the little port frowned o'er the wild atlantic main, as mr. micawber would have said. he struggled for a moment with his emotion and then said, "musha, the next parish is amerikay!" i apologised for my imperfect geographical knowledge, but the cyar-man was immovable. no pardoning look stole over his big red face, which was of the size and complexion of a newly cut ham. nor would he enter into conversation with the inquiring stranger. he cursed his horse with a copiousness which showed his power of imagination, and with a minute attention to detail which demonstrated a superior business capacity. put him in the house amongst the nationalist members, and he is bound to come to the front. the qualifications above-mentioned cannot fail to ensure success. we have the examples before us, no need to mention names. a hard cheek, a bitter tongue, and a good digestion are the three great steps in the irish parliamentary _gradus ad parnassum_, the cheek to enable its happy possessor to "snub up" to gentlemen of birth and breeding, the tongue to drip gall and venom on all and sundry, the digestion to eat dirt _ad libitum_ and to endure hebdomadal horsewhippings. such a man, i am sure, was the dhriver of my cyar, who may readily be identified. his physiognomy is very like the railway map of ireland, coloured red, with the rivers and mountain ranges in dark-blue or plum-colour. as a means of ready reference he would be invaluable in the house of commons. how interesting to see mr. gladstone poring over his cheek (connaught and leinster), his jaw (munster, with a pimple for parnellite cork), and his forehead (ulster, with the eyes for derry and belfast). the g.o.m. would find the kerry member invaluable. like the rest he would probably be devoid of shame, untroubled by scruples, and a straight voter for his side, so long as he was not allowed to go "widout a male." who knows but that, like the prime minister's chief irish adviser, he may even have been reared on the savoury tripe and the succulent "drischeen"? all the tralee folks are shy of political talk. they eye you for a long time before they commit themselves, but when once started they can hardly stop, so warm are they, so intensely interested in the great question. running down the line, a cork merchant said "the kerry folks are decent, quiet folks by nature. do not believe that these simple villagers are the determined murderers they would seem to be. no brighter intellects in ireland, no better hearts, no more hospitable hosts in the emerald isle. they are very superstitious. there you have it all. 'tis their beautiful ingenuousness that makes them so easily led astray. what do these simple country folks, living on their farms, without books, without newspapers, without communication with large centres--what do they know about intricate state affairs? what can they do but listen to the priest, regarded as the great scholar of the district, reverenced as almost--nay, quite infallible, and credited with the power to give or withhold eternal life? for while in england the people only respect a parson according to the esteem he deserves as a man, in ireland the priestly office invests the man with a character entirely different from his own, and covers everything. these poor folks felt the pinch of hard times, and the agitators, backed by their church, saw their opportunity and commenced to use it. hence the kerry moonlighters, poor fellows, fighting in their rude and uncouth way for what they believed to be patriotism and freedom. they should be pitied rather than blamed, for they were assuredly acting up to their light, and upon the advice of men they had from childhood been taught to regard as wise, sincere, and disinterested counsellors. "ah me, what terrible times we had in cork! belfast may boast, but belfast is not in it. we were in the centre of the fire. the shopkeepers of patrick street deserve the fullest recognition from the british nation. they had to furnish juries to well and truly try the moonlighters of kerry, clare, and several other counties. they sat for eight months, had to adjourn over christmas, and those men returned true bills at the peril of their lives. the venue was changed to cork for all these counties, and every man jack of the jury knew full well that any day some fanatic friend of the convicted men might shoot or stab him in the street. the loyalty of belfast is all the talk, but it has never undergone so severe a test. there the loyalists have it all their own way. here the loyalists, instead of being three to one, are only one to three. the ulstermen are the entrenched army; the cork unionists are the advanced picket. more judges got promotion from cork than elsewhere. we changed the barristers' silk to ermine, too. all this shows what we went through. everything is quiet now; balfour terrified the life out of them, and captain moonlight at the mention of that name would skip like spring-heeled jack." the kerry folks turned out bright as their reputation. it was hard to believe that these simple, kindly peasants had ever stained their beautiful pastoral country with the bloodiest, cruellest deeds of recent times. they have a polite, deferential manner without servility, and a pious way of interpolating prayer and thanksgiving with their ordinary conversation. "good morning, sir." "good mornin', an' god save ye, sorr." "fine weather." "'tis indeed foine weather, glory be to god." "nice country." "troth, it is a splindid country. the lord keep us in it." a prosperous-looking shop with a portly personage at the door looked so uncommonly unionistic that i ventured to make a few inquiries _re_ the antiquities of the district. the inevitable topic soon turned up, and to my surprise my friend avowed himself a home ruler and a protectionist. his opinions and illustrations struck me as remarkable, and with his permission i record them here. "yes, i am a home ruler--in theory. i think home rule would be best for both. best for you and best for me, as the song says; but mark me well--not yet. "you are surprised that i should say not yet so emphatically, but the fact is i love my country, and, besides, all my interests and those of my children are bound up with the prosperity of the country. this ought to sharpen a man's wits, if anything could do it, and i have for many years been engaged in thinking out the matter, and my mind is now made up. "home rule from gladstone will ruin us altogether. we must have home rule from balfour. we _must_ have home rule, but we must have it from a conservative government. you smile. is that new to you? it is? just because home rulers in this country cannot afford to express their views at this moment. but the hope is entertained by all, i will say all, the most advanced irish home rulers. by advanced i mean educated, enlightened. let me give you an illustration which i heard from a friend in cork. "here is ireland, a delicate plant requiring untold watching and careful training. around it on the ground are a number of slugs and snails. or call them hireling agitators if you like. i sprinkle salt around the roots to kill off the brutes and save my darling plant. that salt is conservatism. it is furnished by people of property, by men who have interests to guard. salt is a grand thing, let me tell you! balfour is the man to sprinkle salt. home rule from him would be safe. he is the greatest man that ever governed ireland, but that must be stale to you. you must have heard that everywhere. he put his foot on rebellion and crushed it out of existence. on the other hand the poor folks of the west coast would lie down and let him walk over them. they hold him in such esteem that they would regard it a favour if he would honour them by wiping his feet on them. he might walk unarmed and unattended through ireland from end to end with perfect safety. but which of the nationalist members could do that? not one. the city scum, the criminal, irreclaimable class, shout 'hell to balfour,' but these poor readers of the _freeman's journal_ and such-like prints, prepared for their special use and written down to their level, must not be classed with the people of ireland at all. every country has its ruffian element, every country has its poisonous press. ireland is no worse than other countries in these respects." my irish conservative home ruler would have gone on indefinitely, furnishing excellent matter, for he improved as he warmed up, but unhappily a priest called on him to make some purchase, and he had to leave me without much notice. "over the way," he said. "trip across to the opposite shop, and you'll find another tory home ruler." as i "tripped" across i thought of the pills and ointment man who amassed a colossal fortune by fifty years' advertising of the fact that wonders never will cease. mr. overtheway was not quite so tory as might be supposed, after all. he said:-- "i have no objection to home rule, but, although a catholic, i have the greatest objection to rome rule, which is precisely what it means. i object to this great empire being ruled from rome. the greatest empire that the world ever saw to be bossed by a party of priests! do the english know what they are now submitting to? "let me put the thing logically, and controvert me if you can. "if mr. gladstone wished to go to war to-morrow, is he not at the mercy of the irish nationalist party? could he get votes of supply without their aid? in the event of any sudden, or grave emergency, any serious and critical contingency, would they not hold the key of the position, would they not have the power to make or mar the empire? surely they would. and are not these men in the hands of the priests? surely they are. that is a matter of common knowledge, as sure as that water will drown and fire will burn. a pretty position for a sensible man like john bull to be placed in by a blethering idiot, who can argue with equal volubility on either side, but with more conviction when in the wrong. bull must have been drunk, and drunk on stupid beer, when he placed his heart strings between the finger and thumb of a quack like that, who, whatever the result, whether we get home rule or not, has ruined the country for five-and-twenty years. "yes, i am a home ruler. but for heaven's sake don't thrust self-government on an unfortunate country that is not ready for it. that country cries for it, you say. the snuffling old air-pump across the channel says the same thing. says he: 'beloved brethren, i greet you. i fall on your neck and kiss your two ears, and give you all you ask. for why, beloved brethren? why do i this thing. let us in a spirit of love enquire. because it is the wish of the country; because it is the aspiration of the people; because i feel a deep-seated, internal affection for your beautiful land, in whose affairs, during my eighty-four years' pilgrimage in this vale of tears, i have, as you know, always shown the strongest, the warmest, the most passionate interest, and on whose lovely shores i have during my seven dozen years spent (altogether) nearly a week. it has been said that i have never been in ulster, and that, therefore, i am unable to appreciate the situation. an atrocious falsehood. i have spent two hours (nearly) in the northern province, having landed from sir somebody's yacht to see the giant's causeway. i have studied the irish question by means of mineral specimens gathered from the four provinces, and i am, therefore, competent to settle the irish question for ever. do you know a greater man than myself? i confess i don't. bless you, my children. you ask for home rule. enough. the fact that you ask proves a divine right to have what you ask for. you are a people rightly struggling to be free,' says owld gladstone. 'hell to my sowl,' says he, 'but that's what ye are,' says he. "and he starts to murder us by giving what the most ignorant, unthinking, unpatriotic, self-seeking people in the country have asked for, and swears that because they ask they must have. "as well give a razor to a baby that cried for it. "ireland must be treated as an infant. "an irish legislature would lead to untold miseries. we might arrive there some day, but not at a jump. the change is too sudden. we want a little training. we want to grow, and growth is a thing that cannot be forced. it takes time. give us time for heaven's sake. give us home rule, but also give us time. give us milk, then fish, then perhaps a chop, and then, as we grow strong, beefsteak and onions. a word in your ear. this is certain truth, you can go nap on it. tell the english people that the people are getting sick of agitation, that they want peace and quietness, that they are losing faith in agitators, having before them a considerable stretch of history, which, notwithstanding the scattered population, is filtering down into the minds of the people, with its morals all in big print. the irish folks are naturally quick-witted. they are simple and confiding, many of them very ignorant, if you will, but they find out their friends in the long run. look at balfour. not a man in the whole world for whom the people have so much affection. which do you think would get the best welcome to-morrow--balfour or morley? balfour a hundred thousand times. ah, now; my countrymen know the real article when they see it. home rule we want for convenience and for cheapness. we don't want to be compelled to rush to london before we can build a bridge. but rather a million times submit to expense and inconvenience than hand the country over to a set of thieves who'd sell us to-morrow. we're not such fools as ye take us for. don't we know these heroes? and when we see them and gladstone and morley and humbug harcourt with his seventeen chins, all rowling together in abraham's bosom (as ye may say)--harcourt licking harrington's boots, when only yesterday tim was spittin' in his eye--we say to ourselves 'wait yet awhile, my boys, wait yet awhile.' but when ye've finished yer slavering and splathering, and when tim healy can find time to take his heel off morley's neck, then, and not before, we'll have something to say to you. "but you should call on my friend on the right. he is also a home ruler--like myself." number three had powerfully-developed opinions. he said--"home rule on conservative lines is my ticket. we'll get it on no other. i console myself with that idea. otherwise it would be a frightful business, and what would become of us, i cannot tell. but i do not believe that even gladstone would be so insane as to give it us. i cannot believe that the middle class voters of england would stand by and see the corresponding class in this country exterminated. home rule as much as you like, if we had the right men. the very poorest peasants are becoming alive to the fact that under present circumstances the thing would never do for them. they want the right men, that is, men of money and character, to come forward. and i declare most solemnly, that i am convinced that the irish people would fall into line, and see the bill thrown out with perfect quietude. now the push has come, they really do not want home rule, and, what is more, they absolutely dread it, and i firmly believe that a general election at the present moment would send a majority of unionists to power. the priests are working for life and death. they see that this is their best chance, perhaps their very last opportunity. i am a catholic; but then i am a parnellite, a tory parnellite. and i have no intention of bartering away my political freedom to my church, which, in my opinion, should keep clear of politics. the clergy have now advised payment of rent, so that the government may not be embarrassed at a very critical juncture. and the tenants are paying their rent, although the present period is one of great agricultural depression. look at this: the ulster farmers are terribly hard up, are complaining that they cannot pay. this is the protestant province, where the priests have little scope. but in leinster, munster, and connaught, the people are paying the landlord. the word has gone round--pay the landlord, whomever else you don't pay! the oilcake man, the implement man, the shopkeeper, are not getting their dues, but notwithstanding the pinch of the present moment, the landlord (who knows all about it) is paid. and the priests in some cases are actually remitting the clerical dues to enable the small men to pay the rint. pay the rint, say they, if you pledge your very boots, if you have to go to the gombeen man (money-lender), if you have almost to rob the church. they want to get possession, they want to get power, they want to get home rule; and then they know that, as scripture says, 'all these things shall be added unto them.' let them once get the upper hand, and they can very soon recoup themselves. "the priests are showing england their power, with a view to future good bargains. 'you see what we can do,' say they. arrange the matter with us. we are the boys. the reverend father o'codling is the man. have no dealings, except such as are authorised by us, with the red-headed tim healy short. the clergy have only one idea; that is, of course, the predominance of their church. very natural, and, from their point of view, very proper. i find no fault with them, but i say their object hardly commends itself to my undivided admiration, and, being still friendly, we on this subject part company. i wish to let the priests down easy. they are mostly very good men, apart from politics. they are good customers to me, and they pay very promptly. they spend their money in the country, and i'd have no fault to find if they'd lave politics alone. mind that owld gladstone doesn't become a papist all out. 'twould be better for him, no doubt, and as the whole jing-bang that turned round with him before would no doubt still follow at his heels, we'd get a considerable quantity of converts, if we could say little about the quality. d'ye hear what that owld woman's singing?" i listened with interest. the minstrelsy of ireland seems to have drifted into the hands of the most unpoetical people in the green isle. the poor old creature walked very, very slowly along the gutter, ever and anon giving herself a suggestive twitch, which plainly indicated some cutaneous titillation--the south is a grazing country. this was all i heard-- owld oireland was owld oireland whin england was a pup. oireland will be owld oireland whin england's bur-r-sted up! if my friends are right as to the change of feeling _re_ home rule, the dear old lady was hardly up to date. but the great author of "dirty little england"--i judge of the author by the internal evidence of sentiment, style, and literary merit--certainly composed the above beautiful stanza in the sure and certain hope that the present bill would become law. number three qualified his remarks on rent, when speaking of the county clare. "there they embarrass the government by refusing to pay, and by shooting people in the good old way, just at the most ticklish time." he said, "clare has always been an exceptional county. clare returned daniel o'connell, by him secured catholic emancipation, and from that time has called itself the premier county of ireland. they are queer, unmanageable divils, are the clare folks, and we are only divided from them by the shannon. so the kerry folks go mad sometimes by contagion. i should advise you to keep away from clare. you might get a shot-hole put into you. every visitor is noticed in those lonely regions, and the little country towns only serve to disseminate the arrival of a stranger to the rural districts. suppose you walk five miles out of ennis the day after you arrive there, i would wager a pound the first woman that sees you pass her cottage will say, 'that's the englishman that maureen o'hagan said was staying at the queen's hotel.' the servants are regular spies, every one of them. i couldn't speak politics in my house because i've a catholic nurse. good bye, i hope ye won't get shot." i thanked him for the interest expressed, but failed to share his nervousness. after having mingled with the nationalist crowd that followed the balfour column in the dublin torchlight procession, after having escaped unhurt from the blazing nationalists who swarm in the royal victoria hotel, cork, having walked down the limerick entrance to the balmy tipperary, a little shooting, more or less, is unworthy a moment's consideration. besides which, my perpetual journeying and interviewing and scribbling have made me so thin that captain moonlight himself would be bound to miss. however, it is well to be prepared for the worst, so--_pax vobiscum_, and away to county clare. tralee (co. kerry), april th. no. .--english ignorance and irish perversity. a most enchanting place when you have time to look at it. my flying visit of ten days ago gave the city no chance. let me redeem this error, so far as possible. there are two, if not three limericks in one, a shamrock tripartition, a trinity in unity,--english-town, irish-town, and new town perry. new limerick is a well-built city, which will compare favourably with anything reasonable anywhere. much of it resembles the architecture of bedford square, london. the streets are broad and rectangular, the shops handsome and well furnished. but it is the natural features of the vicinity which "knock" the susceptible saxon. the shannon, the classic shannon, sweeps grandly through the town, winding romantically under the five great bridges, washing the walls of the stupendous castle erected by king john, the only british sovereign who ever visited limerick--serpentining through meadows backed by mountains robed in purple haze, reflecting in its broad mirror many a romantic and historic ruin, its banks dotted with salmon-fishers pulling out great fish and knocking them on the head, its promenades abounding with the handsomest women in the world. for the limerick ladies are said to be the most beautiful in ireland, and competent english judges--i know nothing of such matters--assure me that the boast is justified. get to cruise's royal hotel, which for a hundred years has looked over the shannon, take root in its airy, roomy precincts, pleasant, clean, and sweet, with white-haired servitors like noble earls in disguise to bring your ham and eggs, limerick ham, mind you, which at this moment fetches s. per cwt. in london; and with the awful cliffs of kilkee within easy distance, where the angry atlantic ocean, dashing with gigantic force against the rock-bound coast, sends spray two or three miles inland, the falls of castleconnel with the salmon-fisheries under your very nose, and the four hours river-steamer to kilrush, with more cathedrals, statues, antiquities, curiosities, novelties, quaintnesses than could be described in a three-volume novel--do all those things, and, while on your back in the smoke room, after a hard day's pleasure, you will probably be heard to murmur that in the general fall some of us dropped easily enough, and that, all things considered, adam's unhappy collapse was decidedly excusable. the limerick folks are said to be the most catholic people in ireland. they are more loyal than the corkers. why is this? the more catholic, the more disloyal, is the general experience. nobody whose opinion is worth anything will deny this, and however much you may wish to dissociate religion from politics, you cannot blink this fact. in dealing with important matters, it is useless to march a hair's-breadth beside the truth. better go for it baldheaded, calling things by their right names, taking your gruel, and standing by to receive the lash. you are bound to win in the long run. i say the catholic priests are disloyal to the queen. men of the old school, the few who remain, are loyal, ardently loyal. the old-timers were gentlemen. they were sent to douai or some other continental theological school, where they rubbed against gentlemen of broad culture, of extensive view, of perfect civilisation. they returned to ireland with a personal weight, a cultivation, a refinement, which made them the salt of irish earth. these men are still loyal. the maynooth men, sons of small farmers, back-street shopkeepers, pawnbrokers, and gombeen men, aided by british gold, these half-bred, half-educated absorbers of eleemosynary ecclesiasticism, are deadly enemies to the empire. this is mr. bull's guerdon for the maynooth grant. my authority is undeniable. the statement is made on the assurance of eminent catholics. two catholic j.p.'s yesterday concurred in this, and no intelligent irish catholic will think otherwise. surely this consideration should be a factor in arguments against home rule. then why are the limerick catholics loyal? because the limerick bishop is loyal. bishop o'dwyer is opposed to home rule. said mr. james frost, j.p., of george's street: "when the bishop first came here he invited some four hundred catholics to a banquet at the palace. after dinner he proposed the health of the queen, and all the company save two or three rose and received the toast with enthusiasm, waving their handkerchiefs and showing an amount of warmth that was most gratifying to me. i need not tell you that an average home rule audience would not have accepted the toast at all. this shows you the feeling of the most intelligent catholics. the people of education and property are loyal. it shows also that they are opposed to home rule." "but if the best catholics are opposed to home rule, why don't they say so publicly?" "a fair question, which shall have a precise answer. but first, we must go back to mr. balfour's great land act, and the lowering of the franchise, and observe the effect of these two enactments. "the people were at one time terribly ill-used. that is all over now, but the memory still rankles. the irish are great people for tradition. the landlords have for ages been the traditional embodiment of tyranny and religious ascendency. the irish people have long memories, very long memories. englishmen would say: 'no matter what happened to my great-grandfather; i am treated well, and that is enough for me.' irishmen still go harping on the landlord, although he no longer has any power. the terrible history of the former relationship between landlord and tenant is still kept up and remembered, and will be remembered for ages, if not for ever. presently you will see the bearing of all this on your question--why do not the best catholics come forward and speak against home rule? "when the franchise was lowered the rebound from repression was tremendous, like a powerful spring that has been held down, or like an explosive which is the more destructive in proportion as it is more confined. people newly made free go to the opposite extreme. emancipate a serf and he becomes insolent, he does not know how to use his freedom, and becomes violent. the great majority of the people are smarting from the old land laws, which have left a bitter animosity against english rule, which is popularly denounced as being responsible for them. "to speak against home rule is to associate yourself with the worst aspects of the land question. the bulk of the people are incapable of making a distinction. and while they entertain some respect for a protestant opponent, they are irreconcilable with unionist catholics, just as the english gladstonians have a far more virulent dislike for the liberal unionists than for the rankest tories. they say to the protestants, 'we know why you uphold unionism'--that is, as they believe, landlordism--'for the landlords are english and protestant; your position is understandable.' but to the catholic they say, 'you are not only an enemy, but a renegade, a traitor, and a deserter.' and whatever that man's position may be, the people can make things uncomfortable for him." another catholic living near, said: "'how would home rule work?' you ask. most destructively, most ruinously. under the most favourable circumstances, whether home rule passes or not, the country will not recover the shock of the present agitation for many a year; not, i think, in my lifetime. i was over in the north of england last year, and i found that the people there knew nothing of the question, literally nothing. clever men, intelligent men, men who had the ear of the people, displayed a profundity of ignorance on irish questions, conjoined with a confidence in discussing them, surpassing belief. they changed their minds on hearing my statements, and on obtaining exact information. i must give them credit for that. i believe the english gladstonians are only suffering from ignorance. their leader is certainly not less ignorant than the bleating flock at his heels. they smugly argue from the known to the unknown on entirely false premises. they know that when englishmen act in this or that way, such and such things will happen. they know what they themselves would do in certain conjunctures, and when they are told by irishmen that irishmen under similar conditions would act quite differently, they snort and say 'nonsense.' they are too dense to appreciate the radical difference between the two races. the breeds don't mix and don't understand each other. it was miserable to hear these men--i am sure they were good men--prattling like bib-and-tucker babies about irish affairs, and speaking of gladstone as possessing a quality which we catholics only ascribe to the pope. ha! ha! they think that vain old cataract of verbiage to be infallible. he knows nothing of the matter, does not understand the tools he is working with, any one of whom could buy and sell him and simple, clever morley twenty times over. both gladstone and morley _are_ clever in books, in words, in theories, adepts in debating, smart and adroit in talk. but they know no more of paddy than the babe unborn. i say nothing of harcourt and the other understrappers. they'll say anything that suits, whatever it may be. we reckoned them up long since. cannot the english people see through these nimble twisters and time-servers, this crowd of lay vicars of bray?" catholic home ruler number three said, "i agree with all who say that the priests would do their best to secure a dominating influence in political affairs. and although i think we ought to have an irish legislature, although i believe it would be good for us, yet if the priestly influence were to become supreme for one moment of time--if you tell me that the catholic church is to hold the reins for one second, then i say, away with home rule, away with it for ever! better stay as we are." this gentleman seems to have about as much logical foresight as some of those he criticises. he dreads priestly domination above everything, and yet would approve of giving the priests a chance of being masters. he continued:-- "the present irish leaders are the curse of the movement, which, should it succeed, would in their hands bring untold sorrows on the country. as a catholic home ruler, i put up my hands in supplication, and i beg, i implore of the english people to withhold their assent. for god's sake don't give it us at present. we must have it sooner or later, but wait till we have leaders we can trust. have you met a decent home ruler who trusts the present men? no. i knew you would say so. such a man cannot be found in ireland. then why send them to parliament, say you? that is just what you englishmen do not understand. that is one of the points old gladstone is wrecking the country on. you think it unanswerable. listen to me. "when the franchise was lowered, then the mistake was made. you let in an immense electorate utterly incapable of discussing any question of state; and, rushing from the extreme of abject servility to a sort of tyrannical mastery, they elected as their representatives, not the most able men, not the most orderly men, not the men of some training and education, not the men who had some stake in the country, but the most violent men, the glibbest men, the most factious, the most contumacious, the most pragmatical men were the men they elected. look at the poor-law boards. see the set sent there. those are the men who will be sent to the dublin parliament. are they men to be trusted with the affairs of state? look up your burke, and observe the qualifications he thinks necessary to a statesman. then look at the blacksmith who represents the county tipperary, the mason who represents meath, the drapers' assistants and bacon factors' clerks who represent other places. you don't quite see this in england. these men perhaps tell you that they are kings in their own country. ireland is a long way off, and far-away hills are green. "reverse the situation. let dublin be the seat of empire and london wanting home rule. you really want it, and think it would be best for both--a convenience for yourself and a saving of time for all. would you not draw back at the last moment if under the circumstances i have named, your country was to be handed over to fellows whose sole income was derived from their political work, artisans, clerks, and shopkeepers' assistants? what would these men do with their power? make haste to be rich--nothing more. patriots are they? rubbish; they are mere mercenaries. parnell knew that. he said to me:-- "'under the circumstances i must use these men, whom i would not otherwise touch with a forty-foot pole. adversity makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows. any port is good in a storm. these men will fight well--for their pay, and will work the thing up. but when we get the bill, when we come into power, their work is done. they will be dropped at once, or furnished with places where they may get an honest living.'" catholic home ruler number four said: "the meath election shows the feeling of the priests, and what they would do if they could. they loathed parnell, but he was too strong for them. and weren't they glad to give him the slip on the ground of morality. home rule was comparatively a safe thing while parnell lived. now i would not advise it for some years. we must have better men to the fore. we in limerick are loyal, although catholics and home rulers. don't laugh at that. it is a fact, though i admit it is hard to believe. put it down, if you like, to the influence of the bishop. the young priests i say nothing about. their loyalty is a negligeable quantity. they do not object to protestants _qua_ protestants, but they object to them as representatives of english rule." this reminded me of dr. kane, of belfast, who said to me, "they hate us, not because we are protestants, not because we are orangemen, not because we are strangers in the land, but because we are the hated english garrison." here i am bound to interpolate a word of qualification. the mardyke promenade of cork, a mile-long avenue of elms, has many comfortable seats, whereon perpetually do sit the "millingtary" of the sacrilegious saxon, holding sweet converse with the milesian counterparts of the saxon sarah ann. the road is full of them, tommy's yellow-striped legs marching with the neat kirtle of nora, sheela, or maureen. as it was in the isle of saints, so it was in ulster, is now in limerick, and shall be in hibernia _in sæcula sæculorum_. a limerick constable said, "a regiment will come into the city at four o'clock, and at eight they'll every man walk out a girl. the infatuation of the servant-girl class for the military is surprisin'. only let them walk out with a soldier, and they 'chuck' everything, even home rule." the hated garrison are not among the people who never will be missed. wherever tommy goes he seems to be able to sample the female population. the soldiers always have a rare good time. a carman who drove me to castleconnel proved the most interesting politician since dennis mulcahy, of carrignaheela. he knew all about the average english voter, and resented his superior influence in irish affairs. "shure, we're all undher the thumb o' a set o' black men that lives undher the bowils o' the airth. yer honner must know all about thim miners in the black counthry, an' in wales, an' the narth o' england? ye didn't? ah, now, ye're jokin' me, ye take me for an omadhaun all out. ye know all about it; ye know that these poor men goes down, an' down, an' down, till ye'd think they'd niver shtop, an' that they stay there a whole week afore they come up agin. an' then they shtand in tubs while their wives an' sweethearts washes an' scrubs thim, an' makes white men out o' the black men that comes up, an' thin walks thim off home. now, shtandin' in a tub at the mouth o' the pit to be washed by yer wimmenfolks is what we wouldn't do in this counthry--'tisn't black naygurs we are--an' these men that lives in the dark and have no time to think, an' nothin' to think wid, these are the men ye put to rule this counthry, men that they print sich rubbish as _tit-bits_ for, because they couldn't understand sinse. an' the man that first found out that they couldn't understand sinse, an' gave thim somethin' that wanted no brains, they say has made a fortune. is that thrue, now? "as for owld gladstone, i wouldn't trust him out o' me sight. we'll get no home rule, the owld thrickster doesn't mane it. 'tis like a man i knew that was axed to lind a friend £ . he didn't like to lind, an' he was afeared to say no, an' he was in a quondairy intirely. so, says he 'i'll lind ye the money,' says he, 'if ye'll bring the securities down to the bank,' says he, 'an' get the cash off me banker.' thin he went saycretly to the banker, an' says he, 'this thievin' blayguard,' says he, 'wants the money, and he'll never repay me; i wouldn't thrust him,' says he. 'now, will ye help me, for i couldn't say no, by raison he's a relative, an' an owld acquaintance,' says he. "'an' how'll i do that?' says the banker. "'ye can tur-rn up yer nose at the securities.' "'ha, ha,' says the banker, 'is it there ye are? ye're a deep one; begorra ye are. nabocklish,' says he, 'i'll do it for ye,' says he. "so whin the borrower wint for the money, the banker sent out word that the securities wor not good enough, an' that he wouldn't advance a farden. "then the borrower goes to his frind an' complains, an' thin the frind acts all out the way gladstone'll act when the bill's refused at the lords, or may be at the commons. 'hell to him,' he roars, 'the blayguard thief iv a thievin' banker. i'll tache him to refuse a frind, says he. 'sarve him right,' says he, 'av i bate his head into a turnip-mash an' poolverise him into lundy foot snuff. may be i won't, whin i meet him, thrash him till the blood pours down his heels,' says he. that'll be the way iv it. that's what gladstone will say whin the bill's lost, which he manes it to be, the conthrivin' owld son o' a schamer. "a gintleman axed me which o' them i like best o' the two home rule bills, an' i towld him that whin i lived at ennis, an' drove a car at the station there, the visithors, americans an' english, would be axin' me whin they lepped on the car which was the best hotel in ennis. now, whiniver i gave them my advice they would be cur-rsin' an' sinkin' at me whin they met me aftherwards in the sthreet, be raison that there was only two hotels in the place, an' nayther o' thim was at all aiqual to what they wor used to in their own counthries. so i got to know this, an' iver afther, whin they would be sayin' to me, "'which is the best hotel in ennis?' says they, an' i would answer, "'faix, there's only two o' thim, an' to whichiver one ye go ye will be sorrowin' that ye didn't go to the other,' says i. "an' that's my reply as to which of the two home rule bills i like best." in the city of limerick itself all is quiet and orderly. outside, things are different. disturbed parts of the county clare are dangerous to strangers, and, what is more to the point, somewhat difficult of access. the country is not criss-crossed with railways as in england, and vehicles for long journeys are rather hard to get. however, i have chartered a car for a three-day trip into what may be called the interior, have fired several hundred cartridges from a winchester repeating rifle, and written letters to my dearest friends. i start to-morrow, and if i do not succeed in bottoming the recent outrages--which are hushed up as much as possible, and of which the local newspaper-men, both nationalist and conservative, together with head-constable macbrinn, declare they cannot get at the precise particulars--if i cannot get to the root of the matter, i shall in my next letter have the honour of stating the reason why. limerick, april nd. no. .--the curse of county clare. once again the difference between ireland and england is forcibly exemplified. it was certain that several moonlighting expeditions had recently been perpetrated in the neighbourhood of limerick, which is only divided by the shannon from the county clare. you walk over a bridge in the centre of the city and you change your county, but nobody in limerick seems to know anything about the matter. the local papers hush up the outrages when they hear of them, which is seldom or never. the people who know anything will not, dare not tell, and even the police have the utmost difficulty in establishing the bare facts of any given case. english publicity is entirely unknown. local correspondents do not always exist in country towns, and the distances are so great, in comparison with the facilities for travel, that newspaper-men seldom or never visit the scene of the occurrence. and besides the awkward and remote position of the country hamlets and mountain farms, there are other excellent reasons for journalistic reticence. the people do not wish to read such news, the editors do not wish to print these discreditable records, and the police, although eminently and invariably civil and obliging, are debarred by their official position from disclosing what they know. the very victims themselves are often silent, refusing to give details, and almost always declining to give evidence. that the sufferers usually know and could easily identify the cowardly ruffians who so cruelly maltreat them is a well-ascertained fact. that they usually declare they have no clue to the offenders is equally well known. the difficulty of arresting suspected men is enhanced by the fact that the moonlighters have a complete system of scouts who in this bare and thinly populated district, descry the police when miles away, giving timely warning to the marauders; these, besides, are readily concealed by their neighbours and friends, who in this display an ingenuity and enthusiasm worthy a better cause. suppose the villains are caught red-handed; even then the difficulties are by no means over. in ireland a felon once in the hands of the police, by that one circumstance at once and for ever becomes a hero, a martyr, a man to be excused, to be prayed for, to be worshipped. no matter how black his offence, the touch of the constabulary washes him whiter than snow, purifies him from every earthly taint, surrounds him with a halo of sanctity. those whom he has injured will not bear witness against him, because their temerity might cost them their lives, the loss of their property, the esteem of their fellow-men. what this means we shall shortly see. the cases i have examined will speak for themselves. and let it be remembered that close proximity to the scenes described produces an incomparably stronger effect than any description, however minute, however painstaking. the utter lawlessness of the districts i have visited since penning monday's letter has produced a profound, an indelible impression. i pass over the means employed to get over the ground, merely stating that horseflesh has borne the brunt of the business. that and pedestrianism are the only means available, with untold patience and perseverance to worm out the true story. people will not show the way, or will direct you wrongly. their ignorance, that is, their assumed ignorance, is wonderful, incredible. they are all sthrangers in those parts. they never knew a family of that name, never heard of any moonlighting, swear that the amusement is unknown thereabouts, assert that the whole thing is a fabrication of the police. all the people round are decent, honest, hard-working folks, without a fault; pious, virtuous, immaculate. you push on, and your friend runs after you. stay a moment, something has struck him. just at the last distressing hour, his brain displayed amazing power. now he comes to think of it, something was said to have happened over there, at ballygammon, ten miles in the opposite direction. a stack was fired, and they said it was the boys. it was the police who burnt the hay, but they deny it "av coorse." he is suspiciously anxious to afford all the information he can. ballygammon is the spot, and tim mugphiller your man. mention mike delany and you will get every information, and--have ye a screw of tobacky these hard times. you pursue your way certain that at last you are on the right track, and mike's jaw drops to his knees. too late he sees that his only chance of altering your course was to point out the right one. dropping for once scenery and surroundings, let us at once plunge, as horace advises, _in medias res_. the district in mr. balfour's time was pleasant and peaceable. curiously enough its troubles commenced with the change of government. from march to april the police of newcastlewest received tidings of fifteen outrages. how many have been perpetrated no man living can tell, for people often think it wisest to hold their peace. ireland is often said to be almost free from crime, except of the agrarian kind, and moonlighting is partly condoned by reason of its alleged cause. how must we class the following case? on february , , four armed men with blackened faces and dressed as women, attacked the dwelling of t. donoghue, of boola, not far from newcastle. they burst open the door and entered, not to revenge any real or fancied wrong, but purely and simply to obtain possession of a sum of £ , which donoghue's daughter had brought from america. they believed they would have an easy prey, but they were mistaken; there were two or three men in the house, and the heroes decamped instanter, followed, unknown to themselves, by one of donoghue's family. having duly run them to earth, he informed the police, who caught them neatly enough, their shoes covered with fresh mud, and with every circumstance of guilt. the donoghue folks identified them. the case was perfectly clear--that is the expressed opinion of everybody i have met, official and otherwise. it was tried at the limerick spring assizes, and the jury returned a verdict of "not guilty!" these patriotic jurors had doubtless much respect for their oaths, more for the interests of justice, more still for their own skins. this case is public property, and is only cited to prove that when the difficulty of arrest and the greater difficulty of obtaining evidence are with infinite pains overcome, the jury will not convict, no matter what the crime. before he commences his career of crime, the moonlight marauder knows the chances of being caught are immensely in his favour, that should luck in this matter be against him, his very victim will decline to identify him, nay, will affirm that he is not the man, and that when the worst comes to the worst, no jury in the counties of kerry, clare, or limerick will convict. here are some results of my researches. the particulars of these cases now first appear in print. a man named james dore, who keeps a public-house in bridge street, newcastlewest--i can vouch for his beer--also held a small farm of forty-nine acres from the earl of devon, for which he paid the modest rent of £ s. per annum--the land maintaining sixteen cows and calves, which, on the usual local computation of £ profit on each cow, would leave a gain of £ s.--not a bad investment, as irish farming goes. so it was considered, and when the tenant-right was announced as for sale by auction, two cousins of dore, who held farms contiguous, agreed to jointly bid for the tenant-right, and having secured the land, to arrange its partition between themselves. they went to £ , but this was not regarded as enough, and the tenant-right was for a specified time held over for purchase by private agreement. a farmer named william quirke offered £ , which was accepted, and the money paid. after this, the two cousins came forward and said they would purchase the tenant-right, offering £ more than quirke had paid. they were told that they were too late, and the earl's agent (mr. curling) said nothing could now be done. this was on the th of the present month of april. on the th, mr. james cooke, lord devon's bailiff, was seen showing the purchaser quirke over the newly-acquired holding. poor quirke little knew what was at that moment hanging over him. he had not long to wait. the dastard demon of moonlight ruffianism was on his track. quirke had a son aged fourteen years, but looking two years younger, a simple peasant lad, who cannot have injured his country very much. he was tending a cow, which required watching, his father and mother taking their rest while the child sat out the lonely hours in the cowhouse. he heard something, and listened with all his ears. not voices, but a subdued whispering. it was the dead hour of night, two or half-past two, and the boy was frightened. the place is lonely, seven miles or more from newcastlewest, and up towards the mountains. he listened and listened, and again heard the mysterious sounds. he says he "thought it was the fairies." he stole from the byre and went to the house. a horrible dread had crept over him, and father and mother were there. as he opened the door a terrible blow from behind struck him down. he was not stunned, though felled by the butt-end of a gun. they beat and kicked him as he lay. he gave an anguished cry. the mother heard and recognised her boy's voice, and, waking the father, said "go down, they're killing my lad." the old man, for he is an old man, went down the stairs naked and unarmed. the foul marauders met him half-way up, and served him as they had served the boy, throwing him down, kicking him, and beating him with butt-ends of guns; with one terrible blow breaking three of his ribs; and saying, "give it up, give it up." he said he would "give it up"; promised by all he held sacred, begged hard for his life, and implored them at least to spare the young lad. their reply to this was to fire a charge of shot into the boy's legs, a portion of the charge entering the limbs of an old woman--his grandmother, i think--who was feebly trying to shield the lad. this was such excellent sport that more was thought expedient. a charge of shot was fired into the father's legs, and as one knee-joint is injured, the elder quirke's condition is precarious even without his broken ribs and other injuries. the cowardly hounds then left, in their horrid disguise adding a new terror to the lonely night. the evening's entertainment was not yet over. they crossed a couple of fields to a house where dwelt quirke's married son. they burst open the door of his cottage and dragged the young fellow--he is about twenty-five--from his bed, beating him sorely, and in the presence of his wife firing a charge of shot into his legs. then they went home, each man to his virtuous couch, to dream fair dreams of the coming paradise, when they and their kind may work their own sweet will, free from the fear of a hireling constabulary, and under the ægis of a truly national senate, given to a grateful country by a grand old man. the quirkes know their assailants, but they will not tell. "what good would it do me to have men imprisoned?" says william quirke, senior. "my lad's life might pay for it, and perhaps my own." the most influential people of the district have remonstrated with him, argued, persuaded, all in vain. william quirke has a wish to remain in this sublunary sphere. his spirit is not anxious to take unto itself the wings of a dove, that it may fly away and be at rest. like the dying methodist, whose preacher reminded him of the beauties of paradise, he likes "about here pretty well." mr. heard, divisional commissioner in charge of the constabulary organisation of the counties of cork, limerick, and kerry can get nothing out of william quirke. county-inspector moriarty can stir nothing, nor major rolleston, resident magistrate, nor inspectors wright, pattison, and huddy, all of whom have done their level best. these gentlemen assert that obviously quirke knows the moonlighters, and for my own part, i am certain of it. the married son is equally dumb. "they were disguised," he says. "but you would recognise their voices." then comes the strangest assertion, "they never spoke a word." in other words, he affirms that a number of men, not less than seven or eight, burst open his door, dragged him from bed, maltreated and shot him, to the accompaniment of his wife's terrified screaming and his own protestations, without uttering a single syllable! the bold gladstonians whose influence removed mr. balfour from office and delivered the country into ruffian hands, will say: and serve the people right! if they will not bear witness let the victims suffer. you cannot help people who will not help themselves. the police are there, the magistrates are there, the prisons are there, the hangman, if need be, is there. if they will not avail themselves of the protection provided, let them suffer. let them go at it. all their own fault. nobody but themselves to blame. all very plausible and reasonable--in theory. let us look a little closer into this matter. what does william quirke say:--"nobody can help an irish farmer in a lonely part of ireland. there are too many ways of getting at him. suppose i gave such evidence as would satisfy anybody--i do not say i could--i don't know anything; but suppose i knew and told, would a limerick jury convict? certainly not. everybody knows that. the police, the magistrates, will tell you that, every one of them. nobody will say anything else. then, why rouse more enmity? i shall give up the land even if i lose the money, the savings of a life-time, added to a loan, which i can repay in time. that is settled. what good would the land do me, once i were dead? i value my life more than my money, and more especially do i think of those belonging to me. suppose i held on, and kept the land. every time the lad went out i'd expect him to be brought in shot to his mother and me. and when i saw the lad's dead face, what would i think? and what would i say when his mother turned round and said, 'ye have the land, haven't ye, william?' our lives would not be worth twopence if i held on. do you remember carey, the informer? the british empire couldn't protect him, though it shipped him across the world. how would i be among the mountains here? i could be shot going to or coming from market, my cattle houghed or mutilated, nobody would buy from me, nobody would sell to me, nobody would work on my farm. my stacks would be burnt. look at the hay burnt in the last few weeks! you say i'd get a presentment against the county--and if i did i'd have to wait till next march for the money. where's the capital to carry on? suppose i wanted thirty tons of hay between this and that. that would cost £ . where would i get the money? but that's not it. life is dear, and life might at any moment be taken. if my stacks were burnt in july i'd have to wait a year for my money. i'd be cut off from all communication with the people, and shunned as if i'd the plague. if i went to market the people would leave the road to me, would cross over to the other side when they saw me coming. you never saw boycotting; you don't know what it means." in a lonely stretch of gorse-bordered road, steep and rough, i came upon two members of the royal irish constabulary, with rifles, sword-bayonets, and bâtons. we had a chat, and i examined their short sniders while they admired the humble winchester i carried for company, and which on one occasion had acted like a charm. they carried buckshot cartridges and ball, and had no objection to express their views. "balfour was the man to keep the country quiet. two resident magistrates could convict, and the blackguards knew that, if caught, it was all up with them. they are the most cowardly vermin on the face of the earth, for although if any of our men (who never go singly, but always in twos or threes) were to appear unarmed, they'd be murdered at sight. yet although they often fire on us, they mostly do it from such distances that their bullets have no effect, so that they can run away the moment they pull the trigger. lately things have been looking rather blue over there." one pointed to the hills dividing the county from kerry. "the kerry men are getting rifles. i know the 'ping' of the brutes only too well. let them get a few men who know their weapons, and we'll be potted at five hundred yards easily enough. yes, they have rifles now, and what for? to shoot sparrows? no. you can't guess? give it up? ye do? then i'll tell you. to carry out the home rule bill. yes, i do think so. will you tell me this? who will in future collect rates and taxes? the tenants do not think they will have any more rent to pay. lots of them will tell you that. these very men have the members of the irish parliament in their hands. that is; they can return whomsoever they choose. the representation of the country is in their hands. and the priests agree with them. no difference there, their object is one and the same, and when the priests and the farmers unite, who can compel them to pay up? is the irish legislature which will be returned by these men--is it a likely body to compel payment of tribute to the hated saxon at the point of the bayonet? when the british government, with all the resources of gladstonian civilisation, failed to put down boycotting, how do you suppose a sympathetic government, returned by the farmers, consisting of farmers' sons, with a sprinkling of clever attorneys, more smart than honest, will proceed with compulsory action? why they could do nothing if they wished, but then they will have no desire to compel. the english people are only commencing their troubles. they don't know they're born yet. gladstone will have some explaining to do, but he can do it, he can do it. he'd explain the shot out of the quirke family's legs. ah! but he's a terrible curse to this country." the other officer said:--"our duty is very discouraging. we are hindered and baffled on every side by the people, whose sympathies are always against the law. now in england your sympathies are with the law, and the people have the sense to support it, knowing that it will support them, so long as they do the right thing. it was bad enough to have the people against us, but now things are a hundred times worse. when balfour was in power, we felt that our labour was not in vain. we felt that there was some chance of getting a conviction--not much, perhaps, but still a chance. now, if we catch the criminals redhanded, we know no jury will convict. we try to do our duty, but of course we can't put the same heart into it as we could if we thought our work would do any good. and another thing--we knew balfour, so long as we were acting with integrity, would back us up. now we never know what we're going to get--whether we shall be praised or kicked behind. this government is not only weak but also slippery. outrages are increasing. news of three more reached the newcastlewest barracks this very day. we had a man on horseback scouring the mountains for information. the outraged people sometimes keep it close. what's the good, they say. we hear of the affair from other people, and the principals, so to speak, ask us to make no fuss about it, as they don't want to be murdered. the country is getting worse every day. we'll have such a bloody winter as ireland never saw." another small moonlighting incident, now appearing for the first time on this or any other stage. some tenants years ago were evicted on the langford estates. negotiations were proceeding for their proximate restoration, but nothing could be settled. a few days ago a small farmer named benjamin brosna, aged , agreed with the proper authorities to graze some cattle on the land in question pending the arrangement of the matter. a meeting at haye's cross was immediately convened by two holy men of the district, to wit, father keefe, p.p., and father brew, c.c., both of meelin, and under the guidance of these good easy men, it was resolved that any man grazing cattle on the langford land was as bad as the landlord, and must be treated accordingly. on the same day, april , or rather in the night succeeding the day of the meeting, eleven masked and armed men entered brosna's house, and one of them, presenting a gun, said, "we have you now, you grass-grabber." brosna seized the gun, and being hale and active, despite his years, showed such vigorous fight that he fell through the doorway into the yard along with two others, where he was brutally beaten, and must have been killed--it was their clear intention--but for the pitchy darkness of the yard and the number of his assailants, who in their fury fell over each other, enabling brosna, who being on his own ground knew the ropes better than they, in the darkness to glide under a cart and escape over an adjacent wall, where he hid himself. they lost him, and returned to the house, firing shots at whatever they could damage, and smashing everything breakable, from the windows upwards. brosna will lose the sight of one eye, which is practically beaten out. his servants, named larkin, have been compelled to leave by means of threatening letters. their father has also been threatened with death unless he instantly removes them from brosna's house. i could continue indefinitely, continuing my remarks to the occurrences of one month or so; and if i abruptly conclude it is because time presses, my return to civilisation having been effected at . this morning, after a ten miles' mountain walk, followed by three hours' ride in the blissful bowels of an empty cattle-truck. but for the good samaritan of a luggage train i must last night have camped beneath the canopy of heaven. no scarcity of fun in ireland--which beats the world for sparkling incident. rathkeale (co. limerick), april th. no. .--lawlessness and laziness. the fruits of gladstonian rule are ripening fast. mr. morley's visit to cork _en route_ for dublin corresponds with inspector moriarty's visit to the irish capital. mr. moriarty is the county inspector in whose district most of the recent outrages have been perpetrated, and is therefore able to give the irish secretary plenty of news. his report will doubtless remain secret, as it is sensational. mr. morley has too much regard for the sensibilities of mr. and mrs. bull, and when the limerick inspector, entering the state confessional of dublin castle, advances and says, "i could a tale unfold whose lightest word would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood, make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres, thy knotted and combined locks to part, and each particular hair to stand on end, like quills upon the fretful porcupine,"--when mr. moriarty utters the familiar and appropriate words the irish secretary will say with deprecatory gesture, "enough, enough. 'twas ever thus. this is the effect of kindness. what ho, my henchmen bold! a flagon, a mighty flagon of most ancient sack. i feel that i am about to be prostrated. such is the fate of greatness. uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. it is a great and glorious thing, to be an irish sec. but give to me my hollow tree, a crust of bread and liberty. the word is porpentine, not porcupine, mr. inspector. a common corruption. verify your quotations. have them (in future) attested by two resident magistrates. and now to work. all in strict confidence. let not the world hear of these things. let not the people know that violence and rapine walk hand-in-hand with my administration. nameless in dark oblivion let it dwell. let it be _sub rosâ, sub sigillâ confessionis, sub-auditer, sub_ everything. tell it not in gath, proclaim it not in askalon, for behold, if the people heard, they would marvel, and fear greatly; and--be afraid." the officer would then produce his budget, with its horrors, its indecencies, its record of trickery, treachery, cowardly revenge, and midnight terrorism. the local press correspondents of the rural districts are nearly all nationalists, and they either furnish garbled reports, or none at all. the reporters of conservative papers, comparatively conservative, i mean, are also nationalists. the irish themselves know not what is taking place ten miles away. how is england to learn the precise state of things? i have fished up a few recent samples of minor occurrences which will form part of mr. moriarty's news. these smaller outrages invariably lead up to murder if the victim resist. they are so many turns of the screw, just to let the recalcitrant feel what can be done. in the large majority of cases he gives way at the first hint. let us relate some neighbouring experiences. david geary, of castlemahon, late in the evening heard an explosion at the door of his cottage. he ran out, and found a fuse burning, lying where it had been cast, while a volley of large stones whizzed past his head. there had been some litigation between a man named callaghan and a road contractor, and geary had allowed the road contractor's men to take their food in wet weather under his roof. on april , at two in the morning, a party of masked moonlighters visited the cottage of mrs. breens, of raheenish, and having fired two shots through the parlour window, shattering the woodwork by way of letting the widow know they were there, fired a third through her bed-room window to expedite the lady's movements. almost paralysed with fear, she parleyed with the besieging force, which, by its spokesman, demanded her late husband's gun, threatening to put "daylight through her" unless it were instantly given up. it was in her son's possession, and she hurried to his room. the young dog came on the scene, and instead of handing out the gun, fired two shots from a revolver into the darkness. whereupon the band of irish hero-patriots outside fled with electric speed, and returned no more. at ardagh the police found a haystack burning. they saved about ten tons, but patrick cremmin claims £ from the county. he had offended somebody, but he declares he knows not the motive. in other words, he wants to let the thing drop--bar the £ . another stack of hay, partly saved by the police, was burnt because evictions had taken place: damage £ , which the county must pay. r. plummer, a labourer with brosna, whose case was given in my last, has received a letter threatening him with death unless he left brosna's employ. some say the name is brosnan or bresnahan. beware of the quibbling of irish malcontents, who on the strength of a misprint or a wrongly-spelt name, boldly state that no such person ever existed, and that therefore the case is a pure invention. here is a specimen of the toleration loyalists and protestants may expect:--a special train having been run from newcastle to limerick to enable people to attend a unionist meeting in the latter city, the nationalists took steps to mark their sense of the railway company's indiscretion, and a train soon afterwards leaving newcastle for tralee, they hurled a great stone from the garryduff bridge, smashing the window of the guard's van and doing other injury. at gurtnaclochy, to deter a witness in a legal case, a threatening letter was sent, sixty yards of a sod fence thrown down, and a coffin and gun neatly cut on the field. on the roman catholic chapel wall at ashford a notice was posted threatening with death anyone who bought hay or turnips from a boycotted man, and the same day a man named herlihy received a threatening letter. on april a party of armed, disguised men with blackened faces, called on a poor man at inniskeen, and having smashed the windows, tried to force the door, but stopped to parley. they called on "young patrick" to hand out the father's gun, and the young man complied. being twitted with this he said, "i want to live. if i had refused the gun my life would not be worth twopence. i would be 'covered' from a bush or a fence when i walked out, or shot dead in the door as i looked down the lane, as was done in another case. i know the parties well, but i would not give evidence. neither will i give the police any more information. it would not hurt the criminals, but it would hurt me. for while the jury would not convict, the secret tribunal that sat on me would not be so merciful, and many a man would like the distinction of being singled out to execute the secret decrees of the moonlight fraternity." another person standing by said, "what happened at galbally, near tipperary? a priest denounced a protestant named allen from the altar, and a week after the man was shot dead in his tracks. everybody knew perfectly well who did the deed. all knew the man who wanted allen's land, and it was thought that there was evidence enough to hang him twenty times. he is alive and well, and if you go any saturday to the tipperary market father humphreys will introduce you to him. he was discharged without a stain on his character, and brass bands met him on his return, also a torchlight procession." in ireland, even more than in england, brass bands are necessary to the expression of the popular emotion. brass bands met egan, the liberated, everywhere. brass bands accompanied the march of o'brien's mourners at the cork funeral last week. not a murderer in ireland whose release would not be celebrated with blare of brass bands, and glare of burning grease. mr. morley could not land in cork, however privately, for he did not wish to speak, without a brass band being loosed on his heels. the great philosophical radical, the encyclopædia of political wisdom, the benefactor, the saviour, the regenerator of ireland, left cork to the strains of the butter exchange band--_con amore_, _affetuoso_, and doubtless _con spirito_. yet some will say that the irish are not grateful! mr. morley stayed at the hotel i had just left, the royal victoria, which i justly described as a hot-bed of sedition. it was here, in room no. , that dalton so terribly punched the long-suffering head of tim healy. at the four courts, dublin, i saw a waiter who witnessed the famous horsewhipping in that city. i asked him if it were a severe affair, or whether, as the nationalist papers affirmed, only a formality, a sort of consider-yourself-flogged. how that waiter expanded and enjoyed the pleasures of memory! "it was a most thrimindious affair, sorr. mcdermott was a fine, powerful sthrip of a boy, an' handled the horsewhip iligant. ye could hear the whack, whack, whack in the refreshment room wid the doors closed, twenty yards away. it was for all the world a fine, big, healthy kind of batin' that tim got. an' the way he wriggled was the curiousest thing at all. 'twas enough to make yer jump out of yer skin wid just burstin' with laffin'." leaving outrages and violence to messrs. morley and moriarty, let me narrate the effect of the impending home rule bill on some of the commercial community. a well-known tradesman says: "a man in newcastlewest owed me £ for goods delivered. he had a flourishing shop and also an excellent farm. he was so slow in paying, and apparently so certain that in a little while he would escape altogether, that i sued him for the amount. it was a common action for a common debt, between one irish tradesman and another. but i am a unionist, and therefore fair game. i got judgment, but no instalments were paid. i remonstrated over and over again, and was from time to time met with solemn promises, the debtor gaining time by every delay. at last i lost patience, and determined to distrain. everybody laughed at me. 'where will you get an auctioneer, and who will bid? they asked. i determined to carry through this one case, if it cost a hundred pounds. i got a good revolver, and succeeded in bringing an auctioneer from a distance. the debtor said he would brain me with a bill-hook if i put my foot on his ground, and another man promised to shoot me from a bed-room window. it was necessary, to carry out the sale at all, to have police protection. i went to the barracks and submitted the case. had i a sheriff's order, &c., &c., &c.? all difficulties overcome i went to the 'sale.' we seized a cow, a watch, and some of my own goods, and commenced the auction. nobody bid but myself, and when i had covered the amount due the sale ceased, the aspect of the people being very menacing. remember, this was not agrarian at all. the debt was for goods delivered to be sold in the way of trade. most of them were there before my face. the debtor came and said, 'you can't take the things away. but we like your pluck, and if you will settle the matter for £ i will give you the money.' i declined to take £ for £ and costs, although the police looked on the offer as unexpectedly liberal, and the bystanders shed tears of emotion and said that gallagher was 'iver an' always the dacent boy.' when i wished to remove the things the troubles began. i had my revolver, the police their rifles, but things looked very blue. i drove the cow to the station and got her away, but the other things could not walk aboard, and how to get them there was hard to know. i asked people i knew to lend me their carts--people who were under some obligation to me, men i had known and done business with for years. they all refused; they feared the evil eye of the vigilance committee of a fenian organisation still in full swing among us, and keeping regular books for settlement when they have the power. i was determined not to be beat, so i went to limerick, nearly thirty miles away, to get a float or wagon. the news was there before me, not a wheel to be had in the city. at last, by means of powerful influence, i got a cart, on condition that the owner's name should be taken off, and my name painted on. then i returned to newcastle and bore away the goods in triumph. alas! my troubles were only beginning! i had been told that the goods were not the debtor's, but belonged to someone else. the cow, they said, was a neighbour's, who had 'lent' it to my debtor. the watch, they said, was the property of a friend, who had handed it to my debtor that he might take it somewhere to be repaired. the landlord of the house claimed that he had previously seized everything, but had allowed things to remain out of kindness. i was cited in four actions for illegal distraint, all of which were so evidently trumped-up that they were quashed. but the time they took! and the annoyance they caused. the expense also was considerable, and the idea of getting expenses out of these people--but i need add nothing on that score. "there were six witnesses in one case, and they could never be found, so long as the judge could have patience to wait. every lie, trick, subterfuge you can imagine, was practised on poor me. at last all was over, but at what a cost! the big chap who had threatened me with the bill-hook came humbly forward and said: "plase yer honner's worship, i'm very deaf, an' i'm short sighted, and i'm very wake intirely, an' ye must give me toime to insinse meself into the way of it." and that rascal had everything repeated several times, until i was on fifty occasions on the point of chucking up the whole thing. "before the home rule bill had implanted dishonest ideas in his head, before the promises of unscrupulous agitators had unsettled and demoralised the people, that man was a straightforward, good, paying fellow. only he thought that by waiting till the bill was passed he would have nothing to pay. the ignorant among us harbour that idea, and the disloyalty of the lower classes is so intense that you could not understand it unless you lived here at least two years." english friends who praise the affection of the irish people, and who speak of the union of hearts, may note the lectures of the popular miss gonne, who is being enthusiastically welcomed in nationalist ireland. no doubt the local papers expurgated the text; at the present moment the word has gone round:--"let us get the bill, let us get the bill, and then!" but enough remains to show the general tone. addressing the irish national literary society, of loughrea, miss gonne said that she must "contradict lord wolseley in his statement that england was never insulted by invasion since the days of william the conqueror. it would be deeply interesting to the men and women of connaught to hear once again how a gallant body of french troops, fighting in the name of liberty and ireland, had conquered nearly the whole of that province at a time when england had in her service in ireland no less than one hundred and fifty thousand trained troops. she would remind them that france was the one great military nation of europe that had been the friend of ireland"--a remark which was received with loud and prolonged applause. "and it would be a matter of some pride to us to reflect that in these military relations the record of the irish brigades in the service of france compared not without advantage with the military services which france had been able to render to ireland." this passage clearly refers to the aid the two countries have afforded each other as against england, and the whole lecture seems to have aimed at the heaping of ignominy on the british name. the stronger the denunciation of england, the more popular the speaker. the union of hearts gets "no show" at all. the phrase is unknown to irish nationalists. however deceitful they may be, it cannot yet be said that they have sunk thus low. looking over wednesday's _cork examiner_, i observe that amid other things the reverend john o'mahony attributes the fact that "the teeming treasures of the deep were almost left untouched," that is, off the irish coast, and that this is "a disgrace and a dishonour to the people through whose misrule and misgovernment the unhappy result was brought about." father o'mahony is a corker, and should know that he is talking nonsense. let me explain. in cork i met a gentleman for twenty-five years engaged in supplying fishermen with all their needs. he said, "the irish fishermen are the laziest, most provoking beggars under the sun." he showed me two sizes of net-mesh and said, "this is the size of a shilling, this is the size of a halfpenny. the scotsmen and shetlanders use the shilling size. the difference seems small, but it is very important. the irishmen use the halfpenny size, and will use no other. they say that what was good enough for their fathers is good enough for them. when the fish are netted they make a rush, and many of them escape the larger mesh, which they can get through, unless of the largest size. the small mesh catches them by the gills and hangs them. this, however, is a small matter. the most important thing is the depth of fishing. the scotsmen and shetlanders come up to the irish coast, which is remarkably rich in fish, and when they meet a school of fish they fish very deep and bring them up by tons, while the irishmen are skimming the tops of the shoals, and drawing up trumpery dozens, because their fathers did so. years ago i used to argue the point, but i know better now. when the water is troubled, when the wind is blowing, and things are a trifle rough, then is the time to fish. the herrings cannot see the net when the water is agitated. the scotsmen are on the job, full of spirits and go, but paddy gets up and takes a look and goes to bed again. he waits for fine weather, so as to give the fish a chance. the poor shetlanders come over long leagues of sea, catch ling a yard long, under paddy's nose, take it to shetland, cure it, and bring it back to him, that he may buy it at twopence a pound. at the mouth of the blackwater are the finest soles in the world, but the irish are too lazy to catch them;--great thick beggars of fish four inches thick, you never saw such soles, the dover soles are lice to them, they'd fetch a pound apiece in london if they were known. change the subject. every time i come round here i get into a rage. the british government finds these men boats. the shetlanders sometimes land, and when they contrast the fat pastures and teeming south coast of ireland with their own cold seas and stony hills they say with the ulstermen, 'would that you would change countries!'" i asked him how he accounted for this extraordinary state of things. he said:-- "as an irishman i am bound to answer one question by asking another. was there ever a free and prosperous country where the roman catholic religion was predominant?" i could not answer him at the moment, but perhaps father o'mahony, who knows so much, may satisfy him on the point. or in the absence of this eloquent kisser of the blarney stone some other black-coated corker may respond. goodness knows, they are numerous enough. all are well clothed and well fed, while the flock that feed the pastor are mostly in squalid poverty, actually bending the knee to their greasy task-masters, poor ignorant victims of circumstances. among the many nostrums offered to ireland, nobody offers soap. the greatest inventions are often the simplest, and with all humility i make the suggestion. ireland is badly off for soap, and cleanliness is next to godliness. father humphreys, of tipperary, boasts of his influence with the poor--delights to prove how in the matter of rent they took his advice, and so on. suppose he asks them to wash themselves! the suggestion may at first sight appear startling. all novelties are alarming at first; but the mortality, except among old people, would probably prove less than father humphreys might expect. he would have some difficulty in recognising his flock, but the resources of civilisation would probably be sufficient to conquer this drawback. persons over forty might be exempted, as nothing less than skinning would meet their case, but the young might possibly be trained, against tradition and heredity, to the regular use of water. but i fear the good father will hardly strain his authority so far. an edict to wash would mean blue ructions in tipperary, open rebellion would ensue, and the mighty catholic church would totter to its fall. the threat to wash would be an untold terrorism, the use of soap an outrage which could only be atoned by blood. and father humphreys (if he knew the words) might truly say _cui bono_? why wash? is not soap an enemy to the faith? do not the people suit our purpose much better as they are? _thigum thu_, brutal and heretic saxon? killaloe (co. clare), april th. no. .--the peril to english trade. as the great object of public interest in the city of limerick is the treaty stone, a huge block of granite, raised on a pedestal on the clare side of thomond bridge, to commemorate the violated treaty so graphically described by macaulay, and to keep in remembrance of the people the alleged ancient atrocities of the brutal saxon--so the key-note of ennis is the memorial to the manchester martyrs, erected outside the town to commemorate the people who erected it. that is how it strikes the average observer. for while the patriotic murderers of the manchester policemen, to wit, o'brien, allen, and larkin, have only one tablet to the three heroes, the members of the committee who were responsible for this nationalist or rather fenian monument have immortalised themselves on three tablets. but although party feeling runs high, and the town as a whole appears to be eminently disloyal and inimical to england, there are not wanting reasonable people who look on the proposed change with grave suspicion, even though they nominally profess to support the abstract doctrine of home rule. naturally, their main opinions are very like those i have previously recorded as being prevalent in the neighbouring counties of limerick, cork, and kerry. they believe the present time unseasonable, and they have no confidence in the present representatives of the nationalist party. they believe that the irish people are not yet sufficiently educated to be at all capable of self-government, and they fail to see what substantial advantages would accrue from any home rule bill. more especially do they distrust mr. gladstone; and although in england the nationalist leaders speak gratefully of the grand old man, it is probable that such references would in ireland be received in silence, if not with outspoken derision. a well-known nationalist thus expressed himself on this point:-- "gladstone's recent attack on parnell was one of the meanest acts of a naturally mean and cowardly man, whose whole biography is a continuous story of surrender, abject and unconditional. parnell was his master. with all his faults, parnell was much the better man. he was too cool a swordsman for gladstone, and, spite of the grand man's tricky dodging and shifting, parnell beat him at every point, until he was thoroughly cowed and had to give in. what surprises me is that the english people are led away by a mere talker. they claim to be the most straightforward and practical people in the world. answer me this:--did you, did anybody, ever know gladstone to give a straightforward answer to any one question? straight dealing is not in him. he is slippery as an eel--with all his 'honesty,' his piety, his benevolence. but as he reads the bible in hawarden church, the english believe in him. they have no other reason that i can see. have you heard any irishman speak well of gladstone? no, and you never will. how long in the country? five weeks only? you may stay five years, and you will not hear a word expressing sincere esteem. about separation? well, most of the unthinking people, that is, the great majority, would vote in favour of it to-morrow. all sentiment, the very romance of sentimentality. i have been in england, i have been in america, and you could hardly believe the difference in the people's views. the irish are not practical enough. 'ireland a nation' is bound to be the next cry, if home rule become law under the present leaders of the nationalist party." "but how about the pledges, the solemn and reiterated pledges, of michael davitt and the rest?" "i suppose you ask me seriously? you do? an irishman would regard the question as a joke. the pledges are not worth a straw. their object is to deceive, and so to carry the point at issue. would john bull come with an injured air and say, with tears in his voice, 'you said you'd be good. you promised to be loyal. you really did. did you not, now?' don't you think john would cut a pretty figure? davitt knows where to have him. he knows that a quiet, moderate, reasonable tone fetches him. parnell, too, knew that the method with john was a steady, quiet persistence without excitement. john listens to davitt, and says to himself, 'now this is a calm, steady fellow. nothing fly-away about _him_. no shouting and screaming there. this is the kind of man who _must_ boss the show. give him what he wants.' "look how morley was taken in. and so, no doubt, was many another. "if england trusts the assurances of these men, and if the bill under present conditions becomes law, we shall have two generations of experiment, of corruption, of turmoil, of jobbery such as the british empire has never seen. "yes, i am a home ruler--at the proper time. but home rule in our present circumstances would mean revolution, and, a hundred to one, the reconquest of ireland. and in the event of any foreign complication you would have all your work cut out to effect your purpose." a gentleman from mallow said, "the gaelic clubs all over the country are in a high state of organisation, and a perfect state of drill. the splendid force of constabulary which are now for you would be against you. the irish legislature, from the first, would have the power to raise a force of volunteers, and the irish are such a military nation that in six months they could muster a very formidable force. i am a unionist, a protestant too, but i find that my catholic and home rule friends, that is, the superior sort, the best-read, the most thinking men, agree with me perfectly. but while i can understand irish home rulers, even the most extreme sort, i cannot understand any sensible englishman entertaining such an insane idea. as manager of one of the largest concerns in cork i have made many visits to england, and i found the supporters of mr. gladstone so utterly misinformed, so credulous, so blankly ignorant of the matter, that i forbore to debate the thing at all. and their assumption was on a level with their ignorance, which is saying a good deal." mr. thomas manley, the great horse dealer, a famous character throughout the three kingdoms, said to me, "the limerick horse fair of thursday last was the worst i ever attended in forty years. there is no money in the country. the little that changed hands was for horses of a common sort, and every one, i do believe, was bought for england and scotland, tramcar-horses and such like. home rule is killing the country already. i farmed a thousand acres of land in ireland for many a long year, and since i went more fully into the horse-dealing business i kept two hundred and fifty acres going. i have horsed the six crack cavalry regiments of the british army, and i know every nook and corner of ireland; know, perhaps, every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, and i also know their opinions. give me the power and i would do four things. here they are:-- "i would first settle the land question, then reform the poor-laws, then rearrange the grand jury laws, then commence to reclaim the land, which would pay ten per cent. "the tories should undertake these measures. they would then knock the bottom out of the home rule agitation. the people are downright sick of the whole business. they expected to be well off before this. they find themselves going down the nick." mr. abraham p. keeley said: "there is much fault found with the landlords, but they are by no means so much to blame as is supposed. put the saddle on the right horse. and the right horse is the steam horse. the rapid transit of grain and general farm produce has lowered the value of land more rapidly than the landlords could lower the rent. every year the prairie lands of america are further opened up by railways; india and egypt and australia are now in the swim, and ireland, as a purely agricultural country, must suffer. a curious illustration of the purely rural condition of the country was mentioned the other day. nearly all the great towns drink the water of the rivers upon which they stand. cork drinks the lee; limerick drinks the shannon; you can catch trout from the busiest quay in limerick. now, the towns of england don't drink their own rivers. you don't drink the rea at birmingham, i think?" i was obliged to admit that the pellucid waters of the crystal rea were not the favourite table beverage of the citizens of brum, but submitted that mr. joseph malins, the grand worthy chief templar, and his great and influential following might possibly use this innocent means of dissipation. mr. thomas manley continued: "the tenant farmer has cried himself up, and the nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most industrious, most honest, most frugal, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. but he isn't. not a bit of it. the landlords and their agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by secret competitions among neighbours and even relations. "ask any living irish farmer if i am right, and he will say, yes, ten times yes. "the irishman has a land-hunger such as is unknown over the water. and why? because the land is his sole means of living. we have no enterprise, no manufactures to speak of. the celtic nature is to hoard. the englishman invests what the irishman would bury in his back garden, or hang up the chimney in an old stocking. so we have no big works all over the country to employ the people. and as we are very prolific, the only remedy is emigration. down at queenstown the other day i saw irish emigrants leaving the country. a nationalist friend said, 'if they'd only wait a bit till we get home rule, they needn't go, the crathurs.' what's to hinder it? how will they be better off? will the land sustain more with home rule than without it? and when capital is driven away, as it must and will be the moment we pass the bill, instead of more factories we'll have less, and england and scotland will be over-run with thousands of starving irish folks whose means of living is taken away. "as an irish farmer, and an irish farmer's son, living on irish farms for more than sixty years, having an intimate acquaintance with the whole of ireland, and almost every acre of england, i deliberately say that the irish farmer is much better off than the english, scotch, or welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but in the matter of soil. "in many parts of england the soil must be manured after every crop. every time you take out you must put in. not so in ireland. nature has been so bountiful to us that we can take three, and even six, crops off the land after a single dose of manure. of course the farmer grumbles, and no wonder. the price of stock and general produce is so depressed that irish farmers are pinched. but so they are in england. and yet you have no moonlighting. you don't shoot your landlords. if the land will not pay you give it up and take to something else. an irishman goes on holding, simply refusing to pay rent. his neighbours, who are in the same fix, support him. when the landlord wishes to distrain, after waiting seven years or so, he has to get a decree. the tenants know of it as soon as he, and they set sentinels. when the police are signalled the cattle are driven away and mixed with those of other farmers--every difficulty that irish cleverness can invent is placed in the way. then the landlord, whether or not successful in distraining, is boycotted, and the people reckon it a virtue to shoot him down on sight. conviction is almost, if not quite, impossible, for even if you found a willing witness--a very unlikely thing i can tell you--even then the witness knows himself marked for the same fate. if he went to america or australia he would be traced, and someone would be found to settle him. such things have happened over and over again, and people know the risk is great. but about rack-rents. "i have told you of irish avariciousness in the matter of land, and have explained the reason of it. rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. they handed over the land to the highest bidder. what more natural? the farmers are not business men. they offered more than the land could pay. you know the results. but why curse and blaspheme the landlords for what was in many cases their own deliberate act?" on friday last i had a small object-lesson in irish affairs. colonel o'callaghan, of bodyke, went to limerick to buy cattle for grazing on his estate. the cattle were duly bought, but the gallant colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. i saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did i swoop down on the unhappy colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. he said, "i'm driving cows now," and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. even as he spoke, a perverse beast of nationalist tendencies effected a diversion to the right, plainly intending a charge down denmark street, _en route_ for irish town, and the gallant colonel waiving ceremony and a formidable shillelagh, hastened by a flank movement to cut off this retreat, and to guide the erring creature in the right way to fresh woods and pastures new. i fired a parthian arrow after the parting pair. "appointment?" i shouted, but the colonel shook his head. it was no time for gentle assignations. the cursed crew in front of him absorbed his faculties, and then he half expected to be shot from any street abutting on his path. perhaps i may nail him yet. he has been attempting to distrain. if the colonel refuses to speak i will interview his tenants. i have said i will pursue, i will overtake, i will divide the spoil--with the readers of the _gazette_. _dixi._ i have spoken! there is much shooting on the bodyke estates, and in ennis they say that sixty policemen are stationed there to pick up the game. nobody has been bagged as yet, but the clare folks are still hoping. to-morrow a trusty steed will bear me to the spot. relying on a carefully-considered, carefully-studied nationalist appearance, an anti-landlord look, and a decided no-rent expression in my left eye, i feel that i could ride through the most dangerous districts with perfect impunity. "base is the slave that pays," says ancient pistol. that is my present motto. one touch of no rent makes the irish kin. the english people should be told that nearly all irishmen, whether unionist or otherwise, are strong protectionists. the moment home rule becomes law a tremendous attempt will be made to shut out english goods. "the very first thing we do," said to me an influential dubliner i met here, "is to double the harbour dues; you can't prevent that, i suppose? the first good result will be the choking-off of all the scotch and manx fishermen who infest our seas. at present they bring their fish into dublin, whence it is sent all over ireland, competing against irish fishermen. then we'll tax all manufactured goods. we will admit the raw material duty-free, but we must be permitted to know what suits us best, and we must, and will, tax flour, but not wheat. we in ireland, forsooth, must submit to having all our flour mills closed to suit the swarming populations of manchester and birmingham. they must have a cheap loaf. dear me! and so flour comes here untaxed, having given employment to people in america, while our folks are walking about idle. go down the river boyne, from trim to drogheda. what do you see? twelve mills, with machinery worth £ , or more, lying idle. one of those mills once employed fifty or sixty men. now it employs none. tax flour, i say, and so says everybody. we must have protection, and very stringent protection. irish manufacturers must be sustained against english competition. twenty years ago dublin was a great place for cabinet work. now nothing is done there, or next to nothing. everything must come from london. at the same period we did a great trade in leather. the leather trade is gone to the devil. we did a big turnover in boots and shoes. now every pair worn in the city comes from northampton. ireland and irish goods for the irish, and burn everything english but english coals. give us home rule, and all these trades will be restored to us." thus spoke the great home ruler, who declined to permit his name to appear, as he said it might affect his business. his sentiments are universal, and, as i have said, his opinions are shared by the great majority of irishmen, even though professedly unionist. a word of comment on the patriotic sentiments of my friend. i went to delany, of george street, limerick, for a suit of blarney tweed. he had not a yard in the place. he was indicated as the leading clothier and outfitter of the city, but the mahony mills were not represented amongst his patterns. he had scotch tweeds, yorkshire tweeds, west of england tweeds, but although the blarney tweeds are said to be the best in the world as well as the handsomest, i had to seek them elsewhere. an english friend says, "the irish politicians are rather inconsistent. they came into this hotel one evening, six of them, red-hot from a nationalist meeting, cursing england up hill and down dale, till i really felt quite nervous. i hadn't got a winchester like that. (i hope it won't go off.) they agreed that to boycott english goods was the correct thing, and of course they were for burning all but english coals, when the leader of the gang said, 'now, boys, what will you drink,' and hang me! if they didn't every one take a bottle of bass's bitter beer! did you ever know such inconsistency?" the quirks and quips of the irish character would puzzle a philadelphia lawyer. spinning along the lane to killaloe, with mr. beesley, of leeds, and mr. abraham keeley, of mallow, balanced on opposite sides of a jaunting car, we came on a semi-savage specimen of the genuine irish sort. semi-savage! he was seven-eighths savage, and semi-lunatic, just clever enough to mind the cows and goats which, with a donkey or two, grazed by the way-side. he might be five-and-twenty, and looked strong and lusty. his naked feet were black with the dirt of his childhood, and not only black, but shining and gleaming in the sun. his tattered trousers were completely worn away to the knee, showing his muscular legs to perfection. the rags that clothed his body were confusing and indefinite. you could not tell where one garment ended and another began, or whether there were more than one at all. cover a pump with boiling glue, shake over it a sack of rags, and you will get an approximate effect of his costume. his tawny, matted hair and beard had never known brush, comb, or steel. it was a virgin forest. he scratched his head with the air of the old woman who said "forty years long have this generation troubled me;" and ran after the car with outstretched hand. i threw him a penny, upon which he threw himself at full length, his tongue hanging out, a greedy sparkle in his eye. my irish friend instantly stopped the car. "now i'll show you something. this man is more than half an idiot, but watch him." then he cried: "come here, now, i'll toss you for the penny." the man came quickly forward. "now then, put down your penny, and call. what is it? head or harp, speak while it spins!" "head," shouted the savage, and head it was. he picked up the second penny with glee, and said with a burst of wild laughter. "toss more, more, more; toss ever an' always; toss agin, agin, agin." the car-driver was disgusted. "bad luck to ye for a madman. ye have the gamblin' blood in ye. bedad, ye'd break monty carly, ye would." then looking at the gambler's black and polished feet, he said:-- "tell me, now, honey, is it day an' martin's ye use?" ennis (co. clare), april th. no. .--civil war in county clare. the name of bodyke is famous throughout all lands, but few people know anything about the place or the particulars of the great dispute. the whole district is at present in a state of complete lawlessness. the condition of matters is almost incredible, and is such as might possibly be expected in the heart of africa, but hardly in a civilised country, especially when that country is under the benignant british rule. the law-breakers seem to have the upper hand, and to be almost, if not quite, masters of the situation. the whole estate is divided into three properties, fort ann, milltown, and bodyke, about five thousand acres in all, of which the first two comprise about one thousand five hundred acres, isolated from the bodyke lands, which latter may amount to some three thousand five hundred acres. either by reason of their superior honesty, or, as is sometimes suggested, on account of their inferior strategic position, the tenants of the fort ann and milltown lands pay their rent. the men of bodyke are in a state of open rebellion, and resist every process of law both by evasion and open force. the hill-tops are manned by sentries armed with rifles. bivouac fires blaze nightly on every commanding eminence. colonel o'callaghan's agent is a cock-shot from every convenient mound. his rides are made musical by the 'ping' of rifle balls, and nothing but the dread of his repeating rifle, with which he is known to be handy, prevents the marksmen from coming to close quarters. mr. stannard macadam seems to bear a charmed life. he is a fine athletic young man, calm and collected, modest and unassuming, and, as he declares, no talker. he has been described as a man of deeds, not words. he said, "i am not a literary man. i have not the skill to describe incident, or to give a clear and detailed account of what has taken place. i have refused to give information to the local journalists. my business is to manage the estate, and that takes me all my time. you must get particulars elsewhere. i would rather not speak of my own affairs or those of colonel o'callaghan." there was nothing for it but to turn my unwilling back on this veritable gold mine. but although mr. macadam could not or would not speak, others were not so reticent, and once in the neighbourhood the state of things was made plainly evident. the road from ennis to bodyke is dull and dreary, and abounds with painful memories. half-an-hour out you reach the house, or what remains of it, of francis hynes, who was hanged for shooting a man. a little further and you reach the place where mr. perry was shot. a wooded spot, "convaynient" for ambush, once screened some would-be murderers who missed their mark. then comes the house of the misses brown, in which on christmas eve shots were fired, by way of celebrating the festive season. from a clump of trees some four hundred yards from the road the police on a car were fired upon, the horse being shot dead in his tracks. the tenantry of this sweet district are keeping up their rifle practice, and competent judges say that the bodyke men possess not less than fifty rifles, none of which can be found by the police. said one of the constabulary, "they lack nerve to fire from shorter distances, as they think macadam is the better shot, and to miss him would be risky, as he is known to shoot rabbits with ball cartridge. at the same time, i remember burke of loughrea, who was shot, had also a fine reputation as a rifleman, but they settled him neatly enough. i saw him in the railway inn, athenry, just before he was killed, with a repeating rifle slung on his back and a revolver on his hip. i saw him ride away, his servant driving while burke kept the cocked rifle ready, the butt under his armpit, the trigger in his hand. he sat with his back to the horse, keeping a good look-out, and yet they shot both him and his servant as they galloped along. the horse and car came in without them. to carry arms is therefore not a complete security, though no doubt it is, to some extent, a deterrent. but my opinion is that when a man is ordered to be shot he will be shot. clare swarms with secret societies, and you never know from one moment to another what resolutions they will pass. i don't know what the end of it will be, but i should think that home rule, by giving the murderers a fancied security, would in this district lead to wholesale bloodshed. the whole country would rise, as they do now, to meet the landlord or his agent, but they would then do murder without the smallest hesitation." his companion said--the police here are never alone--"the first thing morley did was to rescind the crimes act. when we heard of that we said 'now it's coming.' and we've got it. every man with a head on him, and not a turnip, knew very well what would happen. the police are shot at till they take no notice of it. sometimes we charge up the hills to the spot where the firing started, but among the rocks and ravines and hills and holes they run like rabbits, or they hand their arms to some fleet-footed chap to hide, while they stay--aye, they do, they actually stand their ground till we come, and there they are working at a hedge or digging the ground, and looking as innocent and stupid as possible. they never saw anybody, and never heard any firing--or they thought it was the colonel shooting a hare. we hardly know what to do in doubtful cases, as we know the tenants have the support of the government, and it is as much as our places are worth to make any mistake under present circumstances. the tenants know that too, so between them and morley we feel between two fires." the trouble has been alive for fifteen years or so, but it was not until that bodyke became a regularly historic place. the tenants had paid no rent for years, and wholesale evictions were tried, but without effect. the people walked in again the next day, and as the gallant colonel had not an army division at his back he was obliged to confess himself beaten at every point. he went in for arbitration, but before giving details let us first take a bird's eye view of his position. i will endeavour to state the case as fairly as possible, premising that nothing will be given beyond what is freely admitted by both parties to the dispute. the colonel, who is a powerfully-built, bronzed, and active man, seemingly over sixty years old, left the service just forty years ago. four years before that his father had died, heavily in debt, leaving the estate encumbered by a mortgage, a jointure to the relict, mrs. o'callaghan, now deceased (the said jointure being at that time several years in arrear), a head rent of a hundred guineas a year to colonel patterson, with taxes, tithe rent-charges, and heaven knows what besides. in and his father had made considerable reductions in the rents of the bodyke holdings, but the tenants had contrived to fall into arrears to the respectable tune of £ , , or thereabouts. such was the state of things when the heir came into his happy possessions. a protestant clergyman said to me--"land in ireland is like self-righteousness. the more you have, the worse off you are." thus was it at bodyke. something had to be done. to ask the tenants for the £ , was mere waste of breath. the young soldier had no agent. he was determined to be the people's friend. although a black protestant, he was ambitious of catholic good-will. he wanted to have the tenants blessing him. he coveted the good name which is better than rubies. he wished to make things comfortable, to be a general benefactor of his species; if a protestant landlord and a roman catholic tenantry can be said to be of the same species at all, a point which, according to the nationalist press, is at least doubtful. he called the tenants together, and agreed to accept three hundred pounds for the six thousand pounds legally due, so as to make a fresh start and encourage the people to walk in the paths of righteousness. when times began to mend, the colonel himself a farmer, commenced to raise the rents until they reached the amount paid during his father's reign. the people stood it quietly enough until , when the colonel appointed agents. this year was one of agricultural depression. a mr. willis succeeded the two first agents, but during the troubles he resigned his charge. the popular opinion leans to the supposition that his administration was ineffective, that is, that he was comparatively unused to field strategy, that he lacked dash and military resource, and that he entertained a constitutional objection to being shot. the rents came under the judicial arrangement, and reductions were made. still things would not work smoothly, and it was agreed that bad years should be further considered on rent days. this agreement led to reductions on the judicial rent of to per cent., besides which the colonel, in the arbitration of , had accepted £ , in lieu of several thousand pounds of arrears then due. after november, , the tenants ceased to pay rent at all, and that is practically their present position. the colonel, who being himself an experienced farmer is a competent judge of agricultural affairs, thinks the tenants are able to pay, and even believes that they are willing, were it not for the intimidation of half-a-score village ruffians whose threatened moonlighting exploits, when considered in conjunction with the bloody deeds which have characterised the district up to recent times, are sufficient to paralyse the whole force of the british empire, when that force is directed by the feeble fumblers now in office. that they can pay if they will, is clearly proved by recent occurrences. let us abandon ancient history and bring our story down to date. the number of incidents is so great, and the complications arising from local customs and prejudices are so bewildering that only after much inquiry have i been able to sort from the tangled web a few clear and understandable instances, which, however, may be taken as a fair sample of the whole. new brooms sweep clean. the new agent, mr. macadam, began to negotiate. pow-wows and palavers all ended in smoke, and as meanwhile the charges on the estate were going on merrily, and no money was coming in to meet them, writs were issued against six of the best-off farmers; writs, not decrees, the writ being a more effective instrument. one malone was evicted. he was a married man, without encumbrances, owed several years' arrears, had mismanaged his farm, a really good bit of land, had been forgiven a lot of rent, and still he was not happy. a relative had lent him nearly £ to carry on, but malone was a bottomless pit. what he required was a gold mine and a man to shovel up the ore, but unhappily no such thing existed on the farm. the relative offered to take the land, believing that he could soon recoup himself the loan, but malone held on with iron grip, refusing to listen to the voice of the charmer, charmed he never so wisely. the relative wished to take the place at the judicial rent, and offered to give malone the house, grass for a cow, and the use of three acres of land. malone declined to make any change, and as a last resort it was decided to evict him. on the auspicious day macadam arrived from limerick, accompanied by two men from dublin, whom he proposed to instal as caretakers in malone's house. the sheriff's party were late, and macadam, waiting at some distance, was discovered and the alarm given. horns were blown, the chapel bell was rung, the whole country turned out in force. anticipating seizure, the people drove away their cattle, and shortly no hoof nor horn was visible in the district. a crowd collected and, observing the caretakers, at once divined their mission, and perceived that not seizure, but eviction, was the order of the day. they rushed to malone's house, and, with his consent and assistance, tore off the roof, smashed the windows, and demolished the doors. the place was thus rendered uninhabitable. this having been happily effected, the sheriff's party arrived an hour or so late, in the irish fashion. possession was formally given to the agent, who was now free to revel in the four bare walls, and to enjoy the highly-ventilated condition of the building. the crowd became more and more threatening, and if they could have mustered pluck to run in on the loaded rifles, sheriff, agent, and escort must have been murdered without mercy. the shouting and threatening were heard two miles away. but the tenants had taken other measures. a firing party was posted on a neighbouring hill, and as the sheriff left the shelter of the walls a volley was poured in from a clump of trees four hundred yards away, one bullet narrowly missing a man who ducked at the flash. the riflemen were visible among the trees, and the sheriff returned the fire. several policemen also fired into the clump, but without effect, and their fire was briskly returned from the hill, this time just missing the head of a policeman covered by a bush, a bullet cutting off a branch close to his ear. the police then prepared to charge up the hill, when the firing party decamped. no arrests were made, although the marksmen must have been dwellers in the neighbourhood. a policeman said, "we know who they are; you can't conceal these things in a country place; but we have no legal evidence, and although we saw them at four hundred yards, who will accept our identification at such a distance? and of course no jury would convict. we have no remedy in this unfortunate country. so long as gladstone and such folks are bidding for the people's votes so long we shall have lawlessness. but for the change of government all would long have been settled amicably. but i heard a young priest say to the people, 'hold on a bit till the new government goes in.'" to return to the malone affair, mr. macadam applied to the police for resident protection not for himself, but for the caretakers, whom he now proposed to instal in a farmhouse in the occupation of one of the colonel's servants, and from which no one had been evicted. the authorities refused protection on the very remarkable plea that the situation of the aforesaid premises was so dangerous! so that had the place been quite safe, they would have consented to protect it. macadam determined to carry out his plan, with or without protection. he left limerick at midnight with an ammunition and provision train of seven cars, with two caretakers and four workmen, with materials to fortify the place. he had previously given the authorities notice that he meant to occupy knockclare, the house in question, and before he started they sent a police-sergeant from tulla, a twenty miles drive, to formally warn him off, for that his life would assuredly be taken, and the officer also demanded that he should be permitted to personally warn the caretakers of the risk they ran. this was granted, but the men stuck to their guns. at the eviction a man had funked, frightened out of his seven senses. the police declined all responsibility, but offered to guard the farm for a shilling per man per day. macadam thought this proposal without precedent, and left the police to their own devices, driving along the twenty miles of hilly road, with sorry steeds that refused the last hill, so that the loads had to be pushed and carried up by the men. this was at eight or nine in the morning, after many hours' toilsome march. the fun was not over yet. like the penny show, it was "just a-goin' to begin." the crowd turned out and with awful threats of instant death menaced the lives of the party, who, with levelled rifles, at last gained the building. the people brought boards, and showed the caretakers their coffins in the rough. they spoke of shooting, and swore they would roast them alive that night by burning the house in which they were sheltered. a shot was fired at macadam. a sergeant with one man arrived from tulla police-barracks and urged the party to leave before they were murdered. macadam would hold his post at all risks. later eight armed policemen arrived, and then two carmen started to go home. a wall of stones blocked the road. they somehow got over that, and found a second wall a little further on. here was a menacing crowd, and the police who followed the car drew their revolvers, and with great determination advanced on the mob, saving the carmen's lives, for which they were publicly praised from the bench. but the jarveys returned, and by a circuitous route reached limerick viâ killaloe, thanking heaven for their whole skins, and vowing never to so risk them again. the county inspector who refused the party police protection explained that he did so "out of regard for the safety of his men." he said, "i had more than mr. macadam and his party to consider. i must preserve the lives of the men in my charge." at present the two caretakers hold the citadel, which is also garrisoned by a force of sixteen policemen regularly relieved by day and by night, every man armed to the teeth. now and then the foinest pisintry in the wuruld turn out to the neighbouring hills and blaze away with rifles at the doors and windows of the little barn-like structure. the marksmen want a competent instructor. anyone who knows anything of shooting knows the high art and scientific knowledge required for long-range rifle practice. these men are willing, but they lack science. knowledge to their eyes her ample page, rich with the spoils of time, has ne'er unrolled. mr. gladstone might bring over from the transvaal a number of the boers whose shooting impressed him so much to coach these humble kelts in the mysteries of rifle shooting. such a measure would perceptibly accelerate the passage of the home rule bill. such is the state of things in bodyke at this moment. colonel o'callaghan has had no penny of rent for years--that is, nothing for himself. what has been paid by the tenants of fort ann and milltown has been barely sufficient to meet the charges on the estate. the colonel thinks that the more he concedes the more his people want. he has had many narrow escapes from shooting, and rather expects to be bagged at last. he seems to be constitutionally unconscious of fear, but the police, against his wish, watch over him. in the few instances in which mr. macadam, his agent, has effected seizures, the people have immediately paid up--have simply walked into their houses, brought out the money, and planked down the rent with all expenses, the latter amounting to some or per cent. they _can_ pay. the colonel, who lives by farming, having no other source of income, knows their respective positions exactly, and declines to be humbugged. the tenants believe that they will shortly have the land for nothing, and they are content to remain in a state of siege, themselves beleaguering the investing force, lodged in the centre of the position. the fields are desolate, tillage is suspended, and the whole of the cattle are driven out of sight. armed men watch each other by night and by day, and bloodshed may take place at any moment. the farming operations of the whole region are disorganised and out of joint. six men have been arrested for threats and violence, but all were discharged--the jury would not convict, although the judge said the evidence for the defence was of itself sufficient to convict the gang. a ruffian sprang on macadam with an open knife, swearing he would disembowel him. after a terrible struggle the man was disarmed and secured, brought up before the beak, and the offence proved to the hilt. this gentleman was dismissed without a stain on his character. macadam asked that he should at least be bound over to keep the peace. this small boon was refused. comment is needless. how long are the english people going to stand this morley-gladstone management? i have not yet been able to interview colonel o'callaghan himself, but my information, backed by my own observation, may be relied on as accurate. the carman who drove me hither said "the bodyke boys are dacent fellows, but they must have their sport. tis their nature to be shootin' folks, an' ye can't find fault with a snipe for havin' a long bill. an' they murther ye in sich a tinder-hearted way that no raisonable landlord could have any objection to it." i have the honour of again remarking that ireland is a wonderful country. bodyke (co. clare), may nd. no. .--rent at the root of nationalism. the tenants of the bodyke property stigmatise colonel o'callaghan as the worst landlord in the world, and declare themselves totally unable to pay the rent demanded, and even in some cases say that they cannot pay any rent at all, a statement which is effectually contradicted by the fact that most of them pay up when fairly out-generalled by the dashing strategy of mr. stannard macadam, whose experience as a racing bicyclist seems to have stood him in good stead. the country about bodyke has an unfertile look, a stony, boggy, barren appearance. here and there are patches of tolerable land, but the district cannot fairly be called a garden of eden. being desirous of hearing both sides of the question, i have conversed with several of the complaining farmers, most of whom have very small holdings, if their size be reckoned by the rent demanded. the farmers' homes are not luxurious, but the rural standard of luxury is in ireland everywhere far below that of the english cottar, who would hold up his hands in dismay if required to accommodate himself to such surroundings. briefly stated, the case of the tenants is based on an alleged agreement on the part of colonel o'callaghan to make a reduction of twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents and thirty-seven and a half per cent. on non-judicial rents, whenever the farming season proved unfavourable. this was duly carried out until , when the question arose as to whether that was or was not a bad year. the tenants say that was abnormally bad for them, but that on attending to pay their rent, believing that the reductions which had formerly been made, and which they had come to regard as invariable, would again take place, they were told that the customary rebate would now cease and determine, and that therefore they were expected to pay their rents in full. this they profess to regard as a flagrant breach of faith, and they at once decided to pay no rent at all. the position became a deadlock, and such it still remains. they affect to believe that the last agent, mr. willis, resigned his post out of sheer sympathy, and not because he feared sudden translation to a brighter sphere. they complain that the colonel's stables are too handsome, and that they themselves live in cabins less luxurious than the lodgings of the landlord's horses. there is no epithet too strong to express their indignation against the devoted colonel, who was described by one imaginative peasant, who had worked himself up to a sort of descriptive convulsion, as a "rawhacious vagabone," a fine instance of extemporaneous word-coining of the ideo-phonetic school, which will doubtless be greedily accepted by nationalist parliamentarians who, long ago, exhausted their vocabulary of expletives in dealing with mr. gladstone and each other. the bodykers have one leading idea, to "wait yet awhile." home rule will banish the landlords, and give the people the land for nothing at all. the peasantry are mostly fine-grown men, well-built and well-nourished, bearing no external trace of the hardships they claim to have endured. they are civil and obliging, and thoroughly inured to the interviewer. they have a peculiar accent, of a sing-song character, which now and then threatens to break down the stranger's gravity. that the present state of things is intolerable, and cannot last much longer, they freely admit, but they claim to have the tacit sympathy of the present government, and gleefully relate with what unwillingness police protection was granted to the agent and his men. they disclaim any intention of shooting or otherwise murdering the landlord or his officers, and assert that the fact that they still live is sufficient evidence in this direction. said one white-headed man of gentle, deferential manner:-- "the days o' landlord shootin' is gone by. if the boys wanted to shoot the colonel what's to hinder them? would his double-barrel protect him, or the four dogs he has about him, that he sends sniffin' an' growlin' about the threes an' ditches. if the word wint out he wouldn't live a day, nor his agint nayther. an' his durty emergency men, that's posted like spies at the house beyant, could be potted any time they showed their noses. an' couldn't we starve thim out? couldn't we cut off their provisions? why would we commit murther whin we have only to wait till things turn round, which wid the help of god will be afore long. we're harassed an' throubled, always pullin' the divil by the tail, but that won't last for ever. we'll have our own men, that ondershtands oireland, to put us right, an' then o'callaghan an' all his durty thribe'll be fired out of the counthry before ye can say black's the white o' my eye; an' black curses go wid thim." the caretakers are not accessible. stringent orders forbid the giving of information to any person whatever. this is unfortunate, as a look at their diaries would prove amusing. they must feel like rabbits living in a burrow bored in a sporting district, or the man in the iron mask, or the late respected damocles, or the gentleman who saw the handwriting on the wall. their sleep must be troubled. they must have ugly dreams of treasons, stratagems, and spoils, and when they wake, swearing a prayer or two, they doubtless see through the gloom, mene, mene, tekel, upharsin (i quote from memory), in lurid letters on the ceiling of their stronghold. their waking visions and their daily talk must be of guns and pikes, of graves and coffins, shrouds and skeletons. perhaps they, like mr. macadam and some others, have received missives sprinkled with blood, and ornamented with skulls and cross-bones, those famous national emblems which the irish tenant sketches with a rude, untutored art; bold, freehand drawings, done in gore by hereditary instinct. it may be that they see the newspapers, that they learn how the other day the house of a caretaker at tipperary was, by incendiaries, burned to the ground, the poor fellow at the time suffering from lockjaw, taking his food with difficulty, owing to his having some time previously been shot through the face. or they may read of the shooting case at castleisland, and how mr. magilicuddy suggests that such cases be made public, that the people may know something of the present lawlessness of the country, or of the narrow squeak of mr. walshe, a schoolmaster, living just outside ennis, who barely escaped with his life from two bullets, fired at him, because his wife had been appointed mistress of the girls; or the sad affair of mr. blood of the same district, who being an admittedly kind and amiable man, is compelled to be always under the escort of four armed policemen for that he did discharge a herdman without first asking permission from the local patriots. or they may meditate on the fate of the old man near clonmel, who was so beaten that he has since died, his daughter, who might have aided him, having first been fastened in her room. these and a hundred similar instances of outrage and attempted murder have crept into print during the last few days. red ruin and the breaking-up of laws herald the home rule bill. and if the premonitory symptoms be thus severe, how shall we doctor the disease itself? the other day i stumbled on mr. lynn, of dublin, whom i first met at the queen's hotel, portadown, county armagh. he said, "we ought to know what the home rule bill will do. we know the materials of which the dish is composed, we have seen their preparation and mixing, we now have the process of cooking before us, and when we get it it will give us indigestion." the bodykers have a new grievance, one of most recent date. they had found a delightful means of evasion, which for a time worked well, but the bottom has been knocked out of it, and their legal knowledge has proved of no avail. to pay rent whenever a seizure was effected was voted a bore, a calamitous abandonment of principle, and a loss of money which might be better applied. so that when macadam made his latest seizures, say on the land of brown and jones, these out-manoeuvred tenants brought forward friends named smith and robinson who deeply swore and filed affidavits to the effect that the cattle so seized belonged to them, smith and robinson to wit, and not to the afore-mentioned brown and jones, on whose land they were found. here was a pretty kettle of fish. colonel o'callaghan, or his agent, were processed for illegal distraint, and the evidence being dead against the landlord, that fell tyrant had on several occasions to disgorge his prey, whereat there was great rejoicing in bodyke. the new agent, however, is a tough customer, and in his quality of clerk of petty sessions dabbles in legal lore. he found an act which provides that, after due formalities, distraint may be made on any cattle found on the land in respect of which rent is due, no matter to whom the said cattle may belong. the tenants are said to have been arranging an amicable interchange of grazing land, the cows of smith feeding on the land of brown, and _vice versâ_, so that the affidavit agreement might have some colour of decency. the ancient act discovered by the ardent macadam has rendered null and void this proposed fraternal reciprocity, and the order to conceal every hoof and horn pending discovery of the right answer to this last atrocity has been punctually obeyed, the local papers slanging landlord and agent, but seemingly unable to find the proper countermine. no end of details and of incident might be given, but no substantial increase could be made to the information, given in this and my preceding letter. the tenants say that the landlord perversely refuses the reductions allowed in better times, and the landlord says that as a practical farmer he believes that those upon whom he has distrained or attempted to distrain are able to pay in full. he declares that he has not proceeded against those who from any cause are unable to meet their obligations, but only against the well-to-do men, who, having the money in hand, are deliberately withholding his just and reasonable due, taking advantage of the disturbed state of the country and the weakness of the government to benefit themselves, regardless of the suffering their selfishness entails on innocent people. in striking contrast to the turbulence of the bodyke men is the peaceful calm of the castleconnel people. i have had several pleasant interviews with lady de burgho, whose territory embraces some sixty thousand acres, and who, during a widowed life of twenty-two years, has borne the stress and strain of irish estate administration, with its eternal and wearisome chopping and changing of law, its labyrinthine complications, its killing responsibilities. lady de burgho is, after all, very far from dead, exhibiting in fact a marvellous vitality, and discoursing of the ins and outs of the various harassing land acts, and the astute diplomacy needful to save something from the wreck, with a light, airy vivacity, and a rich native humour irresistibly charming. the recital of her troubles, losses, and burdens, the dodgery and trickery of legal luminaries, and the total extinction of rent profits is delivered with an easy grace, and with the colour and effervescence of sparkling burgundy. to be deprived of nine-tenths of your income seems remarkably good fun; to be ruined, an enviable kind of thing. lady de burgho commenced her reign with one fixed principle, from which nothing has ever induced her to deviate. under no conceivable circumstances would she allow eviction. no agent could induce her to sign a writ. "i could not sleep if i had turned out an irish family," says lady de burgho, adding, with great sagacity, "and besides eviction never does any good." so that this amiable lady has the affections of her people, if she handles not their cash. and who shall estimate the heart's pure feelings? saith not the wisest of men that a good report maketh the bones fat? is not the goodwill of the foinest pisintry in the wuruld more to be desired than much fine gold? is it not sweeter also than honey or the honeycomb? certain mortgagees who wished to appropriate certain lands offered liberal terms to lady de burgho on condition that she would for three years absent herself from ireland, holding no communication with her tenants during that period. lady de burgho objected. she said, "if i accepted your terms my people on my return would believe, and they would be justified in believing, that i had been for three years incarcerated in a lunatic asylum." tableau! three american gentlemen visiting castleconnel told lady de burgho that the success of the present agitation in favour of home rule would be the first step towards making ireland an american dependency, a pronouncement which is not without substantial foundation. the feeling of the masses is towards america, and away from england. to the new world, where are more irish than in ireland (so they say) the poorer classes look with steadfast eye. to them america is the chief end of man, the earthly paradise, the promised land, the el dorado, a heaven upon earth. every able-bodied man is saving up to pay his passage, every good-looking girl is anxious to give herself a better chance in the states. nearly all have relatives to give them a start, and glowing letters from fortunate emigrants are the theme of every village. the effect of these epistles is obvious enough. home rule, say the nationalists, will stop emigration. that this is with them a matter of hope, or pious belief, is made clear by their conversation. they give no good reason for their faith. they are cornered with consummate ease. the plausibilities gorged by gladstonian gulls do not go down in ireland. they are not offered to irishmen. "made in ireland for english gabies" should be branded upon them. the most convincing arguments against the bill are those adduced by home rulers in its favour. here is a faithful statement of reasons for home rule, as given by alderman downing, of limerick, and another gentleman then present whose name i know not:-- "when you allow the irish legislature to frame its own laws, disorder and outrage will be put down with an iron hand. we have no law at present. put an irish parliament in dublin, and we would arrange to hang up moonlighters to the nearest tree. everybody would support the law if imposed from dublin. they resent it as imposed by englishmen in london." "i am not in favour of handing over the government of ireland to the present leaders of the irish party. i believe that, once granted home rule, they would disappear into private life, and that we should replace them by better men. what reason for believing this? oh, i think the people would begin to feel their responsibility. do i think the idea of 'responsibility' is their leading idea? perhaps not at this moment, but they will improve. you think that the people may be fairly expected to return the same class of men? perhaps so. i hope not. i should think they would see the necessity of sending men of position and property. why don't they send them now? simply because they won't come forward; that class of men do not believe in home rule." i humbly submitted that this would prevent their coming forward in future, and that if home rule were admittedly bad under the present leaders, there was really no case to go to a jury, as there was no evidence before the court to show that the leaders would be dropped. on the contrary, there was every probability that the victorious promoters of the bill would be returned by acclamation. further, that if home rule be gladly accepted as a pearl of great price, to drop the gainers thereof, to dismiss the men who had borne the burden and heat of the day, would be an act of shabbiness unworthy the proverbial gratitude and generosity of the irish people. alderman downing would only exclude them from parliamentary place, and would not exclude all even then. the bulk of them might be found some sort of situation where decent salaries would atone for the dropping. would that be jobbery? "ah, you ask too many questions." let it be noted that although the greater part of the irish nationalist members are everywhere rejected beforehand by superior home rulers, as unfit for an irish parliament, they are apparently for that very reason sent to the house of commons as the best sort to tease the brutal saxon. the bulldog is not the noblest, nor the handsomest, nor the swiftest, nor the most faithful, nor the most sagacious, nor the most pleasant companion of the canine world, but he is a good 'un to hang on the nose of the bull. the great unknown said: "you must admit that english rule has not been a success. home rule is admittedly an experiment--well, yes, i will accept the word risk--home rule is admittedly, to some extent, a risk, but let us try it. and if the worst comes to the worst we can go back again to the old arrangement." the speaker was a kindly gentleman of sixty or sixty-five years, and, like alderman downing, spoke in a reasonable, moderate tone. doubtless both are excellent citizens, men of considerable position and influence, certainly very pleasant companions, and, to all appearance, well-read, well-informed men. and yet, in the presence of unionist irishmen, the above-mentioned arguments were all they ventured to offer. arguments, quotha? is the hope that the ignorant peasantry of ireland will return "the better class of men," who "do not believe in home rule" an argument? is the as-you-were assertion an argument? what would the irish say if mr. bull suggested this movement of retrogression? we should have father hayes, the friend of father humphreys, again calling for "dynamite, for the lightnings of heaven and the fires of hell, to pulverise every british cur into top-dressing for the soil." we should have father humphreys himself writing ill-spelt letters to the press, and denouncing all liars as poachers on his own preserves. we should have dillon and o'brien and their crew again leading their ignorant countrymen to the treadmill, while the true culprits stalked the streets wearing lemon-coloured kid gloves purchased with the hard-earned and slowly-accumulated cents of irish-american slaveys. the protestants would be denounced as the blackest, cruellest, most callous slave-drivers on god's earth. and this reminds me of something. doctor o'shaughnessy, of limerick, is the most wonderful man in ireland. his diploma was duly secured in , and daniel o'connell was his most intimate friend, and also his patient. the doctor lived long in london, and was a regular attendant at the house of commons up to . twice he fought limerick for his son, and twice he won easily. the city is now represented by mr. o'keefe, and mr. o'shaughnessy is a commissioner of the board of works in dublin. the doctor has conferred with earl spencer on grave and weighty matters, and doubtless his opinion on irish questions is of greatest value. his pupil and his fellow-student, dr. kidd and dr. quain (i forget which is which), met at the bedside of lord beaconsfield, and medical men admit the doctor's professional eminence. his eighty-four years sit lightly upon him. he looks no more than fifty at most, is straight as a reed, active as a hare, runs upstairs like a boy of fourteen, has the clear blue eye and fresh rosy skin of a young man. he would give the grand old man fifty in a hundred and beat him out of his boots. he might be mr. gladstone's son, if he were only fond of jam. the doctor said several hundred good things which i would like to print, but as our many conferences were unofficial this would be hardly fair. however, i feel sure doctor o'shaughnessy will forgive my repeating one statement of his--premising that the doctor is a devout catholic, and that he knows all about land. "the protestants are not the worst landlords. the hardest men, the most unyielding men the tenants have to meet are the roman catholic landlords, the new men." here is some food for thought. these few words, properly considered, cover much ground. the doctor is a home ruler, an ardent lover of his country, one of the best of the many high-minded men i have met in ireland. were such as he in the forefront of the battle, john bull might hand the irish a blank cheque. the consciousness of trust is of all things most binding on men of integrity. but for mr. gladstone to hand the honour of england to horsewhipped healy and breeches o'brien, showing his confidence in them by permitting it to be taken round the corner--that is a different thing. i forgot to mention a remarkable feature in the history of limerick city, a parallel of which is found in the apocryphal castle in england for which the unique distinction is claimed that queen elizabeth never slept there. and so far as i can learn, tim healy has not yet been horsewhipped in limerick. bodyke (co. clare), may nd. no. .--hard facts for english readers. cort is a quiet wayside country town about forty miles from limerick, a little oasis of trees and flowers, with a clear winding trout-stream running all about it. the streets are wide, the houses well-built, the pavements kerbed and in good condition. trees are bigger and more numerous than usual, and the place has a generally bowery appearance such as is uncommon in ireland, which is not famous for its timber. trees are in many parts the grand desideratum, the one thing needful to perfect the beauty of the scenery, but ireland as compared with england, france, holland, belgium, or germany may almost be called a treeless country. strange to say, the home rule bill, which affects everything, threatens to deprive the country of its few remaining trees. a scotsman resident thirteen years in ireland said to me:-- "the timber you see lying there is not american, but irish. the people who have timber are in many cases cutting it down, because they foresee a state of general insecurity and depression, and they need all the cash they can command. but there is another reason for the deforesting of the country, which is--that if home rule becomes law, the landowners are disposed to believe that no allowance will be made for the timber which may be on the land when the land is sold to the tenant under some unknown act to be passed at some future day." this fits into the point raised by a tenant farmer living just outside the town, an extraordinary character said to rise at seven o'clock in the morning. he said:-- "they say the farmer is to get the land--but what then? somebody must own the land, and whoever has it will be reckoned a bloody tyrant. won't the owner be a landlord? no, say they, no more landlords at all, at all. but isn't that nonsense, says i? if ye split up the land into patches as big as yer hand and give every man a patch, wouldn't some men have twenty or a hundred, or maybe a thousand patches in five years? an' thin, thim that was lazy an' wasteful an' got out o' their land would be for shootin' the savin', sthrivin' man that worked his way up by buying out the drones. for wouldn't he be a landlord the moment he stopped workin' all the land himself. an' that would be sure to happen at wanst. lord gough is landlord here, an' ye'll not better him in ireland. look at the town there--all built of stone an' paved, wid a fine public well in the square, an' a weigh-house, an' the groves of lilac an' laburnums all out in flower an' dippin' in the wather; where ye may catch mighty fine trout out iv yer bedroom window, bedad ye may, or out of yer kitchin, an' draw them out iv the wather an' dhrop thim in' the fryin' pan off the hook with the bait in their mouths, an' their tails waggin', finishing their brakefasts thimselves while they get yours ready! throth ye can. none iv us that has any sinse belaves in home rule. 'tis only the ignorant that'll belave anything. no, we're quiet hereabouts, never shot anybody, an' not likely to. yes, the protestant church is iligant enough, but there's very few protestants hereabouts. it's the gentry an' most respectable folks that's protestants. protestants gets on because they kape their shops cleaner, an' has more taste, an' we'd sooner belave thim an' thrust thim that they'd kape their word an' not chate ye, than our own people. yes, 'tis indeed quare, but it's thrue. the very priests won't deny it. an' another thing they wouldn't deny. the murtherin', sweatin' landlords that'll grind the very soul out of ye--who are they? tell me now. just the small men that have got up out of the muck. 'tisn't the gintry at all. the gintry will wait a year, three years, five years, seven years for rint. the man that bought his farm or two wid borrowed money won't wait a day. 'out ye go, an' bloody end to ye,' says he. ye don't hear of thim evictions. the man that sint it to the paper would get bate--or worse. "an' some of the little houldhers says, 'pat,' says they, 'what'll we do wid the money whin we've no taxes to pay?' 'tis what they're tould, the crathurs. god help them, but they're mighty ignorant." those who ridicule the assertions of protestants and catholic unionists with reference to the lack of liberty may explain away what was told me by mr. j.b. barrington, brother of sir charles barrington, a name of might in mid-ireland. he said, "someone in our neighbourhood went about getting signatures to a petition against the home rule bill. among others who signed it was captain croker's carpenter, who since then has been waylaid and severely beaten. another case occurring in the same district was even harder. a poor fellow has undergone a very severe thrashing with sticks for having signed the bill when, as a matter of fact, he had refused to sign it! wasn't that hard lines? both these men know their assailants, but they will not tell. they think it better to bear those ills they have than fly to others that they know not of. they are quite right, for, as it is, they know the end of the matter. punish the beaters, and the relations of the convicted men would take up the cause, and if they could not come on the principal, if he had removed, or was awkward to get at, they would pass it on to his relations. so that a man's rebelling against the village ruffians may involve his dearest friends in trouble, may subject them to ill-usage or boycotting. a man might fight it out if he only had himself to consider; but you see where the shoe pinches." a decent man in ennis thus expressed himself anent the bodyke affair. (my friend is a catholic nationalist.) "the bodyke men are not all out so badly off as they seem. but their acts are bad, for they can pay, and they will not. no, i do not call the colonel a bad landlord. we know all about it in ennis; everybody agrees, too. the farmers meet in this town and elsewhere. two or three of the best talkers lead the meeting, and everything is done _their_ way. the more decent, sensible men are not always the best talkers. look at gladstone, have ye anybody to come up to him? an' look at his character--one way to-day an' another way to-morrow, an' the divil himself wouldn't say what the day afther that. but often the most decent, sensible men among these farmers can't express themselves, an they get put down. an' all are bound by the resolutions passed. none must pay rent till they get leave from all. what would happen a man who would pay rent on the bodyke estate? he might order his coffin an' the crape for his berryin, an' dig his own grave to save his widow the expense. perhaps ye have gladstonian life-assurance offices in england? what praymium would they want for the life of a bodyke man that paid his rint to the colonel?" the "praymium" would doubtless be "steep." boycotting is hard to bear, as testified by mr. dawson, a certain clerk of petty sessions. he said:--"the darcy family took a small farm from which a man had been evicted after having paid no rent for seven years. the land lay waste for five years, absolutely derelict, before the darcys took it in hand. they were boycotted. their own relations dare not speak to them lest they, too, should be included in the curse. a member of the darcy family died. "then came severe inconveniences. friends had secretly conveyed provisions to the darcys, and, at considerable risk to themselves, had afforded some slight countenance and assistance. but a dead body, that was a terrible affair. no coffin could be had in the whole district, and someone went thirty miles and got one at the county town by means of artful stratagem. then came the funeral. it was to take place at twelve one day, but we found there would be a demonstration, and nobody knew what might happen. the corpse, that of a woman, might have been dragged from the coffin and thrown naked on the street. in the dead of night a young fellow went round the friends, and we buried the poor lady at four in the morning." the laziness of the irish people was here exploited with advantage. a great french chief of police, who had made elaborate dispositions to meet a popular uprising, once said, "send the police home and the military to their barracks. there will be no revolution this evening on account of the rain." a very slight shower keeps an irishman from work, and you need not rise very early to get over him. a police officer at gort said to me, "the people are quiet hereabouts, but i couldn't make you understand their ignorance. they do just what the priest tells them in every mortal thing. they believe that unless they obey they will go to hell and endure endless torture for ever. they believe that unless they vote as they are told they will be damned to all eternity. but oh! if you could see their laziness. they lie abed half the day, and spend most of the rest in minding other people's business. before you had been in the town half-an-hour every soul in the place was discussing you. they thought you had a very suspicious appearance, like an agent or a detective or something. laziness and ignorance, laziness and ignorance, that's what's the matter with ireland." the farmers of this truly rural district distinctly state that they do not want home rule. they only want the land, and nearly all are furnished with tim healy's statement that "the farmer who bought his own land to-day would, when a home rule parliament was won, be very sorry that he was in such a hurry." just as the men of bodyke are getting the rifles for which mr. davitt wished in order to chastise the royal irish constabulary, by way of showing these "ruffians, the armed mercenaries of england, that the people of ireland had not lost the spirit of their ancestors." well may a timid protestant of gort say, "these men are deceiving england. they only want to get power, and then they will come out in their true colours. all is quiet here now, but the strength of the undercurrent is something tremendous. the english home rulers may pooh-pooh our fears, but they know nothing about it. and, besides, _they_ are quite safe. that makes all the difference. the change will not drive them from all they hold dear. i do not agree with the nonsense about cutting our throats in our beds. that speech is an english invention to cast ridicule on us. but we shall have to clear out of this. life will be unendurable with an irish parliament returned by priests. for it _will_ be returned by priests. surely the gladstonian english admit that? to speak of loyalty to england in connection with an irish parliament is too absurd. did not the clan-na-gael circular say that while its objects lay far beyond anything that might openly be named, the national parliament must be first attained by whatever means? then it went on to say that ireland would be able to command the working plant of an armed revolution. do you not know that the irish army of independence is already being organised? what do you suppose the men who join it think it means? did not arthur o'connor say that when england was involved in war, that would be the time? did he not say that , men were already prepared, and that at three days' notice ireland could possess double that number, all willing to fight england for love, and without any pay? if the english home rulers lived in galway they would remember these things as i do. _you think the bill can never become law. if you could assure me of that, i would be a happy man this night._ i would go to my pillow more contented than i have been for years. _i and my family would go on our knees and thank god from our hearts._" mr. wakely, of mount shannon daly, said:--"i live in one of the wildest parts of galway, but all went on well with us until this home rule bill upset the country. now i am completely unsettled. whether to plant the land or let it lie waste, i cannot tell. i might not be able to reap the harvest. whether to buy stock to raise and fatten, or whether to keep what cash we have with a view to a sudden pack-up and exit, we do not know. and i think we are not the only timid folks, for the other day i took a horse twenty-four miles to a fair where i made sure of selling him easily. i had to take him back the twenty-four miles, having wasted my trouble and best part of two days. the franchise is too low, that is what ruined the country." another desponding galwegian found fault with the liberal party of . he said, "they were actuated by so much philanthropy. their motto was "trust the people." we know what was their object well enough, they let in the flood of irish democracy. the radicals got forty, but the nationalists gained sixty, and then part of the radicals--the steady, sensible party among them--ran out a breakwater to prevent both countries being swamped. a break-water is a good thing, but there was no necessity for the flood. they cannot altogether repair the damage they have done. look at the irish members of twenty years ago, and look at them now. formerly they were gentlemen. what are they to-day? a pack of blackguards. their own supporters shrink from entrusting them with the smallest shred of power. mr. gladstone must be as mad as a march hare. the idea of a dublin parliament engineered by men whom their own supporters look upon as rowdies would be amusing but for the seriousness of the consequences. have you been in ennis? did you see the great memorial to the manchester murderers--'martyrs' they call them? their lives were taken away for love of their country, and their last breath was god save ireland! that's the inscription, and what does it mean? loyalty to england? would such a thing be permitted on the continent? why, any sensible government would stamp out such an innuendo as open rebellion. it teaches the children hatred of england, and they are fed with lies from their very cradle. every misfortune--the dirt, the rags, the poverty of the country, are all to be attributed to english rule. take away that and the people believe they will live in laziness combined with luxury." the lying of the home rulers is indeed unscrupulous. an irish newspaper of to-day's date, speaking of the opening of the chicago exposition, says that "it is fitting to remember that our countrymen have in the united states found an asylum and an opportunity which they have never found at home, that there they have been allowed untrammelled to worship god as they thought right," clearly implying that in ireland or in england they have no such liberty. a car driver of limerick, one hynes, a total abstainer, and a person of some intelligence, firmly believed that england prevented ireland from mining for coal, which disability, with the resulting poverty, would disappear with the granting of home rule. everywhere this patent obliqueness and absurd unreason. a fiery nationalist in white heat of debate shook his fist at an ulsterman, and said, "when we get the bill, you'll not be allowed to have all the manufactories to yourselves," an extraordinary outburst which requires no comment. this burning patriot looked around and said, with the air of a man who is posing his adversary, "why should they have all the big works in one corner of the island?" in opposition to the melancholy carman was the dictum of mr. gallagher, the great high-priest of kennedy's tobaccos. he said-- "the poverty of ireland is due to the fact that she has no coal. geologists say that tens of thousands of years ago a great ice-drift carried away all the coal-depositing strata." "another injustice to ireland," interrupted a sacrilegious unionist. "and doubtless due to the baleful machinations of the base and bloody balfour," said another. it is easy to bear other people's troubles. he jests at scars who never felt a wound. that the irish nation has untold wrongs to bear is evidenced by a southern irish paper, which excitedly narrates the injuries heaped on the holy head of hibernia by the scoffing yankee, the wrongful possessor of the american soil. a meeting of distinguished irish emigrants, who have from time to time favoured the states with their notice, was recently convened in new york, not on this exceptional occasion to metaphorically devour the succulent saxon, nor to send his enemies a dollar for bread, and ten dollars for lead, nor yet to urge the gotham nurses and scullerymaids to further contributions in favour of patriot parliamentarians, but to protest with all the fervour of the conveners' souls, with all the eloquence of their powerful intellects, with all the solemnity of a sacred deed, against the irreverent naming of the animals in the central park zoological gardens after irish ladies, irish gentlemen, irish saints. misther daniel o'shea, of county kerry, stated that the great hippotamus had actually been named miss murphy! a hijeous baste from a dissolute counthry inhabited wid black nagurs, to be named after an oirish gyurl! mr. o'shea uncorked the vials of his wrath, and poured out his anger with a bubble, the meeting palpitating with hair-raising horror. some other animal was called miss bridget. and bridget was the name iv an oirish saint! this must be shtopped. mr. o'shea declared he would rather die than allow it to continue. no further particulars are given, but it is understood that the viper had been christened "tim healy," the rattlesnake "o'brien," the laughing hyæna john dillon, and so on. the chairman wanted to know why the yankees did not call the ugly brutes after lord salisbury and colonel saunderson? nobody seemed to know, so eight remonstrants were appointed a committee of inquiry. mr. o'shea also denounced the american people as unlawfully holding a country which properly belonged to the irish, an irish saint, st. brengan, having discovered the new world in the _sixteenth_ century! enough of ireland's wrongs; there is no end to them. as one of her poets sings, "the cup of her bitterness long has overflowed, and still it is not full." the great bulk of the intelligent people of ireland regard home rule with dread, and this feeling grows ever deeper and stronger. the country is at present exploited by adventurers, paid by the enemies of england, themselves animated by racial and religious prejudices, willing to serve their paymasters and deserve their pay rather by damaging england than by benefiting ireland, for whose interests they care not one straw. ignorance manipulated by charlatanism and bigotry is, in these latter days, the determining factor in the destinies of the british empire. intelligence is dominated by terrorism, by threats of death, of ill-usage, of boycotting--the latter i am told an outcome of an old engine of the roman catholic church, improved and brought up to date. humphreys, of tipperary, may know if this is true. it was from one of the "father's" feculent family, in the heart of his own putrescent parish, that i heard of the local chemist who dare not supply medicine urgently needed by a boycotted person, who was suspected of entertaining what the learned humphreys would spell as "brittish" sympathies. gort (co. galway), may th. no. .--indolence and improvidence. mr. james dunne, of athenry, is an acute observer and a shrewd political controversialist. he said: "the people about here, the poor folks such as the small farmers and labourers, have really no opinion at all. they know nothing of home rule, one way or the other. if they say anything, it is to the effect that they will obtain some advantage in connection with the land. beyond that they care nothing for the matter. not one has any sentiment to be gratified. they only want to live, if possible, a bit more easily. if they can get the land for nothing or even more cheaply, then home rule is good. they can see no further than their noses, and they cannot be expected to follow a long chain of argument. they believe just what they are told. yes, they go to the priest for advice under all circumstances. they ask him to name the man for whom they are to vote, or rather they would ask him if he waited long enough. they vote as they are told; and as the catholic priest believes that the catholic religion is the most important thing in the world, which from his point of view is quite proper and right, he naturally influences his people in the direction which is most likely to propagate the true faith, and give to it the predominance which he believes to be its rightful due. "the people round here are harmless, and will continue so, unless the agitators get hold of them. they are ignorant, and easily led, and an influential speaker who knew their simplicity could make them do anything, no matter what. no, i couldn't say that they are industrious. they do not work hard. they just go along, go along, like. they have no enterprise at all, and you couldn't get them out of the ways of their fathers. they'd think it a positive sin. "look at the present fine weather. this is a very early season. no living man has seen such a spring-time in ireland. two months of fine warm weather, the ground in fine working condition, everything six weeks before last year. not a man that started to dig a day earlier. no, the old time will be adhered to just as if it was cold and wet and freezing. you could not stir them with an electric battery. they moon, moon, moon along, in the old, old, old way, waiting for somebody to come and do something for them. "if they had the land for nothing they would be no better off. they would just do that much less work. they live from hand to mouth. they have no ambition. the same thing that did for their fathers will do for them, the same dirtiness, the same inconvenience. if their father went three miles round a stone wall to get in at a gate they'll do it too. never would they think of making another gate. they turn round angrily and say, 'wasn't it good enough for my father, an' wasn't he a betther man than ayther me or you?' if you lived here, you would at first begin to show them things, but when you saw how much better they like their own way you'd stop it. you'd very soon get your heart broke. you couldn't stir them an inch in a thousand years. what will home rule do for them? nobody knows but gladstone and the divil." a bystander said: "down at galway there was a man wid a donkey goin' about sellin' fish, which was carried in two panniers. whin he had only enough to fill one pannier, he put a load o' stones into the other pannier to balance the fish an' make the panniers stick on, an' ride aisier. "well, one day an englishman that had been watchin' barney for some time comes up to him an' he says, says he-- "'whin ye have only fish for one pannier why do ye fill up the other wid stones off the beach?' says he. "'sure, 'tis to balance it,' says barney, mighty surprised an' laffin widin himself at the englishman's ignorance. 'sure,' says barney, 'ye wouldn't have a cock-eyed load on the baste, all swingin' on one side, like a pig wid one ear, would ye?' says he. "but this englishman was one of thim stiff sort that doesn't know whin he's bate, an' he went on arguin'. says he-- "'but couldn't you put the half of the fish in one pannier, and the other half in the other pannier, instead of putting all the fish in one, and filling up the other with stones?' says he. 'wouldn't that balance the load?' says he. 'and wouldn't that be only half the load for the poor baste?' says he. an' barney sthruggled a bit till he got a fair grip iv it, d'ye see, but by the sivin pipers that played before moses, he couldn't see the way to answer this big word of the englishman; so he says, says he, 'musha, 'twas me father's way, rest his sowl,' says he. 'an' would i be settin' meself up to be bettherin' his larnin'?' says he. 'not one o' me would show him sich impidence and disrespect,' says he. 'an' i'll carry the rocks till i die, glory be to god,' says he. "now what could ye do with the like iv _him_?" mr. armour, who lived five years near sligo, said:--"the connaught folks have no idea of preparing for to-morrow. they are almost entirely destitute of self-reliance. so long as they can carry on from one day to another they are quite content. the bit of ground they live on is not half cultivated. in the summer time you may see two or even three crops growing up together. if they had potatoes on last, they got them up in the most slovenly way, leaving half the crop in the ground. they just hoak out with a stick or a bit of board what they require for that day's food, picking the large ones and leaving the small ones in the ground. oats or something else will be seen half-choked with weeds and the growth from the potatoes so left. the slovenliness of these people is most exasperating. of course they are all home rulers in effect, though not in theory. by that i mean that they have no politics, except to produce politicians by their votes. they know no more of home rule than they know of heidsieck's champagne, or christmas strawberries, or soap and water, or any other unknown commodity. they are precisely where their ancestors were, except for the crop of potatoes, which enables them to exist in greater luxury and with less trouble. their way is to plant the potatoes, dig them as required, and live on them either with the aid of a cow or with the butter-milk of a neighbour who has a cow. no provision for the future is attempted, because the relatives are sure to provide for the worn-out and sickly. that shows their goodheartedness, but it does away with self-dependence. there are some things so deeply ingrained in the irish character that nothing and nobody can touch them. the very priests themselves cannot move them. although these people believe that the priests could set them on fire from head to heel, or strike them paralytic, or refuse them entrance into heaven, yet the force of habit is so great, and the dread of public opinion is so powerful, that the people, so long as they remain in ireland, will never depart a hair's-breadth from the old ways." a woman who washed and tidied her children would be a mark for every bitter tongue in the parish. a striking case came under my own observation. a woman of the place was speaking most bitterly of another, and she finished up with,-- "she's the lady all out, niver fear. shure, she washes and dhresses the childer ivery mornin', and turns out the girls wid hats on their heads an' shoes on their feet. divil a less would sarve her turn! she has a brick flure to her house, an' she washes it--divil a lie i tell ye--she washes it--wid wather--an' wid soap an' wather, ivery sattherday in the week! the saints betune us an' harm, but all she wants now is to turn protestant altogether!" four miles away is the village of carnaun, and there i met philip fahy, with his son michael, and another young fellow, all three returning from field work, wearily toiling along the rocky road which runs through the estate of major lobdell. the party stopped and sat down to smoke with me. the senior took the lead, not with a brogue but with an accent, translating from the irish vernacular as he went on. "long ye may live! we're glad we met ye, thanks be to god. yer honner's glory is the foinest, splindidist man i seen this twinty year. may god protect ye! 'tis weary work we does. that foine, big boy ye see foreninst ye, has eighteenpence a day, nine shillin' a week. 'tis not enough to support him properly. i have a son in england, the cliverist lad ye seen this many a day. sich a scholar, 'twould be no discredit to have the queen for his aunt, no it wouldn't. no, he's only just gone, an' i didn't hear from him yet. i didn't tell ye where he'd be, for i wouldn't know meself. but me other boys is goin', for they tell me things will be afther getting worse. god help us, an' stand betune us an harm! did ye hear of the home rule bill? what does it mane at all, at all? not one of us knows, more than that lump of stone ye sit on. will it give us the land for nothin'? for that's all we hear. we'd be obliged av ye could axplain it a thrifle, for sorra a 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 without rint, yer honner's glory?" philip was dressed for agricultural work in the following style, which is clearly considered the correct thing in galway. one tall "top-hat," with a long fur like that of a mangy rabbit, waving to the jocund zephyrs of carnaun; one cut-away coat of very thick homespun cloth, having five brass buttons on each breast; breeches and leggings and stout boots completed the outfit, which fitted like a sentry-box, and bore a curiously caricatured resemblance to the court suit of a cabinet minister in full war-paint. the spades with which the labourers till the ground are strange to the english eye, and seem calculated to get through the smallest amount of work with the greatest amount of labour. that they were spades at all was more than i could make out. "what are those implements?" i asked, to which the answer came, "have ye no shpades in england thin!" the business end is about two feet long and not more than three inches broad, with a sort of shoulder for the foot. the handles are about six feet long and end like a mop-stick, without any crossbar. a slight alteration would turn these tools into pikes, a much more likely operation than the beating of swords into plough-shares and spears into pruning-hooks. meanwhile the length of the handle keeps the worker from too dangerous proximity to his work. there is a broader pattern of blade, but the handle is always of the same sanitary length. the children of the soil turn it over at a wholesome distance. they keep six feet of pole between the earth and their nobility. small blame to them for that same! shure the wuruld will be afther thim. shure there's no sinse at all, at all, in workin' life out to kape life in. "ah, no," said misther fahy. "that tobacky has no strinth in it. we get no satisfaction out iv it. we shmoked a pipe iv it to make frinds, but we'd not shmoke another. 'tis like chopped hay or tay-leaves, it is. will we walk back wid yer honner's glory? 'tis only four miles, it is. no, we bur-rn no powdher here. but on the other side, above athenry, 'tis there ye'll see the foin shootin'. thims the boys for powdher an' shot! 'tis more than nine they shot, aye, and more than tin it was. an' sarve thim right, if they must turn the people out, an' have their own way. may the lord protect ye! may angels make yer bed this night! long may ye live, an' yer sowl to glory!" i had written so far, when glancing through the window, i saw a familiar form, a rosy, healthy, florid gentleman parading on the lawn which fronts the railway hotel, puffing a cigarette, briskly turning and returning with something of the motion of a captive lion. i knew that pinky cheek, i knew that bright blue eye; yet here, in the wilds of galway who could it be? he plays with two sportive spaniels, and cries "down, sir, down." thy voice bewrayeth thee, member for north galway! the parnellitic colonel nolan, thou, _in propriâ personâ_. what makes he here? when the great bill impends, why flee the festive scene? i'll speak a little with this learned theban. i board him, as the french say. for a moment he regards me with suspicion--with a kind of vade-in-retro-satanas air--but presently he goes ahead. a fair at tuam, which he never misses. has paired with somebody, pierpoint he thinks is the name. his vote will therefore not be lost to his side. "nothing will now be done before whitsuntide. both parties will be on their best behaviour. the conservatives and obstruction, the liberals and closure. strategy to obtain some show of advantage at the recess is now the little game. knows not what will happen _re_ home rule. the english liberals not now so confident as they were. the government may be ruined by liquor. 'tis the fate of liberal governments to be ruined by drink. the government of and the next liberal cabinet went to the dogs on liquor. and if the english people are called upon to give a verdict on a local option bill, the result is rather uncertain. chances perhaps against mr. gladstone. the home rule question is now quite worked up. the english people are now satisfied to have home rule, but some intervening question might delay its final settlement. no, the agitation of the past four or five months had not changed the position one bit. no amount of agitation would now make any difference at all." from the probable wrecking of the gladstonian cabinet on "liquor" to the question of customs, or, as colonel nolan preferred to call it, of excise, was but an easy step. by a simple _adagio_ movement i modulated into the customs question, mentioning the opinion given to me by mr. john jameson himself. the colonel did not deny, nor admit, that the irish people were excellent smugglers, but thought the fears of the unionists exaggerated. he was well aware that smuggling might be carried on--say, on the coast of connemara and elsewhere, where were roads and bays and natural harbours galore, with a wild and lonely shore far from the centres of government. probably at first some money might be lost that way; some little chinks would doubtless be found; there would be some little leakage. but suppose an initial loss of £ , or £ , , it was not likely that such a state of things would be allowed to continue. as to the argument that the rural police would not then assist the , coastguards, who with the police have been sufficient, there was little or no solidity in this assumption. the irish parliament would order the police to assist, and if they did not execute their orders, or if they allowed themselves to be bribed, and the irish parliament did not prosecute them for accepting bribes, then the english government would step in and put matters right. this is just a typical home rule argument, the confidence trick all over. the colonel thought that after a certain amount of shaking down, everything would work sweetly enough. he said nothing about the union of hearts, nor have i yet heard the phrase from an irishman. a keen observer resident at the athenry hotel says:--"of those who come here the proportion against home rule is not less than twenty to one. now mark my figures, because they are based on careful notes extending over the last six months. when you have all the money in the country, and all the best brains in the country, against the bill, what good could the bill do if it became law? and while i can see, and all these people can see, no end of risk, disturbance, upset, loss, ruin, and everything that is bad, we cannot see anything at all to compensate for the risk. nobody can put his finger on anything and say, 'there, that's the advantage we'll get from the bill.' 'tis all fancy, pure fancy. ireland a nation, and a roman catholic nation, is the cry. we may get that, but we'll be bankrupt next day. 'tis like putting a poor man in a grand house without food, furniture, or money, and without credit to raise anything on the building. there now, ye might say, ye have a splendid place that's all your own. but wouldn't the poor man have to leave it, or die of starvation? of course i wish to respect my clergy, but i think they should not interfere with politics." colonel nolan said to me: "the priests wield an immense, an incalculable power. all are on the same path, all hammer away at the one point. it is the persistency, the organisation, that tells. in some cases they have been known to preach for a year and a half at a stretch on political subjects. what is going to stand against that?" with these golden words i close my letter. the priest holds the sceptre of the british empire. circumstances have placed in his hands an astonishing opportunity. nearly every priest in ireland is using his supernatural credit with one solitary aim. we know their disloyalty, we know they are no friends of england--we know their influence, their organisation, their perseverance, their unscrupulousness, their absolute supremacy in ireland--and it is high time that england asked herself, in the words of colonel nolan-- "what is going to stand against that?" athenry (co. galway), may th. no. .--religion at the bottom of the irish question. tuam has two cathedrals but no barber. you may be shriven but you cannot be shaved. you may be whitewashed but you cannot be lathered. "one shaves another; we're neighbourly here," said a railway porter. they cut each other's hair by the light of nature, in the open street, with a chorus of bystanders. the tuamites live in a country of antiquities, but they have no photographer. nor could i find a photograph for sale. the people are sweetly unsophisticated. a bare-footed old lady sat on the step of the victoria hotel, sucking a black dhudeen, sending out smoke like a factory chimney, the picture of innocent enjoyment. the streets were full of pigs from the rural parts, and great was the bargaining and chaffering in irish, a language which seemed to be composed of rolling r's and booming gutturals. a sustained conversation sounds like the jolting of a country cart over a rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of bricks. i arrived in time for the great pig fair, and tuam was very busy. it is a poor town, of which the staple trade is religion. the country around is green and beautiful, with brilliant patches of gorse in full bloom, every bush a solid mass of brightest yellow, dazzling you in the sunshine. many of the streets are wretchedly built, and the galway road shows how easily the catholic poor are satisfied. not only are the cabins in this district aboriginal in build, but they are also indescribably filthy, and the condition of the inmates, like that of the people inhabiting the poorer parts of limerick, is no whit higher than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native americans. the hooded women, black-haired and bare-footed, bronzed and tanned by constant exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the far west by buffalo bill. the men look more civilised, and the pig-jobbers, with their tall hats, dress coats, and knotty shillelaghs, were the pink of propriety. now and then a burst of wild excitement would attract the stranger, who would hurry up to see the coming homicide, but there was no manslaughter that i could see. a scene of frantic gesticulation near the town hall promised well, but contrary to expectation, there was no murder done. two wild-eyed men, apparently breathing slaughter, suddenly desisted, reining in their fury and walking off amicably together. an irish-speaking policeman explained that one having sold the other a pig the buyer was asking for twopence off, and that they now departed to drink the amount between them. people who had done their business went away in queer carts made to carry turf--little things with sides like garden palings four or five feet high. three or four men would squat on one, closely packed, looking through the bars like fowls in a hen-coop. the donkeys who drew these chariots had all their work cut out, and most of their backs cut up. the drivers laid on with stout ash-plants, sparing no exertion to create the donkey's enthusiasm. prices ruled low. "'tis not afther sellin' thim i am," said a peasant who had got rid of his pigs, "'tis bestowin' thim i was, the craythurs. the counthry is ruinated intirely, an' so it is. by the holy poker of methesulum, the prices we got this day for lowness bangs banagher, an' banagher bangs the divil." the tuamites spare a little time for politics and boycotting. the public spirit and contempt for british law are all that could be desired by irish patriotism. mr. strachan has recently bought some land. the previous owner, mr. dominick leonard, brother of dr. leonard of athenry, and of judge leonard of london, had raised money on the property, and failed to pay interest or principal. an english insurance company determined to realize, and the affair went into the land court, mr. strachan buying part of the estate for £ , . it was easy enough to buy, and even to pay, but to get possession was quite another thing. precise information is difficult to get, for while some decline to say a word, others are mutually contradictory, and a state commission would hardly sift truth from the confusing mass of details, denials, assertions, and counter-assertions. this much is clear enough. a tenant named ruane was required to leave a house, with ground, which he had held on the estate bought by mr. strachan. he had paid no rent for a long time. of course he refused to leave, and, a decree having been obtained, he was duly evicted. but, as lady de burgho said, evictions do no good. when the officers of the law went home to tea, mr. ruane went home also, breaking the locks, forcing the doors, reinstating himself and his furniture, planting his lares and penates in their old situations, hanging up his caubeen on the ancestral nail, and crossing his patriotic shin-bones on the familiar hearth. pulled up for trespass, he declared that if sent to prison fifty times he would still return to the darling spot, and defied the british army and navy--horse, foot, and artillery--ironclads, marines, and -ton guns, to keep him out. for three acts of trespass he got three weeks imprisonment. the moment he was released mr. ruane walked back home, and took possession once again. there he is now, laughing at the empire on which the sun never sets. when a certain bishop read "paradise lost" to a sporting lord, the impatient auditor's attention was arrested by some bold speech of satan, whereupon he exclaimed "dang me, if i don't back that chap. i like his pluck, and i hope he'll win." something like this might be said of ruane. and ruane will stick to his land. a public meeting held on sunday week determined to support him, and to show forth its mind by planting the ground for him. mr. strachan seems to have seen the futility of looking to the law, on the security of which he invested his money. too late he finds that his savings are not safe, and he endeavours to make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness. he has offered ruane five acres of land and a house, and ruane would have accepted with thanks had he been allowed. but he went to a meeting in some outlying village, and received his orders from the land league. for, be it observed, that the people of these parts speak of the land league as existing in full force. ruane declined the handsome offer of the kind-hearted strachan. ruane will hold the house and land from which he has been evicted, _because_ he had been evicted, and that the people may see that they have the mastery. ruane would prefer the proffered land, but private interests must give way to the public weal. england must be smashed, treated with contumely; her laws, her officers, her edicts treated with contempt, laughed at by every naked gutter-snipe, rendered null and void. that this can be done with perfect impunity is the teaching of priests, fenians, nationalists, federationists--call them what you will--all alike flagrantly disloyal to the english crown. not worth while to differentiate them. as the sailor said of crocodiles and alligators, "there's no difference at all. they're all tarnation varmint together." mr. strachan is boycotted, and goes about with a guard of three policemen. what will happen from one day to another nobody can tell. since i last mentioned mr. blood, of ennis, that most estimable gentleman has been again fired on, this time at a range of yards, and when guarded by the four policemen who accompany him everywhere. three shots were fired, and the police found an empty rifle cartridge at the firing point. a protestant in tuam said to me:-- "home rule would mean that every protestant would have to fly the country. why should there not be a return to the persecutions of years ago? when first i came to the place the protestants were hooted as they went to church, and i can remember seeing this very strachan going to worship on sunday morning, his black go-to-meeting coat so covered with the spittle of the mob that you would not know him. his wife would come down with a bible, and the children would run along shouting 'here comes mother strachan, with the devil in her fist.' why, the young men got cows' horns and fixed them up with strings, so that they could tie them on their foreheads. then with these horns on they would walk before and behind the protestants as they went to church or left it, to show that the devil was accompanying them. they always figure the devil as being horned. one of the little barefooted boys who ran after these protestants is now a holy priest in tuam. and what the people were then, so they will be now, once they get the upper hand. the educated catholics are excellent people, none better anywhere, none more tolerant. nothing to fear from them. but how many are there? look at the masses of ignorant people around us. the density of their ignorance is something that the people of england cannot understand. they have no examples of it. the most stupid and uninformed english you can find have some ray of enlightenment. these people are steeped in ignorance and superstition. their religion is nothing but fetichism. their politics? well, they are blind tools of the priests: what else can be said? and the priests have but one object. in all times, in all countries, the roman catholic church has aimed at absolute dominion. the religious question is at the bottom of it all." no matter where an educated irishman begins, that is where he always ends. catholics and protestants alike come round to the same point at last, though with evident reluctance. the protestant unionists especially avoid all mention of religion as long as possible. they know the credal argument excites suspicion. they attack home rule from every other point of view, and sometimes you think you have encountered a person of different opinion. wait till he knows you a little better, has more confidence in your fairness, stands in less fear of a possible snub. sooner or later, sure as the night follows the day, he is bound to say-- "the religious question is at the bottom of it all." the people of ireland do not want an irish parliament, and the failure of the bill would not trouble them in the least. they do not care a brass farthing for the bill one way or the other. the great heart of the people is untouched. the masses know nothing of it, and will not feel its loss. they are in the hands of priests and agitators, these poor unlettered peasants, and their blind voting, their inarticulate voice, translated into menace and mock patriotism. everybody admits that the people would be happy and content if only left alone. half-a-dozen ruffians with rifles can boss a whole country side, and the people must do as they are told. they do not believe in the secrecy of the ballot. they believe that the priests by their supernatural powers are able to know how everybody voted, and i am assured on highly respectable authority that the secrecy of the ballot in ireland is, in some parts, a questionable point. at the same time, there is everywhere a strong opinion that another election will give very different results in ireland. and everywhere there is a growing feeling that the bill will not become law. this explains the slight rise in the value of irish securities. just outside tuam i came upon a neatly built, deep-thatched villa, with a flower garden in front, a carefully cultivated kitchen garden running along the road, trim hedges, smart white palings, an orchard of fine young trees, a general air of neatness, industry, prosperity, which, under the circumstances, was positively staggering. i had passed along a mile of cabins in every stage of ruin, from the solitary chimney still standing to the more recent ruin with two gables, from the inhabited pig-sty to the hut whereon grew crops of long grass. i had noted the old lady clad in sackcloth and ashes, who, having invested the combined riches of the neighbourhood in six oranges and a bottle of pop, was sitting on the ground, alternately contemplating the three-legged stool which held the locked-up capital and her own sooty toes, immersed in melancholy reflections anent the present depression in commercial circles. the paradisaic cottage was startling after this. i stopped a bare-legged boy, and found that the place belonged to a black protestant, and, what was worse, a presbyterian, and, what was superlatively bad, a scots presbyterian. presently i met a tweed-clad form, red-faced and huge of shoulder, full of strange accents and bearded like the pard. berwickshire gave him birth, but he has "done time" in ireland. "i'm transported this forty-three years. i thought i'd end my days here, but if this bill passes we'll go back to scotland. we'll have catholic governors, and they'll do what they like with us. ye'll have a tangled web to weave, over the channel there. ye'll have the whole island in rebellion in five-and-twenty minutes after ye give them power. anybody that thinks otherwise is either very ignorant of the state of things or else he's a born fule. no, i wouldn't say the folks are all out that lazy, not in this part of galway. they will work weel enough for a scots steward, or for an englishman. but no irish steward can manage them. anybody will tell you that. no-one in any part of the country will say any different. now, that's a queer thing. an irish steward has no control over them. they don't care for him. and he runs more risk of shooting than an english or scots steward. "there was an irish bailiff where i was steward, and he saw how i managed the men, and thought he'd do it the same way. so once when he and a lot of diggers went in for the praties and buttermilk, the praties were not ready, and he gives the fellow who was responsible a bit of a kick behind with the side of his foot, like. "the very next night he got six slugs in his head and face and one of his front teeth knocked out. that taught him to leave kicking to foreigners. once two men were speaking of me. i overheard one say, 'ah, now, micky, an' isn't it a pity that palmer's a black protestant, an' that his sowl will blaze in hell for ever, like a tur-rf soddock ye'd pick up in the bog?'" "settle the land question and you settle home rule. the bad times made parnell's success. he was backed by the low prices of produce, and the general depression of agricultural interests. the rent has been reduced, but not enough to compensate the drop in the prices of produce. why, cattle have been fetching one-half what they fetched a short time ago. potatoes are twopence-halfpenny a stone! did you ever hear of such a thing? yes, it enables the people to live very cheaply, but how about the growers? if every man grew his own potatoes and lived on them, well and good, but he must have no rent to pay. that price would not pay for labour and manure. oats are worth sixpence to ninepence a stone,--a ridiculous price; and we have not yet touched the bottom. "the land question should be settled. no, it is not satisfactory. people have to wait seven years for a settlement, and meanwhile they could be kicked out of their holdings at one day's notice. the people who bought under ashbourne's act are happy, prosperous, and contented. the people who are beside them are the contrary. home rulers, bosh! farmers know as much about home rule as a pig knows about the sabbath day. the land, the land, the land! let the tories take this up and dish the liberals. easiest thing alive. how? compulsory sale, compulsory purchase. leave nothing to either party. then you'll hear no more of home rule. let the unionists hold their ground a bit, till it dies out, or until the rival factious destroy each other. loyalty? why those nationalist members have themselves told you over and over again that they are rebels. don't you believe them? some few may be inspired with the idea that the thing is impracticable, but they will all preach separation when the right time comes. 'pay no taxes to england,' they'll cry. the people can follow that. tell them that any course of action means non-payment of anything, and they're on it like a shot. why, the paying of tribute to england is already discussed in every whiskey shop in galway, and every man is prepared to line the ditches with guns and pikes rather than pay one copper. when you can't give strachan the farm for which he paid last february, when you can't keep a small farmer who won't pay rent from occupying his farm and getting his crops as usual, for he _will_ do so, how are you going to raise the famous tribute money?" near the town hall was a great crowd of people listening to a couple of minstrels who chanted alternate lines of a modernised version of the _shan van vocht_. "let me make the songs of a people, and i care not who makes its laws." mr. gladstone is appreciated now. the heart of the connaughtman throbs responsive to his pet appellation. this is part of the song-- oi'm goin' across the say, says the grand old man, oi'll be back some other day, says the grand old man; when oireland gets fair play we'll make balfour rue the day,-- remimber what i say, says the grand old man. whin will ye come back? says the grand old man, whin will ye come back? says the grand old man, whin balfour gets the sack wid salisbury on his back, or unto hell does pack, says the grand old man. will ye deny the lague? says the grand old man, no, we'll continue to the lague, says the grand old man. john dillon says at every station, 'twill be his conversation till oireland is a nation, says the grand old man. there are three more verses of this immortal strain. the _shan van vocht_ was the great song of the ' rebellion, and possibly the g.o.m.'s happy adaptability to the music may put the finishing touch to his world-wide renown. other songs referred to the arrest of father keller, of youghal. "they gathered in their thousands their grief for to revale, an' mourn for their holy praste all in kilmainham jail." these ballads are anonymous, but the talented author of "dirty little england" stands revealed by internal evidence. the voices which chanted these melodies were discordant, but the people around listened with reverential awe, from time to time making excited comments in irish. altogether tuam is a depressing kind of place, and but for the enterprise of a few protestants, the place would be a phantasmagoria of pigs, priests, peasants, poverty, and "peelers." perhaps galway would have more civilization, if less piety. you cannot move about an irish country town after nightfall without barking your shins on a roman catholic cathedral. this in time becomes somewhat monotonous. tuam (co. galway), may th. no. .--mr. balfour's fisheries. a clean, well-built town, with a big river, the corrib, running through the middle of it, splashing romantically down from the salmon weir, not far from the protestant church of saint nicholas, a magnificent cathedral-like structure over six hundred years old. there is a big square with trees and handsome buildings, several good hotels, a tramway, and, _mirabile dictu!_ a veritable barber's shop. the connaught folks, as a whole, seem to have fully realised the old saying that shaving by a barber is a barbarous custom, but there is no rule without an exception, and accordingly mr. mccoy, of eyre square, razors and scissors her majesty's lieges, whether gentle or simple, rebel or loyal, unionist or separatist, catholic or protestant. the good figaro himself is an out-and-out separatist. he swallows complete independence, and makes no bones about it. he believes in ireland a nation, insists on perfect autonomy, and, unlike the bulk of his fellow nationalists, has the courage of his opinions. his objection to english interference with irish affairs is openly expressed, and with an emphasis which leaves no doubt of his sincerity. according to mr. mccoy, the woes of ireland are each and all directly attributable to english rule. the depopulation of the country, the lack of enterprise, of industry, of the common necessaries of life, of everything to be desired by the sons of men--all these disagreeables are due to the selfishness, the greed, the brutality of englishmen, who are not only devoid of the higher virtues, but also entirely destitute of common fairness, common honesty, common humanity. mr. mccoy holds that england exploits ireland for her own purposes, is a merciless sucker of hibernia's life-blood, a sweater, a slave-driver, a more than egyptian taskmaster. remove the hated english garrison, abolish english influence, let ireland guide her own destinies, and all will at once be well--trade will revive, poverty will disappear, emigration will be checked, a teeming population will inhabit the land, and the emerald isle will once more become great, glorious, and free, furst flower o' the airth, furst gem o' the say. no longer will the gallant men of connaught bow their meek heads to american shears, no longer present their well-developed jaws to yankee razors; but, instead of this, flocking in their thousands on saints' days and market days to their respective county towns, and especially to galway, will form _en queue_ at the door of mr. mccoy, to save the country by fostering native industries. no longer will it avail the chinaman of whom he told me to sail from new york to ireland, because the latter is the only country wherein irishmen do not monopolise all the good things, do not boss the show--have, in fact, no voice at all in its management. "but," said my friend, "we'll get no home rule, we'll get no parlimint, we'll get nothin' at all at all till irishmen rise up in every part o' the wuruld an thrash it out o' ye. what business have the english here at all domineering over us? didn't one o' their great spakers get up in parlimint an' say we must be kept paupers? didn't he say that 'the small loaf was the finest recruiting sergeant in the wuruld?' there ye have the spirit o' the english. we want the counthry to ourselves, an' to manage it our way, not yours. an' that thievin' owld gladstone's the biggest scut o' thim all. no, i'm not grateful to gladstone, not a bit iv it. divil a ha'porth we have to thank him for. sure, he was rakin parnell out iv his grave, the mane-spirited scut, that cringed and grinned whin parnell was alive. sure, 'twas gladstone broke up the party wid his morality. 'ah,' says he, 'i couldn't associate wid such a person, alanna!' an' he wouldn't let it be a parlimint at all--it must be a leg-is-la-ture, by the hokey, it must, no less. let him go choke wid his leg-is-la-ture, the durty, mane-spirited owld scut." mr. mccoy declines to regard mr. gladstone as a benefactor of ireland, but in this he is not alone. his sentiments are shared by every irishman i have met, no matter what his politics. the unionist party are the more merciful, sparing expletives, calling no ill names. they admire his ability, his wonderful vitality, versatility, ingenuity of trickery. they sincerely believe that he is only crazy, and think it a great pity. they speak of the wreck of his rich intellect, and say in effect _corruptio optimi pessima est_. there is another monkish proverb which may strike them as they watch him in debate, particularly when he seems to be cornered; it runs, _non habet anguillam, per caudam qui tenet illam_, which may be extemporaneously rendered, he has not surely caught the eel, who only holds him by the tail. every nationalist i have met entertains similar opinions, but few express them so unguardedly. mr. mccoy must be honoured for his candour and superior honesty. if his brethren were all as frankly outspoken as he england would be saved much trouble, much waste of precious time. the secret aspirations of the irish nationalist leaders, if openly avowed, would dispose of the home rule agitation at once and for ever. no risk of loss, no possible disadvantage, daunted mr. mccoy. he accepted the statement of a rabid separatist, quoted in a previous letter, that the irish would prefer to go to hell their own way. that was his feeling exactly. not that there was any danger. great was his confidence, implicit, sublime, ineffably irish. his was the faith that removes mountains. not like a grain of mustard seed, but like the rock of cashel. _floreat_ mccoy! mr. athy, of kinvarra, has very little to say. he thinks the bill would make ireland a hell upon earth for all protestants living in catholic communities, and that a settlement of the land question would settle the hash of the agitators. mr. kendal, of tallyho, an englishman twenty-five years resident in ireland, agrees in the latter opinion. i forgot to question him _re_ toleration. he thinks the home rule bill simply insane, absurd, not worth serious discussion by sensible men. "no intelligent man who knows the country would dream of such madness. the simplicity of the english people must be incredible. pity they cannot come over and examine for themselves." mr. beddoes, traffic manager of the limerick and waterford railway, came to ireland an enthusiastic gladstonian. he had worked with might and main to send mr. price to parliament, and was largely instrumental in returning him. he is now a staunch unionist, admits the error of his ways, and rejoices that a personal acquaintance with the subject at once led him into the true fold. i had this confession of faith from mr. beddoes himself, a keen, successful man of eminently conservative appearance, a scholar, a traveller, and a great favourite with his men. "how long were you in ireland before you changed your mind?" i asked. "well," said mr. beddoes, "to tell the truth, i began to have my doubts during the first week." a prosperous presbyterian of galway said:--"to say that the irish people, the masses, want an irish parliament is the height of absurdity; and to argue that their aspirations are expressed by their votes is a gross perversion of the truth. the ignorance of the people explains everything. they voted as the priests told them to vote, without the smallest conception of what they were voting for, without the smallest idea of what home rule really means. they are quite incapable of understanding a complicated measure of any kind, and they naturally accept the guidance of their spiritual advisers, whom they are accustomed to regard as men of immense erudition, besides being gifted with power to bind and loose, and having the keys of heaven at command. you know how they canvass their penitents in the confessional, and how from the altar they have taught the people to lie, telling them to vote for one man and to shout down the streets for another. the irish priests are wonderfully moral men in other respects, and cases of immorality in its ordinary sense are so rare as to be practically unknown. i could forgive their politics, and even their confessional influence, if they were not such awful liars. their want of truthfulness reacts on the people, and if you send a man to do a job, he will return and get his money when he has only half done it. 'oh, yes,' he'll say, as natural as possible, 'i've done it well, very well.' and they are not ashamed when they are proved to be liars. they think nothing of it. and the way they cheat each other! a few days ago i met a man who pulled out a bundle of one-pound notes, and said, 'i'm afther selling thirteen cows, an' i'm afther buying thirteen more. i sowld me cows to barney so-and-so, afther givin' him six noggins of poteen, an' i got out of him twenty per cint. more than the price that was goin', thanks be to god!' they are so pious--in words." "what they want is emancipation from the priests and from the superstitions of the dark ages. they believe in the fairies still, and attribute all kinds of powers to them. look at the _tuam news_ of yesterday evening. perhaps the english people would hesitate before conferring self-government on the poor folks who read that paper, if they could only see the rag for a week or two." i secured the _tuam news_ for friday, may , , and found the sheet instructive, suggestive, original. there is a big advertisement in irish, an ancient irish poem with translation, and a letter from mr. henry smyth, of harborne, birmingham, addressed to the national literary society of loughrea, under whose auspices miss gonne the other day delivered the rebel lecture quoted in the killaloe letter. our fellow-citizen speaks of "the spirit of revival that is abroad amongst you, of your new society rising phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, not uninspired, we may suppose, by the project of your being in the near future masters in your own house, the arbiters of your own destiny, for you will be governed by the men of your own choice." side by side with this heart-felt utterance let us print another letter appearing in the same issue of the same hebdomadal illuminator:-- to the editor of the tuam news. sir,--permit me a little space in the next issue of the _tuam news_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which appeared in the _tuam news_ of the th of april last. i beg to say that he was not killed by the fairies, but i say he was killed by some person or persons unknown as yet. hoping very soon that the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be soon brought to light, i am, mr. editor, yours obediently, david redington. kilcreevanty, may th, ' . what would be thought of an english constituency which required such a contradiction? the people who believe in the fairies form the bulk of the irish electorate. their votes have sent the nationalist members to parliament; their voice it is which directs the action of gladstone, morley, and tail; their influence ordains the course of legislation; in their hands are the destinies of england and englishmen. the people themselves are innocent enough. if they hate england it is because they have been so taught by priests and agitators for their own ends. the only remedy is enlightenment, but the process must be slow. the accursed influences are ever at work, on the platform, in the press, at the altar, and i see no countervailing agency. the people are 'cute enough, and would be clever, if once their bonds were broken. they are not fettered by english rule. they are bound down by ignorance, rank ignorance, in an egyptian darkness that may be felt. they are poor in this world's goods, although seemingly healthier and stronger than the english average. much of their poverty is their own fault. much more is due to the teachings of agitators. the land league has mined whole communities. poverty and ignorance made the irish masses an easy prey. their ancient prejudices are kept alive, their ancient grievances industriously disinterred, their imagination pleased with an illimitable vista of prosperity artfully unrolled before their untutored gaze. we have the result before us. the gladstonian party in england are responding to the dictates of a handful of hirelings and sacerdotalists, and not to the aspirations of a people. credulity is the offspring of ignorance, and accordingly we see that the irish people believe in tim healy and the priests, the grand old man and the fairies. they must be saved from themselves. the harbour of galway is very picturesque. a massive ivy-covered arch marks the boundary line of the ancient walls, some of which are still extant. the raggedness and filthiness of the fisher-wives and children must be seen to be understood. a few sturdy fishermen sat gloomily beside two great piles of fish, thrown out of the boats in heaps. large fish, like cod, and yet not cod; bigger than hake, but not unlike the cornish fish. to ask a question at a country station or in the street is in connaught rather embarrassing, as all the people within earshot immediately crowd around to hear what is going on. not impudent, but sweetly unsophisticated are the galway folks, openly regarding the stranger with inquiring eye, not unfriendly, but merely curious. having no business of their own, they take the deepest interest in that of other people. and they make a fuss. they are too polite. they load you with attentions. no trouble is too great. give them the smallest chance and they put themselves about until you wish you had not spoken. however, i wanted to know about the fish, so i strolled up to two men who were lying at full length on the quay, and said-- "what do you call those fish?" both men sprang hastily to their feet, and said-- "black pollock, sorr." "where do you catch them?" at this juncture two or three dozen urchins galloped up, most of them, save for a thick skin of dirt, clad in what artists call the nude. they surrounded us, and listened with avidity. "outside the aran islands." here several women joined the group, and more were seen hastening to the scene of excitement from every point of the compass. "how far away is that?" "thirty miles, sorr." "what are they worth?" "a shilling a dozen." "that is, a penny a pound?" "no, but a shilling for a dozen fish, and there's thirteen to the dozen." "and how heavy is the average fish?" he picked up one by the jaws, and weighing him on his hand, said-- "that chap would be nigh-hand fourteen pounds. some's more, some's less." it was even so. the agent of the congested districts board, mr. michael walsh, of dock street, confirmed this startling statement. thirteen huge codlike fish for a shilling! more than a hundredweight and a half of fish for twelve pence sterling! and, as father mahony remarks, still the irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel english yoke, still turns his back on the teeming treasures of the deep. the brutal balfour supplied twenty-five boats to the poor peasants of the western seaboard, and these, all working in conjunction under direction, have proved both a boon and a blessing. "yesterday i sent sixty boxes of mackerel to messrs. smith, of birmingham, and to-day i think i shall send them a hundred," said mr. walsh. "these balfour boats have been a wonderful success. you'll hear the very ignorant still cursing him, but not the better-informed, nor the people he has benefited. i think him a great man, a very great man, indeed. i am no politician. i only look at the effect he produced and the blessing he was to the people. on wednesday last the duras steamer brought in boxes of fish, which had been caught in one day. we thought that pretty good, but thursday's consignment was simply astonishing, , boxes coming in. we sent them all to england. mackerel have fetched grand prices this year. early in the season we sold them to birmingham at tenpence apiece wholesale, with carriage and other expenses on the top of that. better price than the pollock? well, that fish is not very good just now. sometimes it fetches six shillings a dozen fish, nearly sixpence each. no, not much for twelve or fourteen pounds of good fish. half-a-crown a dozen is more usual. there's no demand. yes, they're cheap to-day. a dozen pounds of fish for a penny would be reckoned 'a cheap loaf' in birmingham." a shopkeeper near the harbour complained of the unbusiness-like ways of the galway townsmen:--"they have no notion of business management. take the galway board of guardians. they resolved that any contractor furnishing milk below a certain standard should have his contract broken if he were caught swindling the authorities three times in six months. what would they think of such a resolution in england? well, one fellow was caught three times or more. his milk was found to contain forty-four per cent. of water. instead of kicking him out at once there was a great debate on the subject. it was not denied that the facts were as i have stated them. his friends simply said, 'ah, now, let the boy go on wid the conthract; shure, isn't he the dacent boy altogether? an' what for would ye break the conthract whin he put in a dhrop of clane wather, that wouldn't hurt anybody. shure, 'tis very wholesome it is intirely.' as curran said, 'we are ruined with to-day saying we'll do some thing, and then turning round and saying to-morrow that we won't do it.' another guardian named connor stuck up for the right thing, and another named davoren gave the contractor's friends a good tongue-thrashing. the milkman was sacked by fifteen votes to nine. the right thing was done, but my point is that a lot of time was wasted in trying to bolster up such a case, and nine men actually voted for the defaulter, whose action was so grossly fraudulent, and who had been caught at least three times in six months. "the bag factory has just been closed. the home rule bill is at the bottom of this mischief. it was the only factory we had in galway, and what the people here are to do now god only knows. it gave employment to the working classes of the town, who will now have to go further afield. some are off to america, some to england, some to scotland. curious thing i've noticed. a scotsman lands here with twopence, next day has fourpence, in five years a house and farm of his own, in twenty-five years an estate, in thirty years is being shot at as a landowner, in forty years has an agent to be deputy cock-shot for him. but irishmen who go to scotland nearly always return next year swearing that the country is poor as the divil. now, how is that? "the bag works was just short of money and management. irishmen are not financiers. they are always getting into holes, and waiting for somebody to get them out. they have no self-reliance. you may hold them up by the scruff of the neck for years and years, and the moment you drop them they hate you like poison. many shooting cases would show this if impartially looked into. pity the english do not come over here more than they do. the people get along famously with individual englishmen, and sometimes they wonder where all the murdering villains are of whom they hear from their spiritual and political advisers. a priest said in my hearing, 'only the best men come over here. they are picked out to impose on you.' and the poor folks believed him. we want to know each other better. the english are just as ignorant as the irish, in a way. they know no more of the irish than the irish know of them. the poor folks of connaught firmly believe that they would be well off and able to save money but for the english that ruin the country. and here this jute bag company is bursted up because it had not capital to carry on with. belfast men or englishmen would have made it a big success. it stopped because it could not raise enough money to buy a ship-load of jute, and was obliged to buy from hand to mouth from retailers. "take the wool trade. everywhere over ireland you will see wool, wool in big letters on placards for the farmers--notices of one sort or another. we are the centre of a wool district. not a single wool factory, although the town is in every way fitted for excelling in the woollen trade. we have a grand river, and the people understand wool. they card and spin, and make home-made shawls and coat-pieces at their own homes, just for themselves, and there they stop. they are waiting for home rule, they say. pass the bill, and factories will jump out of the ground like mushrooms. instead of taking advantage of the means at their disposal, they are looking forward to a speculative something which they cannot define. the english are the cause of any trouble they may have, and an irish parliament will totally change the aspect of things. everybody is going to be well off, and with little or no work. the farmers are going to get the land for nothing, or next to nothing, and all heretics will be sent out of the country, or kept down and in their proper place." thus spake a well-to-do protestant, born in galway some sixty years ago, a half-breed irish and scotchman. i have now heard so many exasperating variations of this same tune, that i should be disposed, had i the power, to take a deep and desperate revenge by granting the grumblers home rule on the spot. it would doubtless serve them right, but england has also herself to consider. galway town, may th. no. .--the land league's reign at loughrea. this is the most depressing town i have seen as yet. except on market and fair days, literally nothing is done. the streets are nearly deserted, the houses are tumbling down, gable-ends without side-walls or roofs are seen everywhere, nettles are growing in the old chimney corners, and the splendid ruins of the ancient abbey are the most cheerful feature of the place. a few melancholy men stand about, the picture of despondent wretchedness, a few sad-eyed girls wander about with the everlasting hood, hiding their heads and faces, a few miserable old women beg from all and sundry, and the usual swarm of barefooted children are, of course, to the fore. the shopkeepers display their wares, waiting wearily for market day, and dismally hoping against hope for better times. everybody is in the doleful dumps, everybody says the place is going down, everybody says that things grow worse, that the trade of the place grows smaller by degrees and gradually less, that enterprise is totally extinguished, that there is no employment for the people, and no prospect of any. those whose heads are just above water are puzzled to know how those worse off than themselves contrive to exist at all, and look towards the future with gloomiest foreboding. like the man who quoted christmas strawberries at twelve dollars a pound, they ask how the poor are going to live. the young men of the place seem to have quite lost heart, and no longer muster spirit enough to murder anybody. loughrea is disloyal as the sea is salt. the man in the street is full of grievances. his poverty and ignorance make him the mark of lying agitators, who arouse in his simple soul implacable resentment for imaginary wrongs. a decent civil working-man named hanan thus expressed himself:-- "the town was a fine business place until a few years ago, whin the land league ruined it. ah, thim was terrible times. we had murthers in the town an' all round the town. perhaps the people that got shot desarved it, they say here that they did; but, all the same, the place was ruined by the goin's on. it's no joke to kill nine or ten people in and about a quiet little place like this. an' ever since thin the place is goin' down, down, down, an' no one knows what will be the ind iv it. 'tis all the fault of the english governmint. the counthry is full of gowld mines, an' silver mines, an' copper mines, an' we're not allowed to work thim. divil a lie i spake. the government wouldn't allow us to bore for coal. sure, we're towld by thim that knows all about it, men that's grate scholars an' can spake out iligant. why wouldn't we be allowed to sink a coal mine in our own counthry? why wouldn't we be allowed to get the gowld that's all through the mountains? 'tis the english that wants iverything for thimsilves, an' makes us all starvin' paupers intirely." this serves to indicate the kind of falsehoods palmed off upon these poor people in order to make them agitators or criminals. hanan went on-- "look at the galway bag factory. i'm towld that's shutting up now. what'll the people do at all, at all, that was employed in it? an' the english parlimint ordhers it to be closed because it turns out bags chaper than they can make thim in england, an' betther, and the english maker couldn't compate. ye know betther? i wouldn't conthradict yer honour's glory, ye mane well; but i have it from them that knows. look at the galway marble quarries. there's two sorts o' marble in one quarry, an' tis grand stone it is, an' the quarries would give no ind iv imploymint to the poor men that's willin' to work. god help thim, but they're not allowed to cut a lump of stone in their own counthry. what stops them? sure 'tis the english government, an' what would it be else? a gintleman isn't allowed to cut a stone on his own land. all must come from england. ye make us buy it off ye, an' us wid millions of pounds' worth of stone. ah, now, don't tell me 'tis all rubbish. sure, i have it sthraight from mimbers of parlimint. didn't the english governmint send out soldiers an' policemen, wid guns an' swords, an' stop the men that wint to cut the stone in the marble quarries i was afther mintionin' to yer honour? yes, 'twas the land league that ruined this place, but 'twas the governmint that made the land league by dhriving the people into it. no, i wouldn't trust gladstone or any other englishman. they'll take care of thimselves, the english. we'll get no more than they can help. what we got out o' gladstone we bate out o' him. we get nothing but what we conquered. small thanks we owe, an' small thanks we'll give." a small farmer said, "the rints isn't low enough. the judicial rints is twice too much, an' the price of stock what it is. we must have a sliding scale, an' pay rint according to the price of produce. we must have the land for half what we pay now. i wouldn't say anythin' agin' the english. i have two brothers there an' they come over here sometimes, an' from what they tell me i believe the english manes well. an' the english law isn't bad at all. 'tis the administhration of the law that's bad. we have the law, but 'tis no use to us because the landlords administhers it. divil a bit o' compinsation can we get. an' if we want a pump, or a fence, or a bit o' repairs, we may wait for seven years, till our hearts break wid worryin' afther it. thin we've our business to mind, an' we've not the time nor the money to go to law, even whin the law is with us an we have a clear case. the landlord has his agint, that has nothin' else to do but to circumvint us, so that the land laws don't do us the good that ye think over in england. ye have grand laws, says you, an' 'tis thrue for you; but who works the laws? says i. that's where the trouble comes in. who works the laws? says i. "thin ye say, ye can buy your farms all out, says you. but the landlords won't sell, says i. look at the monivea disthrict. french is a good landlord enough, but he won't sell. the tinants want to buy, but if ye go to monivea castle ye'll have your labour for your pains. the agint is the landlord's brother, an' a dacent, good man he is. i have a relative over there, an' sorra a word agin aither o' thim will he spake. but when he wint to buy his farm, not an inch would he get." this statement was so diametrically opposed to that of mr. john cook, of londonderry, who said that the farmers had ceased to buy, owing to their belief that the land would shortly become their own on much better terms than they could at present obtain, that i tramped to monivea, a distance of six miles from athenry, for the purpose of ascertaining, if possible, how far my loughrea friend's assertion was borne out by facts. monivea is a charming village, built round a great green patch of turf, whereon the children play in regiments. imagine an oblong field three hundred yards long by one hundred wide, bounded at one end by high trees, at the other by a great manor house in ruins, the sides closed in by neat white cottages and a pretty protestant church, and you have monivea, the sweetest village i have seen in ireland. here i interviewed four men, one of whom had just returned by the campania from america, to visit his friends after an absence of many years. this gentleman was a strong unionist, and ridiculed the idea of home rule as the most absurd and useless measure ever brought forward with the object of benefiting his countrymen. "what will ye do wid it when ye've got it?" he said; "sure it can never do ye any good at all. how will it put a penny in yer pockets, an' what would ye get by it that ye can't get widout it?" two farmers thought they would get the land for a much lower rent. they said that although the landowner, mr. french, was an excellent, kind, and liberal man, and that no fault at all could be found with his brother, the agent, yet still the land was far too dear, and that a large portion of it was worth nothing at all. "i pay eight and sixpence an acre for land that grows nothing but furze, that a few sheep can nibble round, an', begorra, 'tis not worth half-a-crown. most iv it is worth just nothin' at all, an' yet i have to scrape together eight and sixpence an acre," said he. "'tis not possible to get a livin' out iv it." "thin why don't ye lave it?" said the man from missouri. "why thin, how could i lave the bit o' ground me father had? av ye offered me a hundhred acres o' land for nothin' elsewhere, i vow to god i would rather stay on the bit o' rock that grows heath and gorse, if i could only get a crust out iv it, far sooner," said the grumbler. "an' d'ye think home rule will enable ye to do betther? ye'll believe anythin' in monivea. ye are the same as iver ye wor. it's no use raisonin' wid yez at all. sure, the counthry won't be able to do widout loans, an' who'll lind ye money wid an irish parlimint?" "why would we want money whin there's gowld to be had for the diggin', av we got lave to dig it?" said the man of monivea. the villagers believe that england prevents their mining for coal, gold, silver, copper; that the british government tyrannically puts down all enterprise; that home rule will open mines, build railways, factories, institute great public works; that their friends will flock back from america; that all the money now spent out of the country will be disbursed in ireland for irish manufactures; that the land must and will become their own for nothing, or next to nothing; and in short, that simultaneously with the first sitting of an irish parliament an era of unprecedented prosperity will immediately set in. the two farmers confirmed what i have been told of the reluctance of the landlords to part with an acre of the land, and said that men had returned from america with money to buy farms, and after having wandered in vain over ireland were fain to go back to the states, being unable to purchase even at a fancy price. they have been told this by persons in whom they had implicit trust, and i am sure they believed it. a fairly educated man, who had travelled, and from whom i expected better things, has since assured me that the stories about compulsory closing of mines and quarries had been dinned into him from infancy, and that he was of opinion that these assertions were well founded, and that they could not be successfully contradicted. everywhere the same story of english selfishness and oppression. he cited a case in point. "twenty years ago there was a silver mine in kinvarra. it gave a lot of employment to the people of those parts, and was a grand thing for the country at large. the government stepped in and closed it. i'm towld by them i can believe that 'twas done to keep us poor, so that they could manage us, because we'd not be able to resist oppression and tyranny, we'd be that pauperised. england does everything to keep us down. they have the police and the soldiers everywhere to watch us that we'd get no money at all. so when they see us starting a factory, or a fishery, or opening a mine or a quarry, the word comes down to stop it, and if we'd say no, this is our own country, and we'll do what we like in it, they'd shoot us down, and we couldn't help ourselves. i'm not sayin' that i want home rule or anything fanciful just for mere sentiment. we only want our own, and home rule will give us our own." the home rule party, the nationalist patriots who know full well the falsity of these and such-like beliefs, are responsible for this invincible ignorance. hatred and distrust of england are the staple of their teachings, which the credulous peasantry imbibe like mother's milk. the peripatetic patriots who invade the rural communities seem to be easy, extemporaneous liars, having a natural gift for tergiversation, an undeniable gift for mendacity, an inexhaustible fertility of invention. such liars, like poets, are born, not made, though doubtless their natural gifts have been improved and developed by constant practice. like parolles, they "lie with such volubility that you would think truth were a fool." the seed has been industriously sown, and john bull is reaping the harvest. is there no means of enlightenment available? is there no antidote to this poison? i am disposed to believe that if the country were stumped by men of known position and integrity much good would be done. leaflets bearing good names would have considerable effect. the result might not be seen at once, but the thing would work, and the people have less and less confidence in their leaders. the most unlettered peasant is a keen judge of character, and, given time, would modify his views. the truth about the mines, given in clear and simple language, would have a great effect. education is fighting for the union. time is all the loyalists require. the national schools must, in the long run, be fatal to political priestcraft and traitorous agitation. to return to loughrea. i walked a short distance out of the town to see the place where mr. blake, lord clanricarde's agent, was so foully murdered. a little way past the great carmelite convent i encountered an old man, who showed me the fatal spot. a pleasant country road with fair green meadows on each side, a house or two not far away, the fields all fenced with the stone walls characteristic of the county galway. "'twas here, sorr, that the guns came over the wall. misther blake was dhrivin' to church, at about eleven o'clock o' a foin summer's mornin'. his wife was wid him, an' timothy ruane was runnin' the horse--a dacent boy was tim, would do a hand's turn for anybody. the childer all swore by tim, be raison he was the boy to give them half-pince for sweets and the like o' that. so they dhrove along, and whin they came tin yards from this, says tim, sittin' in front wid the reins, says he, 'misther blake, i see some men at the back iv the ditch,' says he. 'drive on, tim,' says misther blake, 'sure that's nothin' to do with aither you or me.' an' the next instant both of thim wor in eternity! blake and poor tim wor kilt outright on the spot, an' nayther of them spoke a word nor made a move, but jist dhropped stone dead, god rest their sowls. an' the wife, that's misthress blake, a good, kind-hearted lady she was, was shot in the hip, an' crippled, but she wasn't kilt, d'ye see. blake was a hard man, they said, an' must have the rint. an' poor tim was kilt the way he wouldn't tell o' the boys that did it. 'twas slugs they used, an' not bullets, but they fired at two or three yards, an' so close that the shot hasn't time to spread, an' 'tis as good as a cannon ball. who were they? all boys belongin' to the place. mrs. blake dhropped, an' they thought she was dead, i believe. some thinks she was shot by accident, an' that they did not mane to kill a wake woman at all. but whin they shot tim, to kape his mouth shut, why wouldn't they shoot the woman?" seven men were arrested, and everybody in the place was believed to know the murderers. the police had no doubt at all that they had the right men. all were acquitted. no evidence was offered. no witness cared to meet the fate of blake. silence, in this case, was golden, and no mistake about it. walking from the railway station along the main street, in the very heart of the town, you see on your left the modest steeple of the protestant church, some fifty yards down church street. the town is built on two parallel streets, and church street is the principal connecting artery, about a hundred yards long. exactly opposite the church the houses on the right recede some five or six feet from the rank; and here poor sergeant linton met his death. he was an antrim man, a black presbyterian, and a total abstainer. his integrity was so well known that he was exempted from attendance at the police roll-call. he was death on secret societies, and was thought to know too much. in the soft twilight of a summer's eve he left the main street and sauntered down church street. when he reached the indentation above-mentioned a man shot him with a revolver, and fled into the main street. the unfortunate officer gave chase, pursuing the assassin along the principal thoroughfare, his life-blood ebbing fast, until, on reaching the front of nevin's hotel, he fell dead. arrests were made, and, as before, the criminal was undoubtedly secured. again no evidence. the murderer was liberated, but he wisely left the country, and will hardly return. a policeman said: "there was no doubt about the case. the criminal was there. everybody spotted the man, even those who did not see him shoot. but nobody spoke, and if they had spoken he would have got off just the same. the people of this happy country have brought the art of defeating the law to its highest perfection. the most ignorant peasants know all its weak spots, and they work them well, very well indeed, from their own point of view. suppose ten of linton's comrades had seen the shot fired, and that they had immediately caught the assassin, with the revolver in his hands. the jury would not have convicted him. yes, i know that the judge in certain cases can set aside the verdict of the jury. if you did that in ireland it would cost some lives. wouldn't there be a shindy! and then there's strong judges and weak judges. judges don't like being shot more than other people. and irish judges are made of flesh and blood. look at o'halloran's case. i was in the court when it was tried. a moonlighting case. the police caught a man on the spot, with a rifle having a double load. the thing was clear as the sun at noonday. acquitted. the jury said, 'not guilty'; and the man went quietly home. the administration of justice with a weak judge, or with a strong judge who feels a weak government behind him, is a farce in ireland. "what will happen if we do not get the bill? i think there will be some disturbance--the ruffians are always with us--although the people do not want home rule. i mean, they don't care about it. the bulk of the people would not give sixpence for home rule. they have been told it will pay them well, and they go in for that. not one of them would have home rule if it cost him a penny, unless he believed he'd get twopence for his outlay. it's the land, and nothing else. the party that puts the land question on a comfortable footing will rule ireland for ever. that's the opinion of every man in the force, in loughrea or elsewhere. we have a curiosity here--a priest who goes against home rule. a very great man he was, head of a college or something, not one of the common ruck, and he's dead against it, and says so openly. the _tuam news_ used to pitch into him, but he didn't care, so they got tired of it. no good rowing people up when they laugh at you." an old woman of the type too common in ireland came up as the officer left me, and said:-- "musha, now, but 'tis the foin, handsome man ye are, an' ye've a gintleman's face on ye, bedad ye have, an,'" here she showed a halfpenny in her withered claw, "this is all i got since i kem out, and me that's twistin' wid the rummatacks like the divil on a hot griddle; the holy mother o' god knows its thrue, an' me ould man, that's seventy or eighty or more--the divil a one o' him knows his own age--he's that sick an' bad, an' that wake intirely, that he couldn't lift a herrin' wid a pair o' hot tongs; 'tis an ulster he has, that does be ruinin' him, the docthor says; bad luck to it for an ulster wid a powltice, an' he's growlin' that he has no tobacky, god help him. (here i gave her something.) almighty god open ye the gates in heaven, the holy mother o' god pour blessin's upon ye. 'tis englishmen i like, bedad it is; the grandest, foinest, greatest counthry in the wuruld, begorra it is--an' why not?" this outburst somehow reminded me of a certain gentleman i met at the railway hotel, athenry. he said, "i'm a home ruler out and out. the counthry's widin a stone's throw o' hell, an' we may as well be in it althegither." "now, mr. kelly," said the charming miss o'reilly, "you are most inconsistent; you sometimes say you are a conservative----" "aye, aye," assented mr. kelly, "but that's only when i'm sober!" the loughreans are quiet now, but the secret societies which dealt so lightly with human life are still at work, and the best-informed people believe that the murderous emissaries of the land league, whose terrorism ruined the town, are only kept down by a powerful and vigilant police. i have only described three of the murders which took place in the town and neighbourhood during a comparatively short period. add mr. burke and driver wallace; both shot dead near craughwell. j. connor, of carrickeele, who had accepted a situation as bog-ranger, _vice_ keogh, discharged. shot. three men arrested. no evidence. patrick dempsey, who had taken a small farm from which martin birmingham had been evicted. shot dead in the presence of his two small children, with whom he was walking to church. no evidence. no convictions, but many more crimes, both great and small. so many murders that outrages do not count for much. it is to the men who are directly responsible for all these horrors that mr. gladstone proposes to entrust the government of ireland. loughrea, may th. no. .--the reign of indolence. i have just returned from innishmore, the largest of the aran islands, the population of which have been lifted from a condition of chronic starvation and enabled to earn their own livelihood by the splendid organisation of mr. balfour for the relief of the congested districts. postal and other exigences having compelled a hasty return to the mainland, i defer a full account of this most interesting visit until my next letter, when i shall also be in possession of fuller and more accurate information than is attainable on the island itself. meanwhile, let us examine the state of irish feeling by the sad sea waves of galway bay. salthill is a plucky little bathing place; that is, plucky for ireland. it is easily accessible from galway town, and looks over the bay, but it is more like a long natural harbour without ships. there is a mile or so of promenade with stone seats at intervals, a shingle dotted with big rocks, a modicum of slate-coloured sand, like that of schevening, in holland, and blue hills opposite, like those of carlingford lough. the promenade is kerbed by a massive sea wall of limestone, and here and there flights of stone steps lead to the water's edge. facing the sea are handsome villas, with flower gardens, tidy gravelled walks, shrubberies, snowy window blinds and other appurtenances of a desperately protestant appearance. no large hotels, no villas with "apartments" on a card in the fanlight, no boatmen plying for hire, no boats even, either ashore or afloat; no bathing-machines no anything the brutal saxon mostly needs, except fresh air and blazing sunshine. the galway end of this fashionable resort has a few shady houses, aggressively anglicised with names like wave view house and elm tree view, the first looking at a whitewashed wall, the second at a telegraph post. but although some of these houses announce "furnished lodgings," no english tourists would "take them on." if you want to bathe you walk into the sea as you stand, or hand your toga virilis to the bystanders, if any. the connaught folks have no false modesty. a white-haired gentleman descends from a wagonette and promenades for a while. then he sits down beside me. the conversation turns on home rule. my friend is impatient, has been spending a few days in belfast. the ignorance of the poor people is astonishing. a roman catholic of the northern city told him that the first act of the irish parliament would be to level cave hill, and on the site thereof to build cottages for the poor. the hill was full of diamonds, which queen victoria would not allow the poor irish folks to get. the country would be full of money. didn't mr. gladstone say we'd have too much?--a clear allusion to the "chronic plethora." the people would have the upper hand, as they ought to have, and the first thing would be to evict the evictors. the only question was, would they clear out peaceably, or would it be necessary to call in the aid of the irish army of independence? "this poor man evidently believed that every respectable person, everybody possessing means and property, was an enemy to the commonwealth. an ardent home ruler asked me if the majority had a right to rule. he thought that was a triumphant, an unanswerable question. i replied that during a long and busy life i had always observed how, in successful enterprises, the majority did not rule. the intelligent minority, the persons who had shown their wisdom, their industry, their sagacity, their integrity, that they were competent and reliable, those, i said, were the people who were entrusted with the management of great affairs, and not the many-headed mob. the management of irish affairs promises to be a task of tremendous difficulty, and those to whom you propose to entrust this huge and complicated machinery stand convicted of inability to manage with even tolerable success such comparatively simple affairs as the party journal, or the rent collection of new tipperary. both these enterprises turned out dead failures owing to the total incapacity of the irish parliamentary party. and we are asked to entrust the future of the country to these men, whose only qualifications are a faculty for glib talk and an unreasonable hatred of everything english. "mr. gladstone has shown to demonstration that statesmen are no longer to direct the course of legislation; are no longer to lead the people onward in the paths of progressive improvement. the unthinking, uneducated masses are in future to signify their will, and statesmen are to be the automata to carry out their behests, whatever they may be. the unwashed, unshorn incapables who have nothing, because they lack the brains and industry to acquire property, are nowadays told that they, and they alone, shall decide the fate of empires, shall decide the ownership of property, shall manipulate the fortunes of those who have raised themselves from the dirt by ability, self-denial, and unremitting hard work. look at the comparative returns of the illiterate electorate. in scotland in , in england in , in ireland in . in one quarter of donegal, a catholic one, more illiterates than in all scotland. not that there is so much difference as these figures would seem to show. but if men who can write declare themselves illiterate, so that the priests and village ruffians may be satisfied as to how they individually voted, is not this still more deplorable? the conduct of the english gladstonians passes my comprehension. they do not examine for themselves. they say mr. gladstone says so-and-so, and for them this is sufficient. do they say their prayers to the grand old man?" another salthill malcontent said:--"an english visitor sneeringly asked me how it was that the irish could not trust one another. i said, 'we cannot trust these men, and we can give you what ought to be a satisfactory reason for our distrust. they have been condemned as criminals by a competent tribunal, presided over by three english judges, one of them a roman catholic. they have been found guilty of criminal conspiracy, of sympathy with crime, and of having furnished the means for its committal, and that after the fairest trial ever held in the world. by a law passed in by grattan's parliament they would have suffered the punishment of death for this same criminal conspiracy. and, apart from home rule, leaving the present agitation altogether out of the question, the respectable classes of ireland entirely object to be represented by such men, either at westminster or college green. their conduct has done more to ruin ireland than any other calamity which the country has endured for long ages. they have displayed an ingenuity of torture, and a refinement of cruelty, worthy of the inquisition. look at the case of district-inspector murphy, of woodford, in this county. not by any means the worst of the tens of thousands of cases all over the country, but impressive to me because it came under my own observation. at the trial of wilfrid blunt, mr. murphy deposed upon oath that so severely was he boycotted for the mere performance of his duty, that his children were crying for bread, and that he was unable to give them any. policemen had to bring milk from miles away. in other cases the pupils of these patriots, the preachers of the land league, poured human filth into the water supply of their victims, who were in many cases ladies of gentle birth and children of tender years. go up to cong, and walk out to the place where lord mountmorres was murdered, near clonbur. his whole income was £ or £ , a poor allowance for a peer, one of the noble house of de montmorency. he was shot in broad daylight, a dozen houses within call, and an open uncovered country, save for low stone walls, all around. the people danced in derision on the spot where he fell, and threw soil stained with his life blood in the air. he wanted his due, and, goodness knows, he was poor enough to satisfy oven an irish agitator. his name was down for the next vacancy among the resident magistrates. the people who were guilty of inciting to those outrages are the most prominent of the nationalist party. is this the class of men you wish to set over us as governors?" an artist named hamilton, a guernsey man, said, "the english people do not understand what stonethrowing means in ireland. they read of rows, and so long as no shooting is done, they do not think it serious. the men of connaught are wonderful shots with big stones, and you would be surprised at the force and precision with which they hurl great lumps of rock weighing three or four pounds. poor corbett, a man in lord ardilaun's employ, was killed outright by one of these missiles, and only the other day i was reading of the connaught rangers in egypt, the old th, how they were short of ammunition at the battle of aboukir, and how they tore down a wall and actually stopped the french, who were advancing with the bayonet." a galway merchant said:--"balfour is the man for ireland. a nationalist member told me he was the cleverest man in the house. he said, 'chamberlain goes in for hard hitting, and he is very effective, but nobody ever answered the irish members so readily and smartly as balfour. we thought twice before we framed our questions, and although we of course disapprove of him, we are bound to admire him immensely.' and as a business man i think balfour was fully up to the mark. he it was who subsidised the midland and western railway to build the light line now being made between galway and clifden. no company would have undertaken such a concern. as a mere business transaction it could not pay. but look at the good that is being done. the people were starving for want of employment, and no unskilled labour is imported to the district, so that the connemara folks get the benefit of the work, and also a permanent advantage by the opening up of the galway fisheries, which are practically inexhaustible. we have the atlantic to go at. and the fish out of the deep, strong, running water are twice as big as those just off the coast, on herring-banks and shoals. the fishermen know this, and they call these places the mackerel hospitals and infirmaries. these fishermen always knew it, but they had no boats to go out to the deep seas, no nets, no tackle. they have them now, and they got them from balfour. they get nothing but home rule from morley and gladstone, and they find it keeps them free from indigestion, although it puts their livers out of order. amusing chaps, these fishermen. i was in a little country place on the coast, where the judicial and magisterial proceedings are of a very primitive character, and where most of the people speak irish as their vernacular. one old chap declined to give evidence in english, and asked for an interpreter. the magistrate, who knew the old wag, said, 'michael cahill, you speak english very well,' to which the old man replied, ''tis not for the likes o' me to conthradict yer honner, but divil resave the word iv it i ondhersthand at all, at all.' there was a great roar from the court, and the interpreter was trotted forward. another witness was said to have been drunk, but he claimed to be a temperance man. 'what do you drink,' said the magistrate. 'wather, yer honner,' said the total abstainer. 'jist pure wather from the spring there beyant,' and then he looked round the court, and slyly added, 'wid jist as much whiskey as will take off the earthy taste, yer honner.' he was like the temperance lecturer who preached round galway, and was afterwards seen crushing sugar in a stiff glass of the crathur at oughterard. when he was caught redhanded, as it were, he said, 'to be sure i'm a timprance man, but, bedad, ye can't say that i'm a bigoted one'! "we want morley to give us a light railway from clifden to westport, and then we'd have the whole coast supplied. but he's a tight-fisted one as regards practical work. we've no chance with him, except in matters of sentiment. he wants to give home rule, but we can't eat that. and my impression is that we are fast drifting into the position of the man who has nothing, and from whom shall be taken the little that he hath. as to arguments against home rule, i do not think it a case for argument. that the thing is bad is self-evident; and self-evident propositions, whether in euclid or elsewhere, are always the most difficult to prove. ask me to prove that two added to two make four, ask me how many beans make five, and i gracefully retire. ask me to show that home rule will be bad for ireland, and i will make but a slight departure from this formula. i say, on the supporters of home rule rests the _onus probandi_; they are the people who should show cause, let them prove their case in its favour. here i am, quite satisfied with the laws as they now are. show me, say i, how i shall benefit by the proposed change. that knocks them speechless. in england they may make a pretence of proving their case, but in this country they are dumb in the presence of unionists. they cannot argue with enlightened people. they have not a leg to stand upon, and they know it. "consider the fulminations of archbishop walsh with regard to that dublin freemason bazaar in aid of orphan children. as you must have heard, the sacraments were refused to any catholic attending this purely charitable movement. the church said in effect--any one who aids the orphans of freemasons by going to this bazaar, or by patronising the function, whether directly or indirectly, will be damned everlastingly. and the catholics kept away, frightened by this threat. what would you expect of a people who believe such rubbish? do you think that a people powerfully influenced, supremely influenced, by the word of a priest are fit to govern themselves? can you depend on the loyalty of the catholic priesthood? you surely know better than that. suppose you gave ireland home rule, and the church turned rusty? with matters in the hands of an irish parliament, who would have the pull in weight of influence, john bull or the priests? you are walking into a snare with your eyes open. soon you will be punching your own head and calling yourself a fool. and you will be quite right. england is giving herself away at the bidding of a crowd of fellows who in ireland are not received into decent society, and few of whom could get 'tick' for a week's board or a week's washing. not that the latter would be much hardship. clean linen is a novelty to the bulk of them. and seventy-one out of eighty of these upstarts must do the bidding of the priests. "poor old bull! the fine fellow he was. respected by everybody. strong but good-humoured, never hurting a soul. slapping his breeches pocket now and then, and looking round the world with an eye that seemed to say, 'i could buy and sell the lot of ye; look what a fine fellow i am!' and he was. and he knew it, too. his only fault. ready to lend a deserving friend a trifle, and apt to poke his nose into what didn't concern him, especially when a small country was being put upon. then john would come up and say, 'let him alone, will yer.' a laughing-stock in his old age. but yesterday he might have stood before the world: now none so poor to do him reverence,--shakespeare! that's what's coming. poor old bull! in his dotage making a rod to whip himself. well, well." there are presbyterians at salthill. wherever they are they always wear good coats, have good houses, well-clad children. to be comfortably off seems part of their creed. one of them said, "there never was a more faithful worshipper of the grand old man than myself,--up to a certain time, i mean. i dropped him before he went over to parnell. i gave him up on account of his inconsistency. what staggered me was a trick he tried to play the queen's college arrangements in ireland. it was a supplemental charter really changing the whole constitution of the thing, and he tried to carry his point by a dodge. i did not care much about the matter one way or the other, but i thought his underhanded trickery unworthy a statesman, or any other man. i tried not to believe it; that is, i would rather not have believed it. i had a sort of feeling that it couldn't be. but it was so. then his pamphlet about vaticanism, in which he said no roman catholic could be loyal, after which he appointed the marquess of ripon, a catholic convert, or pervert, to the governor-generalship of india, the most important office in the gift of the crown. again, i had no objection to the action in itself, but i considered it from mr. gladstone's point of view, and then it dawned on me that he would say anything. you never know what he'll do next. what he says is no guide at all nowadays to what he'll do. he was my hero, but a change has come over him, and now he cannot be trusted. he ought to be looked after in some public institution where the keepers wouldn't contradict him. he was a great man before his mind gave way." a bustling belfaster of fatiguing vitality told me this little story which my friends the catholic clergy may disprove if they can. he said:--"mr. mcmaster, of the firm of dunbar, mcmaster and co., of gilford, county down, conceived the idea of aiding his fellow-countrymen and women who were starving in the congested districts. this was some time ago, but it is a good illustration of the difficulty you have in helping people who will not help themselves. he drew up a scheme, well thought-out and workable, such as a thorough business man might be expected to concoct, and sent down his agent to the districts of gweedore in donegal and maam in galway, with instructions to engage as many families as possible to work in the mills of the firm, noted all over the world for thread, yarn, and linen-weaving. an enormous affair, employing a whole township. the agent was provided with a document emanating from the priest of the district into which they were invited to migrate, setting forth that no proselytism was intended, and that the migrants would be under the care of catholic clergy. as they had neither money nor furniture worth moving, it was agreed to pay the cost of transit, and to provide clean, sweet cottages, ready furnished, and with every reasonable convenience. the furniture was to be paid for by instalments, but the cost of removal was to be a gift from mr. mcmaster, who was desirous of aiding the people without pauperising them. they were to work the ordinary factory hours, as enacted by statute, and to be paid the ordinary wages. but they were required to work regularly. no saints' days, no lounging about on the "pattherns" (patron saints' days), no in-and-out running, but steady, regular attendance. people who knew the keltic irish laughed at mr. mcmaster, but he had seen their poverty, their filth, their mud cabins, their semi-starvation, and he thought he knew. he offered them work, and everything they seemed to want, out of pure humanity. "how many people moved to gilford out of the two counties?" "peradventure there might be a hundred found, peradventure there might be fifty, thirty, twenty, ten." "guess again. give it up? not a single solitary soul accepted mr. mcmaster's offer. these are the people who are waiting for home rule. much good may it do them." a little galway man became irate. "'tis our birthright to hate england. that's why we want home rule that we may tache thim their place. i'd fight england, an' i'd do more." here he looked sternly at the ulsterman. "i'd do more, i say, i'd fight thim that'd shtand up for her. d'ye see me now?" the belfast man proved an awkward customer. he said, "you're too busy to fight anybody just now, you nationalists. wait till you've settled your differences, wait till you've cut each other's throats, wait till you've fought over the plunder, like the kilkenny cats, till there's nothing left of you but the tail. then we'll send down an army of owld women with besoms to sweep ye into the atlantic. 'twill be the first bath your army of independence ever got. 'twill cool their courage and clean their hides at the same time." the small separatist was about to make an angry reply, when i interposed with an inquiry as to his estimate of mr. gladstone. "ah," said the little man, with a pucker of his little nose, and a grand gesture of contempt, "sure he's not worth as much powdher as would blow him to hell." his sentiment lacks novelty, but i quote him for the picturesqueness of his style. salthill, may th. no. .--the aran islands. the aran islanders seem to have passed most of their time in a state of chronic starvation. the land seems to grow little but rock, and the burning of seaweed, the kelp trade, does not seem to have helped them much. true, the atlantic was all before them, where to choose, but what father mahony would call the teeming treasures of the deep were practically left untouched. if we accept the plain meaning of the good priest's speech, we must believe that the aran islanders and irish fishermen generally preferred to starve rather than to catch fish, unless an irish parliament were fixed on college green. they had no objection to accept charitable aid, no matter from what quarter it came, and the araners required assistance every other year. they were not unwilling to catch fish, but they had nothing to catch them with; and, strange as it may seem, these islanders, who could scarcely move five yards in any direction without falling into the sea, these amphibious irishmen, did not know the art of catching fish! they tinkered and slopped around the shoals in the vicinity of the island, but they were never able to catch enough fish to keep themselves from starvation, much less to supply the dublin and london markets. their boats were the most primitive affairs imaginable, and showed the irish spirit of conservatism to perfection. these coraghs are practically the same boat as the welsh coracle, but much larger. those i examined were from ten to fifteen feet long and three feet wide. oak ribs, over which are nailed laths of white deal, two inches wide and half an inch thick. cover this slight skeleton with tarred canvas, and the ship is nearly complete. it only needs two pairs of wooden thole-pins, and two pairs of oars, long, light, and thin, coming nearly to a point at the water-end, having a perforated block which works on the thole-pins before-mentioned. you want no keel, no helm, no mast. stay! you need a board or two for seats for the oarsmen. with these frail cockleshells the araners adventure themselves twelve miles on the atlantic, and mostly come home again. these makeshift canoes are almost useless for catching fish. having no helm, it is hard to keep them straight; having no keel, it is needful to sit still, or at any rate to maintain a perfect balance, or over you go. a gust of wind spins the canoe round like a top. these primeval boats are made on the island, thrown together out of fifteen-pennyworth of wood, a few yards of canvas, and a pitch-pot. they have some virtues. they are cheap, and they will not sink. the coraghs always come back, even if bottom up. and when they reach the shore the two occupants (if any) invert the ship, stick a head in the stem and another in the stern, and carry her home to tea. this process is apt to puzzle the uninformed visitor, who sees a strange and fearful animal, like a huge black-beetle, crawling up the cliffs. he begins to think of "antres huge and deserts vast, and anthropophagi, and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." he hesitates about landing, but if he be on the duras, captain neal delargy, who equally scoffs at big beetles and home rule, will explain, and will accompany him to the tavern on the cliff side, where they charge ordinary prices for beer and give you bread-and-cheese for nothing. and yet the araners profess to be civilised. in pursuance of his policy of helping the people to help themselves, mr. balfour determined to educate the araners, and to give them sufficient help in the matter of boats and tackle to make their education of some avail. it was useless to give them boats and nets, for they knew not how to use them, and it is certain that any boat club on the birmingham reservoir, or any tripper who has gone mackerel fishing in douglas bay, could have given these fishermen much valuable information and instruction. having once determined to attempt on a tolerably large scale the establishment of a fresh mackerel and fresh herring trade with england, mr. balfour set about the gigantic and discouraging task of endeavouring nothing less than the creation of the local industry. but how were the people to be taught the management of large boats, and the kind of nets that were used? after much inquiry, it was decided to subsidise trained crews from other parts of ireland to show the local fishermen what earnings might be theirs, and at the same time to impart needful instruction to the connemara and aran people. it was also arranged to make loans for the purchase of boats and tackle to such persons as might prove likely to benefit by them. accordingly arrangements were made with the crews of seven arklow boats to proceed to the aran islands, and in order to indemnify them for the risk of working on an untried fishing ground, each crew received a bounty of £ from the congested districts board. but there was no use in catching fish unless it could be quickly put on the market, and again the necessary plant proved a matter involving considerable expenditure. a derelict norwegian ship, which two or three years ago had been discovered at sea and towed into queenstown harbour, was purchased from the salvors, and anchored in killeany bay, outside the harbour of kilronane, the capital city of the biggest aran, as an ice-hulk. the board then entered into an agreement with mr. w.w. harvey, of cork, to market the mackerel at a fixed rate of commission, it being also arranged that he should pay the fishermen the english market price less by a deduction of s. a box to cover the cost of ice-packing, carriage, and english salesman's commission. the ice-hulk and boxes were provided by the board, but mr. harvey was to purchase the ice and defray all the cost of labour except the salary of a manager. in addition to the seven arklow crews two boats were fitted out by miss mansfield for training crews from the parish of carna, in connemara; and miss skerritt also placed two english-built boats at the board's disposal for the training of crews from the pretty watering place of clifden, also in connemara. an aran hooker, belonging to innishmore, joined the little fishing fleet, bringing up the number to exactly a dozen boats. the rev. w.s. green, a protestant parson, who is said to have first discovered these fishing grounds, and who threw himself into the work with wonderful enthusiasm, superintended the experiment in the steamer fingal, which was specially chartered for the purpose. mr. green as a skilled fisheries inspector, knew what he was about, and he was empowered to lend nets, where advisable, to the aran beginners. away they went to sea, to start with a fortnight's heart-breaking luck. the water in those regions was cold, and the fish were amusing themselves elsewhere. the ice-hulk with its two hundred tons of norwegian ice was waiting, and its staff of packers might cool their ardour in the hold. the mackerel would not come to be packed, and the dozen boats, with their master and apprentice crews, cruised up and down on the deep blue sea, with the blue sky overhead, and hope, like bob acres' valour, gradually oozing out of their finger-ends. the arklow men began to talk of going home again. altogether it was a blue look-out. at last the luck turned. on april th, , six thousand mackerel were despatched to the english market. the weather during much of the season was stormy and unfavourable, but on may th, seventy-three thousand three hundred and fifty mackerel were sent to galway, thirty miles away by sea, and were forwarded thence by two special trains. the midland and western railway, under the management of mr. joseph tatlow, has been prompt, plucky, and obliging, and runs the fish to dublin as fast as they arrive in galway. during the season of ten weeks the experienced arklow crews made on an average £ per boat, and the greenhorns who were learning the business earned about £ per boat, although they could not fish at all at the beginning of the season. the total number of mackerel packed on the ice-hulk amounted to the respectable total of two hundred and ninety-nine thousand four hundred and eighty. the "teeming treasures of the deep" were not left untouched on this occasion, though, doubtless, "still the irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel english yoke." mr. balfour's benefactions have not been confined to the aran islands. every available fishing place from top to bottom of the whole west coast has been similarly aided, and the value of their produce has increased from next to nothing to something like fifty thousand pounds per month. this on the authority of father p.j. mcphilpin, parish priest of kilronane, innishmore, who said:-- "we never had a chief secretary who so quickly grasped the position, who so rapidly saw what was the right thing to do, and who did it so thoroughly and so promptly. strange to say the liberals are always the most illiberal. when we get anything for ireland it somehow always seems to come from the tories." having been carried from galway to the ice-hulk in killeany bay, and having been duly put ashore in a boat, one of the first persons i saw was father thomas flatley, coadjutor of father mcphilpin, an earnest home ruler, like his superior, and like him a great admirer of mr. balfour. father flatley wore a yachting cap, or i might have sheered off under all sail--the biretta inspires me with affright--but his nautical rig reassured me, and yawing a little from my course, i put up my helm and boarded him. too late i saw the black flag--i mean the white choker--but there was nothing of the pirate about father tom. he was kindly, courteous, earnest, humorous, hospitable, and full of latin quotations. before our acquaintance was two minutes old he invited me to dinner. then i ran aground on an arklow boatman, james doyle by name, a smart tweed-suited sailor, bright and gay. the post office was near, and the letters were being given out. three deliveries a week, weather permitting. the parish priest was there, grave, refined, slightly ascetic, with the azure blue eyes so common in connaught, never seen in england, although frequently met with in norway and north germany. the waiting-women were barefoot, but all the men were shod. the araners have a speciality in shoes--pampooties, to wit. these are made of raw hide, hair outwards, the toe-piece drawn in, and the whole tied on with string or sinew. the cottages are better built than many on the mainland. otherwise the winter gales would blow them into the atlantic main. the thatch is pegged down firmly, and then tied on with a close network of ropes. the people are clean, smart, and good-looking. miss margaret flanagan, who escorted me in my search after pampooties, would pass for a pretty girl anywhere, and the aran irish flowed from her lips like a rivulet of cream. she spoke english too. an accomplished young lady, miss margaret kilmartin, aged nineteen, said her father had been wrongfully imprisoned for two and a half years for shooting a bailiff. the national sports are therefore not altogether unknown in the arans. miss kilmartin was _en route_ for america, per teutonic, first to new york, and then a thousand miles by rail, alone, and without a bonnet. she had never been off the island. this little run would be her first flutter from the paternal nest. the araners know little of politics, save that the balfour government lifted them out of the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock and established their goings. the balfour boats are there, the balfour nets are full of fish, the balfour boys are learning a useful occupation, and earning money meanwhile. if there is anything in the aran cupboards, the araners know who enabled them to put it there. if the young ladies have new shoes, new shawls, new brooches; if the aran belles make money by mending nets; if the men sometimes see beef; if they compass the thick twist; if they manage without the everlasting hat going round, they have mr. balfour to thank, and they know it. they own it, not grudgingly or of necessity, but cheerfully. one battered old wreck raised his hat at every mention of the name. i saw no morley boats. i saw no gladstone nets. i saw no home rule fish. the araners do not care for the grand old mendacium. perhaps they lack patriotism. it may be that they do not share what mr. gladstone calls the aspirations of a people. so far as i could judge, their principal aspiration is to get something to eat. a pampootied native who has often visited the main-land, and is evidently looked upon as a mountain of sagacity and superior wisdom, said to me-- "not a bit they care but to look afther the wife and childher an' pray to god for good takes o' fish. an' small blame to thim. before balfour the people were starvin', an' ivery other year father davis that's dead this six months would go round beggin' an' prayin' for a thrifle to kape life in thim. the hardships and the misery the poor folks had, god alone knows. an' would ye say to thim, 'tis home rule ye want? "there was a young fellow fishin' here from dublin. he went out in the hookers an' injoyed himself all to pieces, a dacent sthrip of a boy, but wid no more brains than a scalpeen (pickled mackerel). he got me to be interpreter to an owld man that would spake wid him over on innishmair, an' the owld chap wos tellin' his throubles. so afther a bit, the young fellow says, says he, "''tis home rule ye want,' says he. "'no,' says the owld chap, shakin' his head, 'tis my dinner i want,' says he. "an' that young fellow was mad whin i thranslated it. but 'twas thrue, ivery word iv it. 'ah! the ignorance, the ignorance,' says he. but then he was spakin' on a full stomach, an' 'tis ill arguin' betwixt a full man and a fastin'. "i wouldn't say but they'd take more notice afther a while. but they're not used to bein' prosperous, an' they don't know themselves at all. ye can't cultivate politics on low feed. 'tis the high livin' that makes the parliamint men that can talk for twenty-four hours at a sthretch. an' these chaps is gettin' their backs up. in twelve months' time they'll be gettin' consated. 'tis balfour that's feedin' thim into condition. vote against him? av coorse they will, ivery man o' thim. sure they'll be towld to vote for a man, an' they'll do it. how would they ondhersthand at all? av 'twas misther balfour himself that wanted their vote he'd get it fast enough. but 'tisn't. an' they'll vote agin' him without knowin' what they're doin'." father mcphilpin said, "it is very hard to get them to move. the irish people are the most conservative in the world. they will not stir for telling, and they will not stir when you take them by the collar and haul them along. they are wedded to the customs of their ancestors; and yet, when once they see the advantage to be obtained by any given change, no people are so quick to follow it up. the difficulty is to start them. the araners had actually less knowledge of the sea, of boats, nets, and fishing, than people coming here from an inland place. surprising, but quite true." speaking on the general question of home rule, i asked father mcphilpin if the people of ireland would be loyal. "loyal to what?" said the father, replying quickly. "loyal to england, to the crown, to queen victoria." "the irish people have always been loyal--much more loyal than the english people. you have only to look at english history. how far shall i go back, father tom?" said my genial host to the coadjutor, who just then entered the room. "shall we go back to henry ii.? where shall we begin, father tom?" "well," said father tom, "i'd not be for going back quite so far. i think if we began with charles i.----" "very good. now, were not the irish loyal when the english people disloyally favoured their oliver cromwell and their william the third?" i proceeded with the imbibition of father mcphilpin's excellent tea. the answer was obvious, but father tom clearly believed that his senior had me on the hip, and good-naturedly came in with a latin quotation or two. both clerics were deeply interested in the condition of the poor in their charge, and indeed all over ireland, and their profound belief that a home rule bill would benefit the poorer classes, by changing the conditions affecting the tenure or ownership of land, was apparently their chief reason for advocating a college green parliament. father mcphilpin holds some honorary official position in connection with the aran fisheries, and from him i derived most of my information. another authority assured me that the araners were not grateful to england nor to mr. balfour, and spoke of the viper that somebody warmed in his bosom with disagreeable results. but, as father tom would say, _omnis comparatio claudicat_, and all my experience points to a proper appreciation of the great ex-secretary's desire to do the country good. the people know how thoroughly he examined the subject; how he spent weeks in the congested districts; how he saw the parish priests, the head men of the districts, the cotters themselves. every irishman, whatever his politics, will readily agree that mr. balfour knows more about ireland than any englishman living, and most of them credit him with more knowledge of the subject than any irishman. my thorough-going friend, mr. mccoy, of galway, hater of england, avowed separatist, longing to wallow in the brutal saxon's gore, thinks mr. balfour the best friend that ireland ever had. "i'd agree with you there," said mr. mccoy. "i don't agree with charity, but i agree with putting people in a way to do things for themselves, which is what mr. balfour has done." back on the ice-hulk by favour of thomas joyce, of kilronane, skipper and owner of a fishing smack. mr. william fitzgerald showed the factory, the great hold with the ice, the windmill which pumps the hulk, the mountains of boxes for fish, the mackerel in process of packing, sixty in a box, most of them very large fish. an unhappy halibut, which had come to an untimely end, stood on his tail in a narrow basket, his mouth wide open, looking like a home rule orator descanting on the woes of ireland. he was slapped into a box and instantly nailed down, which summary process suggested an obvious wish. mr. fitzgerald said: "the fisheries have been a great success, and have done much good. the spring fishery paid well on account of the great price we got for the mackerel. it is not customary to catch fish so early, but when you can do it it pays splendidly. just now the price is not up to the mark, but we hope for better times. the arklow men are not subsidised this year. they didn't need it. the ground proved productive, and they were glad to come on their own hook. if they had required a second subsidy they would not have got it." "why not?" "i'm no politician," said mr. fitzgerald. "the araners are so strong and hardy that they would surprise you. they will stand all day on the ice, with nothing on but those pampooties, and you would think they'd need iron soles, instead of a bit of skin. they work hard, and come regularly and give no trouble. no, i could not find any fault with them. they mostly speak irish among themselves. it's greek to me, but i can make out that they think a great deal of mr. balfour." a week on the hulk would be refreshing, for on one side there is no land nearer than america. however, i have to go, for the duras is getting uneasy, so i leave the hulk, the mackerel, the big sea trout which are caught with the mackerel, and steam back to galway. a splendid fellow in the cabin discloses his views. "we must have complete independence. we shall start with , men for the army of independence. that will be only a nucleus. we shall attract all the brave, chivalrous, adventurous spirits of america. england has india to draw from. trot your niggers over, we'll make short work of them. we draw from america, australia, every part of the world. we draw from , , of irishmen all willing to fight for nothing, and even to pay money to be allowed to fight against england. an irish republic, under the protection of america. that's the idea. it's the natural thing. work the two countries together and england may slide. we'll have an independent irish republic in four years; perhaps in three years. rubbish about pledges of loyalty. the people must be loyal to themselves, not to england. our members will do what the people want, or they will be replaced by men who will. we have the sentiments of the people, backed by the influence of religion, all tending to complete independence. who's going to prevent it? we'll have a declaration of independence on saint patrick's day, , at latest. who'll stop it? mr. gladstone? why long before that time we'll convert him, and ten to one he'll draw up the document. what'll you bet that he doesn't come over to dublin and read it in the house?" galway, may th. no. .--the priests and outrage. they never condemned it. the people of moycullen with whom i have spent a day are hardly patriotic. so far as i can gather, they have always paid their rents and worked hard for their living. they know nothing of home rule, and they do not murder their friends and neighbours. they send forth a strong contingent of men to work on mr. balfour's railway between galway and clifden, and find the weekly wages there earned very convenient. they vote as they are told, and do not trouble themselves with matters which are too high for them. if a candidate proposes to make the land much cheaper, or even to spare the necessity of paying any rent at all, the moyculleners give him their voice. like every catholic villager in ireland they look to father pat, tom, dick, or harry for advice, and the good priest gives them the right tip. he points out that micky o'codlin promises to support such legislation as shall place the land in the hands of the tillers of the soil, while the protestant short declares that the thing is not honest, and cannot be done. the result is precisely what might be expected. the nationalist members are returned, and mr. gladstone, with his most grandiose manner, and with the abject magnanimity he always shows when thoroughly beaten, comes forward and declares he can no longer resist the aspirations of a people. the separatist sheep tumble over each other in their nervous anxiety to keep close on the heels of the bell-wether, and the empire is threatened with disintegration to suit the convenience of a party of priests. an eminent roman catholic lawyer of dublin, a home ruler, said to me:-- "i vote for home rule because the sooner the thing is settled the better, and it will never be settled until we get home rule in some form or other. the country is weary of the agitation of the last twenty years, and i am of opinion that home rule would do much to restore the freedom of ireland. for ireland is in a state of slavery--not to england, but to the priesthood. i believe in the fundamental doctrines of the faith, but i don't believe everything the priests choose to tell me. i am ready to admit that they have more spiritual gifts and graces than anybody else, but i will not believe that they know more about politics, and i will not submit to their dictation. they control the course of affairs both sacred and secular. at the present moment they are running the british empire. you cannot get away from the fact that they return the irish majority, and you will admit that the irish majority is now the ruling power. let me illustrate my point. "you in england think we have the franchise in ireland. nothing of the kind. there may be a hundred thousand in the north who vote as they think proper, but an overwhelming majority of the south are absolutely in the hands of the clergy, who in many cases lead or drive them in hundreds to the poll." here an english civil engineer said:--"when i was engaged on a line at mayo i actually saw the priest walking in front of some hundreds of voters brought into the town from the rural districts. i was driving along in a car, and my driver shouted 'parnell for ever!' he was struck on the head and face, his cheek cut open, and himself knocked off the car. how the priestly party do hate the parnellites! i wonder what would happen if the nationalists got into power." "they would exterminate each other, if possible," said the dublin man. "we should have an awful ferment, a chaos, an immediate bankruptcy. but let us have it. let us make the experiment, and thus for ever settle the question. to return to the priests. the people of ireland have not the franchise, which is monopolised by a few thousand priests and bishops. the nationalist members, the dauntless seventy-one, are as much the nominees of the catholic clergy as the old pocket-borough members were nominees of the local landlords. and the same thing will hold good in future. people tell you it will not be so, but that's all humbug. it may be different in five-and-twenty years, when the people are educated, when the national schools have done their work, but half that time is enough to ruin england. thanks to agitators, ireland cannot be any worse off than she is." some time ago there was a convention in dublin, a home rule convention. there were five hundred delegates, sent up by the votes of the people. four hundred and nine were priests, who had returned themselves. can the english gladstonians get away from the suggestiveness of this fact? is it sufficiently symptomatic? can they not diagnose the progress of the disease? one of the galway town commissioners, also a roman catholic, declared that the irish people, once the kindliest, most honest, most conscientious amongst the nations of the earth, had for years been taught a doctrine of malevolence. "they were naturally benevolent, but their nature has been changed, and i regret to say that in a large measure the priests are responsible for the change. where once mutual help and perfect honesty reigned, you now find selfishness and mutual distrust. the priests have made the altar a hustings, and even worse than electioneering has been done on that sacred spot. from the altar have been denounced old friends and neighbours who had dared to have an opinion of their own, had dared to show an independent spirit, and to hold on what they thought the true course in spite of the blackguard population of the district. take the case of o'mara, of parsonstown. he was the principal merchant of the place, a very kindly man, of decided politics, a catholic conservative, like myself. he sold provisions to what the local priest called the 'helmeted minions of our saxon taskmasters.' in other words, he sold bread to the constabulary at a time when outrage and murder were being put down with a strong hand. the priest threatened him with boycotting, his friends urged him to give way, and let the police get their 'prog' from a distance, but o'mara, who was an easy-going man, and who had never obtruded his politics on anyone, showed an unexpected obstinacy, and said he would do as he chose, spite of all the priests on earth. they denounced him from the altar, but, although they tried hard, they failed to ruin him. in other cases, clerical influence has dragged men from positions of competency and caused them to end their days in the workhouse. then, again, the priests never denounced outrage. they might have stopped the fiendish deeds of the murderous blackguards whose evil propensities were fostered and utilised by the land league, but they said no word of disapproval. on the contrary they tacitly favoured, or seemed to favour, the most awful assassinations. when the phoenix park murders took place, a galway priest whom i will not name said that he had been requested to ask for the prayers of the faithful in favour of mr. burke, one of the murdered men, who belonged to an old galway family. and what was the remark made by that follower of jesus christ? he said, 'i have mentioned the request. you can pray for his soul--_if you like_.' what he meant was plain enough." "let me tell you of something even worse," said the dublin lawyer. "in a certain catholic church which i regularly attend, and on a sunday when were present two or three eminent judges, with a considerable number of the dublin aristocracy, a certain dignitary, whom i also will not name before our sassenach friend, actually coupled the names of honest people who had died in their beds with the names of curley and the other assassins who were hanged for the phoenix park murders. we were invited to pray for their souls _en bloc_! and this, mind you, not at the time of the execution, but a year afterwards, on the anniversary of the day, and when the thing might well have been allowed to drop. did you ever hear of anything more outrageous than the conduct of this priest, who took upon himself to mention these brutal murderers in the same breath with the blessed departed, whose friends and relations were kneeling around? the fact that this cleric could so act shows the immunity of the irish priesthood, and their confidence in their influence over the people. don't forget that this was in the capital of ireland, and that the congregation was aristocratic. how great must be priestly influence over the unlettered peasantry. you see my point? what would the english say to such an exhibition? what would the relatives of decent people in england do if they had been submitted to such an insult by a protestant parson?" i disclaimed any right to speak for the brutal saxon with any degree of authority, but ventured to say that to the best of my knowledge and belief the supposititious reverend gentleman, when next he took his walks abroad, might possibly become acquainted with a novel but vigorous method of propulsion, or even might undergo the process so familiar to tim healy, not altogether unconnected with a horsewhip. the galway town commissioner said:--"we respectable catholics are in a very awkward position. we have to live among our countrymen who are of a different way of thinking, and unhappily we cannot express our honest opinions without embarassing consequences. in england, where people of opposite politics meet on terms of most sincere friendship, you do not understand our difficulties. we are denounced as unpatriotic, as enemies to our native land, and as aiders and abettors of the hated english rule. now we know very well--my friend from dublin, who understands law, will bear me out--we know very well that the english laws are good, excellent, liberal. we know that the english people are anxious to do what is fair and right, and that they have long been doing their best to make us comfortable. but we must keep this knowledge to ourselves, for such of us who are in business would run great risk of loss, besides social ostracism, if we ventured to boldly express our views. moreover, we do not care to put ourselves in open conflict with the clergy, upon whom we have been taught to look from earliest childhood with reverence and awe. it is almost, if not quite, a matter of heredity. i declare that, in spite of what i might call my intellectual convictions, i am to some extent overawed by any illiterate farmer's son, who has been ordained a priest. i feel it in my blood. i must have imbibed it with my mother's milk. no use for conservative catholics to kick against it. we are too few, and we are bound hand and foot." so did the galway man deliver himself. i was reminded of mr. o'ryan, of larne, a devoted catholic, who said, "i protest from my innermost heart against home rule. i protest not only for myself, but also on behalf of my co-religionists that dare not speak, because if they did speak their lives might not be worth an hour's purchase, not being situated, as i am, in the midst of a loyal, and law-abiding population. i believe that all that ireland requires is a just settlement of the land question, and a fair, reasonable measure of local self-government. for several generations past england has been doing all the good she could for ireland, and none have more reason than the roman catholics of ireland to be thankful for that good. the loyal roman catholics of ireland are convinced that home rule would be the ruin of ireland in particular and of the british empire in general, which would find itself deprived in a few hours of a constitution the workmanship of centuries, and the admiration of the whole nineteenth-century civilisation." this is tolerably outspoken for an irish roman catholic, but mr. o'ryan lives in ulster, where people do not shoot their neighbours for difference of political opinion. he said more: "we loyal catholics could never submit to mr. gladstone's ticket-of-leave men placed in power over us in this country, and rather than submit to them we are prepared for the worst, and ready, if need be, to die with the words, 'no surrender,' on our lips." archbishop walsh cursed the dublin bazaar for the irish masonic orphanage until he was black in the face, but neither he nor any other catholic bishop denounced the perpetrators of outrage, of mutilation, of foul assassinations. when inspector martin was butchered on the steps of the presbytery at gweedore; when joseph huddy and john huddy were murdered and their bodies put in sacks and thrown into lough mask; when mrs. croughan, of mullingar, was murdered because she had been seen speaking to the police, four shots being fired into her body; when luke dillon, a poor peasant, was shot dead as he walked home from work; when patrick halloran, a poor herdsman, was shot dead at his own fireside; when michael moloney was murdered for paying his rent; when john lennane, an old man who had accepted work from a boycotted farmer, was shot dead in the midst of his family; when thomas abram met precisely the same fate under similar circumstances; when constable kavanagh was murdered; when john dillon had his brains beaten out and his ears torn away; when patrick freely was murdered for paying his rent; when john curtin was shot dead by moonlighters, to whom he refused to give up his guns; when john forhan, a feeble old man of nearly seventy years, was murdered for having induced labourers to work on a boycotted farm; when james ruane, a labourer who worked for a boycotted farmer, was murdered by three shots; when james quinn was wounded by a bullet, and while disabled, killed by having his throat cut; when peter mccarthy was murdered because it was thought he meant to pay rent; when james fitzmaurice, aged seventy, was shot dead in the presence of his daughter norah, because he had taken a farm which his brother had left, the latter declining to pay rent, although the landlord offered a reduction of per cent.; when margaret macmahon, widow, and her little children were three times fired at because the poor woman had earned a few pence by supplying turf to the police; when patrick quirke, aged seventy-five, was murdered for taking a farm which somebody else wanted; when the wife of john collins was indecently assaulted while her husband was being brutally beaten for caretaking; when john curtin (another john curtin), a school-master, was shot, and his wife received forty-two slugs in her face, neck, and breast for something they had not done, the school also being fired into, and all children attending it boycotted; when john connor's wife was shot in the head by moonlighters who wished to vex the husband; when cornelius murphy was shot dead while sitting at his "ain fireside" chatting with his wife and children; when daniel o'brien, aged seventy-five, talking with his wife, aged seventy, was murdered by a shot; when patrick quigley had the roof of his skull blown away for taking some grazing; when david barry was shot in the main street of castleisland; when patrick taugney was murdered in the presence of his wife and daughters; when edmund allen was shot dead because of a right-of-way dispute--he was a protestant; when young cashman, aged twenty, was beaten to death for speaking to a policeman; when poor spillane was murdered for acting as a caretaker; when patrick curtin, john rahen, and a farmer named tonery were murdered; when james spence, aged sixty-five, was beaten to death; when blake, ruane, linton, burke, wallace, dempsey, timothy sullivan, john moylan, james sheridan, and constable cox were shot dead; when james miller, michael ball, peter greany, and bridget mccullagh were murdered--the last a poor widow, who was beaten to death with a spade; when ryan foley was brutally murdered; when michael baylan was murdered; when viscount mountmorres was murdered, and the dead body left on the road, the neighbouring farmers being afraid to give the poor corpse the shelter of a barn; when a car-driver named john downey was killed by a bullet intended for mr. hutchins, j.p.; when young wheeler, of oolagh, whence i dated a letter, was shot dead, to punish his father, who was an agent--when all these murders took place, every one of them, and as many more, the work of the land league, which also was responsible for more outrages, filthy indecencies, and gross brutalities than the entire _gazette_ would hold, and which would in many cases be unfit for publication--then were the clergy silent. no denunciations from the altar; no influence exerted in the parish. in many cases a direct encouragement to persevere in the good path. when john curtin's daughters attended church after their father's murder they were attacked by a hostile crowd. the police were compelled to charge the infuriated mob. otherwise the pious papists would in all probability have consummated the good work by murdering the remainder of the family, after having, in the presence of daughters who nobly fought the murderers, assassinated the father. what did the good priest, father o'connor, say to all this; how express his deep sense of this abject cowardice, this atrocious savagery, this unheard-of-sacrilege? he "took no notice of the occurrence"--good, easy man. but i am forgetting something. mr. curtin was killed by a gang of moonlighters, who knocked him up, and, presenting loaded rifles at the children, asked for the father's arms. before the terrified boys and girls could comply the father appeared and shot a moonlighter dead in his tracks. the rest fled precipitately, but unhappily curtin gave chase and was killed. good father o'connor attended the funeral of the moonlighter, who did not belong to his parish, and refused to attend that of mr. curtin, who did! the catholic bishops of ireland stood by and looked on all this without a word of censure. silence gives consent. had they fulminated against outrage and secret wholesale murder of poor working men, for nearly all those i have cited were of this class; had they used their immense influence to stem the murderous instincts of ruffians who in many cases took advantage of the prevailing disregard for human life to wreak their private revenge on their neighbours, satisfied that no man dare testify, and that the clergy would aid them to frustrate the law--had the bishops done this, even the dull and sluggish brain of the brutal saxon could have understood their action. they uttered no single word of condemnation. an eminent catholic, a clever professional man, who reveres the faith in which he was bred, but holds its priesthood in lowest contempt, said to me:--"you cannot find a word of condemnation uttered by any bishop during the whole period when brutal murders were of daily occurrence. i give you your best. i would stake anything on my statement. i have challenged people over and over again, but nobody has ever been able to produce a syllable of censure, of warning, of reprobation. the bishops were strangely unanimous in their silence." but when the irish masons try to provide for the orphans of their brethren the archbishop's back is up at once; for masons have secrets which they may not tell even to priests; and therefore dr. walsh declares that whosoever gives sixpence to this cause of charity, or associates with its promoters, shall be cast into hell, there to abide in torture everlastingly--unless previously whitewashed by himself in person. and as i have clearly shown, the influence of archbishop walsh and his kind is at this moment supremely powerful in matters affecting the prestige and integrity of england and her people. wherefore i do not wonder at the saying of an earnest irishman of famous name, a baronet of long descent, whom i saw yesterday-- "when i see how the thing is being worked, and when, as a catholic, i recognise the progress and character of the church policy, and when i see england walking so stupidly into the trap, i don't know what to do--whether to swear, or to go out and be sick." moycullen (connemara), may rd. no. .--the connemara railway. mr. balfour's railway from galway to clifden will be exactly fifty miles long, and will run through crooniffe, moycullen, ross, oughterard, and the wildest and most desolate parts of connemara. the line has been in contemplation for thirty years at least, but the strong suit of its irish projectors was talking, not doing, and the project might have remained under discussion until the crack of doom but for mr. balfour's energy and administrative power. the irish patriots had no money, or they would not invest any. the galway authorities would not authorise a county rate. anybody who chose might make the line, but the local "powers that be" refused to spend a single penny on an enterprise which would for years provide employment for the starving people of connemara, and would afterwards prove of incalculable benefit to the whole west of ireland by opening up an attractive, an immense, an almost inaccessible tourist district, besides affording facilities of transit for agricultural stock and general market produce, and powerfully aiding the rapidly-developing fish trade of the western sea-board. not a bit of it. the western irish are always standing about waiting for something. they talked about the line for a generation or two, but they cut no sod of turf. they harangued meetings convened to hear the prospective blessings of the line, but they declined to put any money on their opinions. the starving peasants of connemara might have turned cannibals and eaten each other before irishmen had commenced the railway. the people of the congested districts were unable to live on the sympathy of their fellow-countrymen, and nothing else was offered to them. the connemarans have an occasional weakness for food. they like a square feed now and again. their instincts are somewhat material. they think that pity without relief is like mustard without beef. they like sentiment--with something substantial at the back of it. their patriot-brethren, those warm-hearted, dashing, off-hand, devil-may-care heroes of whom we read in charles lever, sometimes visited the district, to rouse the people against the brutal saxon, but they did no more than this. sometimes, i say, not often, did the patriots patrol connemara. there were two reasons for this. first, the irish patriots do not speak their native language; and the connemarans are not at home with english. secondly, and principally, the connemarans had nothing to give away. they cannot pay for first-class patriotism like that of davitt, dillon, o'brien, and tim healy, who latterly have never performed out of london. and so the galway folks went on with their railway discussions, and the poor connemarans went on with their starving. suddenly mr. balfour took the thing up, and the turf began to fly. the midland and western railway company, in consideration of a grant of £ , , agreed to make the line, and to afterwards run it, whether it paid or not. the contractors were not allowed to import unskilled labour. the connemarans were to make the line whether they knew the work or not. they had never seen navvy labour. they knew nothing outside the management of small farms. they had never done regular work. their usual form is to plant their bit of ground and then to sit down till the crops come up, on which they live till next season. a failure of crops means starvation. this was their normal condition. they enjoyed what mr. gladstone would call a "chronic plethora" of hunger. the liverish tourist who adventured himself into these barbarous regions in hopeless quest of appetite for his breakfast, would see the connemarans in hopeless quest of breakfast for their appetites. the region is healthy enough. as justice shallow would say, "beggars all, beggars all. marry, good air." the first thing you see is a twenty-thousand-pound bridge across the corrib, not very far from the salmon weir, where are more fish than you can count splashing up the salmon stairs, which are arranged to save the salmon the effort of a long jump. then the line running along the corrib valley on a high embankment, past the ruins of what was first a convent, then a whiskey distillery, now a timekeeper's office. an entire field is being dug up and carted away, the soil being excavated to a depth of eight or ten feet, over an area of several acres required for sidings and railway buildings. a strolling galway man of home rule tendencies imparts information. he is eminently discontented, and thinks the way in which the work is conducted another injustice to ireland. "the people are working and getting wages, but what wages! thirteen and sixpence a week! would english navvies work for that? you are getting the labour at starvation prices, and even then you bully the men. they work in gangs, each with a ganger swearing at them in the most offensive and outrageous way. see that gang over there. you can hear the ganger shouting and swearing even at this distance. the poor men are treated like dogs, and even then they can hardly keep body and soul together. they have to come miles and miles to the work, and some live so far away that they can only return home once a week. so they have to camp out in hovels. you are going down the line? then you will be shocked at the slave-driving you'll see. it reminds me of legree in 'uncle tom's cabin.' i am surprised that the men do not drop dead over the work. not a moment's rest or relaxation. work, work, work from morning to night, for next to nothing. it ought not to be allowed in a civilised country. and on the top of all this slavery we are expected to be very much obliged for the opportunity of working at all. you chuck us a crust just as you would chuck a bone to a dog, and then you want us to go down on our knees and pour blessings on balfour's head. we're tired of such stuff; but, thank god, we shall soon have things in our own hands. all these men are small farmers, or small farmers' sons. they can't get a living out of the land, and they are obliged to come to this. bullied and driven from week's end to week's end, they are the very picture of starvation. a shame and disgrace to the english government." i may as well say at once that all this proved to be untrue. no doubt the galway home rulers invent and circulate these falsehoods to discount the effect of the good work of a conservative government, and it is, therefore, well that the facts should be placed on record. i pushed on to a cutting where fifty men were busily engaged in loading earth into trucks, having first dug it from a great bank of gravelly soil. an irish ganger walked to and fro along the top, keeping his eye on the men, and occasionally shouting in an excited tone. but he was not swearing at, or otherwise abusing, the men, who were as fine a company of peasants as you could see anywhere, well-built, well-grown, and muscular. not a trace of starvation, but, on the contrary, a well-fed, well-nourished look. the ganger, sullivan, seemed good-tempered enough, only shouting to let off his superfluous vitality. he used no bad language. "cheer up, my lads," he cried. "in wid the dirt. look alive, look alive, look alive. whirroo! shove it up, my lads, shove it up. away ye go. look out for that fall of earth. there she goes. whirroo!" english navvies would have preferred silence, would have requested him to hold his condemned jaw, would have spent some breath in applying an explosive mining term to his eyes, but these irish labourers seemed to understand their superior officer, and to cheerfully accept the situation. mr. sullivan was civil and good-humoured. "these are a picked lot. splendid set of fellows, and good workers. no, they do not walk for miles before they reach their work. the engine runs along the line to pick them up in the morning, and to drop them again in the evening. they have half-an-hour for dinner, and half-an-hour for tea. they get about fifteen shillings a week. boys get less, but thirteen shillings and sixpence is the very bottom. rubbish about low wages. nine bob a week is the regular farmer's wage, and these men would have been glad to work for six bob. all have some land, every man of them. they have just come back from planting it. we have been very short of men. they went away at the beginning of april, and they were away for a fortnight or three weeks. small blame to them. half or three-quarters of them went to look after their bits of ground. but, barrin' that, they turn up very regularly. they get fifteen shillings a week, where they got nothing. and every man knows the convenience the line will be to him to get his bit of stuff to galway market, and also that it will bring money into a country where there was none. they are as contented as can be, and we never hear a word of complaint. we have not heard a grumble since the line was started a year or two ago. these home rulers will say anything but their prayers, and them they whistle. since the work came from the tories it must be bad. there must be a curse on it. now, my lads, shove it up, shove it up! (excuse me, sir.) whirroo, my boys. look out! in wid it, thin! whirroo!" a big tank for engine water was being filled by an old man in shirt and trousers, his naked chest shining a hundred yards away. luke whelan was his name; a vigorous pumper, he. "'tis hard work it is, ye may say it. i have another tank or two to fill, an' keep filled, but i have long rests, and time for a grain o' baccy, glory be to god! thirteen-an'-sixpence it is, but i lost my place at palmer's flour mills, the work gave out, an' but for this i'd have nothin' at all. was in the fifth fusiliers, but lost me sight (partly) in injee. was in the army long enough to get a pension of ninepence a day. me rint is two pounds a year, and i've only the owld woman to kape. ah, but balfour was a blessin' to us altogether! they talk about home rule, but what good will that do us? can we ate it, can we dhrink it, can we shmoke it? the small farmers thinks they'll have the land for nothin', but what about the labourers? everything that's done is done for the farmers, an' the workin' men gets nothin' at all. in england 'tis the workin' men gets all the consideration; but in this counthry 'tis the farmers, an' the workin' men that have no land may hang themselves. when the big farms is all done away who'll employ the labourers? the gintry that spint money an' made things a bit better is all driven out of the counthry by the land league. ye see all around ye the chimneys of places that once was bits of manufactories. all tumblin' down, all tumblin' down. nobody dares invest money for fear he'd be robbed of his property, the same as the landlords was robbed, an' will be robbed, till the end of the chapther. 'tis nothin' but robbery ye hear of, an' gettin' other people's property for nothin'. the home rule bill would dhrive all the workin' men out of the counthry to england and america. they must have employment, an' they must go where it is to be had. engineers have been threatenin' this line for forty years, first one route an' then another, but divil a spade was put in it. england found us the money to build the line, an' the labourers get work. where will we get work whin nobody would lend us money to build lines? an irish parlimint wouldn't build a line in a thousand years. for nobody would thrust thim wid the cash. yes, wid ninepence a day and thirteen shillings and sixpence a week, i'm comfortable enough. but begorra, the pump leaks, an' i have to pump a quarther more than i should. av the pump worked right 'tis little grumblin' ye'd hear from luke whelan." mr. george william wood, contractors' agent, said:--"the men work as well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like english navvies. they are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give the least trouble. of course, they had to be taught, and they did not like the big navvy shovels. they were used to the six-foot spades with no cross-bar. yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but then the irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. the long handle lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. however, we insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all right. these men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not worth nearly so much as english navvies. they may be willing, but they have not the same stamina. the english navvy eats about two pounds of beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale. these men never see meat from one year's end to another. they live on potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. at three in the afternoon they are not worth much, clean pumped out--might almost as well go home. no, they don't live in hovels. those who go home but once a week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings, with good beds and bedclothes. there are about forty of them in a hut, with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. for this excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog is supplied at wholesale prices. we buy largely in dublin, bring it down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and families are supplied to any amount. they effect a saving of at least twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are terribly dear. the whole district has found out this advantage, and they flock to the hut-store from all parts. so balfour is a boon to the country at large." next day i went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from oughterard. it was pay-day, and i clung to the engine along with the engineer, mr. wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. a wild and stony country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on the right, through which the corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising from the channel brilliantly white. "they whitewash the rocks, so that they can be seen by the boats and the cong steamer. englishmen would blow them up and have done with them, but irishmen prefer to whitewash them and sail round them. more exciting i suppose, matter of taste." this from the engineer, a saxon of the usual type. on through bogs, past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple distance. now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple of goats. here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a snowfall. this was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the bigness of a finger. sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only use of the fences, so far as i could see, was to keep thoughtless cattle out. very little tillage. just a few ridges of potatoes, but the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. at long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the succession of lake, rock, and bog. moycullen, six miles from galway, is to have a station; another will be built at ross, ten miles, a third at oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. not a stone laid as yet. at ross a great excavation. the men had just laid bare a huge boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and mr. wood, observing my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot. "no granite _in situ_ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." ten miles from galway a cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line i saw was fenced with a galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and eighteen inches thick. "the men build stone walls with great skill," said mr. wood, "but half the number of english navvies would do more excavating." the pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came forward for their money. all had the same well-nourished sturdy look, and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. they conversed in irish, but they mostly understood english, even if they could not speak it themselves. whole villages were there seemingly of the same name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. there was john toole and john toole pat, john pat toole and pat toole john. permutation was the order of the day. there was tom joyce pat and pat tom joyce, tom joyce sally and tom joyce boy. besides this change ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had pat tom joyce red and pat tom joyce black, red pat tom joyce and black tom joyce pat. this is called joyce's country, before balfour's time depopulating to desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-joyceing in fact. nearly seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in the great civiliser will steam from galway to clifden, inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity. in oughterard i met an american tourist who said, "i should think home rule would about settle old england. the irish people show a most unfriendly spirit, and i have come to the conclusion that there is no such word as gratitude in the irish language. there is some change in this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the agitators have been everything is going to the bad. nothing but distrust and suspicion. no irishman would invest in irish securities. they prefer south americans! that startled me. i am told that tim healy is worth £ , , all got out of home rule, and my informant says that tim would not risk a penny in his own country. tim is a blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks irish securities. where are the business managers of the irish nation coming from? that's what i want to know." i told him of the galway harbour commissioners, who, having been forgiven a government debt of nearly £ , , conceived the idea of building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to unload in the harbour. let me repeat the story for the readers of the _gazette_. the harbour board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right thing would cost £ , . they sent him to the right about, and called in another man. "now," said they, "we can only raise £ , by loans from the board of works. will not that suffice? we give you per cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." the new man said £ , was ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. ultimately they borrowed £ , , which they spent, along with the £ , in hand. then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! no use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. to get the big vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. as the galway men still groan beneath the cruel english yoke, this operation was found impracticable. during some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of another dock in full working order. the stone was just in the way of the vessels, but as there was no parliament in college green, the harbour board had not the heart to fish it up. so it crashed through the bottom of a henderson collier, the owner of which sued the harbour board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. the money never was paid, and never will be. the fortunate winner of the suit will sell his claim for £ in english gold. he was thought to have done well in winning, and my informant, a typical irishman, admired the complainant's successful attack on the harbour board. "but what good come of it at last," i ventured to put in. "nay, that i cannot tell," said he, "but 'twas a glorious victory." the galway harbour board spent £ , or so on a deep dock which they have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the board of works, which collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. the harbour board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no credit, no anything. this is a fair specimen of the business management which characterises the breed of irishmen who favour home rule. the party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk below zero, and they built new tipperary on land to which they had no title; so that the money was completely thrown away. almost every board of guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases where the government has kicked out the poor law guardians elected by the parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the concern for a couple of years. this has been done in several instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good working order, with a balance in the bank. the inference is obvious. would the belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? would englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is curiously remindful of robinson crusoe and his big canoe? would the galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans england and mr. balfour, would not the connemara men have proceeded to starve until the end of time? a keen old railway man who had thravelled, and who had done railway work in california, said to me, "whin we get an oirish parlimint the labourers may jist put on their hats and go over to england. thank god, we'll know something besides farm work now, the whole of us. we can get railroad work in england. there'll be none in oireland, for every mother's son that has money will cut the country. i could take ye fourteen oirish miles from galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses, an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. the owners that used to live in them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land agitation. all are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin' down, an' the people worse off than iver. if the bill becomes law the young men will all be off to england and america. there'll be no work, no money in the counthry. did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to mr. morley?" i confessed that the incident escaped my recollection. "why the cyar-man was a dacent boy, an mister morley axed him how was thrade, an' av he was busy." "no," says the dhriver, "things is quite, very quite," says he. "ye'll be busy when ye get home rule," says mister morley. "but that'll only last a week," says the cyar-man. "an' why so?" says the irish secretary, bein' curious an' lookin' round at the dhriver. "och," says pat; "'twill only take a week to dhrive thim to the boats." "who d'ye mane, wid yer dhrivin' to the boats?" says owld morley. "all the dacent folks that has any money to pay for dhrivin'," says pat, "for bedad they'll be lavin' the counthry." "that was a thriminjus rap for owld morley, but 'twas thrue, an' the divil himself couldn't deny it." "an' can ye tell me why the farmers should have all the land an' not the labourers? an' could ye say why them murdherin' land leaguers in parliament wasn't hung up, the rampagious ruffians?" i could throw no light on these points. my friend had much to say about the land league m.p.'s, and a score of times asked me why they had not been hanged. a hard question to answer, when you come to think of it. does anybody know? oughterard (connemara), may rd. no. .--cultivating irish industry. the city of kings. pronounced athen-rye, with a bang on the last syllable. a squalid town, standing amid splendid ruins of a bygone time. "look what english rule has brought us to," said a village politician, waving his hand from the ivy-covered gateway by which you enter the town to the mean-looking houses around. "that's what we could build when we were left to ourselves, an' this is what we can do afther sivin hundhred years of the saxon." the ruins in question are the remains of fortifications erected after the norman conquest of ireland by the normans, a great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong keep. the ruins of the dominican friary, founded in by meyler, of birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its pendant in the story of a mayence verger, who holds british visitors to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it is said that a mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to be of english extraction, or like the stratford mulberry tree, which is said to be a cutting of a tree said to have grown on the spot where a tree is said to have stood which is said to have been planted by shakespeare. galway abounds in ruined fortalices, tumble-down abbeys, ivied towers and castles, none of which were built by the irish race. the round towers which dot the country here and there, with a few ruined churches, are all that the native irish can claim in the way of architecture. the people here are full of interest. the fair at athenry is something to remember. a very good time it was, cattle selling higher than of yore. the men were queerly, quaintly dressed, speaking irish, getting extremely drunk on vilest whiskey, leaving the town in twos and threes, tumbling in groups by the roadside, reeking heaps of imbruted humanity. the women were numerous, tall, decent, and modest. all wore the shawl as a hood, the shawls of strange pattern unknown in england. all tucked up the dress nearly to the waist, showing the invariable red kirtle. all, or nearly all, were shod with serviceable shoes, such as would astonish the parisian makers of bottines. but these shoes were only for show. the ladies walked painfully about in the unaccustomed leather. they seemed to have innumerable corns, to wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal infirmities. outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. outside the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious, crippling abominations into isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they tucked under their arms as they bounded away like deer. it was pleasant to watch their joy, their freedom, their long springy step as their feet once more struck their native heath. they do not spare their shoes by reason of economy, but because they walk better without them. donned for propriety, doffed for convenience. the young lady who is "on the market" is expected to wear leather on high days and holidays, and she submits--another martyr to fashion. yet even as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, so longeth her sole after her native turf. it was at athenry that i first obtained a precise legal definition of the term congested district, to the effect that wherever the land valuation amounts to less than s. per head of the population the district is held to be congested, and may receive assistance under the act of . the chief item of the board's income is the sum of £ , a year, being interest at - / per cent. per annum on the sum of £ , , referred to in the act as the church surplus grant. the board may, under certain conditions, use the principal, if needful. two other smaller sums are also available, and the unexpended balance of the irish distress fund has been applied to the completion of the bealdangan causeway in connemara. this was mr. balfour's suggestion. there is a widespread idea that only the sea-board is touched, and that only fishermen have reaped the benefit of the act. this is entirely erroneous. the board works unceasingly at the development of agriculture, the planting of trees, the breeding of live stock and poultry, the sale of seed potatoes and seed oats, the amalgamation of small holdings, migration, emigration, weaving and spinning, and any other suitable industries, as well as in aid of fishing and fishermen. besides the innumerable direct and indirect methods by which agriculture and industries are assisted in production, the board has laboured successfully in the establishment of such means of communication, by railway, steamship, or otherwise, as will enable goods to be imported and exported at rates sufficiently low to make trade possible and profitable to producers and consumers in remote congested districts. another popular error arises from regarding the work of the board as merely a means of relief during periods of exceptional distress. mr. balfour would be the first to deprecate this notion. his scheme was constructed with a view to bringing about a gradual and lasting improvement in the poor districts of ireland, by putting the people in a way to help themselves, and not by doling out large sums in charity. the works, which are wrongly called "relief works," are in every instance a well-considered effort to permanently and materially improve the trade and resources of a given area in connection with agriculture and miscellaneous industries. such was the invariable principle of every action of the board while under mr. balfour's administration. the people have been taught better methods, and helped to carry out the instruction they had received. the royal dublin society has in some instances employed an instructor, whose duty it has been to teach the people the best system of cultivating portions or plots of their holdings, and to encourage them by gifts of seed and by giving prizes to those who were most successful in carrying out the instructions of their teacher. it is conceded that by proper management, by the adoption of modern methods of farming such as are well within the grasp of the smallest landowner, the produce of irish farms might be increased from one-third to one-half. consider the effect of this unassailable proposition on the eternal question of rent. the question can hardly be over-estimated. compare the solidity, the practicability, the substantial usefulness of this kind of help, with the weak pandering to sentiment displayed by the present government. the board admits that no matter how vigorously and constantly agricultural improvements are inculcated, the tenants of ireland are tardy in their adoption. the small farmers dislike change, and at the present moment they are rapidly slipping back into their old grooves. they believe that the old system will pay when they have no rent-days to meet. the balfour administration encouraged honesty, industry, self-reliance. the morley government puts a premium on idleness, unthrift, retrogression, and dishonesty. it is easier to half-till the land, paying small rents or none at all, than to get the utmost out of the land with the object of paying the landlord his due. the board is carrying on the afforestation of ireland, which in many parts is almost without trees. when the potato crop failed in mr. balfour commenced to plant trees on the western sea-board. in a sum of £ , was spent in draining, fencing, and roadmaking, and in planting acres of acquired by the tory government for the purpose. in a further sum of £ , was spent in carrying on the work. it is said that a previous liberal government had rejected the scheme on the ground that trees would not grow in a situation exposed to the salt gales of the atlantic, but mr. balfour's trees have thriven remarkably well. he tried all sorts, convinced that something should be done, and that an ounce of experiment was worth a pound of theory. sycamore, ash, elm, beech, birch, poplar, alder, larch, scotch fir, spruce, silver fir, sea buckthorn, elder, and willow--he gave them all a chance, some as main plantations, some as shelter belts. all proved successful except the silver fir. besides this, three hundred and fifty holdings have been planted with shelter belts, and about six hundred and fifty more were being planted when mr. balfour loosed the reins. an eminent irishman, a great authority on this subject, assures me that he could dictate similar facts for a week without stopping to search his memory. mr. gladstone proposes to place the poor people of ireland under a government utterly inexperienced in the administration of great matters, utterly unreliable where the handling of money is concerned, utterly ignorant of business methods and business routine. the fate of the destitute poor and the fortunes of the well-to-do classes are to be at the mercy of men whose business ventures have been absurdly unsuccessful, who believe that to aid the poor you must rob the rich, and that the no-rent manifesto, the plan of campaign, and the land league, with its story of outrage and murder, were the perfection of modern statesmanship. the balfour system teaches men to help themselves. the morley system teaches men to help themselves to their neighbour's goods. my friend gave a few more instances of useful assistance rendered by what the poor folks call the blessed board. special arrangements have been made to enable the farmers to improve the breed of horses. the queen presented an arabian horse named tirassan to the county donegal. bulls of superior breed have been sold to decent, honest farmers at one-third of their cost, and this small figure was payable in two yearly instalments. about two hundred black-faced scotch rams and cheviot rams have been located in donegal and galway free of charge, and young boars of the pure yorkshire breed are sold to certain selected farmers at a nominal charge on certain conditions calculated to prove useful to the neighbourhood. the breeding and rearing of poultry has received a world of attention, and the poor folks who make a little money by the sale of eggs have been supplied with the best information and substantial assistance. in a former letter i described the aran sea-fisheries, and before that i adverted to the fact that the shetland fishermen came to the irish coast, caught ling, and brought it back salted to sell to irish fishermen. the board has engaged an experienced fish-curer from norway to show irishmen how the thing is done, and english and scotch fish-curers have been sent to several stations to give instruction in mackerel and herring-curing. fifteen fish-curing stations are now in full swing, and the poor irish fishermen, instead of buying salt ling at d. a pound, are now selling it at £ to £ per ton. a big steamer has been chartered to carry the salt, the fish, and for other useful purposes. contrast this work and these results with the work of the irish agitators and with that of messrs. gladstone, morley, and co. sentiment and starvation versus salt fish and satiety. a red-faced yorkshireman who knows all about fish-curing, said:--"when first i came here i'm blest if the men wasn't transparent. you could see through 'em like lookin' through the rungs of a ladder. now the beggars are growin' double chins. now they're a-gettin' cheeky. they're like a hoss as has had a feed of corn. they was meek an' mild enough when i come over. now they're a-gettin' perky, an' a-talkin' politics. they usen't to see no agitators. they never had no meetin's; why? there was no chance of a collection. sometimes i gets down on 'em proper. 'tother day i says, 'you chaps, wi' yer home rule, i says, reminds me of a character in the bible, i says.' bein' catholics, they don't read the bible for theirselves. the priests read it for 'em. but one of 'em cocks up his nose, an' he says, 'we're like a character in the bible, are we? well,' he says, 'who was he?' "'you're like the wild ass that sniffed up the wind instead of goin' in for sommat more substantial,' i says. that's what i told 'em. they did look down their noses, i tell you. an' they fell to talkin' i' irish. they couldn't answer me, do what they would." before leaving the connemara district i paid a second visit to oughterard in order that i might see the progress made by irishmen in the art of railway making. a gang or two were engaged in the comparatively skilled work of rail-laying, and the way they got over the ground was truly surprising. two trucks stood on the line already laid, one bearing sleepers, the other loaded with steel rails. four or five couples of men shouldered sleepers and laid them on the track at spots marked by a club-footed irishman, who swore at everything with a vigour which spoke well for his wind. several men lifted a thirty feet length of rail, weighing nearly six hundred-weight, and laid it on the sleepers, when it was instantly bolted and secured. the same having been done on the other side, the trucks were pushed along the newly-laid ten yards, and the process was repeated, the irish ganger above-mentioned swearing till the surrounding bogs seemed to quake. an unhappy connemaran having dropped his end of the sleeper a few inches from the right spot, was cursed through the entire dictionary, the ganger winding up a solemn declaration that he had not seen anything so blankly and double-blankly and forty times blankly idiotic since "the owld goat died." an english ganger hard by never spoke at all, but no doubt his men felt lonely. a labourer who had hurt his foot, and was awaiting a friendly truck to take him home, said of the swearer:-- "he manes no harm, an' the boys doesn't care a rap for his swearin'. these men want no elbowin' on, for they are paid by the piece, so that the harder they work the more they get. all irish gangers swear like that. an' irish farm bailiffs is jist the same. onless they're cussin' an' rippin' an' tearin' they don't think they're doin' the work for which they're paid, an' they don't think their masthers would be contint wid thim. av an irish landlord that kept a bailiff didn't hear him swearin' three miles away, he'd discharge him for not workin'. english gangers an' bailiffs says very little, an' ye wouldn't think they wor doin' anythin'. 'tis quare at first, but ye get used to it in time." travelling in any country is always instructive, no matter how much about that country you previously knew. my lame friend may have unconsciously suggested an explanation of the speeches and conduct of the irish nationalist parliamentary contingent. unless they kept up the cursin' an' swearin', an' rippin' an' tearin', so that they can be heard across the atlantic, their american paymasters might not be contint wid thim, and might withhold the sinews of war. once it is understood that the irish patriots must revile all and sundry to earn their pay, the situation is to some extent explained. few of them are likely to fail in this supreme requirement. six pounds a week for abusing the brutal saxon is far better than the pound or thirty shillings of their pre-political days. they have no inducement to earn an honest living. the story of the galway bag factory may serve as a pendant to the story of mr. mcmaster's effort to benefit the catholic peasantry of the counties of galway and donegal. the concern had stopped for lack of funds, and father peter dooley went round the town endeavouring to induce people to take shares in the concern, in order that the poor folks of the district might have employment. the mills were reopened, and at first, just at first, the people attended work with tolerable regularity. they then fell off, coming for half a day, coming not at all. the management actually instituted prizes for regularity of attendance. the people, who professed to be dying for employment, had to be bribed to come to work. even this was ineffectual, and as a certain number of people were required to work a loom, the absence of one or two made the loom and the other workpeople idle, and as, in order to pay expenses, every loom required to be constantly worked, this skulking was not only annoying, but also a ruinous loss. mr. miller, the manager, was compelled to get people over from scotland, after having long placarded the walls of galway with notices of vacancies which no galway girls attempted to fill up. father peter remonstrated, and pointed out that as he had been instrumental in reopening the factory, he thought mr. miller should oblige him by engaging galway girls. the manager showed him the placards, and said that if father peter would bring the people he would find them employment. father peter dooley went into the highways and hedges, but not a soul could he bring in, although mr. miller seems to have been so desperately beset that he would have jumped at the blind, the maimed, the halt, and the lame. the good father was beaten, but then he had a reason--an excellent reason. when things go wrong in ireland, it is always some other fellow's fault, just as when the french are beaten in battle they always scream _nous sommes trahis_! bad characters had been admitted to the looms. manager was surprised. let father peter point them out, and away they go--if father peter did not hesitate to cast them again on the streets of galway. two girls were dismissed. some of the old workpeople returned to work intermittently, as before. father peter wanted the two girls reinstated. the manager declined to see-saw in this way, and sacrilegious scotsman as he was, dared to say that nothing went well when bossed by priests! from that moment that manager was blighted. his sight grew dim, his hearing became dull, his liver got out of order, his corns grew more numerous and more painful, and a bald spot was seen on his crown. the people worked as before, by fits and starts, but more fitty and starty than ever. the factory was closed, and the manager died. they buried him about a week ago, a sort of human jackdaw of rheims without the curse taken off. protestants say the galway workpeople wore him down, broke his spirit and broke his heart, but catholics know better. the only wonder was that instead of being instantly consumed by fire from heaven, miller was permitted to waste away by slow degrees. but that was father dooley's good nature. the galwegians say that a belfast firm has taken the mill, and that therefore its future success is assured. the cutest citizens say that this entirely depends on the manager's theory as to workpeople. if he brings them with him, well and good. the work will be done although the workpeople may be boycotted. and then the irish will have another grievance. they will be able to point to the fact that of a large number of workpeople only a small proportion of catholics are employed. this is the trick of nationalists when speaking of the intolerance of belfast. the officials of that city, and indeed, of every city in ireland, are mostly protestants, not because of this, but because they are better men. the belfast merchants and the belfast corporation have a keen eye to the main chance, as is abundantly proved by their success, and in business matters they will have the best men, whether protestants, catholics, jews, turks, or infidels. whatever the cause, it is certain that protestantism turns out a far larger proportion of able men, and in ulster, at any rate, you rarely meet a catholic who is worth his salt. the catholics of ulster lack, not toleration, but brains, industry, and business capacity. anyone who compares the harbours of cork and galway with belfast will at once appreciate the situation. wherefore let not the keltic irish waste their time in clamouring for the redress of non-existent grievances, but buckle to and make their own prosperity. the destinies of nations, like those of individuals, are in their own hands. honest work is never wasted work. selah. athenry, may th. no. .--could we reconquer ireland? the country people call this place "the back of god-speed," "the back of the world," and "the divil's own hunting ground," but why they do it nobody seems to know. the village is on the road to nowhere, and i dropped on it, as it were, accidentally, during a long drive to the remotest end of galway bay. yet even here i found civilised people who regard the proposed college green parliament with undisguised aversion. not the inhabitants, but irish tourists, bent on exploring the wildest and remotest nooks of their native land, among them a dublin barrister, whose critical analysis of the powers proposed to be entrusted to the unscrupulous and self-seeking promoters of the land league may prove useful and interesting to non-legal english readers. a galway gentleman having during the drive pointed out a large number of desolate mansions rapidly falling into ruin, the conversation turned on the universal subject, and my legal friend embarked on a dissertation on the iniquity of the gladstone land laws, which have had the effect of ruining a large number of the country gentry of ireland, driving them from their native shores, impoverishing the landlords without any perceptible benefit to the tenants, who appear to be no better off than ever. what surprised him most was the arrant nonsense talked by the english gladstonians, and the blindness and apathy of the english people generally, who in his opinion were being gradually led to the brink of a frightful abyss, which threatened to swallow up the prestige and prosperity of the british people. he said:-- "have englishmen forgotten the previous history of the men she is now on the point of entrusting with her future? are englishmen unacquainted with the traditional hatred of the irish malcontents? do they not know the aspirations of the catholic clergy, and are they ignorant of their immense influence with the masses? surely they are, or they would rise in their might and instantly trample out the present agitation, which has for its aim and end, not the benefit of ireland, not the pacification of the people, who are perfectly peaceful if left alone, not the convenience of ireland in matters which should be managed by local self-government, but the absolute independence of the country, the creation of a national army, and the affiliation of ireland with some foreign power hostile to england, such as either america or france, as occasion might serve. america is largely in the hands of the irish electorate, and american politicians would not be particularly scrupulous how they purchased irish support. no need to point out the embarrassing complications likely to result from giving large powers to men who are essentially inimical to england. you can do justice without putting your own head on the block. it has been my business to analyse the bill, in conjunction with other lawyers, home rule and otherwise in political colour, and we are all agreed that the so-called safeguards amount to nothing, and it would be incomparably safer for england to throw over the country altogether. because that is what it must ultimately come to, and we think it would be better to avoid the inevitable agitation, the terrible difficulties foreshadowed by the measure, difficulties which would assuredly lead to the reconquest or the attempted reconquest of the country. "gladstonians say this is an absurd idea, that ireland could offer no resistance worth mentioning, that the british arms would prove instantly victorious over any show of resistance. but would you have ireland alone to reckon with? once give her the prestige of a spurious independence, once give to your enemies control over the resources of the country, and you would find the task of reconquest much more arduous than you think. the fact that england's distress would be ireland's opportunity has been so often insisted upon, both by unionists and the nationalists themselves, that i need say nothing on this point, which, besides, is so obvious as to be in itself a sufficient answer to the home rule agitation under present circumstances. but even supposing that you had no eastern and european difficulty--and we know not from one moment to another when war may break out--supposing you only had ireland to reconquer, do you think this an agreeable prospect? do you think that reconquest would settle the irish question? do you believe that the shooting of a few hundred patriots by the british grenadiers would further what they call the union of hearts? "these followers of mr. gladstone who say, 'let them have home rule to quiet the country, to relieve the house from the endless discussion of the irish question so that we can proceed with the disestablishment of the church, the local option bill, and the thousand-and-one other fads for which english home rulers have sold themselves'--the men who say this, and who also say 'if they kick over the traces we can instantly tighten the reins and reduce them to order,' surely these folks cannot be aware that the gladstone-morley government is unable to give strachan, of tuam, the land which he has bought and paid for in the land courts. the british government cannot collect the rents of colonel o'callaghan, of bodyke; nor can it prevent the daily cases of moonlighting and outrage which are so carefully hushed up, and which hardly ever get into irish newspapers. when the british government cannot make a few farmers either pay their rent or leave the land, the said government having control over the police and civil officers of the law, how is it going to collect the purchase money of the farms, in the form of rent, when it has not this control? "the new police will be in the hands of a parliament, elected by these very farmers, who, so to speak, have tasted blood, have ceased to make efforts to pay rent, have been encouraged in their refusal to pay by the very men mr. gladstone proposes to entrust with the whole concern! will these farmers suddenly turn round and say, 'we declined to pay when english rule would have forced payment, we shall be delighted to pay when nothing could make us do so?' i have been connected with irish farmers and landowners for thirty years as a land specialist, and i tell you that the thing will work exactly as i have said. put the rebel party in power, and see what will happen to you. it is hard to believe that englishmen will act so stupidly in a matter so vitally affecting their own interests. that is why educated people both in ireland and england do not believe the bill will ever become law. they cannot conceive the final acceptance of anything so utterly preposterous. but call on me to-morrow, and i will go into the legal possibilities of the question." so i gathered posies of bog-bean bloom and walked round the big boulders with which this sterile region is thickly strewn. the natives know nothing of home or any other rule, and you might as well speak to them of the darwinian theory, or the philosophy of herbert spencer, or the homeric studies of the grand old man, or the origin of the sanskrit language. the only opinion i could glean was the leading idea of simple irish agriculturists everywhere. a young fellow who appeared to be in a state of intellectual advancement so far beyond that of the other barnans as to be almost out of sight, said:-- "i'm towld that there's to be a parlimint in galway city that's to find imploymint for the people, an' that ivery man is to have five acres of good land for nothin', and that if it isn't good land he is to have ten acres, and that there's to be an oirish king in dublin, an' that all the sojers an' pleecemen is to be put out o' the counthry, an' all protestants is to go to england, an' that's all very good, but the protestants might be allowed to stay, for they're dacent folks, but thin they say that nobody's to howld land but the catholics." i met an old lady clad in the short skirt of the connaught peasantry, walking bare-headed, bare-footed, and almost bare-legged from chapel, carrying a bottle of holy water, probably destined for some important purpose within the sacred precincts of the domestic circle. perhaps the old man was rheumatic, or it may be that the fairies had spoilt the butther, or that the cow was bewitched, or that the shadow of a black protestant had fallen across the threshold. she was a promising subject for original conversation, but unhappily she could speak no english. my galway friend explained the bottle, and said "here we have true religion. if you want the genuine, unadulterated article you must come to galway, and especially to barna. look how she clings to it, how she holds it to her breast, how reverentially she looks down on it. suppose she caught her foot on a stone, stumbled, and broke the bottle! horrid thought, involving (perhaps) eternal damnation, (unless she were quickly absolved by the priest). there is piety for you! as a good catholic i am ashamed of myself when i think how little religion (comparatively) there is in me. education has been a curse. how happy i should be if i had that old woman's simple, strong belief in the virtues of holy water, especially when carried home in a well-washed whiskey bottle. but, somehow, the more we catholics know the less we believe. we go regularly to mass, at any rate i do (my wife is very devout), but i fear that catholics have less and less faith in proportion to their culture. but for the women catholicism would not hold its ground among the higher classes of irishmen for so much as five-and-twenty minutes." it seems to me that the belief of uncultured irishmen as to the immense benefits to be derived from home rule is exactly on a par with the belief of uncultured irishwomen as to the immense benefits to be derived from the sprinkling of holy water. no reasonable man, who has carefully examined the subject, will for one moment assert that there is a pin to choose between the two. the votes of these poor folks, admitted by thousands to the electorate, have sent to westminster the hireling orators whose persistent clamour has turned a slippery statesmen from the paths of patriotism and propriety, and whose subterranean machinations--aided and abetted by men versed in jesuistic and machiavellian strategy, and who believe that the end justifies the means--threaten to undermine the british empire, and to involve the citizens of england in political and financial ruin. a pretty pass for a respectable individual like john bull. england to be worked by the wire-pulling of a few under-bred, half-educated priests! whose tincture of learning john himself has paid for--poor bull, who seems to pay for everything, and who would gladly have paid for gentility, too, if the maynooth professors could have injected the commodity by means of a hypodermic syringe, or even by hydraulic pressure. no use in attempting impossibilities. as well endeavour to communicate good manners or gratitude to a nationalist m.p. my legal friend was full of matter, but many of his points were too technical for the general reader. he said:--"absurd to ask what an irish parliament _will_ do, because we know the tendencies of the present men. we must ask what it _can_ do, for it is certain that its members will from time to time be replaced by men of more 'advanced' opinions. appetite grows by what it feeds on, and the irish people want to pose as an independent nation. englishmen and scotchmen say ireland would never be so foolish, and i am not surprised that they should say this. but when did irishmen act on the lines of englishmen or scotchmen? they never did; they never will. the peoples are actuated by entirely different motives. englishmen look at what is going to pay. they act on whatever basis promises the most substantial return. irishmen are swayed by sentiment." here i remembered a remark of father mcphilpin, parish priest of kilronane, aran isles. he said:--"the irish people act more for fancy and less for money than any nation on earth. the poorest classes have less sentiment than the middle classes. they are too closely engaged in securing a livelihood. but the great difficulty of the english in managing the irish lies in the fact that the english people work on strictly business principles, and that the irish do not. the english people do not at all understand the irish; and the reason is perfectly clear to me. they do not appreciate the extent to which mere sentiment will move the irish race, mere sentiment, as opposed to what you would call business principles." returning to my barrister. he continued:--"the dublin bar has decided--has formally decided--that so far as the action of the executive is concerned the irish parliament will be a supreme and irresponsible body. the action of its officers will not be in any way subject to the review of the english government. what does this mean? simply that the life, the liberty, the property of every citizen will be entirely in the hands of the irish government. do the english people know this? i think not. for if they did know, surely they would think twice before they committed decent people to the tender mercies of the inventors and supporters of the land league, with its ten thousand stories of outrage and murder." "give instances of what they can do, say you? they can refuse police protection to persons whose lives are in danger from the national league. and, as you know, scores of persons are at this moment under protection in ireland. mr. blood, of ennis, would be shot on sight; mr. strachan, of tuam, would be torn to pieces, if without the three, or four policemen who watch over him day and night; the caretakers on the bodyke estate would get very short shrift, once the sixteen policemen who guard the two men were removed. blood discharged a labourer, strachan bought a farm. if, under the now _régime_, a farmer paid rent against the orders of the national league; if a man persisted in holding land from which someone had been evicted years ago; if a man worked for a boycotted person or in any way supported him, although it were his own father, he would be in danger of his life. would the new government give police protection to such people? to do so would be to stultify themselves. "then again the irish executive can refuse police protection to sheriffs' officers who desire to execute writs for non-payment of rent. no, i do _not_ think they would refuse a police escort to sheriffs' officers proceeding to distrain on the belfast manufacturers. i think they would order a strong force to proceed, fully armed, and i am of opinion that the police would require all the weapons they could carry. not a stiver would they get in belfast, until backed by the queen's troops. then the ulstermen would pay--to refuse next year. so the process will go on and on, with bloodshed and slaughter every time, the british army enforcing the demands of rebels, against loyalists who sing 'god save the queen,' quite in the opera bouffe style of gilbert and sullivan, isn't it? can't you get gilbert to do a home rule opera comique? the absurdities of the situation are already there. no invention required. immense hit. wish i knew gilbert. money in it. english people might see the thing in the true light, if presented in comic songs, with a rattling chorus. friend of mine bringing out a gladstone suppression company unlimited, forty million shares at twopence-halfpenny each. at a premium already. money subscribed ten times over." "and won't the new parliament have a high old time with the new land commission. messrs. healy and co. will have the appointment of the land commissioners, whose function will be to fix rent. wouldn't you like to be a landlord under such conditions? don't you think that the rents will be reduced until the landlords are used up? remember that the total extinction of the landlords and their expulsion from the country have been over and over again promised by the very men in whose hands you, or rather mr. gladstone will place them. no; i exculpate the english people from returning him to power, i know that the brains of england as well as those of ireland are against him. but the english people stand by and see the thing pressed forward, hoping for the best. they rely on their immense wealth and energy to get them out of any hole they may get into. i am reminded of captain webb, who said, 'i am bound to have a go at the niagara rapids. i know it's infernal risky and therefore infernally foolish, but i must have cash, and i expect i shall pull through somehow.' and i once met a sailor who said that his skipper had not his equal for getting the ship out of a scrape, nor yet his equal for getting into one. same with england. webb did not come up again. might be the same with bull. england is risking all for peace, just as webb risked all for money. "the irish parliament may, after three years, break every contract having regard to land, no matter when or how made. think of the ferment during that three years of waiting. think of the situation of farmers as well as that of landowners. who will work the land and do the best for the country without security? then the college green folks will have power to establish an armed and disciplined force. the irish army of independence is already recruiting all over the country. for what? is it to assist england? is it friendly to england? why, the very foundation of its sentiment is undying animosity to england. and your english home rulers say, 'quite right, too, the irish have good reason for their hatred!' gladstonians come over here, mingle with haters of their native land, and earn a little cheap popularity by slanging john bull. they get excellent receptions when they speak in that vein, especially if they have any money to spend. but what do the irish think of them? the poor fools make me sick, splashing their cash about and vilifying england for the cheers of fenians and the patronage of maynooth priests. a lady from wolverhampton, a good, kind lady, was woefully imposed upon somewhere in connemara. a priest told me; a priest you have met." here the name was given. "he laughed at the simplicity of this well-meaning benefactor, who was shown nineteen processes for rent, and who shelled out very liberally at the sight." "seventeen of them were old ones! the rent had already been paid. but whenever an english _gobemouche_ called around out came the old writs until they were clean worn out. they were a splendid source of income while they lasted." this reminded me of a bodyker, who said:--"a man named lancashire came here from manchester or birmingham--i think it was birmingham--and said he was going into the next parliament, and that he was a great friend of mr. gladstone. he was very kind, and seemed made of money, and said he'd make england ring with our wrongs. my son had his name on a card, but a lawyer in limerick said the name hadn't got in. i forget it now. d'ye know anybody, sorr, of the name of lancashire that's a great friend o' misther gladstone, an' that lives in birmingham, an' that didn't get in?" these irish peasants ask more questions than anybody can answer. they have a keen scent for cash, especially when the coin is in the keeping of english gladstonians. they believe with the claimant that "sum folks has branes, and sum folks has money, and them what has money is made for them what has branes." the bodyke farmers and the peasantry of connemara believe that english home rulers have money. impossible to escape the natural inference. barna (co. galway), may th. no. .--what rack-rent means. i am disposed to call this quiet inland place a fishing village. the people not only sell fish and eat fish, but they talk fish, read fish, think fish, dream fish. the fishing industry keeps the place going. anglers swarm hither from every part of the three kingdoms. last year there were five fishing colonels at the greville arms all at once. brown-faced people who live in the open air, and who are deeply versed in the mysteries of tackle, cunning in the ways of trout, pike, perch, and salmon, walk the streets clad in tweed suits, with strong shoes and knickerbockers. the mullingar folks despise the dictum of the american economist who said that every town without a river should buy one, as they are handy things to have. they boast of three magnificent lakes, and they look down on the athlone people, thirty miles away, with their trumpery shannon, of which they are so proud, but which the mullingar folks will tell you is not worth the paper it is written on. lough owel, five miles long by two or three wide; lough derravarra, six miles by three or four; and lough belvidere, eight miles by three, all of which are in the immediate vicinity, may be considered a tolerable allowance of fishing water for one country town. lough belvidere, formerly called lough ennell, with its thousands of acres of water, would perhaps meet with the approval of the yankee who called the mediterranean "a nice pond," not for its size, but for its exceeding beauty. and the most remarkable feature about the fisher-enthusiasts of mullingar, is the fact, the undoubted, well-attested fact, that they actually catch fish. english anglers, who in response to the inquiries of new arrivals at any anglican fishing resort state that they have caught nothing yet, having only been fishing for a fortnight, will hardly believe that at mullingar their countrymen catch fish every day, and big fish too. the lake trout vary from five to twenty pounds in weight, but the latter are not often seen. nine-pounders are reckoned fairly good, but this weight excites no remark. how big the pike may be i know not, but mr. herring, of london, on monday last, fishing in lough derravarra, hauled out a specimen which looked more like a shark than a pike. he weighed over thirty-six pounds, and measured four feet three inches over all. _hoc egomet oculis meis vidi._ birmingham anglers who win prizes with takes of four-and-a-half ounces would have recoiled in affright from the monster, even as he lay dead in the entrance hall of the greville arms. old women stand at the street corners with silver eels like boa-constrictors, for which they wish to smite the saxon to the tune of sixpence each. i vouch for the pike and eels, but confess to some dubiety _re_ the story of a fat old english gentleman, who said, "i don't care for fishing for the sake of catching fish. i go out in a boat, hook a big pike, lash the line to the bow, and let the beggar tow me about all day. boating is my delight. towards evening i cut my charger loose, and we part with mutual regret. inexpensive amusement; more humane than ordinary fishing." mullingar is a thriving town situate in a fertile district. the land is very rich, and the rents are reasonable. the farmers are well off, and admit the soft impeachment. they are home rulers to a man, and they boldly give their reasons. "did ye ever know a man who was contint wid a good bargain when he has a prospect of a better bargain still?" said a prosperous agriculturist residing a mile outside the town. the country around has a decidedly english appearance. fat land, good roads, high hedges, daisied meadows, and decent houses everywhere. the main street is long, wide, clean, well-paved, well-built. the shopkeepers who live in the surrounding district make money, and when they "go before," cut up for surprising sums. said mr. gordon, "everybody here has money. the people are downright well off. living in constant communication with dublin, fifty miles away on the main line of the midland and western railway, they have adopted the prevailing politics of the metropolis. they do not understand what home rule means, and they blindly believe that they will do better still under a dublin parliament. i am quite certain of the contrary. suppose we want £ for some improvement, who will lend us the money? i am satisfied that the prosperity of the place would immediately decline. the priests influence the people to an extent englishmen can never understand. the protestant clergy do not intervene in mundane matters, but the catholic clergy consider it their duty to guide the people in politics as well as in religion. given home rule, protestantism and protestants would be nowhere. there is no doubt in my mind on this point." mr. mason said:--"the whole agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a severe land measure, which would have the effect of further reducing the rents. no doubt all previous land legislation has been very severe, and i do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. i merely say that the people do not want home rule, but they want the advantages which they are told will accrue from home rule. if the measure is not to benefit them in a pecuniary sense, then they do not care two straws about it. do the english people grasp the present position of landowner and tenant respectively? let me state it in a very few words.-- "formerly the landowner was regarded as the owner of the land. at the present moment, and without a line of further legislation, the tenant is the real owner, and not the nominal landlord at all. for owing to reduction of rent, fixity of tenure, free sale, and the tenant-right, the tenant is actually more than two-thirds owner. this is a matter of cash and not of theory, for the tenants' rights are at this moment worth more than double the fee-simple of the land itself. what will the gladstonian party who prate about rack-rents say to this?" this seems a suitable opportunity for calling attention to the term rack-rents, which in england is almost universally misunderstood. separatist speakers invariably use the term as denoting an excessive rent, an impossible rent--a rent, which is, as it were, extorted by means of the rack. the term is purely legal, and denotes a rent paid by all yearly tenants, whether their rent, as a whole, be high or low. the lowest-rented yearly tenant in the country is paying rack-rent. the whole case for the farmers has been obscured and a false issue raised by the constant use of this term, to which a new meaning has been given. another common term is found in the word head-rent, of which gladstonians know no more than of rack-rent. when head-rent comes to be discussed in england we shall have home rulers explaining that the term refers to decapitation of tenants for non-payment of rack-rent. this explanation will not present any appreciable departure from their usual vein. an english home ruler who supports mr. gladstone "because his father did," and who first landed in ireland yesterday, said, "i do not approve of ascendency. hang the rights of property! give me the rights of intellect. let us have equality. treat the irish fairly, even generously. they should have equal rights with englishmen. why keep them down by force of bayonets? live and let live, that's what i say. equal laws and equal rights for all." that is the usual patter of the self-satisfied separatist, who, having delivered himself, looks around him with an air which seems to say--"what a fine fellow i am, how generous, fair, disinterested. have i not a noble soul? did you ever see such magnanimity? can anybody say anything against such sentiments? thank heaven that i am not as other men, nor even as this unionist." he is plausible, but no more. the mob which applauds the hero and hisses the villain of a melodrama pats him on the back, while he looks upward with his hand on his heart and a heaven-is-my-home expression in his eye. put him under the microscope--he needs it, and you will see him as he is. the platitudes in which he lives, and moves, and has his being have no foundation in fact. his talk is grand, but it lacks substance. it is magnificent, but it is not sense. listen to what a statesman has said:-- "i have looked in vain for the setting forth of any practical scheme of policy which the imperial parliament is not equal to deal with, and which it refuses to deal with, and which is to be brought about by home rule." "there is nothing ireland has asked, and which this country and this parliament has refused. this parliament has done for ireland what it would have scrupled to do for england or scotland." "what are the inequalities of england and ireland? i declare that i know none, except that there are certain taxes still remaining, which are levied over englishmen and scotchmen, and which are not levied over irishmen; and, likewise, that there are certain purposes for which public money is freely and largely given in ireland, and for which it is not given in england and scotland." i read this deliverance to my gladstonian friend, who was staggered to learn upon incontrovertible evidence, to wit, the printed report of his speech, that these were the publicly expressed opinions of the grand old man, whose pandering to irish opinion as expressed by outrage dates from the time of the clerkenwell explosion. that his conversion to home rule is entirely attributable to the endless murders and atrocities of the land league, the invincibles, and other fenian organisations, is universally admitted in ireland by unionists and nationalists alike. and once an irish parliament is granted, how will he resist the demand for irish independence, for the irish republic affiliated with america? query--if a given number of murders were required to bring about home rule, how many murders will be required to effect complete separation? a mere question in arithmetic. concurrently with the compulsory withdrawal of the union jack displayed by my friend mrs. gibson, of northern hotel, londonderry, another occurrence, this time in the south, will serve to attest the progress made by the inventor and patentee of the union of hearts. during the progress of a cricket match on the killarney athletic grounds, between the clubs of limerick and kerry, on whit-monday, a union jack was hoisted, not as a political banner, but as an ornament, and the only banner available for the purpose. it was left flying when the cricketers went home, but in the morning it lay prone and dishonoured. the forty-foot spar had been sawn through, and in falling had smashed the palings. let a chorus of musical gladstonians march through ireland bearing the union jack and singing "god save the queen," let them do it, with or without police protection, and i will gladly watch their progress, record their prowess, and will have great pleasure in writing their obituary notice. the people, as a whole, are enemies to england. they are filled with a blind, unreasoning, implacable resentment for injuries they have never received, their dislike engendered and sustained by lying priests and selfish agitators, who are hastening to achieve their ends, alarmed at the prospect of popular enlightenment, which would for ever hurl them from power. the opinions of cardinal logue have been quoted by lord randolph churchill. the _freeman's journal_ is still more absolute. does this sound like the union of hearts? does this give earnest of final settlement, of unbroken peace and contentment, of eternal fraternity and friendship? the _freeman_ says, "we contend that the good government of ireland by england is _impossible_, not so much by reason of natural obstacles, but because of the radical, essential difference in the public order of the two countries. this, considered in the abstract, makes a gulf profound, impassible--_an obstacle no human ingenuity can remove or overcome_." this promises well for the success of the home rule bill; but why is the thing "impossible"? why is the gulf not only profound but also "impassible"? why is the good government of ireland by england prevented by an obstacle beyond human ability to remove, and which, as mr. gladstone would say, "passes the wit of man." the _freeman_ has no objection to tell us. the writer assumes a high moral standpoint, addressing the eminently respectable and religious mr. bull more in sorrow than in anger, but notwithstanding this, in a style to which that highly moral and twenty-shillings-in-the-pound-paying person is not at all accustomed. the _freeman_ goes on-- "we find ourselves bound by reason and logic to deny to english civilisation the glorious title of christian." this is distinctly surprising. john always believed himself a christian. the natural pain he may be expected to undergo after this disagreeable discovery is luckily to some extent mitigated by the information that although england is not christian, ireland is extremely so. the one people (the irish) "has not only accepted but retained with inviolable constancy the christian civilisation;" the other (the english) "has not only rejected it, but has been for three centuries the leader of the great apostacy, and is at this day _the principal obstacle to the conversion of the world_." do the english separatists see daylight now? will they any longer deny what all intelligent irishmen of whatever creed readily admit, namely, that religion is at the bottom of the home rule question? and is not mr. bull surprised to find that after all his missionary collections, he is without the right balm of gilead, that his civilisation is not christian, and that he is the principal obstacle to the salvation of the world? is he not surprised to find that ireland, with its thousand and ten thousand tales of horror, its brutal outrages on helpless women, its chronic incendiarism, its myriads of indecent anonymous letters addressed to young girls, such as i have seen filed by the ream in irish police-stations--ireland with its moonlighting atrocities, its barbarous boycotting of helpless children, its poisoning of wells and water supply, its mutilation of cattle, its unnumbered foul and cowardly murders, its habitual sheltering and protection of unspeakable felons--ireland, one of the few remaining strongholds of the catholic faith, has the true christianity? ireland would convert the world, but england stops her. the no-rent manifesto, the plan of campaign, and the land league were sample productions of the genuine faith, to say nothing of horsewhipped healy, breeches o'brien, and t.d. sullivan, who composed a eulogy on the murderers of police-sergeant brett, of manchester (allen, larkin, and o'brien), high upon the gallows tree swung the noble-hearted three. that is all i can remember, but it may serve to show that irish christianity is the real stingo, and no mistake. a mullingaringian who wishes to be nameless desires to know particulars of the gorging capacity of the average gladstonian elector. the particular item that excites his wonder is the letter of mr. j.w. logan, m.p., on irish rents. briefly stated, mr. logan's point is this: that notwithstanding the complaints of irish landlords they are getting more rent than ever! and he proceeds to adduce testimony thus: income-tax valuation in ireland, on land, in three years selected by himself stands as follows:-- £ , , £ , , £ , , then, after showing the amount of increase, he says:--"rents continue to rise in ireland as far as is indicated by the income-tax." my friend says:--"mr. logan is both culpably ignorant and flagrantly dishonest. he seems incapable of understanding the difference between an assessment, a mere valuation, and the actual payment of income-tax. he is dishonest, because he deliberately suppresses the explanation of the difference between the first and second row of figures. when i saw the curiously-selected years, i said, why , , and ? i knew there was some thimble-rigging. i looked at the twenty-eighth annual report of her majesty's commissioners, that for , the latest i have, and behold, the year had an asterisk! it was the only starred number on the page. it referred to a foot-note, and that foot-note read as follows:-- "'_the large difference as compared with prior years is due to the value of farmhouses having been previously included under the head of messuages._' "the land up to ' was called land, and the farm buildings were called messuages. but in ' they began to reckon the buildings as land, shifting an amount from one column of figures to another. a mere matter of book-keeping. mr. logan writes to the papers for an explanation which is given in a footnote. he carries his point, for hundreds of people will follow his figures. give a lie twenty-four hours' start and you can never overtake it. thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, but four times he who gets his blow in fust. i suppose the gladstonians claim that the land commission reduced rents by to per cent. but here mr. logan is proving that the landlords are drawing more money than ever! they wish they could believe it. valuation is a queer thing. it fluctuates in the most unaccountable way. what an increase shows is the prosperity of the tenant who is putting up buildings and making other improvements. mr. logan's third figures show a further increase. look at the figures in the authorised report, not for ' and ' , but between the two. what do you see there?" i looked, and this is what i saw:-- £ , , £ , , £ , , £ , , £ , , £ , , £ , , so that mr. logan might have shown from these figures that during the no-rent campaign the landlords were enjoying an untold period of prosperity, for his chosen year, , shows a _decrease_ as compared with any one of the seven years above-mentioned. the truth is that the figures prove nothing in support of mr. logan's case, which is based on fallacy and suppression of material facts. his comparison of with , without reference to the explanatory footnote, is of itself sufficient to shoulder him out of court, and stamps him as little more scrupulous than father humphreys, of venerated memory. mr. logan's belief that assessment and tax-paying are one and the same thing is here regarded as ridiculous, and my friend thinks that if mr. gladstone should impose a tax on brains, the grand old man's followers will escape with an easy assessment. mullingar (co. westmeath), june st. no. .--the "union of hearts." it was strange to hear the tune of "rule britannia" in the streets of mullingar. the irish madden at "god save the queen," and would make short work of the performer. it was market day, and the singer was selling printed sheets of poesy. the old tune was fairly correct, but the words were strange and sad. "when britain first at hell's command prepared to cross the irish main, thus spake a prophet in our land, 'mid traitors' scoff and fools' disdain, 'if britannia cross the waves, irish ever shall be slaves.' in vain the warning patriot spoke, in treach'rous guise britannia came--divided, bent us to her yoke, till ireland rose, in freedom's name, and britannia boldly braves! irish are no longer slaves." the people were too busily engaged in selling pigs to pay much attention to the minstrel who, however, was plainly depending on disloyalty for custom. westmeath was once the home of whiteboyism, ribbonism, fenianism, and all the other isms which have successively ruined the country by banishing security; and a spice of the old leaven still flavours the popular sentiment. "they may swear as they often did our wretchedness to cure, but we'll never trust john bull again nor let his lies allure. no we won't bull, we won't bull, for now nor ever more; for we've hopes on the ocean, we've trust on the shore. oh! remember the days when their reign we did disturb, at limerick and thurles, blackwater and benburb. and ask this proud saxon if our blows he did enjoy when we met him on the battlefield of france, at fontenoy. then we'll up for the green, boys, and up for the green! oh! 'tis still in the dust and a shame to be seen! but we've hearts and we've hands, boys, full strong enough, i ween, to rescue and to raise again our own unsullied green." a group of farmers standing hard by paid some attention to this chant, and one of them, in answer to my inquiry as to how the union of hearts was getting on, chuckled vociferously and said, "aye, aye, union iv hearts, how are ye? how are ye, union iv hearts?" the group joined in the laugh, and i saw that the joke was an old one. the invincibles had a few recruits in mullingar and district, and the land leaguers also made their mark. the stationmaster sued somebody for travelling without a ticket. he was shot dead in the street immediately afterwards. miss croughan did not meet popular opinion in the matter of farm management. she was shot as she walked to church one fine sunday morning. patrick farrelly took land which somebody else wanted. shot as he walked home from work. mr. dolan, of a flour mill in the neighbourhood, had some misunderstanding with his workmen. shot, on the chance that his successor would take warning, and accommodate himself to the public sentiment. miss ann murphy, who with her two brothers lives at a small farm a mile or two away, supplied a jug of milk, and said that things were quiet for the moment, but there was no telling what might happen. the house was roofed with corrugated iron. "ah," said miss murphy, "we were nearly burned to death, myself an' my two brothers. an' this was the way iv it. tramps and ruffians would call here at nightfall, an' would ask for a shelter an' a lie down, an' i would lay a few bags or something on the flure over beyant, an' they would sthretch themselves out till mornin', an' often and often i would wash their cheeks an' heads where they had been fightin', an' would be all cut an' hacked. one fellow was often here, an' my brothers had reason to refuse him free lodgin's, an' so the next mornin' we found the gate lifted off the hinges an' carried away down the lane. my brothers spoke to the police-sergeant about this, an' the very next thing was to try to burn us alive in our beds. some ruffian came in the night an' put a match in the thatch, an' i woke almost suffocated. i ran out, an' there was the house on fire, and the cow-house, with a beautiful, lovely cow, all a solid piece of blazin' flames, till ye could see nothin' else. we saved the four walls an' some of the furniture, an' we got £ from the county. that's the sort of people the land league brought out all over the country." a sturdy farmer living near said:--"an' that's what we'll have to suffer again, once ye let home rulers have the upper hand. the only way ye can manage these scamps is to make them feel the lash. no good tomfooling with these murdherin' ruffians. with home rule they expect to do as they like. if i go into a whiskey shop on a market day, what do i hear? ever an' always the same things. there is to be no landlords, no policemen, no means of enforcing the law. there ye have it, now. the respectable people who work and make money will be a mark for every robber in the country. an' in ireland ye can rob and murther widout fear of consequences. see that hill there? mrs. smith had her brains blown out as she drove by the foot of it. they meant the shot for her husband, who was with her. they don't make many mistakes. they bide their time, avoid hurry, and do the work both nately an' complately. they track down their victims like sleuth hounds, an' there's one thing they never go in for,--that's executions. mrs. smith, farrelly, dolan, miss croughan, and the stationmaster, were all comfortably shot without anyone incurring evil consequences. it's devilish hard to catch an irishman, an' when ye've caught him it's harder still to convict him. they're improvin' in their plannin', but they are not so sure o' their shootin' as they used to be. they fired at moloney from both sides of the road at once. that was a good idea. but they failed to kill him, and seven of them are arrested. of course, we'll have no convictions, but it looks better to arrest them, an' it ensures the man that's arrested a brass band an' a collection. so everybody's pleased an' nobody hurt. an' what would ye ask for more?" on thursday last, at eleven in the morning, mr. weldon c. moloney, solicitor, of dublin, was driving near milltown, on the bodyke property, when he was wounded from the ankle to the thigh by several simultaneous shots from both sides of the road, and the horse so badly injured that it must probably be destroyed. mr. moloney believes that he will be able to identify his assailants, and the police are sure they have the right men. nothing, therefore, is now wanting to the formalities accompanying the morley administration of justice but the march to court, the cheers of the crowd, the twelve good men and true--who, having sworn to return a verdict in accordance with the evidence, will assuredly say not guilty--and the brass band to accompany the marksmen home. if the heroes of this adventure be liberated in the evening a torchlight procession will make the thing complete, and will be handy for burning the haystacks of anyone who may not have joined the promenade. athlone is well built and beautifully situated. the shannon winds round the town, and also cuts it in two, so that one-half is in county westmeath, province of leinster, the other in county roscommon, province of connaught. the people are fairly well clad, but dirt and squalor such as can hardly be conceived are plentiful enough. the shannon saw mills, which for twenty years have given employment to two hundred men, will shortly be removed to liverpool, and the athloners are sad at heart and refuse to be comforted. the concern belongs to wilson, of todmorden, lancashire; and the manager, mr. lewis jones, says that all the timber within reasonable distance is used up, besides which the place is not well fixed for business purposes. the workpeople are manageable enough, but somewhat uncertain in their attendance. they require a half-hour extra at breakfast time every now and then, perhaps twenty times a year or more, that they may attend mass, on the saints' days and such like occasions. this reminded me of my first entrance to galway. all the bridges and other lounging places were covered with men who looked as if they ought to be at work. it was ascension day, and nobody struck a stroke. my invasion of athlone afforded a similar experience. there were sixty-five able-bodied men lounging on the shannon bridge at three in the afternoon--all deeply anxious to know whence i came and whither i was going, all with an intense desire to learn my particular business. other pauper factories were in full swing, and at the first blush it seemed that the athloners lived by looking at the river and discussing the affairs of other people. it was corpus christi day, and none but heathen would work. the brutal saxon with his ding-dong persistency may be making money, but how about his future interests? when the last trump shall sound and the dead shall be raised, where will be the workers on saints' days? among the goats. but the men who spend these holy seasons in smoking thick twist, with the shannon for a spittoon, will reap the reward of their self-denial. mr. lewis jones has always taken a strong interest in politics, and his present opinion is remarkable. "i came to ireland a gladstonian, a home ruler, and, what is more, a bigoted home ruler. how the change to my present opinion was brought about i hardly know. it was not revolution, but rather evolution. no-one can remain a home ruler when he understands the subject. the change in myself came about through much travelling all over the country and mixing with the people. i do not blame the english home rulers a bit. how can i do so, when i myself was just as ignorant? had i remained in liverpool i should have remained a home ruler. i am certain of that. unless you actually live in the country you cannot gauge its feeling, and the irish people are very difficult to understand. i have always got along with them famously, and i shall take ninety per cent. of our workmen with me to england. no, home rule has nothing to do with the removal of the works. "my cousin and i worked like horses to get in mr. neville for the exchange division of liverpool. we actually won, for by a piece of adroit management we polled a number of votes which would certainly have remained unpolled, and we polled them all for our man, who won by a very small majority, eleven, i think. i would willingly go to liverpool to undo that work, as i now see how completely i was mistaken in my views of the irish question. i was always a great radical, and such i shall always remain; but as a radical i am bound to support what is best for the masses of the people, and i am convinced that home rule would reduce the country to beggary. bankruptcy must and will ensue, and with the flight of the landowners and the destruction of confidence, employment will be unobtainable. who will embark capital in ireland under present circumstances?" a financial authority told me that poor ireland has thirty-six millions of uninvested money lying idle in the banks. the irish not only lack enterprise, but they will not trust each other. great opportunities are lying thickly around, but they seem unable to avail themselves of the finest openings. mr. smith, of athlone, makes twelve and a half miles of irish tweed every week, and sells it rather faster than he can make it. he commenced with two shillings a week wages, and now he owns a factory and employs five hundred people. a black protestant, of course. mr. samuel heaton, of bradford, is about to go and do likewise. i went over his place an hour ago, and this is what he said:--"this was a flour mill which cost £ , to build. the machinery would cost £ , more, i should think. it did well for many years, and then it was left to three brothers, who disputed about it until the concern was ruined as a paying business, and the place was allowed to lie derelict. the water power alone cost them £ a year, and goodness knows what these splendid buildings would be worth. the board of works had got hold of it, and it was understood that anybody might have it a bargain, but nobody came forward. i offered them £ a year for the whole of the buildings, the waterpower, and the dwelling house hard by, also that other immense building yonder, which might prove handy for a store-house; and my offer was accepted. i took all at that rent for sixty years, with six months' free tenancy to start with, and i was also to have a free gift of all machinery and fittings in the place. here we are going nicely, only in a small way, but we shall do. we make blankets, tweeds for men's suits and ladies' dresses. when the athlone people saw us knocking about they were surprised they had never thought of it before. there are hundreds of derelict flour mills going to ruin all over the country, and the owners would gladly let anyone have them and grand water power for nothing for two or three years, just to get a chance of obtaining rent at some future day. we work from morning till night, and neither i nor my sons have ever tasted a spot of intoxicating liquor. now there are many small mills going in the country, the proprietors of which go on the spree three days a week. if they can do, we can do. this is going to be a big thing. the only difficulty i have is to turn out the stuff. irish tweeds have such a reputation that we simply cannot meet the demand. mills and water power may be had for next to nothing, but the irish have no enterprise, and the english are afraid to put any money in the country under present circumstances." the lock mills above mentioned are three or four stories high, with perhaps a hundred yards of front elevation, a grandly built series of stone buildings close to the shannon, which is here about a hundred and twenty yards wide, and carries tolerably large steamers and lighters. six months' occupancy for nothing, the old machinery a free gift, water power and buildings for sixty years at £ a year. i have previously mentioned the twelve big mills abandoned on the boyne. twelve openings for small capitalists--but irishmen put their money in stockings, under the flure, in the thatch. _they_ will not trust irishmen, although they have no objection to john bull's doing so. a bank manager of this district said:-- "poor connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. and when irishmen invest they invest outside ireland. seventy-eight thousand pounds in the post office savings bank in mayo, the most poverty-stricken district--as they will tell you. there is connaught money in australia, in america, in england, and in all kinds of foreign bonds. irishmen want to keep their hoardings secret. they like to walk about barefoot and have money in their stocking. an old woman who puts on and takes off her shoes outside the town has three sons high up in the civil service, and could lend you eight hundred pounds. you would take her for a beggar and might offer her a penny, and she'd take it. have you noticed the appalling mendicancy of ireland? have you reflected on the 'high spirit' of the irish people? have you remembered their pride, their repugnance to the saxon? and have you noticed the everlastingly outstretched hands which meet you at every corner? beggary, lying, dirt, and laziness invariably accompany priestly rule, and are never seen in ireland in conjunction with protestantism? i wish somebody would explain this. the irish masses are the dirtiest and laziest in the world, but there are no dirty, lazy protestants. nobody ever heard of such a thing. and yet because there are more dirty, lazy catholics than clean, industrious protestants mr. gladstone would give the catholic party the mastery, and england in future would be ruled from rome. "mr. gladstone is not responsible for his actions. the civil service will not employ a man after sixty-five. the british government forbids a man to work in its service after that time. the consensus of scientific opinion has fixed sixty-five as the limit at which the control of an office or the execution of routine office work should cease. slips of memory occur, and the brain has lost its keen edge, its firm grip, its rapid grasp of detail. at sixty-five you are not good enough for the civil service, but at eighty-four, when you are nineteen years older, you may govern a vast empire. it is an anomaly. even the nationalists think mr. gladstone past his work." this statement was fully borne out by a strong anti-parnellite of athlone. he said:--"the bill is a hoax, but it is better than nothing. we'll take what we can get, an' we'll get what we can take--afterwards. ye wouldn't be surprised that the people's bitter about the bill. sure, 'tis no home rule it is at all, even if we got it as it first stood. 'tis an insult to offer such a bill to the irish nation. we want complete independence. we have a sort of a yoke on us, an' we'll never rest till we get it off. ye say 'this'll happen ye, and that'll happen ye,' an' ye care the divil an' all about it. we don't care what happens, once we get rid of that yoke. a friend of mine said yesterday, 'i never see an englishman but i think i'd like to have him under my feet, an' meself stickin' somethin' into him.' there's murther in their hearts, an' ye can't wonder at it. an' owld gladstone's a madman, no less. i'm towld he ordhers a dozen top hats at once, an' his wife gets the shop-keeper to take thim back. an' i'm towld he stales the spoons whin he goes out to dine wid his frinds, an' that his wife takes thim back in a little basket nixt mornin'. and i thought that was all nonsinse till i seen the bill. an' thin i felt i could believe it; for, bedad, nobody but a madman could have drawn up sich a measure, to offind everybody, an' plaze nobody. 'tis what ye'd expect from a lunatic asylum. but, thin, 'tis home rule. 'tis the principle; an' as the mimber for roscommon says, ''tis ourselves will apply it, an' 'tis ourselves will explain it. that's where we'll rape the advantage,' says he." the athlone market is "now on," and several hundred cows and calves are lowing in front of the royal, mrs. haire's excellent caravanserai. sheep are bleating, and excited farmers are yelling like pandemonium or an irish house of commons. athlone is a wonderful place for donkeys, which swell the nine-fold harmony with incessant cacophonous braying, so that the town might fairly claim the distinction of being the chosen home, if not the _fons et origo_, of nationalist oratory. athlone, june rd. no. .--the "union of hearts." once again the atlantic stops me. the eighty-three miles of country between here and athlone have brought about no great change in the appearance of the people, who, on the whole, are better clad than the galway folks. the difference in customs, dress, language, manners, and looks between one part of ireland and another close by is sometimes very considerable. there is a lack of homogeneity, a want of fusion, an obvious need of some mixing process. the people do not travel, and in the rural districts many of them live and die without journeying five miles from home. the railways now projected or in process of construction will shortly change all this, and the tourist, with more convenience, will no longer be able to see the ireland of centuries ago. the language is rapidly dying out. not a word of irish did i hear in athlone, even on market day. the westporters know nothing about it. the tongue of the brutal saxon is everywhere heard. the degenerate irish of these latter days cannot speak their own language. they preach, teach, quarrel, pray, swear, mourn, sing, bargain, bless, curse, make love in english. they are sufficiently familiar with the british vernacular to lie with the easy grace of a person speaking his mother-tongue. they are a gifted people, and a patriotic--at least they tell us so, and the irish, they say, is the queen of languages, the softest, the sweetest, the most poetical, the most sonorous, the most soul-satisfying. and yet the patriot members speak it not. william o'brien is said to know a little, but only as you know a foreign language. he could not address the people on the woes of ireland, could not lash the brutal saxon, could not express in his native tongue the withering outpourings of his patriotic soul. he always speaks in english, of which he thinks foul scorn. he is the best gaelic scholar of the rout, and yet he could not give you the irish for breeches. westport is splendidly situated in a lovely valley watered by a nameless stream which empties itself into clew bay. a grand range of mountains rises around, the pyramidal form of croagh patrick dominating the quay. it was from the summit of this magnificent height that saint patrick sent forth the command which banished from the green isle the whole of the reptile tribe. "the wicklow hills are very high, an' so's the hill of howth, sir; but there's a hill much higher still, aye, higher than them both, sir! 'twas from the top of this high hill saint patrick preached the sarmint, that drove the frogs out of the bogs an' bothered all the varmint. the toads went hop, the frogs went flop, slap-dash into the water, an' the snakes committed suicide to save themselves from slaughter." pity there is no modern successor of saint patrick to extirpate the reptilia of the present day, the moonlighters and their parliamentary supporters, to wit. the westport people are very pious. as i have previously shown by quotations from irish authorities, ireland has the true christianity which england so sadly needs. unhindered by england, ireland would evangelise the world, and that in double-quick time. every town i visit is deeply engaged in religious exercises. in limerick it was a triduum with some reference to saint monica. in cork it was something else, which required much expenditure in blessed candles. in galway the confraternity of the holy girdle was making full time, and in westport three priests are laying on day and night in a mission. a few days ago they carried the corpus christi round the place, six hundred children strewing flowers under the sacerdotal feet, and the crowds of worshippers who flocked into the town necessitated the use of a tent, from which the money-box was stolen. on sunday last the bridge convaynient to the chapel was covered with country folks who could not get into the building, and a big stall with sacred images in plaster of paris and highly-coloured pictures in cheap frames was doing a roaring trade. barefooted women were hurrying to chapel to get pictures blessed, or walking leisurely home with the sanctified treasure under their shawls. a brace of scoffers on the bridge explained the surging crowd, and advised instant application, that evening being the last. "get inside, wid a candle in yer fist, an' ye can pray till yer teeth dhrop out iv yer head." this irreverence is probably one of the accursed fruits of contact with the sacrilegious saxon. "the people here are cowardly, knavish, and ignorant," said an irishman twenty years resident in westport. "they believe anything the priests tell them, and they will do anything the priests may order or even hint at. they would consider it an honour if the priests told them to lie down that they might walk over them. politically they are entirely in the hands of the roman catholic clergy. they are totally unable to understand or to grasp the meaning of the change now proposed, which would place the country entirely at the mercy of the clerical party. we see the result of popular election in the return of poor law guardians, who spend most of their time in calling each other beggars and liars. patronage under the home rule bill would mean the instalment of the relatives of priests in all the best offices. once we have an irish parliament, a man of capacity may leave the country unless he have a priest for his uncle. "we want a liberal measure of local government, and a final settlement of the land question. the poor people are becoming poorer and poorer through this eternal agitation which drives away wealth and capital, and undermines the value of all irish securities. poor as we were, we were much better off before the agitation commenced. the poor themselves are becoming alive to the fact that continuous agitation means continuous poverty. we must now have some sort of home rule, but we shall be ruined if we get it from a liberal government. if we get it from a tory government, the english will run to lend us money, but if from a morley-gladstone combination they won't advance us a stiver. the present irish parliamentary representatives have the confidence of no single irish party. they were well enough for their immediate purpose, and no better men would come forward. to entrust them with large powers is the very acme of wild insanity. admitting their honesty, which is doubtful, they have had no experience in business affairs, and their class is demonstratedly devoid of administrative capacity. the poor law guardians of cork, portumna, ballinasloe, swinford, ballyvaughan, and many other towns and cities, have by their mismanagement brought their respective districts to insolvency. that every case was a case of mismanagement is clearly proved by the fact that the government having superseded these boards in each case by two paid guardians, a period of two years has sufficed to wipe off all debts, to reduce expenses, and to leave a balance in hand. they then begin to drift again into insolvency. and where the guardians have not been superseded, where they have not yet become bankrupt, they still have a bank balance against them. you will scarcely hear of a solvent parish, even if you offer a reward. and that is the class of persons mr. gladstone would entrust with the administration of irish finance. the result would be the country's bankruptcy, and england would have to pay the damage. serve england right for her stupidity." what my friend said anent the class of men who compose the ranks of the irish parliamentary party reminds me of something i heard in athlone. a great anti-parnellite said:--"poor mat harris was the splindid spaker, in throth! parnell it was that sent him to the house of commons. many's the time i seen him on the roof of the royal hotel, fixin the tiles, an' puttin things sthraight, that the rain wouldn't run in. 'tis a slater he was, an' an iligant slater, at that. an' when he came down for a big dhrink, the way he'd stand at the bar and discoorse about ireland would brake yer heart. many's the time i seen the ould waiter listenin' to him till the wather would pour out iv his two good-lookin' eyes. an, thin, 'twas mat harris had the gab, rest his sowl! ye haven't anybody could come up to him barrin' owld gladstone, divil a one." another athloner, speaking of an irish nationalist m.p., who luckily still lives, said:--"mr. parnell took him up because he was a wonderful fellow to talk, and so was popular with the mob of these parts. i think he was a blacksmith by trade. parnell got him made m.p., and set him up with a blue pilot coat, but forgot to give him a handkerchief. so he used the tail of his coat alternately with his coat sleeve. he never had a pocket-handkerchief in his life, but he was a born legislator, and the people believed he could do much to restore the vaunted ancient prestige and prosperity of ireland. he came to athlone, and went to the royal, but the waiter, who did not know he was speaking to a member of parliament, and moreover one of his own kidney, declined to take him in, and recommended a place where he could get a bed for thruppence! and the m.p. actually had to take it. this was only inconsistent with his new dignity, and not with his previous experiences. this is the kind of person who is to direct irish legislation more efficiently than the educated class, who unanimously object to home rule as detrimental to the interests of both countries, and as likely to further impoverish poor ireland. the men who now represent the 'patriotic' party will feather their own nests. they care for nothing more." the westport folks may not deserve the strictures of their friend of twenty years, but two things are plainly visible. they are dirty, and they have no enterprise. the island-dotted clew bay and the sublime panorama of mountain scenery, the sylvan demesne of the earl of sligo, and the forest-bordered inlets of westport bay, form a scene of surpassing loveliness and magnificence such as england and wales together cannot show. the town is well laid out, the streets are broad and straight, and lord sligo's splendid range of lake and woodland, free to all, adjoins the very centre. and yet the shops are small and mean, the houses are dirty and uninviting, and dunghills front the cottages first seen by the visitor. a breezy street leads upward to the heights, and all along it are dustheaps, with cocks and hens galore, scratching for buried treasure. at the top a stone railway bridge, the interstices facing the sea full of parsley fern, wild maidenhair, hart's-tongue, and a beautiful species unknown to me. the bracing air of the atlantic sweeps the town, which is sheltered withal by miles of well-grown woods. the houses are dazzling white, and like the rhine villages look well from a distance. beware the interiors, or at least look before you leap. then you will probably leap like the stricken hart, and in the opposite direction. you will be surprised at your own agility. flee from the "lodgings and entertainment" announced in the windows. your "entertainment" is likely to be livelier than you expected, and you will wish that your lodgings were on the cold, cold ground. the westporters are too pious to wash themselves or their houses. "they wash the middle of their faces once a month," said a black methodist. for there are methodists here, likewise presbyterians and plymouth brethren--besides the church of ireland folks, who only are called protestants. all these must be exempted from the charge of dirtiness. cleanliness, neatness, prosperity, and protestantism seem to go together. father humphreys himself would not deny this dictum. for the other clause of the indictment--lack of enterprise--the westporters are no worse and no better than their neighbours. the corkers make nothing of their harbour, spending most of their time in talking politics and cursing england. commercial men speak of the difficulty of doing business at cork, which does not keep its appointments, is slippery, and requires much spirituous lubrication. cork ruins more young commercial men than any city in britain, and owing to the unreliability of its citizens, is more difficult to work. galway has scores of ruined warehouses and factories, and has been discussing the advisability of building a town hall for forty years at least. limerick has a noble river, with an elaborate system of quays, on which no business is done. the estuary of the shannon, some ten miles wide, lies just below, opening on the atlantic; and a little enterprise would make the city the irish head-quarters for grain. the quays are peopled by loafers, barefooted gossiping women, and dirty, ragged children playing at marbles. great buildings erected to hold the stores that never come, or to manufacture irish productions which nobody makes, are falling into ruin. i saw the wild birds of the air flying through them, while the people were emigrating or complaining, and nothing seemed to flourish but religious services and fowl-stealing. it was during my sojourn in limerick that somebody complained to the town council of poultry depredations, which complaint drew from that august body a counter-complaint to the effect that the same complainant had complained before, and that he always did it during a retreat, that is, when the town was full of people engaged in special religious services--so that the heretic observer, and especially the representative of the _gazette_, referred to by name, might couple the salvation of souls with the perdition of hens, to the great discredit of the faith. but this is a digression. westport should brush itself up, cleanse its streets, tidy up its shops, sanitate its surroundings, and offer decent accommodation to tourists. the latter does exist, but is scarce and hard to find. the people of cork, limerick, and galway blame england and english rule for the poverty which is their own fault alone. they hate the northerners as idle unsuccessful men hate successful industrious men. belfast is a standing reproach. the people of leinster, munster, and connaught have had the same government under which ulster has flourished, with incomparably greater advantages of soil and climate than ulster, with better harbours and a better trading position. but instead of working they stand with folded hands complaining. instead of putting their own shoulders to the wheel they wait for somebody to lift them out of the rut. instead of modern methods of agriculture, fishing, or what not, they cling to the ancient ways, and resent advice. the women will not take service; the men will not dig, chop, hammer. they are essentially bone-idle--laziness is in their blood. they will not exert themselves. as father mcphilpin says, "they will not move. you cannot stir them if you take them by the shoulders and haul at them." what will home rule do for such people? will it serve them instead of work? will it content the grumblers? will it silence the agitators? will it convert the people to industry? will it imbue them with enterprise? will it make them dig, chop, fish, hammer? will it make the factory hands regular day by day? will it cause the women to wash themselves and cleanse their houses? will it change their ingrained sluttishness to tidiness and neatness and decency? father mahony, of cork, said that the irish fisherman turned his back on the teeming treasures of the deep, because he groaned beneath the cruel english yoke. since then i have seen him fishing, but i did not hear him groan. he wanted boats, nets, and to be taught their use. mr. balfour supplied him with plant and instructions. father mahony and his tribe of wind-bags feed the people on empty air. the starving poor ask for bread, and they get a speech. they are told to go on grumbling, and things will come all right. nobody ever tells them to work. murder and robbery, outrage and spoliation, landlord-shooting and moonlighting, are easier ways of getting what they want. the plan of campaign, the no rent combination, the land league brotherhood when rightly considered, were just so many substitutes for honest work. ireland will be happy when ireland is industrious, and not a moment before. no need to say that the westporters are home rulers. the clean and tidy folks, the protestant minority, are heart and soul against the bill, but the respectable voters are swamped all over ireland, by devotees of the priests. "we think the franchise much too low," said a presbyterian. "we think illiterate ireland, with its abject servility to the catholic clergy, quite unfit to exercise the privilege of sending men to parliament. we think the intelligent minority should rule, and that the principles which obtain in other matters might well be applied to parliamentary elections. these ignorant people are no more fit to elect m.p.'s than to elect the president of the royal society or the president of the royal academy. and yet if mere numbers must decide, if the counting of heads is to make things right or wrong, why not let the people decide these distinctions? the west of ireland folks know quite as much of art or science as of home rule, or any other political question. they have returned, and will in future return, the nominees of the priests." one of the highest legal authorities in ireland, himself a roman catholic, said to me:-- "you saw the elections voided by reason of undue priestly influence. that was because, in the cases so examined, money was available to pay the costs of appeal. if there had been money enough to contest every case where a nationalist was returned, you would have seen every such election proved equally illegal, and every one would have been adjudicated void." the westport folks are looking for great things from the great parliament in college green. a sligo man who has lived in dublin was yesterday holding forth on these prospective benefits, his only auditor being one michael, an ancient waiter of the finest irish brand. michael is both pious and excitable, and must have an abnormal bump of wonder. he is a small man with a big head, and is very demonstrative with his hands. he abounds with pious (and other) ejaculations, and belongs to that popular class which is profuse in expressions of surprise and admiration. the most commonplace observation evokes a "d'ye see that, now?" a "d'ye tell me so, thin?" or a "whillaloo! but that bates all!" as will be seen, michael artistically suits his exclamations to the tone and matter of the principal narrator, mixing up christianity and paganism in a quaintly composite style, but always keeping in harmony with the subject. the sligo man said:-- "i seen the mails go on the boat at kingstown, an' there was hundhreds of bags, no less." "heavenly fa-a-ther!" said michael, throwing up eyes and hands. "divil a lie in it. 'twas six hundhred, i believe." "holy moses preserve us!" "an' the rivinue is millions an' millions o' pounds." "the saints in glory!" "an' wid home rule we'd have all that for oireland." "julius saysar an' nibuchadnizzar!" "forty millions o' goolden sovereigns, divil a less." "thunder an' ouns, but ye startle me!" "an' we're losin' all that"-- "save _an'_ deliver us!" "becase the english takes it"-- "holy virgin undefiled!" "to pay peelers an' sojers"-- "bloody end to thim!" "to murther and evict us"-- "lord help us!" "an' collect taxes an' rint." "hell's blazes!" ten minutes after this conversation under my window michael adroitly introduced the subject of postal profits in ireland. i told him there was an ascertained loss of £ , a year, which the new legislature would have to make up somehow. michael bore the change with fortitude. the loss of forty millions plus fifty thousand would have upset many a man, but michael only threw up his eyes and said very softly-- "heavenly fa-a-ther!" westport, june th. no. .--home rule and irish immigration. a bright country town with a big green square called the mall, bordered by rows of great elm trees and brilliantly whitewashed houses. the town is about a mile from the station, and the way is pleasant enough. plenty of trees and pleasant pastures with thriving cattle, mansions with umbrageous carriage-drives, and the immense mass of croagh patrick fifteen miles away towering over all. the famous mountain when seen from castlebar, is as exactly triangular as an egyptian pyramid, or the famous mound of waterloo. few british heights have the striking outline of croagh patrick, which may be called the matterhorn of ireland. castlebar is always dotted with soldiers, the buffs are now marching through the town, on their way to the exercise ground, but the sight is so familiar that the street urchins hardly turn their heads. the protestant church, square-towered, fills a corner of the mall, and there stands a statue of general o'malley, with a drawn sword of white marble. lord lucan, of the balaklava charge, hailed from castlebar. the town and its precincts belong to the lucans. there is a convent with a big statue of the virgin mary, and the usual high wall. the shops are better than those of westport, and the streets are far above the irish average in order and cleanliness. the country around is rich in antiquities. burrishoole abbey and aughnagower tower, with the splendid round tower of turlough, are within easy distance, the last a brisk hour's walk from castlebar. there in the graveyard i met a catholic priest of more than average breadth and culture, who discussed home rule with apparent sincerity, and with a keener insight than is possessed by most of his profession. he said:-- "when the last explosion took place at dublin, the first to apprise me of the affair was the bishop of my diocese, whose comment was summed up in the two words 'castle job!' now that riled me. i am tired of that kind of criticism." here i may interpolate the critique of colonel nolan, who was the first to apprise me of the occurrence.--"i do not say that the irish government officials are responsible for the explosion. that would not be fair, as there is no evidence against them. but i do say that if they did arrange the blow-up they could not have selected a better time, and if some mistaken irish nationalist be the guilty person he could not have selected a worse time from a patriotic point of view." thus spake the colonel, who has an excellent reputation in his own district. the stoutest conservatives of tuam speak well of him. "all the nolans are good," said a staunch unionist; and another said, "the nolans are a good breed. the colonel is good, and sebastian nolan is just as good. nobody can find fault with the nolans apart from politics." the colonel is one of the nine parnellites accursed of the priests. perhaps he was present at the parnellite meeting at athenry, regarding which canon canton, parish priest of athenry, declared from the altar that every person attending it would be guilty of mortal sin. english readers will note that the parnellites resent priestly dictation. another interpolation anent "the castle job." i thought to corner a great athlone politician by questions _re_ the recent moonlighting, incendiarism, and attempted murders in limerick and clare. he said-- "all these things are concocted and paid for by the tories of england. the reason balfour seemed to be so successful was simple enough when you know the explanation. balfour and his friends kept the moonlighters and such like people going. they paid regular gangs of marauders to disturb the country while the liberals were in power. when the tories get in, these same gangs are paid to be quiet. then the tories go about saying, 'look at the order we can keep.' every shot fired in county clare is paid for by the english tories. sure, i have it from them that knows. ye might talk for a month an' ye'd never change my opinion. there's betther heads than mine to undershtand these things, men that has the larnin', an' is the thrue frinds of ireland. when i hear them spake from the altar 'tis enough for me. i lave it to them. ye couldn't turn me in politics or religion, an' i wouldn't listen to anybody but my insthructors since i was twelve inches high." well might colonel winter, who knows the speaker above-mentioned, say to me, "he has read a good deal, but his reading seems to have done him no good." it is time i went back to turlough's tower and my phoenix priest who was riled to hear his bishop speak of the dublin explosion as a "castle job." he claimed that "the clergy are unwilling instruments in the hands of the irish people, who are unconquerable even after seven hundred years of english rule. the irish priesthood is so powerful an element of irish life, not because it leads, but because it follows. powerful popular movements coerce the clergy, who are bound to join the stream, or be for ever left behind. no doubt at all that, being once in, they endeavour to direct the current of opinion in the course most favourable to the catholic religion. to do otherwise would be to deny their profession, to be traitors to the church. they did not commence the agitation. the church instinctively sticks to what is established, and opposes violent revolutionary action. history will bear me out. the clergy stamped out the smith-o'brien insurrection. the catholic clergy of the present day, mostly the sons of farmers, are perhaps more ardently political than the clergy of a former day, a little less broad in view, a little more hot-headed; yet in the main are subject to the invariable law i laid down at first--that is, they only follow and direct, they do not lead, or at any rate they only place themselves in the front when the safety of the church demands it. the bulk of the clergy believe that the time to lead has now come. my own opinion, in which i am supported by a very few,--but i am happy to say a very distinguished few,--is this: the roman catholic church is making immense progress in england; a closer and closer connection with england will ultimately do far more for the church than can be hoped from revolutionary and republican ireland. we should by a home rule bill gain much ground at first, but we should as rapidly lose it, while our hold on england would be altogether gone. many of the so-called catholic nationalists are atheists at heart, and the tendency of modern education is decidedly materialistic. so that instead of progressive conquest the church would experience progressive decline, which would be all the more striking after the great but momentary accession of prestige conferred by the home rule bill. my theory is--let well alone. the popular idea is to achieve commanding and lasting success at a blow." the castlebar folks have diverse opinions, the decent minority, the intelligence of the place, being unionist, as in every other irish town. a steady, well-clad yeoman said:--"i've looked at the thing in a hundred ways, and although i confess that i voted for home rule, yet when we have time to consider it, and to watch the debate on every point, we may be excused if we become doubtful as to the good it will do. the people round here are so ignorant, that talking sense to them is waste of time. they will put their trust in coal mines and the like of that. now, i have gone into the subject of irish mines. i have read the subject up from beginning to end. wicklow gold would cost us a pound for ten shillings' worth. the silver mines wouldn't pay, and the lead mines are a fraud; while the copper mines would ruin anybody who put their money into them. i know something about irish coal. lord ranfurly did his best for irish coal at dungannon. mines were sunk and coal was found, but it was worthless. well, it fetched half a crown a ton, and people on the spot went on paying a guinea a ton for newcastle coal because it was cheaper in the end. we may have iron, but what's the good when we have no coal to smelt it? the irish forests which formerly were used for this purpose are all gone. then the people put their trust in wool and cotton manufactures. they may do something with the wool, because england is waking up to the superior quality of irish woollen productions; but in the cotton england is here, there and everywhere before us. 'oh,' say some who should know better, 'put a duty on english goods, and make the irish buy their own productions.' what rubbish! when england buys almost every yard of irish woollen stuff, and could choke us off in a moment by counter-tariffs. without english custom the irish tweed mills would not run a single day. "as an irishman, i should like to have a parliament of my own. i suppose that is a respectable ambition. at the same time, i cannot see where it would do us any substantial good. no, i do not think the present nationalist members loyal to the english crown. nor are they traitors. a priest explained that very well. there's a distinction. 'a man may not be loyal and yet not be a traitor, for how can a man be a traitor to a foreign government?' said he. that sounded like the truth. i thought that a reasonable statement. for, after all, we _are_ under foreign rule, and we have a perfect right to revolt against it and throw off the english yoke if we could do it, and if it suited us to do it. how to do it has been the talk since my childhood, and many a year before. it is the leading idea of all secret societies, and hardly any young man in kerry and clare but belongs to one or other of them. the idea is to get rid of the landlords who hold the country for england. there it is, now. we'll never be a contented conquered province like scotland. we'd be all right if we could only make ourselves content. but the divil is in us. that's what ye'll say. the divil himself is in irishmen." the mayo folks are great temporary migrants. from the county mayo and its neighbour roscommon come the bands of irish harvesters which annually invade england. latterly they are going more than ever, and the women also are joining in large numbers. the unsettled state of the country and the threat of a college green parliament have made work scarcer and scarcer, and the prevailing belief among the better classes that the bill is too absurd to become law, is not sufficient to counteract the chronic want of confidence inspired by the presence of mr. gladstone at the helm of state. five hundred workers went from westport quay to glasgow the other evening. more than two-thirds were women from achil island, sturdy and sun-burnt, quaintly dressed in short red kirtle, brilliant striped shawl, and enormous lace-up boots, of fearful crushing power. though not forbidding, the women were very plain, ethnologically of low type, with small turn-up noses, small eyes, large jaws, and large flat cheekbones. the men were ugly as sin and coarse as young bulls, of which their movements were remindful. a piper struck up a jig and couples of men danced wildly about, the women looking on. five shillings only for forty hours' sea-sickness, with permission to stand about the deck all the time. berths were, of course, out of the question, and the boat moved slowly into the atlantic with hundreds of bareheaded women leaning over the sides. another boat-load will land at liverpool, to return in september and october. the best-informed people of these parts think that under the proposed change the young female population of mayo would be compelled to stay in england altogether, and that their competition in the english labour market would materially lower the rate of factory wage. "they live hard and work like slaves when away from ireland," said an experienced sergeant of the royal irish constabulary. "and yet they are lazy, for on their return they will live somehow on the money they bring back until the time comes to go again, and during the interval they will hardly wash themselves. they will not work in their own districts, nor for their friends, the small farmers. partly pride, partly laziness; you cannot understand them. the man who attempts to explain the inconsistencies of the irish character will have all his work before him. make the country a peasant-proprietary to suit the small farmers, and the labouring class will go to england and scotland to live. the abolition of the big farmers will cut the ground from under their feet. you will have ireland bossing your elections, as in america, and cutting the legs from under your artisans. for let me tell you that once paddy learns mechanical work he is a heap smarter than any englishman." if home rule should become law, and if england should be over-run by the charming people of connaught, the brutal saxon will be interested to observe some of the ancient customs to which they cling with a touching tenacity. marriage with the connaught folks is entirely a matter of pecuniary bargain. the young folks have no act or part in the arrangements. the seniors meet and form a committee of ways and means. how much money has your son? how much has your daughter? the details once understood, the parties agree or disagree, or leave the matter pending while they respectively look about for a better bargain. and even if the bargain be ostensibly agreed to, either party is at liberty to at once break the match, on hearing of something better. the prospective bride and bridegroom have nothing to say in the negotiations, and may never have seen each other in their lives. previous acquaintance is not considered necessary, and the high contracting parties are frequently married without having met before they meet at the altar. this was hard to believe, but careful inquiry established the fact. never was a case of rebellion recorded. the lady takes the goods the gods provide her, and the gentleman believes that the custom yields all prizes and no blanks. marriage is indeed a lottery in connaught. the system works well, for unfaithfulness is said to be unknown. the connaught funerals are impressive. one of these i have seen, and one contents me well. the coffin arrived on a country cart, the wife and family of the deceased sitting on the body, after the fashion attributed to english juries. to sit elsewhere than on the coffin would in connaught be considered a mark of disrespect. the children sit on the head and feet, the wife jumps on the chest of the dear departed, and away goes the donkey. the party dismount at the churchyard gates, and as the coffin enters they raise the irish cry, a blood-curdling wail that makes your muscles creep, while a cold chill runs down your spine, and you sternly make for home. you may as well see it out, for you can hear the "keen" two miles away against the wind. the mourners clasp their hands and move them quickly up and down, recounting the deceased's good deeds, and exclaiming, in irish and english, "why did ye die? ah, thin, why did ye die?" to which very reasonable query no satisfactory answer is obtainable. the widow is expected to tear her hair, if any, and to be perfectly inconsolable until the churchyard wall is cleared on leaving. then, and not before, she may address herself to mundane things. good "keeners" are in much request, and a really efficient howler is sure of regular employment. the connaught folks are somewhat rough-and-ready with their dead. colonel winter, of the buffs, told me that he came across a donkey-cart in charge of two men, who were waiting at a cross-road. a coffin had been removed from the cart, and stood on its end hard by. "i thought it was an empty coffin," said the colonel, "but it wasn't. the men were waiting, by appointment, for the mourners, and meanwhile the old lady in the coffin was standing on her head. wonderful country is ireland. "an old woman died in the workhouse of typhus fever, or some other contagious disorder. the corpse was placed in a parish coffin, and was about to be buried, when a relative came forward and offered to take charge of the funeral, declining to accept the workhouse coffin. the authorities consented, on condition that the proposed coffin should be large enough to enclose the first one, explaining that the body was dangerously contagious. the relative, a stout farmer, duly arrived at the workhouse with the new coffin, which was found to be too small to include the first one, and the authorities thereupon refused to have the coffins changed. so the mourner knocked down two men, and, making his way into the dead-room, burst open the receptacle containing his revered grandmother, whipped her out of the parochial box, planked her into the family coffin, and triumphantly walked her off on his shoulder. there was filial piety for you! they arrested that man, locked him up, and, for aught i know, left the old lady to bury herself, which must have been a great hardship. what englishman would have done as much for his grandmother? and yet they say that connaught men have no enterprise!" a protestant of castlebar said:--"if the english people fail to correctly estimate the supreme importance of the present crisis it is all over with us, and, i think, with england. if the unionist party persevere they must ultimately win. the facts are all with them. enlightenment is spreading, and if time to spread the truth can be gained home rule will be as dead as a door-nail. if, on the other hand, the english people fail to see the true meaning of home rule, which is revolution and disintegration, england, from the moment an irish parliament is established, must be classed with those countries from which power has dwindled away; her glory will have commenced to wane, her enemies will rejoice, and she will present to the world the aspect of a nation in its decadence. the irish leaders and the irish people alike, who support home rule, are ninety-nine hundredths disloyal. already the leaders are cursing england more deeply than before, this time for deceiving them about the home rule bill. their most respectable paper is already preparing the ground for further agitation. the _irish independent_ says that the irish people are being marched from one prison to another, and told that is their liberty. such is the latest criticism of the home rule bill, as pronounced by the nationalist party. the same paper ordered the lord mayor of dublin and the city council to refuse an address of congratulation on the marriage of the duke of york and princess may, and they refused by more than four to one. they refused when it was the duke of clarence. we could understand that, but why refuse now, when home rule is adopted as the principal measure of the government whose only aim is the union of hearts? the english people must indeed be fools if they cannot gauge the feeling that dictated a vote so mean as this. surely the english will at the eleventh hour draw back and save us and our country, and themselves and their country from unknown disaster. if they allow this ruinous measure to become law i shall almost doubt the bible where it says, 'surely the net is set in vain in the sight of any bird.'" i met a very savage separatist in castlebar. they are numerous in mayo and galway. the more uncivilised the district, the more ignorant the people, the more decided the leaning to home rule. my friend was not of the peasant class, but rather of the small commercial traveller breed, such as, with the clerks and counterskippers of the country stores, make up the membership of the gaelic clubs by which the expulsion of the saxon is confidently expected. he said, "i am for complete independence, and i do not believe in what is called constitutional agitation. who would be free, themselves must strike the blow. every country that has its freedom has fought for it. i would not waste a word with england, which has always deceived us and is about to deceive us once again. england has always wronged us, always robbed us. england has used her vast resources to ruin our trade that her own might flourish. the weakest must go to the wall--that is the doctrine of england--which thrives by our beggary and lives by our death. you have heaps of speakers in england who admit this. gladstone knows it is true. the irish people have let the english eat their bread for generations. the irish people have seen the english spending their money for centuries. this must be stopped as soon as possible, and ireland grows stronger every day. every concession we have obtained has been the result of compulsion, and i am for armed combination. every irishman should be armed, and know the use of arms. the day will come when we shall dictate to england, and when we may, if we choose, retaliate on her. we shall have an army and navy of our own; all that will come with time. we must creep before we walk, and walk before we run. the clubs already know their comrades; each man knows his right and left shoulder man, and the man whose orders he is to obey. merely a question of athletic sports, at present. but when we get home rule the enthusiasm of the people will be whetted to such an extent that we shall soon enroll the whole of the able-bodied population, and after then, when we get the word, you will see what will happen. where would be your isolated handfuls of soldiery and police, with roads torn up, bridges destroyed, and an entire population rising against them? yes, you might put us down, but we'd first have some fun. in a week we'd not leave a red coat in the island." the gratitude, the warm generosity of the irish people is very beautiful. the union of hearts, however, as a paying investment seems to have fallen considerably below par. castlebar, june th. no. .--tuam's indignation meeting. here i am, after two hours' journey by the midland and great western railway, which leads to most of the good things in ireland, and is uncommonly well managed, and with much enterprise. by the midland and great western railway you may cover the best tourist districts in quick time and with great comfort. by it you may tackle connemara either from galway or westport, and the company, subsidised by mr. balfour, will shortly open fifty miles of line between galway and clifden. then we want a thirty-mile continuation from clifden by letterfrack and leenane to westport, and the circle will be complete. for that, paddy must wait until the tories are again in office. as he will tell you, the liberals spend their strength in sympathetic talk. mr. hastings, of westport, said:--"i care not who hears me say that the tories have instituted the public works which have so much benefited the country. the liberals have always been illiberal in this respect. mr. balfour did ireland more good than any liberal irish secretary." mr. hastings is as good a catholic home ruler as father mcphilpin, who said substantially the same thing. ballina is on the moy--every self-respecting town in ireland has a salmon river--and the midland and great western railway gives fishing tickets to tourists, who anywhere on this line should find themselves in paradise. from the three lakes of mullingar to the shannon at athlone, from the moy at ballina to the corrib at galway, the waters swarm with fish. the salmon weir at galway is worth a long journey to see. the fish literally jostle each other in the water. they positively elbow each other about. sometimes you may stand against the salmon ladder in the middle of the town, and although the water is clear as crystal you cannot see the bottom for fish--great, silvery salmon, upon whose backs you think you might walk across the river. the moy at ballina is perhaps fifty yards wide, and the town boasts two fine bridges, one of which is flanked by a big catholic church. the streets are not handsome, nor yet mean. whiskey shops abound, though they are not quite so numerous as in some parts of ennis, where, in mill street, about three-fourths of the shops sell liquor. castleisland in kerry would also beat ballina. mr. reid, of aldershot, said:--"the population of castleisland is only one thousand two hundred, but i counted forty-eight whiskey-shops on one side of the street." of a row of eleven houses near the main bridge of ballina i counted seven whiskey-shops, and one of the remaining four was void. there were several drink-shops opposite, so that the people are adequately supplied with the means of festivity. the place has no striking features, and seems to vegetate in the way common to irish country towns. it probably lives on the markets, waking up once a week, and immediately going to sleep again. the post office counter had two bottles of ink and no pen, and the young man in charge was whistling "the minstrel boy." the shop-keepers were mostly standing at their doors, congratulating each other on the fine weather. a long, long street leading uphill promised a view of the surrounding country, but the result was not worth the trouble. it led in the direction of ardnaree, which my irish scholarship translates "king's hill," but i stopped short at the ruins of the old workhouse, and after a glance over the domain of captain jones went back through the double row of fairly good cottages, and the numerous clans of cocks and hens which scratched for a precarious living on the king's highway. the people turned out _en masse_ to look at me, and to discuss my country, race, business, appearance, and probable income. the connaught folks have so little change, are so wedded to one dull round, that when i observe the interest my passage evokes i feel like a public benefactor. a bell rings at the catholic church. three strokes and a pause. then three more and another pause. a lounger on the bridge reverently raises his hat, and seeing himself observed starts like a guilty wretch upon a fearful summons. i ask him what the ringing means, and with a deprecatory wag of his head he says:-- "deed an' deed thin, i couldn't tell ye." the town crier unconsciously launched me into business, and soon i was floating on a high tide of political declamation. what the crier cried i could not at all make out, for the accent of the ballina folks is exceedingly full-flavoured. when he stopped i turned to a well-dressed young man near me and said, "he does not finish, as in england, with god save the queen." "no," said my friend with a laugh, "he has too much regard for his skin." "what would happen if he expressed his loyalty?" "he would be instantly rolled in the gutter. the people would be on him in a moment. he'd be like a daisy in a bull's mouth. he might say "god save ireland," just to round the thing off, but "god save the queen"! my friend was a home ruler, and yet unlike the rest. he said: "i am a home ruler because i think home rule inevitable now the english people have given way so far. give paddy an inch and you may trust him to take an ell. we must have something like home rule to put an end to the agitation which is destroying the country. it is now our only chance, and in my opinion a very poor chance, but we are reduced so low that we think the bottom is touched. the various political agencies which have frightened away capital and entirely abolished enterprise will continue their work until some measure of home rule is given to the country, and then things will come to a head at once. it is barely possible that good might ultimately result, but young men would be gray-headed before things would work smoothly. the posture of the poorer classes is simply absurd. they will have a dreadful awakening, and that will also do good. they are doing nothing now except waiting for the wonderful things they have been told will take place when irishmen get into power. you must have heard the extraordinary things they say about the mines and factories that will be everywhere opened. some of their popular orators tell them of the prosperity of ireland before the union. that is true enough, but the conditions are totally changed. we did something in the way of manufacturing, but we could not do it now. we had no germany, no america to compete against. those who tell us to revive that period of prosperity by the same means might just as well tell us to revive the system of tribal lands or the chieftainship of brian boru. "the people need some tremendous shock to bring them to their senses. they used to work much better, to stand, as it were, on their own feet. now they make little or no exertion. they know they will never be allowed to starve. they know that at the cry of their distress england and america will rush to their succour. and they have tasted the delights of not paying. first it was the rent, the impossible rent. in this they had a world-wide sympathy, and a very large number of undeserving persons well able to pay chummed in with the deserving people who were really unable to meet their engagements. and at the meetings of farmers to decide on united action, the men who could pay but would not were always the most resolute in their opposition to the landlord. this was natural enough, for they had most to gain by withholding payment. the landlords always knew which was which, and would issue ejectment processes against those able to pay, but what could be done against a whole county of no-rent folks? and never have these people been without aid and sympathy from english politicians. we have had them in ireland by the dozen, going round the farmers and encouraging them to persevere. "the great advantage of home rule in the eyes of the farmers is this and this only--that an irish house would settle the land question for ever. the people would take a good bill from the house of commons at westminster if they could get it, but they can't. they believe that their only hope is with an irish parliament. the most intelligent are now somewhat doubtful as to the substantial benefits to come. they fear heavy taxation. they say that everything must come out of the land, and they wonder whether the change would pay them after all. on the whole, they will risk it, and under the advice of the clergy, who have their own little ideas, they will continue to vote for home rule. throw out this bill, let mr. balfour settle the land question, and the agitators will not have a leg left to stand on." all this i steadfastly believe. no farmer wants home rule for anything beyond his personal interests. mr. patrick gibbons, of carnalurgan, is one of the smartest small farmers i have met, and he confirms the statements of his fellows. "give the farmers the land for a reasonable rent," said he, "and they would not care two straws for home rule." the small traders admit that they would like it, as a mere matter of fancy, and because they have been from time to time assured that the english parliament is the sole cause of ireland's decadence. they are assured that an irish parliament by instituting immense public works would prevent emigration, and that the people staying at home and earning money would bring custom to their shops. nearly everybody insists on an exclusive system of protective tariffs. england, they say, competes too strongly. ireland cannot stand up to her. she must be kept out at any cost. according to a ballina nationalist this is where the "shock" will come in. he said:-- "the bill is being whittled down to nothing. gladstone is betraying us. it is doubtful if he ever was in earnest. 'twould be no home rule bill at all, if even it was passed. an' what d'ye mane by refusing us the right to put on whatever harbour dues we choose? an' what d'ye mane by sayin' we're not to impose protective tariffs to help irish industries? ye wish to say, 'here's yer parlimint. ye're responsible for the government of the counthry, for the advancement of the counthry, for the prosperity of the counthry; but ye mustn't do what ye think best to bring about all this. when we have a parlimint we'll do as _we_ choose, an' not as _you_ choose, ye have no right to dictate what we shall do, nor what we shan't do. we'll do what we think proper, an' england must make the best of it. england has always considered herself: now we'll consider ourselves. if we're not to govern the counthry in every way that _we_ think best, why on earth would we want a parlimint at all? tell me that, now. if ireland is to be governed from england, if we are to have any interference, what betther off will we be? an' protection is the very first cry we shall raise." the good folks at tuam have held an indignation meeting to protest against the statements contained in my tuam letter, which they characterise as "vile slanders" which they wish to "hurl back in my teeth" (if any). the meeting took place in the town hall on sunday, which day is usually selected by the tuamites to protest against the brutal saxon, and to hold meetings of the national league, a colourable successor to the land league. all these meetings are convened by priests, addressed by priests, governed by priests. the tuamites are among the most priest-ridden people in ireland, and, after having seen galway and limerick, this is saying a good deal. the meeting was from beginning to end a screaming farce, wherein language was used fit only for an irish house of commons. the vocabulary of irish town commissioners and irish poor law guardians was laid under heavy contribution. the speakers hurled at the _gazette_ the pet terms they usually and properly reserve for each other. the too flattering terms which in a moment of weakness i applied to tuam and its people are described as "lying, hellish, mendacious misrepresentations." misther maccormack said the english people would know there was "not a wurrud of thruth in these miserable lies." the report of the _tuam herald_ reads like a faction fight in a whiskey-shop. you can hear the trailing of coats, the crack of shillelaghs on thick irish skulls, the yells of hurroosh, whirroo, and o'donnell aboo! towards the end your high-wrought imagination can almost smell the sticking plaister, so vivid is the picture. "the bare-faced slanders of this hireling scribe from the slums of birmingham" were hotly denounced, but nobody said what they were. the clergy and their serfs were equally silent on this point. i steadfastly adhere to every syllable of my tuam letter. i challenge the clergy and laity combined to put their fingers on a single assertion which is untrue, or even overstated. let them point out a single inaccuracy, if they can. to make sweeping statements, to say that this "gutter-snipe," this "hireling calumniator," this "blackguard birmingham man" has made a series of "reckless calumnies," "devoid of one particle of truth," is not sufficiently precise. i stand by every word i have uttered; i am prepared to hold my ground on every single point. most of my information was obtained from catholics who are heart-weary of priestly tyranny and priestly intimidation; who are sufficiently enlightened to see that priestly power is based on the ignorance of priestly dupes, that priestly influence is the real slavery of ireland, the abject condition of the poor is its unmistakable result, and that where there are priests in ireland there are ignorance and dirt in exact proportion. they have compared the clean cottages of the north with the filthy hovels of the south, and they have drawn their own conclusions. but to descend to detail. what do the tuamites deny? "not a particle of truth in the whole letter!" father humphreys said my tipperary letter was "a pure invention," without a syllable of truth. since then father humphreys has been compelled to admit, in writing, that all i said was true, and that he "could not have believed it possible." that was his apology. turning to the tuam letter, i find these words-- "the educated catholics are excellent people--none better anywhere, none more tolerant." this is construed into "a gross insult on our holy priests, and particularly on our archbishop," who, by the way, was not mentioned or made the subject of any allusion, however remote. do the tuamites deny that "many of the streets are wretchedly built," and "the galway road shows how easily the catholic poor are satisfied?" do they deny that the cabins in this district are "aboriginal in build, and also indescribably filthy," and that "the condition of the inmates is not one whit higher than that obtaining in the wigwams of the native americans?" do they deny that "the hooded women, barefooted, bronzed, and tanned by constant exposure, are wonderfully like the squaws brought from the far west by buffalo bill?" all this i reiterate and firmly maintain, with the addition of the statement that the squaws were in a condition of compulsory cleanliness the like of which seems never to be attained by the ladies of the galway road, tuam. the meeting is called a "monster" meeting. how many people does the tuam town hall hold? the fact is that the town hall of tuam, with the entire population of tuam thrown in, could be put into the town hall of birmingham. do the tuamites deny that mr. strachan, one of their most worthy citizens, is unable to walk the streets of the town wherein live the people he has benefited, without a guard of policemen to protect him from the cut-throat emissaries of the land league? so it was when i visited tuam, mr. strachan's crimes being the purchase of a farm in the land court and his protestant creed. do they deny the scenes of persecution i described as having taken place in former days? all this i had from a source more reliable than the whole papist hierarchy. the tuamites can deny nothing of what i have written. the tumbledown town is there, the filthy cabins and degraded squaws of the galway road are still festering in their own putridity, and probably the police are still preserving strachan from the fate of the poor fellow so brutally murdered near tuam a few weeks ago. the priests called a town meeting to protest against insult to the church. great is diana of the ephesians! when the tenants refused to pay their lawful dues the priests called no meeting. when the country from end to end echoed with the lamentations of widows and the wailing of helpless children whose natural protectors had been murdered by the land league, the tuamites suppressed their indignation, the tuam priests made no protest. when scores of men were butchered at their own firesides, shot in their beds, battered to pieces at their own thresholds, these virtuous sacerdotalists never said a word, called no town's meeting, used no bad language, spoke not of "hirelings," "calumniators," "blackguards," and "liars." two of the speakers threatened personal injury should i again visit the town. that is their usual form,--kicking, bludgeoning, outraging, or shooting from behind a wall. when they do not shoot they come on in herds, like wild buffaloes, to trample on and mutilate their victim. from the strong or armed they run like hares. their fleetness of foot is astonishing. the _tuam news_, owned and edited by the brother of a priest, exhibits the intellectual status of the tuam people. let us quote it once again:-- to the editor of the "tuam news." sir--permit me a little space in the next issue of the _tuam news_, relative to my father being killed by the fairies which appeared in the _tuam news_ of the th of april last. i beg to say that he was not killed by the fairies, but i say he was killed by some person or persons unknown as yet. hoping very soon that the perpetrators of this dastardly outrage will be soon brought to light, i am, mr. editor, yours obediently, david redington. kilcreevanty, may th, ' . after this i need add nothing to what i have said except a pronouncement of father curran, who said that "tuam could boast as fine schools as birmingham, and that he would then and there throw out a challenge that they boast more intelligence in tuam than birmingham could afford." poor father curran! poor tuam! poor tuamites with their rags, pigs, filth, priests, fairies, and intelligence! i shall visit them once more. a few photographs from the galway road would settle the dispute, and render null and void all future town's meetings. they have sworn to slay me, but in visiting their town i fear nothing but vermin and typhoid fever. their threats affect me not. as one of their own townsmen remarked,-- "you cannot believe a word they say. they never speak the truth except when they call each other liars. and when they are in fear, although too lazy to work, they are never too lazy to run. they have no independence of thought or action. their religion crushes all manhood out of them. they are the obedient servants of the priests, and no man dare say his soul's his own. any one who did not attend that meeting would be a marked man, but if it had been limited to people who know the use of soap it would necessarily have been small, even for the tuam town hall." everywhere in connaught i hear the people saying, "when you want to roast an irishman you can always find another irishman to turn the spit." thrue for ye, ma bouchal! ballina, june th. no. .--why ireland does not prosper. a community of small farmers with a sprinkling of resident gentry. all sorts of land within a small compass, rock, bog, tillage, and excellent grazing. the churchyard is a striking feature. a ruined oratory covered with ivy is surrounded by tombstones and other mortuary memorials strange to the saxon eye. the graves are dug east and west on a rugged mound hardly deserving to be called a hill, although here and there steep enough. huge masses of sterile mountain form the background, and from the ruin the atlantic is seen, gleaming in the sun. patches of bog with diggers of turf, are close by the untouched portions covered with white bog-bean blooms, which at a short distance look like a snowfall. on a neighbouring hill is a fine old danish earthwork, a fort, called by the natives "the rath," fifty yards in diameter, the grassy walls, some ten feet high and four yards thick, reared in a perfect circle, on which grow gorse and brambles. the graveyard is sadly neglected. costly irish crosses with elaborate carving stand in a wilderness of nettles and long grass. not a semblance of a path anywhere. to walk about is positively dangerous. ruined tombstones, and broken slabs which appear to cover family vaults, trip you up at every step. every yard of progress is made with difficulty, and you move nervously among the tall rank nettles in momentary fear of dislocating your ankle, or of being suddenly precipitated into the reeking charnel house of some defunct mayo family. the connaught dead seem to be very exclusive. most of the ground is enclosed in small squares, each having a low stone wall, half-a-yard thick, with what looks like the gable-end of a stone cottage at the west end. seen from a distance the churchyard looks like a ruined village. at first sight you think the place a relic of some former age, tenanted by the long-forgotten dead, but a closer inspection proves interments almost up to date. weird memorials of the olden time stand cheek by jowl with modern monuments of marble; and two of suspiciously black country physiognomy are of cast-iron, with i.h.s. and a crucifix all correctly moulded, the outlines painted vermilion, with an invitation to pray for the souls of the dead in the same effective colour. the graveyard shows no end of prayer, but absolutely no work. no tidiness, order, reverence, decency, or convenience. nothing but ruin, neglect, disorder, untidiness, irreverence, and inconvenience. _ora et labora_ is an excellent proverb which the irish people have not yet mastered in its entirety. to pray _and_ work is as yet a little too much for them. they stop at the first word, look round, and think they have done all. this graveyard displays the national character. heaps of piety, but no exertion. any amount of talk, but no work. more than any people, the irish affect respect for their dead. you leave the graveyard of oughewall smarting with nettle stings, and thankful that you have not broken your neck. the place will doubtless be tidied, the nettles mowed down and pathways made, when the people get home rule. they are clearly waiting for something. they wish to be freed from the cruel english yoke. when this operation is happily effected, they will clean their houses, move the dunghills from their doors, wash themselves, and go to work in earnest. the spanish queen vowed she would never wash herself till gibraltar was retaken from the english. seven hundred years ago the irish nation must have made a similar vow--and kept it. a passing shower drove me to the shelter of a neighbouring farmhouse, where lived a farmer, his wife, and their son and daughter. the place was poor but tolerable, the wife being far above the irish average. the living room, about ten feet square, was paved with irregularly-shaped stones of all sizes, not particularly flat, but in places decidedly humpy; the interstices were of earth, the whole swept fairly clean, but certainly not scrubbed. the rafters, of rough wood, were painted black, and a rough ladder-like stair, open at the sides, led to the upper regions. to have an upstairs is to be an aristocrat. the standard of luxury is much lower than in england, for almost any english agricultural labourer would have better furniture than that possessed by this well-to-do but discontented farmer. an oak cupboard like a wardrobe, a round deal table, and four rough rush-bottomed chairs of unstained wood comprised the paraphernalia. the kitchen dresser, that indispensable requisite of english farm kitchens, with its rows of plates and dishes, was nowhere to be seen. the turf fire on the hearth needed no stove nor grate, nor was there any in the house. a second room on the ground floor, used as a bed room, had a boarded floor, and although to english notions bare and bald, having no carpet, pictures, dressing table, or washstand, it was clean and inoffensive. the churning and dairy operations are carried on in the room first described, where also the ducks and hens do feed. the farmer holds fifty acres of good land, for which he pays fifty pounds a year. his father, who died thirty years ago, paid twenty-four pounds, which he thinks a fair rent to-day. has not made application to the court, although he _might_ benefit by twenty-five to thirty-five per cent. is aware that the judicial rent is sometimes fixed at a sum above what the tenant had been paying, and admits that this might happen to him. "yes, the land round the house is very good, very good indeed, but what can be seen from here is by far the best of it. that is always the way in this world, the best at the front." from this and other remarks of like tendency i gather that the noble landlord is in the habit of placing all the best land of his estate along the high read, concealing the boggy, rocky portions in the remote interior, fraudulently imposing on the public, and alienating sympathy from the tenant, thereby inflicting another injustice on ireland. "the english laws are right enough, as far as they go," said the farmer, "but the english will not do the right thing about the land. now we know that an irish parliament will settle the matter forth-with. that's why we support home rule. we know the opinions of the men who now represent us, and we can trust them in this matter if in no other. the land is the whole of it. if that were once put on an unchangeable bottom i would rather be without home rule. some say that even if our rents are reduced by one-half, the increased taxes we must pay would make us nearly as poor as ever, and that all this bother and disturbance would not really save us a penny piece. and i think this might be true. so that if something could be done by the english parliament i should prefer it to come that way. and so would we all, a hundred times. for with the english parliament we know where we are, and what we're doing. i'm not one to believe that the land will be handed over to us without payment. plenty of them are ignorant enough to believe even that. my view is just this: if the english parliament would settle the land question, i would prefer to do without an irish parliament. that's what all the best farmers say, and nothing else. no, i wouldn't invest money in ireland. no, i wouldn't trust the bulk of the present members for ireland. yes, i would prefer a more respectable class of men who had a stake in the country. but we had to take what we could catch, for people who have a stake in the country are all against home rule. what could we do? we had no choice. we sent home rulers because an irish parliament is pledged to meet our views about the land. we know they will fulfil their pledges, not because they have promised, nor because they wish to benefit us, but because they wish to abolish landlordism and landlords from the country. the landlord interest is english interest, and that they want to get rid of. their reasons for settling the land question are not the farmers' reasons, but so long as it _is_ settled the farmer will reap the benefit, and will not care _why_ it was settled. give us compulsory sale and compulsory purchase, at a fair price, and you will find the farmers nearly all voting against home rule. no, the priests would not be able to stir us once we were comfortably settled. why, we'd all become conservatives at once. sure anybody with half-an-eye could see that in a pitch-dark night in a bog-hole." my friend assured me that secret societies are unknown in mayo, or at any rate, in the westport district. the young men of clare, he thought, were fenians to a man. "they are queer, blood-thirsty folks, enemies to ireland. why, they object to other irishmen. they will not allow a poor fellow from another county to work among them as a harvest-man. they would warn him off, and if he would not go, they'd beat him with sticks, and when once they begin, you never know where they'll stop. they should be put down with a strong hand." but where is the strong hand? mr. morley, recently replying to mr. arnold forster, said that "it was admitted that the police were working as faithfully and as energetically under the present as under the late government, and added that the authorities concerned were taking all the steps which experience and responsibility suggested." mr. morley is right in attributing faithfulness to the police, and their energy is doubtless all that can be reasonably expected under very discouraging auspices. mr. morley speaks more highly of the police than the police speak of mr. morley. from donegal to bantry bay, from dublin to galway and westport, north, south, east, west, right, left, and centre, the police of ireland condemn mr. morley's administration as feeble, vacillating, and as likely to encourage crime. they speak of their duties in despondent tones. i have from time to time given their sentiments, which are unvarying. they know not what to do, and complain that while they continue to be held responsible they dare not follow up their duties with the requisite energy. only yesterday an experienced officer said:--"the men are disheartened because they do not know how their action will be taken, and because they feel that anything in the nature of enterprise is very likely to injure themselves individually. they feel that in the matter of arrests it is better to be on the safe side, and then they know how unavailing all their efforts must be in the disturbed districts of kerry, clare, and limerick, where the arm of the law has been paralysed by mr. morley's rescision of the salutary provisions so necessary in those counties. outrages and shooting are every-day occurrences, for many cases are never reported to the police at all. if the police caught the criminals in the act there would be no result, for the juries of those three counties would not convict, and the venue cannot now be changed to cork. "some of the nationalist members were the other day asking in the house whether the cork magistrates had not been presented with white gloves, and so on, to bring out the fact that there was no crime to punish on a recent occasion; but what does this prove? merely that mr. balfour's action in changing the venue of three counties to the city of cork, where moonlighters are tried by a jury of independent traders of patrick street was wise and sagacious. the white gloves of cork were a tribute to tory administration. the cork juries convicted their men, and stood by the consequences. they have escaped so far, as all bold men escape. if the limerick moonlighters must have been tried in cork there would have been no moonlighting. the police can always catch them, when there is any use in catching them. in country districts the movements of people are pretty well known, and these fellows are always ready to betray each other. mr. morley may talk fine, and may mean well, but the people who have been riddled with shot have mr. morley to thank. of course he is under compulsion. he has to please the irish separatists. old women and children are outraged and shot in the legs because of mr. morley's political necessities." i think my friend was right as to the effect of boldness in action. there is too much truckling to the ruffian element, not only by mr. morley, but by most unionists resident in ireland. opinions on this point vary with varying circumstances. several shopkeepers in a mayo town were utterly ruined for expressing their political opinions, or for being suspected of harbouring opinions contrary to the feeling of the majority. they were boycotted, and had to shut up shop. others, older-established, or in possession of a monopoly, weathered the storm, but their opinions cost them something. these are the milder cases. yet shooting or bludgeoning are likely enough to follow overt political action, such as refusing to join a procession or to illuminate. it was hard to find a protestant farmer in this district, but i succeeded at last. his notions were strange, very strange indeed. he thought his rent fair enough, and was of opinion that the tenant must be prepared to take the good years with the bad years. "these countrymen of mine, like somebody i've read of, never learn anything and never forget anything. they do not half farm the land. they don't understand any but the most elementary methods. they do not put the land to its best use. when they had prosperous years, and many a one they had, they put nothing by for a rainy day. they are very improvident. i have been in both england and scotland, and i know the difference in the people. they have more self-reliance, and they are keen after improvements. they are not satisfied to have just enough, to live from hand to mouth. they must have comfort, and they like to be independent. now, paddy is content to just scrape along. if he can barely exist he's quite satisfied. he's always on the edge of the nest, but he feels sure that when the worst comes to the worst, somebody or something will step in and save him from starvation. "nearly every man in this county has been in england, many of them twenty times or more, working for months and months in the best farmed districts. have they got any wrinkles? divil a one. they have not planted a gooseberry or currant tree, they have no pot-herbs, no carrots or parsnips--nothing at all but potatoes and turnips. the farmers have no system of winter feeding, and they won't learn one. there is a great and growing demand in england for irish butter, which, properly put up in a tasty way, would fetch fine figures, but the lack of system in winter feeding and winter calving prevents the supply from being kept up. the farmers will make no change in their habits, and they don't work as if they meant it. they lounge about all day, waiting for the crops to grow and the cattle to get fat, and then they wonder they are so poor. the only hope of the irish people is their absorption in america. they work well enough when surrounded by new influences. once get them away from the priests, and away they go; you can't stop them. they have great natural abilities, but somehow they won't bloom in ireland. if they put forth the same energy in ireland as in america they would do well. but they never will. their religion keeps them down, and they can't get out of their old habits." i observed that the earl of sligo had obtained eighty-two decrees of possession against tenants for non-payment of rent, and that the _mayo news_, while censuring his action, admitted that most of the tenants owed two years' rent at least. my black protestant friend might tell me whether the heading "another batch of death sentences" was a fair description of this legal action, and whether the tenants were, in his opinion, totally unable to pay the rent. "to call them sentences of death is absurd, the people are not evicted and left homeless, but merely deprived of their rights as tenants. in england, if a man does not pay his rent, he is thrown out, and nobody says nay. in ireland a man may pay no rent for seven years, and yet, when he is evicted, the people cry shame on the landlord, who, in most cases, has been patient to the limit of human endurance. the landlord has watched the tenant neglecting the land, and living more expensively on the money he ought to have paid as rent. now, let me submit a point which never seems to strike the english unionist speakers. and yet it is plain enough. the separatists say evictions are cruel and tyrannical because the people cannot pay the awful, exorbitant rents. now notice my point! "a rent may be too high, but the land must be worth _something_. now these people have paid _nothing at all for two years or more_. "talk to these defaulters, and they will usually say 'the land is worth just one-half.' "why don't they pay that half? "then they would be only one year behind, instead of two, and they would get no notice to quit. "but instead of paying the one-half which they themselves say the land is worth, they pay nothing at all. does that look honest? does it look genuine? don't you think anybody could see that they are taking advantage of the unsettled state of things to avoid any payment whatever? they await home rule, which is to give them the land, and they are anticipating its advantages. "they all know hennessy's brandy, and can tell you the difference between the one-star and the three-star brands. "in england everybody is at work. in ireland most are at play. a man who has been taught to work in england feels inclined to follow them up here with a whip, they look so idle even when at work. they move about as if half-dead. they are as lazy as lambert's dog, that leaned his head against the wall to bark. the young women won't work either. my sister in athlone is obliged to give her servants three nights a week off from five to ten, or she could have nobody. then they are always going to mass or keeping some festival of the church. speak a word of reproof and away they go. they are as proud as lambert's other dog, that took the wall of a muck-cart and got squelched for his pains. "home rule would never do ireland any good. quite the contrary. what can do a man good who tries to get his dinner by standing about and saying how hungry he is? "as to the agitators, they will always agitate. when one source is dried up they'll invent another. they have their living to get, and agitation is their trade. and a paying trade it is. are they disloyal to england? i believe them fenians at heart--that is, fenians in the matter of loyalty. they would use any power they might get to damage england, and if england gives them power she'll bitterly rue the day. paddy may be lazy, but put your finger in his mouth and he'll bite. the english separatists don't see this, but when i see the fox in the hen-roost i can guess what brought him there. if i put the cat in the dairy i should expect her to taste the cream. trust the irish nationalist members! i'd as soon trust a pack of wolves with my lambs." my friend is a scientific gardener, and descanted on the wonderful climate of ireland, where plants that will not grow in england nourish luxuriously. i told him i had seen bamboo growing in the open air at dundalk, and asked him if the bonds of brotherhood (_humbugis morleyensis_) or the union of hearts (_gladstonia gammonica gigantica_) would come to perfection in hibernia. he thought the soil and climate unsuitable, and was sure they would never take root. the _gammonica_ had been tried, but it withered and died. it could not be "budded" for want of an irish "stock." a scrap-book, fifty years old, revealed a condition of things so strangely like that of the present day that i obtained permission to copy the following skit, which, but for the mention of the old convict colony, might have been written last week. it is headed "extract from the forthcoming history of the irish parliament." the home rule project is therefore ancient enough:-- one blow and ireland sprang from the head of her saxon enslaver like a new minerva! proudly and solemnly she then sat down to frame a republic worthy of plato and pat. her first president had been a workhouse porter, who was also a night watchman. he was, therefore, eminently fitted for both civil and military administration. the speech of president pat on opening congress developes his policy and his well-digested plans of legislative reform. here are a few quotations:-- the key-stone of government is the blarney-stone. political progress may always be accelerated by a bludgeon. our institutions must be consolidated by soft-soap and whacks. the people's will is made known by manifesto, and by many fists too. every man shall be qualified to sit in congress that is a ten-pound pig-holder, provided that the pig and the member sleep under the same roof. members of congress will be paid for their services. gentlemen wearing gloves only to have the privilege of shaking the president's hand. the unwashed members to be paid at the door. pipes will not be allowed on the opposition benches, nor may any member take whiskey until challenged by the president. under no circumstances will a member be suffered to sit with his blunderbuss at full cock, nor pointed at the president's ear. our ambassadors will be chosen from our most meritorious postmen, so that they may have no difficulty in reading their letters. the foreign office will be presided over by a patriotic editor who has travelled in new south wales and is thoroughly conversant with the language. instead of bulwarks, the island will be fortified with irish bulls, our engineers being of opinion that no other horn-works are so efficient. to prevent heartburnings between landlord and tenant, a government collector of rents shall be appointed, and tenant-right shall include a power to shoot over the land and at anyone on it. and this was written half-a-century ago. it reads like yesterday! oughewall, june th. no. .--in a congested district. this is the first station on the balfour line which is to run from westport to achil sound--now in process of construction by mr. robert worthington, the great dublin contractor, who has built about a million pounds' worth of irish railway, and who is of opinion that home rule means the bankruptcy of ireland, and that the labouring population of the country would by it be compelled to emigrate to england, bringing their newly-acquired skill as railway workers into competition with the navvies and general working population. the seven miles of line between here and westport are not yet packed and ballasted, and the ride hither on an engine kindly placed at the disposal of the _gazette_, was not lacking in pleasurable excitement. the bogey engine kicked and winced and bucked and cavorted in a fashion unique in my experience. she seemed to be exhilarated by the pure mountain air, charged with ozone from the atlantic main. watching her little eccentricities, it was hard to believe her not endued with animal vitality. she walked the railway like a thing of life. she ducked and dived and plunged and snorted and reared and jibbed like a veritable cocktailed nag of the true old irish breed. sometimes she seemed to go from under you as she suddenly dipped into a slight depression. sometimes she rolled like a ship at sea, and you began to wonder if sea-sickness were possible on land. the scenery is not striking, and the surrounding country, though poor and desolate, is by no means sterile. no tracts of black bog, no impassable morasses, no miles of rocks and boulders, but a fairly good grazing country, with here and there, at long intervals, a white cottage. the engine slows at one point, where the rails are twisted into serpentine convolutions by yesterday's tropical heat. both sides are considerably displaced, but they still bear the right relation to each other, and the faithful machine, sniffing and picking her way carefully, glides safely over the contorted path. a short tunnel, with sides of solid masonry and roof-arch of brick, again demands extra care, and it is well that the pace is slowed, for half-way through, a man becomes dimly visible running a trolley off the line. mountains arise on the left and in front, and my old friend croagh patrick puts in his nationalist appearance. then newport heaves in sight, a cemetery on high ground opposite the site of the station, and overhanging the line, kept in its place by an immense retaining wall, without which the "rude forefathers of the hamlet" would fall from their narrow cells and block the progress of the civilising train. a handsome viaduct ends the run, _finis coronat opus_, and i walk a hundred yards to see the awkward spot which at first seemed to have no bottom, but which energy and industry have conquered, as they conquer everything. the line was going on happily until this point was reached, when a soft bog was broached, which threatened to swallow everything, opening its cavernous jaws with appetite which long seemed insatiable. the engineer choked it off with a hundred thousand cubic yards of earth, a quantity which to the untechnical ear sounds like a little kingdom, or at least like a decent farm, and the bog cried, hold! enough. the total length of the line will be twenty-six-and-a-half miles, the cost, exclusive of the permanent way, which is an extra of some £ , a mile, being £ , , most of which is dispensed among the labourers of the district, who thank the balfour administration for a great work which would never have been undertaken as a merely commercial speculation. the congested areas here, as elsewhere, have been powerfully assisted and benefited by the sagacity which at once afforded relief, improved the country, and opened the way to great markets. temporary assistance is succeeded by a solid and permanent benefaction. and still the people are not happy. most of them are rather below the irish average. their isolated position in the extreme west, and their want of means of communication, may partly account for this. few ever see a newspaper, and when they do they only read stuff concocted for them by unscrupulous people who write down to their level, and deliberately endeavour to keep them in total darkness. the men employed on the line work well, and mr. william ross, civil engineer, tells me they are even better workers than the galway men, to whom i gave due credit for industry. the townsfolk are great politicians. that is, they echo the absurdities they hear, and are ready to believe anything, provided it is unlikely enough. the country papers of ireland are poor and illiterate beyond belief, but their assumption of knowledge and superior information is amazing. one of the galway rags recently treated its readers to a confidential communication having reference to the real sentiments of lord salisbury and mr. balfour as opposed to those ostensibly affected by those statesmen and to those with which they are popularly credited. lord salisbury is really dying for home rule, and mr. balfour would depart in peace if he could once behold a dublin parliament bossed by tim healy and william o'brien. lord salisbury is not so bad as he seems, nor is balfour altogether beyond hope of salvation. both are under a kind of tory terrorism which makes them say the thing that is not, compels them against their wishes to fight, forces them reluctantly to make a show of opposition. but both of them wink the other eye and have doubtless unbosomed themselves--in strict confidence--to the editor of the galway paper. the poor folks of ireland swallow this stuff, and will quote it gravely in argument. the _irish catholic_ has a large circulation, and a glance over its columns, particularly its advertising columns, is highly suggestive at the present juncture. people offer to swop prayers, just as in _exchange and mart_ people wish to barter a pet hedgehog for a lop-eared rabbit, or a cracked china cup for a gold watch and chain. gentleman wishes someone to say fifteen hail marys every morning at eight o'clock for a week, while he, in return, will knock off a similar number of some other good things. the trade in masses is surprising. for a certain sum you get one mass a week for a year, for a higher figure you get two masses a week _and_ an oleograph, for a trifle more you get mentioned in special prayers for benefactors, with a rosary that has touched the relics of thomas-a-becket or has been laid on the shrine of blessed thomas more. one advertisement sets forth the proviso that unless the payment is regular the supplications will be stopped. no pay, no prayer. _point d'argent, point de prêtre._ prayers and advice, political or otherwise, at lowest terms for cash. no discount allowed. a reduction on taking a quantity. a very knowing newport man explained the present political position. "'tis as simple as ah, bay, say. parnell wint over to france an' amerikay, an' explained to thim how the english was oppressin' and ruinin' the poor irish people; an' whin the saxon seen he was found out, an' whin the americans sent thousands an' thousands of pounds to pay the cliverist men in ireland to fight the english in parlimint, thin the english begun to give us back part of what they robbed us of. every bite ye get in england manes that much less in an irish mouth, an' the counthry is all starvin' becase england is fattenin'. all the young folks is gone out of the counthry; an' why did they go? becase england makes the laws, an' becase she makes the laws to suit herself, an' to ruin us. sure nine-tenths of the land is owned by englishmen, who make us pay twice, aye, an' four times the rint the land is worth; an' that's what england thinks us good for, an' nothin' else. we're just slaves to the saxon, as many's the time i heard the priest sayin' it. an' it was thrue for him. sure, the counthry is full of coal, an' if we wor allowed to get it we'd be as rich as england in five years. sure, lord sligo's estate is made of coal, an' although he's a conservative, an' a unionist, an' a protestant, the english parlimint wouldn't allow him to get it because it was in ireland, an' they wor afraid the irish would get betther off. an' sure they want to keep us paupers, so that we'll be compelled to 'list for sojers, an' fight for england against rooshia and prooshia, an' injy, an' foreign parts, that the english is afraid to do for themselves." his opinions are not below the intellectual average of those held by the majority of the irish electorate. the ignorance of the rank and file of the irish voters is exasperating to englishmen, who are quite unable to understand their credulity, to combat their bitter prejudices, or to make headway against their preconceived notions. english gladstonians who believe that home rule ought to be a good thing will stagger with dismay when confronted with the people who will rule the roost. for the intelligent are nowhere in point of numbers. the thick-witted believers in charms, in fairies, in the curative and preservative virtues of holy water, will have the country in their hands. the poor benighted peasants, who firmly believe that mr. balfour has the moonlighters in his pay, and that the murders of the land league were ordered by lord salisbury to cast discredit on the national cause--these are the people who, voting as they are told by the priests, would govern the action of the irish parliament. they believe that home rule by some magic process will supply the place of industry and enterprise, will open up innumerable sources of boundless wealth, and will bring about mr. gladstone's "chronic plethora" of money. but, above all, the people are to be for ever delivered from the "english yoke." what the phrase means they know not. they only repeat what they have heard. the dogs around newport are muzzled. it would be well for the people if their advisers were muzzled too. public feeling is well organised in ireland. although the people are not readers of daily news, the kind of sentiment ordered at head-quarters is immediately entertained. how it spreads nobody knows, unless it is spread from the altar. a change has come over the public sentiment. among the more intelligent farmers there is a revolt against home rule. at a unionist meeting held the other day at athenry, all the speakers agreed on this point. one said that the change might be inoperative, because the farmers dare not avow their true opinions, because they have little or no faith in the secrecy of the ballot, and because they dread the unknown consequences of ruffian vengeance. the ignorant masses have also experienced a change. they have been undergoing a process of preparation for the next agitation. the poor folks at first believed that when they got home rule all would be well. that consummation devoutly to be wished, was to enrich them all. the agitators have to guard against the resentment of the disappointed people. they are hedging industriously. if home rule should come it will do no good, because it is not the right brand. john bull has spoilt it all, as he spoils everything. home rule would have done all they promised, but this is not the home rule they meant! they took it at first as a small instalment of what they would afterwards kick out of the saxon, but those outrageous unionists have shaved it down to almost nothing. it is not worth having, and the only thing to do, say some newport politicians, is for the irish nationalist party to rise in a body an' lave the house, an' not put a fut back into it till they get what they want. i wish my newport friends could make their counsel prevail. the latest phase of feeling, then, is an affected indignation at this supreme treachery of the english people. over and over again i have quoted the opinions of people who said mr. gladstone meant to hoax ireland again. this was when all seemed to be going quite smoothly. the government concessions and the moderate use of the closure have convinced the doubters that they were right, and they breathe battle and slaughter. irishmen like fighting debates, decided measures, tremendously hard hitting. as a people they do not believe in constitutional agitation. they would prefer sudden revolutions, cannons roaring, blood and thunder. they openly avow their preference, and say that this would have been their method, but that england has elaborately disarmed the country, which declaration clashes with the popular opinion, often exultantly expressed, that ireland is full of arms. the truth is with the revolutionaries, who would certainly prefer battle but for its well-known danger. if ireland could be freed by moonlighters firing at long ranges from behind stone walls, with an inaccessible retreat within easy reach, the english yoke would have but a short shrift. a frantic newporter said:--"we never got anything by love, but always by fear, and compulsion should be our motto. i've no patience wid thim that'll stand hat in hand, or be going down on their knees to england for every bit an' sup. john mitchel an' james stephens was the only men of modern times who properly understood how to manage the english. of coorse, parnell did something to advance the cause, an' 'tis thrue that he had no revolution nor insurrection of the old sort. but the land league was arranged to include all the secret associations and to make use of thim all. ye had whiteboys, an' fenians an' ribbonmen agin ye, an' ye can't say but what the secret societies did the business, an' not what they call the constitutional agitation. ye might have talked to the english parlimint till doomsday an' ye'd not make it move a hair's-breadth for ireland. but follow up yer talk wid a bit of shootin' an' then ye'll see what ye will see. 'twas very bad, an' no man could agree wid it; but it did what no talkin' would ever have done. compulsion is the right idea. an' what about dynamite? if ye look properly at the thing, why wouldn't we use dynamite? haven't we a right to do as _we_ choose in ireland? ought not the irish people to be masters of ireland? we say clear out--lave us to ourselves, take away yer landlords, yer sojers, yer police, an' _thin_ we'll not have recoorse to dynamite. we have a right to free ourselves by any means that comes handy. all's fair in love an' war. no, i'm not sayin' that i'd do it meself personally. but whin ye come to look into it, why wouldn't we be justified in usin' dynamite? ye pitched shells into alexandria whin it suited ye. why wouldn't we blow up london wid dynamite, if it suited us?" the newport people have not heard of the union of hearts. a decent old man who was trying to sell home-spun tweed of his own making, said:--"the english has been hittin' us for many a year, but whin we git home rule we'll be able to hit thim back. god spare me to see that day!" and he raised his hat, just as the people mentioned by mr. a.m. sullivan, m.p., "raised their hats reverentially" when they heard that a landlord or agent was shot. whenever i hear a friendly sentiment, a friendly wish, a friendly aspiration in connection with england from the lips of any nationalist i will gladly record it, if possible, in letters of gold. i do not expect this to happen. speakers who attack england are most popular. the more unscrupulous and violent they are, the better their reception. nationalist m.p.'s who in england have spoken well of mr. gladstone or of the english people are sharply hauled over the coals. the fighting men are the patriot's glory. the irish people believe that the introduction of a home rule bill is due to the action of their bullies, rather than to the persuasive argument of their civilised men. a very small minority desire to give john bull some credit for fair play, an opinion hotly resented by the mob. "ah, now, listen to me, thin." "sure, i'm lookin' at ye." "don't i know we bate the bill out of bull." "an' how would ye know, at all, at all?" "how would i know, is it? d'ye take me for a fool?" "arrah, thin, sure i would not judge ye by yer looks!" that is a model bar spar, the combatants drinking dog's-nose, sometimes called "powdher an' ball"--a drink of neat whiskey washed down by a pot of porter. the connaught folk drink whiskey neat, but usually follow the spirit with water. they take up both glasses at once, and after a loving sniff at the poteen they pour it slowly down, the shebeen stuff tasting like a torchlight procession. then they hastily toss off the water, making a wry face, and mostly addressing to the despised fluid the remark-- "ye'll find it gone on before!" the desperate appeal of the parnellite party for funds has evoked much merriment among irish unionists, and much burning scorn from anti-parnellites--who themselves have much need of the money. a young friend has sent me the following parody, adapted from an old and well-known, melody:-- the patriot came down like a wolf on the fold, and all that he asked was their silver and gold; and he pocketed all that he got, as his fee, from the shores of the liffey to rocky tralee. tho' pat looked as naked and bleak as his soil, yet there stood the patriot to sack up the spoil. and from parish to parish the box went its rounds-- if we give you our speeches you must give us your pounds. the coming golden time is neatly hinted at. home rule will pay for all:-- when it comes, you no longer shall lie in a ditch, every beggar among you at once shall be rich; the hedger and ditcher shall have an estate, and drive his four horses, and dine off his plate. what! you won't? and your champion in want of a meal, with his coat out at elbows, his shoes down at heel; with his heart all as black as his speeches in print! boys, i know what you'll do: you'll just keep back the rint. now down with your cash, never think of the jail, for erin's true patriots the virgin is bail; she'll rain down bank notes till the bailiff is blind-- still you're slack! then i'll tell you a piece of my mind. the priest is invoked to compel unwilling subscribers:-- would you like to be sent, in the shape of a ghost, to be pokered by demons and browned like a toast? or be hung in a blaze with a hook in your backs, till you all melt away like a cake of bees'-wax? would you like to be pitchforked down headlong to limbo, with the pope standing by with his two arms akimbo? no matter who starves, plank down on the spot, pounds, shillings, and pence; we'll take all that you've got. the poem breathes the true spirit of separatism-cum-sacerdotalism. newport (co. mayo), june th. no. .--irish improvidence the stumbling block. the further journey from newport to mulranney on the _gazette_ special engine was yesterday delayed for a few hours by the announcement that during the night part of the line had sunk into a bog--a circumstance which might have seemed unusual and ominous to english engineers, but which mr. lionel vaughan bennett regarded as a mere matter of daily routine, hardly worth more than a passing mention. there was nothing for it but to take another walk round newport, and after further admiring the great wall holding up the embankment opposite the station--a colossal work executed under great difficulties--to look at the surrounding landscape. those who are interested in engineering may like to know the dimensions of this wall, which is two hundred feet long, thirty-five feet high, and ten feet thick at the base, tapering off to a thickness of five feet at the top, and is built of a fine limestone quarried from the railway cutting a little further out. the view from either of the ridges between which the town is built, is magnificent, mountain, valley, sea, and river contributing to the effect. from one ridge you see clew bay and the croagh patrick range, with an immense tract of country of varied appearance. from the other, immediately above the station, an enormous valley stretches away to the bogagh mountain in front and the peaked summit of lettermoughra on the left. at the latter point of view are some wooden cabins which the saxon might mistake for pigsties or small cowsheds until he discovered they were inhabited by patriots, keen on home rule and charitable coppers. beware of civility in these parts. from casual passers-by it nearly always means an appeal for alms, and after a few days' experience you are apt to fall into misanthropy. some of these beggars have a fine dramatic way of opening the conversation. a hale and seemingly able-bodied man of fifty or thereabouts came up carrying a wheel, which he dropped when about ten yards away with the fervently uttered exclamation-- "god help the poor--owld--man!" this adjuration falling short of its aim, he came up and asked for "a few coppers," at the same time invoking about sixpennyworth of blessings in advance, a sort of sprat to catch a mackerel. "got no coppers," i said, rather impatiently. "may ye never have one till the day of yer death," said the good old man, this time with an unmistakable accent of sincerity. he hobbled off with the wheel, muttering something which may have been blessings, and a fine healthy young fellow came up. "good mornin', an' 'tis a foin bit of scenery, but we can't ate it, an' we'd die afore we'd go into the poorhouse, an' a thrifle of money for a dhraw at the pipe would be as welkim as the flowers of may, an' 'tis england is the grate counthry, and thim that was in it says that englishmen is tin per cint. betther than irishmen, aye, twinty per cint."--and so forth, and so forth. there were six more applications in a hundred yards, one of them from a well-dressed boy of fourteen or fifteen, who gracefully reclined on a bank with his legs crossed, his arms under his head. begging to the irish race is as natural as breathing. they have an innate affinity for blessing and begging, and they beg without need. anything to avoid work. they are for the most part entirely destitute of a spirit of independence. they will not dig, and to beg they are not ashamed. according to a newport authority they are growing worse than ever. while i awaited the fishing up of the line he said:-- "the conduct of the poorer classes is becoming more and more a disgrace to the country. there is poverty, of course, but not so much, nor in so great a proportion, as in england. this line has been in progress for two years and a half, and the people of this district have received many thousands of pounds without any perceptible improvement of position, either as to solvency or personal appearance. they are as ragged as ever, as dirty as ever, and decidedly more dishonest than ever. they are more extravagant in their eating and drinking, and the women spend more in ridiculous finery; but in spite of the wages they have earned, they have not paid their way one bit better than before. they usually sow the land and live on the crops, selling the surplus to pay the rent, which is usually very moderate, and well within what the land will pay. for thirty months many hundreds of them, thanks to mr. balfour, have enjoyed an additional income of fifteen shillings a week, but they have not paid their rents any better than before. they have so many people agitating for them, both here and in england, that whatever they do or fail to do, they know they are sure of substantial support. while irishmen only were working for them, they felt less secure, but now mr. gladstone and his following have taken their cause in hand, they feel more sure of their ground, and accordingly they have lapsed into confirmed laziness and dishonesty. they have found out the strength of combination, and the possibility of withholding payment of rent, and year by year they are falling lower and lower. their morality is sapped at the root. they have the utmost confidence in their clergy, and their conduct being supported, and even advised from the altar, they spend all their money quite comfortably, sure that in case of eviction the country will be up in arms for their assistance, and that weak but well-meaning english tourists, seeing their apparent condition, will help them liberally. the english tourist has much to answer for. he couples dirt and nakedness with misfortune and poverty, and nine times out of ten he is altogether wrong. people with five hundred pounds in the bank will go about barefoot, unwashed, and in rags. no englishman can possibly know his way about until he has lived for some time in the country, remaining in one spot long enough to find out the real state of things. he runs about hurriedly from place to place, observing certain symptoms which in england mean undeserved poverty and suffering. his diagnosis would be right for england, but for ireland it is hopelessly wrong. what he sees is not so often symptomatic of undeserved misfortune, as of laziness, improvidence, and rank dishonesty. the irish are a complaining people. self-help is practically unknown among them, at any rate, among the catholic population. they have reduced complaining to a system, or, if you will, they have elevated it to the level of a fine art. the recent agitations have demolished any rudimentary backbone they ever had, and the no-rent campaign, with its pleas of poverty and financial inability, has done more to pauperise the people than all the famines ireland ever saw. "you can do nothing for them. one great argument for home rule is the fact that the people are leaving the country. best thing they can do. let them get to some country where they must work or starve. then they will do well enough. they work like horses in america, and their native cuteness conies out in trade with surprising results. the irish race make a splendid mixture, but you must not take them neat. i am looked upon as a monster when i say, let them go. i think it would be best. let them clear out of the country, and leave it to people who can make it pay. let ireland be populated by englishmen or scotsmen, or both, and in twenty years the country would be one of the most prosperous in the world. those are my opinions, and few irishmen will gainsay them. they think them cruel, but their truth is generally admitted. mr. balfour has helped the people, and in a way which was best calculated to put them permanently on their feet. all to no purpose. you can't go on making lines that will not pay. you can't go on doling out charity for ever. take the boats, nets, and so on, given to the congested districts. when those are gone you may give them more. the people will be exactly where they were. a few have been taught fishing, you say. but it will not spread. those who have learned the art have been taught almost by compulsion, and at the first opportunity they will fall back into their own ways. the farmers will not change their methods. if one among them did so he would be a mark for derision. no irish villager has the pluck to say, i will do this or that because it is the best thing to do. he must do as the others do, even to planting his farm, selling the produce, and also in disposing of the proceeds. nowhere is public opinion so powerful, so tyrannical, or so injuriously conservative as in ireland. i challenge contradiction. any intelligent irishman who has lived in an agricultural and roman catholic neighbourhood will admit every statement i have made." later in the day i laid these observations before three irish gentlemen dining at the mulranney hotel. all three readily and fully concurred, and there can be no doubt that these sentiments will be unanimously confirmed by any competent tribunal in or out of ireland, such being the case, the absurdity of the home rule agitation becomes evident at once. at last the sportive young engine whose playfulness and prankishness were mentioned in my last, came whinnying up, harnessed to an empty truck in which was a bench with a green cloth, emblematic of ireland. this was better than convulsively clinging to the engine while she madly careered along narrow and dizzy precipices, every kick threatening to be your last, and emerging from the fiery ordeal, begrimed and swarthy, your knees half cooked by the engine fire. all this happened on my journey from westport to newport, but now the truck promised sybaritic luxury, and if the rail should again give way, if the bog-hole, "still gaping to devour me, opened wide," i should at least disappear with dignity, should take my _holium cum dignitatis_ in a truck, on a green-covered seat, and with the consciousness that i was doing something to fill up the gap, to solace the aching void in ireland's bosom. away we went, thundering along between the quivering bogs, as through a land of brown-black calves'-foot jelly. the line itself is sound, well-made and firm. i had this from mr. hare, engineer of the board of works, who said that mr. worthington's railways have an excellent name for solidity and thorough, conscientious work. mr. hare was formally taking over the last bit of line, that between mulranney and achil sound, with which the midland and great western company will at present have nought to do. the company will work from westport to mulranney, although some portions of the line have a gradient of one in sixty, and the directors are shy of anything steeper than one in a hundred by reason of the wear and tear involved to rolling stock and permanent way by gradients requiring so much brake power. but the last seven miles they decline to touch on the terms offered by the government at present. no doubt the line will be worked, and by the company aforesaid, but the contracting parties are for the moment at a deadlock. no line between mulranney and the sound could possibly pay. england is building irish railways to give the people a chance, as the splendid quays of newport, limerick, and galway were built. nothing, or next to nothing, is done on these quays. the channel, as it is called at newport, is a fine expanse of water about one hundred and twenty yards wide, leading through newport bay directly into the atlantic. only one boat, i was told, comes into the port. i saw it there, unloading a hundred and eighty tons of indian corn--a glasgow vessel, the harmony, a sailer, which had taken three weeks to the voyage, which a steamer easily runs in thirty six to forty hours. galway was busier, but not by irish enterprise, and limerick was mostly fast asleep. the people cry aloud and shout for quays, harbours, piers, and railways; and when they are built they ask for something else. they are without the faculty of industrial enterprise. they are always waiting for weather, wind, and tide. they lack resourcefulness, energy, invention. when the flour mills ceased to pay they had no notion of using the buildings and water-power for some other purpose. when the coventry ribbon trade went to the dogs the people found salvation in bicycles. if coventry had been in ireland the people would have starved and murmured to the end of time. two miles out we came to deradda, where eighty men were at work. next came shellogah and the squeamish bit of bog. a number of men were busy on the line, and right in front of us was a gap in the rails, the platelayers laying the steel for dear life while the engine came up. we slackened speed, but made no stop, and the last rail was finally bolted as we ran upon it. carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of day and martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this irish bog. the subsidence of yesterday had forced the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, and your humble commissioner. i took a last look at the landscape, and made a final note, but, while inly wondering whether i should be ultimately consumed in the form of peat or dug up and exhibited to future ages as a bog-preserved brutal saxon, with a concluding squash we passed the rotten spot, and it was permissible to breathe again. "we prefer it to sink at once," said mr. bennett. "then we know the 'hard' is not far off, and we can fill up till the line becomes solid as a rock. when it goes down by degrees, sinking a foot to-day and a foot to-morrow, we find our work more difficult. we never leave a bad bit till we are assured, by careful examination and severe and repeated tests, that all is solid and secure." he told me how much earth had been dumped on this spot, which, like the soft place mentioned in my last, has given mr. balfour's _protégés_ a world of employment. i forget the quantity, but it sounded like an island or a small range of mountains. soon on the left we saw the great expanse of clew bay, with its three hundred and sixty-five considerable islands, nearly all with cottages, cattle, and pasture, but without a tree. the yankee breezes blew refreshingly, and the scenery around became of wildest grandeur. high mountains hemmed us in on every side, rising one over another, huge masses of rock impending over untrodden passes, unknown to any guide-book, and leading no man knows whither. some mountain sheep on the line scaled the embankment and leaped the five-foot wall like squirrels. then a group of obstinate black cattle, one of which narrowly escaped sudden transformation into beef. then the station of mulranney, or rather its site, for the foundations are not yet dug out. some neat wooden cottages attested the contractor's care for his workmen, and the beautiful bay with its extensive sands and lovely surroundings came into view far below. a steep descent brought us to the hotel, an unlicensed house kept by a northern protestant. a quaint and charming place, known and prized by a select few. the board of works gave mulrannoy a pier, but the whole bay boasted only a single boat. the people make no use of their pier. it stretches into the sea in a lonely, melancholy way, and, so far as i could see, without a boat near it, without a soul upon it or within half-a-mile. the mulranians cannot do anything with the pier until they get home rule. in limerick one day i saw a dead cat before a cottage door, in a crowded part of irishtown. a week later pussy was diffusing an aromatic fragrance from the self-same spot. the denizens of this locality are waiting for home rule. they cannot move their dead cats while smarting 'neath the cruel english yoke. the home rulers of mulranney are not original. they say the same things over and over again, merely echoing what they have been told by others. they believe that their country has unlimited good coal, and that the english parliament prevents the mines being sunk for fear of losing irish custom. "we wish it were trap," said mr. bennett. "we are always looking for it, but although we have made a million's worth of railway, we have never seen a vestige of coal. it is safe to say that there is no coal in ireland, except in one or two well-known spots, where it exists, and is mined, in small quantities." another enlightened irishman, of wide experience in many lands, expressed the conviction of the majority of his countrymen that the proposed parliamentary change will never take place. "the thing is too ridiculous to be possible. the respectable portion of the community were alarmed at first, as well they might be, knowing as they do precisely what it means. but as time went on that alarm has to a great extent subsided, not, as some will say, because the people are in any degree reconciled to the idea, but purely and simply because they see that the bill must perish when exposed to the light of criticism. the people as a whole do not want the bill. the poorer classes do not know in the least what it means, nor what all the bother is about. they are told that they will be hugely benefited, but nobody can tell them how. of course they vote for home rule, because in these parts the priest stands at the door of the polling booth and tells them as they go in how they are to vote. he also questions them as they come out, and they know beforehand that he will do so, and act accordingly. they dare not tell him a lie, for fear of spiritual trouble. they believe that the priest has their eternal future in his hands, and this belief is encouraged by the well-known argument used by the roman catholic clergy, a very familiar phrase in ireland, "you must do as i tell you, for _i_ am responsible. god will require your soul of _me_ at the day of judgement!" what can the poor folks do? even the higher classes are not exempt from this superstitious fear. they may be more or less freethinkers--freethinking is common among educated catholics who are yet compelled by custom to conform to the outward observances of their faith--but yet, when the pinch comes, they are influenced by the prepossessions of their childhood and environments, and they mostly vote as they are told. they dread to offend the priest, though not to the same extent as the poor peasantry, who believe that confession of a wrong vote would entail the refusal of extreme unction, and that this would mean untold and endless torture in the world to come. and the priests preach politics every sunday. the people like it better than the old style of instruction. they call their sermons instructions, you know, and they instruct the people to some tune. no doubt they have a right to persuade their flocks to follow a certain course. the temptation to preach something which at once catches the people's attention and furthers their own views is very great, and perhaps excusable. but is their teaching designed or calculated to suit england? the english may not understand the irish question, but they may be sure that whatever suits the papal power does not suit them. the modern irish priest is a sworn foe to england. it cannot be otherwise. he springs from the small farmer class, which has sworn to extirpate landlordism, which, to their minds, is synonymous with british rule. the english parliament, hoping to win over the farmers, who are the strength of ireland, has made one concession after another, with what result? absolutely none. the property of the landlord has been sacrificed bit by bit, in fruitless endeavour to please these people, who are more discontented than ever. and so they will continue to be as long as discontent pays. in ireland the landlord is nothing, the tenant is everything. the policy of england with regard to irish landlords reminds me of the man who, having to dock a dog's tail, cut off half-an-inch every day to gradually accustom him to the loss, and to minimise the 'suffering of the baste.'" you can go nowhere in ireland without meeting an ulsterman. there was one at mulranney. you may know them by their accent, by their size, by a general effect of weight, decision, and determination. they are mostly big men, large-boned and large-limbed, of ruthless energy, of inexhaustible vitality. they are demons in argument, tenacious and crushing. they bowl straight over-hand and dead on the middle stump. the lithe and sinuous celt is no match for them. no matter how he twists and turns they grab him up, and, will he, nill he, fix him in front of the argument. they are adepts in cornering an opponent by keeping him to the point. you cannot catch them napping, and you cannot turn their flank. they are contented enough, except that they sigh for more worlds to conquer. they delight in difficulties, and demolish home rulers with a kind of contempt as if the work were only fit for children. they seem to be fighting with one hand, with great reserve of power, and, after doubling up an opponent, they chuck him over the ropes, and look around, as if, like oliver, asking for "more." my mulranney friend said:-- "bull confessedly does not know what to do, and he calls in two sets of irish experts (we'll say) and asks for their opinions. one set of irishmen never quarrel with anybody and always pay their debts. the other set quarrel with everybody and don't pay what they owe. one set are successful in everything, the other set are successful in nothing. one set have always been friendly and helpful to bull, the other set have always been unfriendly and obstructive to him. he proposes to reject the advice of the successful, amicable, helpful men, who have always stuck up for him, and to follow the advice of the quarrelsome, unsuccessful, unfriendly men, who have always spoken ill of him and have spent their energies in trying to damage him. bull must be a fool--or rather he would be if he meant to act in this foolish way. he will not do so; that can never be. but why waste so much time?" i submitted that this waste was due to mr. gladstone, and not to england at all. he said-- "there is no england now. there's nothing left but gladstone." of course he was wrong, but the mistake is one that under present circumstances any loyal irishman might easily make. mulranney (co. mayo), june th. no. .--on achil island. the final spurt from mulranney to achil sound was pleasant, but devoid of striking incident. this part of the line is packed and ballasted, and the _gazette_ engine sobered down to the merely commonplace, dropping her prancing and curveting, with other deplorable excesses of the first two runs, and pushing my comfortable truck with the steadiness of a well-broken steed. no holding on was required, as we ran between the two ranges of mountains which guard the sound, and along the edge of a salt-water creek, which seemed to be pushing its investigations inland. barring the scenery the ride became uninteresting by its very safety. the line for the most part is based upon the living rock, and there were no exciting skims over treacherous bogs, no reasonable chance of running off the line, no ups and downs such as on our first flight were remindful of the switchback railway, no hopping, jumping, or skipping. anybody could have ridden from mulranney to achil. there was no merit in the achievement. all you had to do was to sit still and look about. you could no longer witch the world with noble truckmanship. we ran over a bridge built to replace one washed away by a mountain torrent. the engineer who constructed the first had failed to realise that the tinkling rivulet of summer became in winter a fiercely surging cataract. the achil mountains loomed in full view, croaghaun to the left, sliebhmor (pronounced slievemore) the great mountain, in front, with many others stranger still of name. then the sound came in sight, with the iron viaduct-bridge which has turned the island into a peninsula. then the final dismount, and a scramble among rusty rails, embankments, sleepers, and big boulders strewn about in hopeless chaos. then the little inn, with a stuffed fox and a swan in the porch. a glance at the day-before-yesterday's paper, which has just arrived, and is considered to serve up news red-hot; and then invasion of the island. a few hookers are anchored near the swivel-bridge of the viaduct, in readiness for their cargoes of harvesters for england and scotland, and now and then big trout and salmon throw themselves in air to see what is going on in the world around them. a group of men who are busily engaged in doing nothing, with a grace and ease which tells of long experience, manifest great interest in the stranger, whom they greet civilly and with much politeness. men, women, and children are digging turf in a bog beside the road. all suspend operations and look earnestly in my direction. this is one of the amenities of irish life. driving along a country road you see men at work in a field. they stop at the first rumble of the car, and leaning on their spades they watch you out of sight. then they resume in leisurely style, for work they will tell you is scarce, and, to their credit be it observed, they show no disposition to make it scarcer still. they husband it, hoard it up, are not too greedy, leave some for another day. they dig easily, with a straight back, and take a long time to turn round. the savage energy of the saxon is to them unknown. why wear themselves out? "sweet bad luck to the man that would bur-rst himself as if the wuruld wouldn't be afther him. divil sweep the omadhaun that would make his two elbows into a windmill that niver shtops, but is always going. fair an' aisy goes far in a day. walkin' is betther than runnin', an' standin' is betther than walkin', an' sittin' is betther than standin', an' lyin' is betther than any o' thim. twas me owld father said it, an' a thrue wurud he shpoke, rest his sowl in glory." the achil folks are ardent politicians. they have been visited by michael davitt, dr. tanner, and others, and most of the population, all the catholics in fact, became members of the land league. the area of the island is about forty thousand acres, a vast moorland, with miles of bog, and hills and mountains in every direction. there are also several large lakes, which abound with white trout. the cultivated portions of the land only seem to dot the great waste, which nevertheless supports a population of some five thousand persons. the houses are mostly filthy, the people having cattle which live with the family. i approached a house to make inquiries, and was driven from the open door by the smell issuing from the interior. the next was sweeter, having perhaps been more recently cleaned out. only one room, with a big turf fire, creating an intolerable atmosphere. a bed filled one-third of the floor, most of the remainder being occupied by two cows. a rough deal table near the bed comprised the furniture, and visitors, therefore, must sit on the sleeping arrangement. a civilised irishman said:--"two cows, two clean cows only, and you're surprised at that! where have you been? where have you been brought up? let me tell you something, and when you get to dugort ask the doctor there whether i am correct. a family not far away were stricken down with typhus fever. the people are mostly healthy and strong, although living under circumstances which would soon kill people not used to them, or not enjoying the same splendidly pure air. well, the poor folks, eight of them, were all down at once, and no wonder, for when i visited them i never saw such a sight in my life. there were three in one bed in one corner, three in one bed in another corner, and two in shake-down beds on the floor. in the same room were a mare and foal, three cows, one pig under a bed, and a henroost above, on the ceiling. what would the sanitary authorities of birmingham say to that menagerie in a sick room? somebody wrote to the local government board, and the board referred the matter to the poor law guardians. but the guardians themselves kept cattle in their houses. it is the prevailing custom. wherever you go in achil, you will find cattle in the houses, along with the family, sharing the same room. the people cannot be moved from this custom. a large landowner built some good cottages for them, and offered them rent free, on condition that they would not live with the cattle. the people would not accept, so they got the houses at last on their own terms, and took the cows with them as before. they say that the cows enjoy the warmth and give better milk. they also say that the big turf fire stands them in lieu of feed to some extent. the achil folks are hopeless in the direction of improvements. they have had the protestant colony at dugort before them for more than sixty years--a well-housed, well-clad community, living clearly and respectably, paying their way, and keeping at peace with all men, but they have not moved an inch in the same direction. they bury their dead in the old savage way, without any funeral rites, except such as the relatives may have in their minds. the priest says no prayer, reads no service, does not attend in his official character, unless specially engaged and paid. usually he does not attend funerals at all, although he may sometimes join the procession as a mark of respect. and the weddings are arranged in a way you might think barbarous. a young man fancies a girl he sees at mass, or at a funeral. he gets a bottle of whiskey and goes to see the father, who nearly always wishes to get the daughter off his hands, without any regard whatever for the poor girl's feelings. i was present at one of these negotiations. 'what will you give with her?' said the young fellow, a boy of eighteen or so. 'three cows and a calf,' said the father. 'so-and-so got three cows and a calf and a sheep.' said the suitor. the father pondered a bit, but eventually, not to be behind, conceded the sheep. the lover tried a bit further. somebody else had three cows and a calf and a sheep and a lamb, but the old man stood firm, and the bargain was struck, with mutual esteem, after several hours' haggling and a second bottle of whiskey. i called in the evening to learn the girl's fate. she had been two years in service and had got unorthodox notions. she screamed with affright when the father brought the fellow forward and told her what was arranged. she had seen him before, but had never spoken to him, and the sight of him had always been most repugnant to her. she ran away into the bogs, but the country was up, and she was soon found. then after a sound beating she was handed over to the ardent swain along with the cows, and so forth, nominated in the bond. "they marry early or go to america. the boy is usually seventeen or eighteen, the girl fifteen or sixteen. i have known girls marry at thirteen. not long ago a boy i knew well, a mere weakling, unable to do even a boy's work, got married. he was seventeen, or nearly seventeen, but he didn't look it. they believe that their poverty, such as it is, is due to the predominance of england. their hatred of the english is very pronounced, but a casual visitor will not see it. he has money to spend, and they flock round him in a friendly way. but let him live among them! they tried to boycott the protestant settlement, and if their priests had ruled on that occasion they would have starved us out or would have made things so unpleasant that we must have left the field. that was during the land league agitation. the protestants declined to join and vengeance was declared, but bonaventure, head of the monastery, forbade it. he is a splendid fellow, not like the ordinary priests at all. so they were saved. but let this change come about, once let that bill become law, and all protestants must leave the island, must give up the land they have tilled and tended until it is like a garden, and seek their fortunes elsewhere. that is a certainty. ask everyone you meet, and you will find that each will say just the same thing." a smart car driver, named matthew henay, was dubious as to the benefits accruing from home rule. his driving was a study, and his conversations with maggie, his little mare, were both varied and vigorous. "now me little daughter, away ye go. that's the girl now. me little duck, ye go sweetly. there's the beauty, now. maggie me love, me darlint, me pride; ye know ivery word i spake. yes, she does, sorr. she ondhershtands both english an' irish. i can dhrive her in both, but i have an owld woman o' me own that can only dhrive her in irish. home rule will do no good at all. twinty years i wint to england to harvest, an' eighteen iv it to the same masther an' on the same farm. an' ye don't get me to belave all i hear widout thinkin' a bit. an' i say, get out o' that wid yer talk o' mines an' factories, an' rubbish. where's the money to come from? says i. that's what nobody knows. sure, we'd be nothin' widout england. a thousand goes from this part every year, an' even the girls brings back ten to fifteen pounds each. that's all the circulation of money we have. an' as all we get's from england, i say, let us stick to england, but nobody agrees wid me. there's the girl, now. away ye go, me little duck, me daughter, me beauty, me--bad luck to ye, _will_ ye go? what are ye standin' there for? will ye get out o' that, ye lazy brute? take that, an' that, an' _that_, ye idle, good-for-nothin', desavin', durty daughter of a pig. _now_ d'ye ondhershtand who's masther, ye idle, skulkin', schamin', disrespictable baste?" misther henay was favourably disposed towards the protestant settlers of dugort, but another sounder was very bitter indeed. "a set of soupers an' jumpers an' double-jumpers. what's the manin' iv it ye ask? soupers is catholics that's turned protestants for the sake of small pickin's sich as soup. that's what they are at dugort. an' jumpers is worse than soupers. for soupers only changed once, but jumpers is thim that turned once an' then turned back again, jumpin' about from one religion to another. ye can have jumpers in anythin'. ye can have thim in politics. owld gladstone is a jumper and a double-jumper an' a double-thribble jumper. an' if we get a parlimint for ourselves, 'tis because he daren't for the life of him say no--an' divil thank him. yes, we'll take the bill; what else will we do? we can amend it whin once we get it. but afther so much jumpin', owld gladstone's a man i wouldn't thrust. a man that would make so many changes isn't to be thrusted. i wouldn't be surprised if he wouldn't bring in a coercion bill at any minute. ah, the thricks an' the dodges iv him! an' the silver tongue he has in his head! begorra, i wouldn't lave him out o' me sight. 'tis himself would stale the cross off a donkey's back." the achil ditches are full of ferns, and a hundred yards from the sea are clumps of _osmunda regalis_--otherwise known as the royal fern--spreading out palm-like fronds four feet long. other ferns, usually regarded as rare, abound in every direction, and potatoes and cabbages grow at the very water's edge. the vast plains are treeless save for the plantations round the house of major pike, who has shown what can be done to reclaim the land, but his excellent example has attracted no imitators. except in the major's grounds there is not a tree on the island, unless we count the hedges of fuchsias, twelve to fifteen feet high, which fence in some of the gardens. the post office, engineered by mr. robins, of devonshire, an old coastguardsman, is surrounded by fuchsia bloom, and every evidence of careful culture. here i met some achil folks who did not understand english, and a mainland man who does not believe in the future of the race. he said:-- "i think their civilisation has stood still for at least five centuries. they are so wedded to their ancient customs that nothing can be done for them. they are not so poor as they look, and the starvation of which you hear in england is totally unknown. as an object of charity achil is a gigantic swindle. when the seed potatoes were brought here in her majesty's gunboats the people were too lazy to fetch them ashore. i was there and heard an irish bluejacket cursing them as a disgrace to his country. they do just what the priests tell them from week to week. every sunday they get their instructions. they keep up the cry of distress when there is no distress, for fear of breaking through the custom. they have been helped on all sides, but they will not utilise their advantages. the sea is before them, swarming with fish, which they will not catch. they said, we have no pier, no quay. they were set up with these and everything they needed. what did they do with them? nothing at all. the work is falling to pieces and they let it go. they sometimes go out in coraghs, and catch enough fish for the day's food, but that is all. they don't pay their rents, and their rents would amuse you. twenty-five shillings a year for a decent house and a good piece of land is reckoned a heavy responsibility. one man i know named mcgreal has twenty acres of good land and a house for seventeen shillings and sixpence a year. they will not sell you butter, they will not sell you milk. they say they want it for themselves. none of them has ever paid a cent for fuel. all have turf for the digging, and much of the achil turf is equal to coal. the sea is in front of them, and all round them, and the lakes are full of fish. and yet the hat is sent round every other year. "they used to pay their debts. now they will pay nothing, and their audacity is something wonderful. a gentleman over there has bought some land, and the people turn their cattle on it to graze. he remonstrates, and they say, 'what business have you here? keep in your own country.' he sued them for damages. they had nothing but the cattle aforesaid, and, as he could not find heart to seize, he had no remedy. they keep their cattle on his land, although he has, since then, processed them for trespass. they have already divided the spoils of the protestants; that is, in theory. they are anticipating the home rule bill in their disposal of the land. they have marked out the patches they will severally claim, and are already disputing the future possession of certain desirable fields. "english gladstonians ridicule the fears of irish protestants, who declare unanimously their conviction that home rule means oppression. this ridicule is absurd in face of the fact that every protestant sect, without exception, has publicly and formally announced its adherence to this opinion. the church of ireland believes in catholic intolerance; the methodists believe it; the baptists believe it; the plymouth brethren believe it; the presbyterians believe it; the unitarians, the most radical of all the sects, believe it; the quakers, who never before made a public deliverance of opinion in any political matter, believe it; and all these have issued printed declarations of their belief. the roman catholic laity, the best of them, believe it; but the catholic bishops say no, they will not admit the soft impeachment. and englishmen who are gladstonians believe these bishops in preference to all the sects i have enumerated. could anything be more unreasonable? but it is of a piece with the whole conception of the bill, which seems to contain every possible absurdity, and is based on extravagant assumptions of amity on the part of irish catholics, of which there is not one particle of evidence in existence. all the evidence points the other way, and irish protestants know that under home rule their fate is sealed. there would be no open persecution, but we should be gently elbowed out of the country. all who could leave ireland would do so at once, and england would lose her most powerful allies in the enemy's camp. for it is the enemy's camp, and this fact should be borne in mind. mr. gladstone and his followers would be horrified to hear such a statement, which they would regard as rank blasphemy. but every irishman knows it, and every englishman knows it who lives here long enough to know anything. irish nationalists have two leading ideas--to get as much out of england as possible, and to damage her as much as possible by way of repayment. mr. gladstone wants to put england's head on the block, to hand an axe to her sworn enemy, and to say, 'i'm sure you won't chop.' people who have common sense stand amazed, dumbfounded at so much stupidity." a pious catholic bore out the statements of my first achil friend with reference to the comparative comfort of the islanders. he said:--"we live mostly on bread and tea. of course we have plenty of butter and eggs, and now and then we go out and get some fish. i had a go at a five-pound white trout to-day, with plenty of butter and potatoes. at dugort people who live in cabins have money in the bank, aye, some of them have several hundred pounds. and yet they took the seed potatoes sent by england. well, they wanted a change of seed, and they must do the same as their neighbours. it would not do to pretend to be any better off than the rest. they are compelled to do as the majority do in everything, or they would be boycotted at once. they cease work when a death occurs in the parish. if an infant three days old should give up the ghost, every man shoulders his spade and leaves the field. and he does not return till after the funeral. if another death occurred on the funeral day, he would leave off again, and so on. no matter how urgent the state of the crop, he must leave it to its fate, or leave the country, for no one would know a person who would work while a corpse lay in the parish. they would look upon him as an infidel, and, if possible, worse than a protestant. luckily we don't often die hereabouts, or we'd never get the praties set or the turf cut. sometimes they won't go to work because someone is expected to die, and they say it isn't worth while to begin. i have known a lingering case to throw the crops back a fortnight or more. oh, they don't grumble; any excuse for laziness is warmly welcomed. they complain when people die at inconvenient times, and will say the act might have been delayed till a more convenient season, or might have been done a little earlier. the whole population turn out for the funeral, but they don't dig the grave until the procession reaches the graveyard. then the mourners sit around smoking, both men and women, while a couple of young chaps make a shallow hole, and cover the coffin with four to six inches of earth. no, it is not severely sanitary, but we are not too particular in achil." these unsophisticated islanders are decidedly interesting. their customs, politics, manners, morals, odours seem to be strongly marked--to have character, originality, individuality. i fear they are mostly home rulers, for in ireland home rule and strong smells nearly always go together. achil sound, june th. no. .--the achil islanders. dugort, the capital city of achil, is twelve miles from the sound, a terrible drive in winter, when the atlantic storms blow with such violence as to stop a horse and cart, and to render pedestrianism well-nigh impossible; but pleasant enough in fine weather, notwithstanding the seemingly interminable wastes of bog and rocky mountain, dotted at infrequent intervals with white cottages, single or in small clusters of three or four. after major pike's plantations, near the sound, not a tree is visible all the way to dugort, although at some points you can see for ten miles or more. here and there where the turf has been cut away for fuel, great gnarled roots of oak and fir trees are visible, bleached by exposure to a ghastly white, showing against the jetty soil like the bones of extinct giants, which indeed they are. the inhabitants say that the island was once covered by a great forest, which perished by fire, and misther patrick toolis, with that love of fine words which marks the irish peasant, said that the charred interior of the scattered remains proves that the trees were "desthroyed intirely by a grate confiscation." the heather, of two kinds, is brilliantly purple, and the royal fern grows everywhere in profusion, its terra-cotta bloom often towering six feet high. the mountains are effectively arranged, and imposing by their massiveness, height, and rugged grandeur. some of the roads are tolerable, those made by mr. balfour being by far the best. others are execrable and dangerous in the extreme, and in winter must be almost impassable. sometimes they run along a narrow ridge which in its normal condition was of barely sufficient width to carry the car, and it often happens that part of this has fallen away, so that the gap must be passed by leading the horse while the car scrapes along with one wheel on the top and one clinging to the side of the abyss. the natives make light of such small inconveniences, and for the most part ride on horseback with saddles and crupper-bands of plaited rye-straw. every householder has a horse or an ass, mostly a horse, and young girls career adown the mountain sides in what seems the maddest, most reckless way, guiding their half-broken, mustard-coloured steeds with a single rein of plaited straw, adjusted in an artful way which is beyond me to describe. very quaint they look, on their yellow horses, which remind you of d'artagnan's orange-coloured charger, immortalised by dumas in the "three musketeers;" their red robes floating in the breeze, their bare feet hanging over the horse's right flank. when they fall off they simply get on again. they seldom or never are hurt. they are hard as nails and lissom as cats. dr. croly, of dugort, saw a girl thrown heels over head, turning a complete somersault from the horse's back. she alighted on her feet, grabbed the rein, bounded up again, and gaily galloped away. during my hundred miles riding and walking over the island i saw many riderless horses, fully accoutred in the achil style, plodding patiently along the moorland roads, climbing the steep mountain paths. at first i thought an accident had occurred, and spent some time in looking for the corpse. there was no occasion for fear. the achil harvesters going to england and scotland ride over to the sound, where lie the fishing smacks which bear them to westport, and then turn their horses loose. the faithful beasts go home, however long or devious the road, sometimes alone, sometimes in company, only staying a moment at the parting of the ways to bid each other good-bye, then going forward at a brisker pace to make up for lost time. the hamlet of cashel, not to be confused with cashel of the rock, is the first sign of life after leaving the sound. a ravine, with white cabins, green crops, and huge boulders, on one of which seven small children were sitting in a row, unwashed, unkempt, with little calico and no leather. bunnacurragh has a post-office run by a pensioner who grows roses, and keeps his place like a picture, the straw ropes which secure the thatch against the western gales taut and trig, each loose end terminated by a loop holding a large stone. the stones are used in place of pegs, and very queer they look dangling all round over the eaves. not far from here is an immense basin-like depression of dry bog. then a monastery, in the precincts of which the ground is reclaimed and admirably tilled, the drainage being carried over ingenious turf conduits, the soil lacking firmness to hold stone or brick. the vast bulk of slievemore soon looms full in front, and after a long stretch of smooth balfour road and a sharp turn on the edge of a deep ravine on the right with a high ridge beyond it, the great mountain on the left, dugort, with blacksod bay, heaves in sight. a final spurt up the hilly road and the weary, jolted traveller, or what is left of him, may (metaphorically) fall into the arms of mr. robert sheridan, of the sea view hotel, or of mrs. sheridan, if he likes it better. there are two dugorts, or one dugort divided against itself. the line of demarcation is sharp and decided. the two sections stand but a short distance apart, each on an opposite horn of the little bay, but the moral distance is great enough for forty thousand leagues. the dugort under slievemore is protestant, the dugort of the opposite cliff is intensely roman catholic. the one is the perfection of neatness, sweetness, cleanliness, prettiness, and order. the other is dirty, frowsy, disorderly, and of evil odour. the papists deny the right of the protestants to be in the island at all, speak of them with acerbity, call them the colonists, the perverts, the soupers, the jumpers, the heretics; and look forward to the time when a dublin parliament will banish law and order, so that these interlopers may be for ever swept away, and their fields and houses become the property of the faithful. they complain that the protestants have all the best land, and that the papist population were wrongfully driven from the ground now occupied by the colony. like other catholic poor all over ireland they will tell you that they have been ground down, harried, oppressed, grievously ill-used, habitually ill-treated by the english government, which has never given them a chance. they explain the prosperity of their protestant neighbours by knowing winks and nods, and by plain intimations that all irish protestants are secretly subsidised by england, that they have privileges, that they are favoured, petted, kept in pocket money. to affect to doubt this is to prove yourself a dissembler, an impostor, a black-hearted enemy of the people. your achil friend will drop the conversation in disgust, and by round-about ways will call you a liar. he is sure of his facts, as sure as he is that a sprinkling of holy water will cure rheumatism, will keep away the fairies from the cow, will put a fine edge on his razor, will keep the donkey from being bewitched. he knows who has had money and how much, having reasoned out the matter by inference. he could sell himself to-morrow, but is incorruptible, and will remain a strong rock to the faith, will still buttress up the true hierarchy of heaven. he cannot be bought, and this is strange, for he never looks worth twopence. it was during a famine that one mr. nangle, a protestant parson from the north, went to achil and found the people in deepest distress. they were dying of starvation, and their priests had all fled. mr. nangle had no money, but he was prompt in action. he sent a thousand pounds' worth of meal to the island on his own responsibility, and weighed down by a sense of the debt he had incurred, went to london to beg the money. he was successful, and afterwards founded the achil mission at dugort, now called the colony. needless to say that all the land belonging to the mission was duly bought and paid for, and that the protestants have been the benefactors of achil. the stories of wrong-doing, robbery, and spoliation, which the peasantry repeat, are of course totally untrue. the example of a decently-housed community has produced no perceptible effect on the habits of the achilese. the villages of cabawn, avon (also known by its anglicised name of river), ballyknock, slievemore, and ducanella are dirty beyond description. some of the houses i saw in a drive which included the coastguard station of bull's mouth were mere heaps of stones, with turf sods for tiles, whereon was growing long grass which looked like a small instalment of the three acres and a cow. some had no windows and no chimney, the turf reek filling the hovel, but partly escaping by a hole in the roof. the people who live in this look as it painted in umber by old dutch masters. these huts are small, but there is always room for a pig or two, which stalk about or stretch themselves before the fire like privileged members of the family. this was very well for the gintleman that paid the rint. but he merits the title no longer. his occupation's gone. a sturdy protestant said:--"suppose home rule became law, then we must go away. we are only here on sufferance, and every person in the colony knows it and feels it only too well. our lives would not be endangered: those times are over, but we could not possibly stay in the island. remove the direct support of england, and we should be subject to insult and wrong, for which we should have no earthly remedy. what could they do? why, to begin with, they could pasture their cattle on our fields. if we turned them out they could be turned in again; if we sue them we have a day's journey to take to get the cause heard, and if we get the verdict we can recover nothing. shoot a cow or two! then we should ourselves be shot, or our children. no, there has been no landlord-shooting on the island. this kind of large game has always been very scarce on achil. just over the sound we had a little sport--a really merry little turn it was--but the wrong man was shot. "a mr. smith came down to collect rents. the land league was ruling the country, and its desperadoes were everywhere. it was decided to shoot mr. smith, after duly warning him to keep away. smith was not to be deterred from what he thought his duty (he was a black protestant), and away he went, with his son, a neat strip of a lad about seventeen or so. when they got half-way to the house which smith had appointed as a meeting-place a man in the bog which bordered the road called out, and waved a paper, which he then placed on a heap of turf. young smith went for it, and it read. you'll not go home alive this night. 'drive on, tom,' said the father. 'we'll do our work, whether we go home alive or dead.' coming back the same evening the father was driving, the son, this young lad, sitting at the side of the car, which was furnished with a couple of repeating rifles and a revolver. suddenly three men spring up from behind a fence and fire a volley at the two smiths, but as they rose the horse shied and plunged forward, and hang me! if they didn't all miss. the elder smith still struggled with the frightened horse, which the shooting had made ungovernable, but the boy slipped off the car, and, seizing one of the rifles, looked out for a shot in return. it was growing dusk, and the bog was full of trenches and ups and downs, of which the three fugitives cleverly availed themselves. besides, to be shot at from a point-blank range of three or four yards, scrambling down afterwards from behind a frantic horse, is not the best wimbledon method of steadying the nerves. the boy put the rifle to his shoulder, and bided his time. presently up came one of the running heroes, and young smith shot him through the heart, as neat a kill as ever you saw. the dead man was identified as a militiaman from crossmolina, up sligo way. the league always brought its marksmen from a distance, and it is known that most of them were persons who had received some military training. then the youngster covered another, but missed, and was about to fire again when his father shouted, 'hold hard, tom, that's enough sport for one day.'" my friend was wrong. the second shot lacerated the man's shoulder, and laid him up for many a long week. i had the fact, which is now first recorded, on _undoubted authority_. young smith may be gratified to learn, for the first time, that his second bullet was not altogether thrown away. this may console him for the loss of the third reprobate, whom he had got "exactly between the shoulders," when the elder smith ordered him to desist. the occurrence was such a lesson to the land league assassins that they for ever after forswore achil and its immediate surroundings. as dennis mulcahy remarked, "the ruffians only want shtandin' up to, an' they'll not come nixt or near ye." mr. morley would do well to apply this moral to the county clare. the best authority in achil said:--"the hat is always going round for the islanders, who are much better off than the poor of great english cities. they have the reputation of being in a state of chronic famine. this has no foundation in fact. they all have land, one, two, or three cows, and the sea to draw upon. for their land and houses they pay nothing, or next to nothing; for good land in some cases is to be had for a shilling an acre. the lakes also abound with fish. they glory in their poverty, and hail a partial failure of crops with delight. they know they will be cared for, and that provisions will be showered upon them from all sides. they say, 'please god, we'll have a famine this year,' and when the contributions pour in they laugh and sing, and say, 'the distress for ever! long live the famine!' the word goes round at stated intervals that they are to 'have a famine.' they jump at the suggestion, act well together, and carry out the idea perfectly. the protestants never have any distress which calls for charitable aid. they live on the same soil, under the same laws, but they never beg. they pay their rents, too, much more regularly than the others, who of late years can hardly be got to pay either rent or anything else. the protestants are all strong unionists. the catholics are all strong home rulers. their notions of home rule are as follows:--no rent, no police, a poteen still at every door, and possession of the land now held by protestants, which is so much better than their own because so much more labour has been expended on it, and for no other reason. who tells them to 'have a famine'? why, the same people who arouse and keep alive their enmity to the protestants; the same people who tell them lies about the early history of the colony--lies which the tellers know to be lies, such as the stories of oppression, spoliation, and of how the mission took the property of the islanders with the strong hand, aided by england, the home of robbery, tyranny, and heresy. the people would be friendly enough but for their priests. yet they have marched in procession before our houses, blowing defiance by means of a drum and fife band, because we would not join one or other of their dishonest and illegal combinations. they opened a man's head with a stone, producing a dreadful scalp wound, and when doctor croly, the greatest favourite in the whole island, went to dress the wound, five or six of them stopped his horse, with the object of giving him a 'bating,' which would have ended nobody knows how. the doctor produced a revolver, and the heroes vanished like smoke." the good doctor is himself a unionist, but more of a philanthropist than a politician. he is the parish doctor, with eight thousand people to look after, the whole being scattered over an immense area. i accompanied him on a twenty-mile drive to see a girl down with influenza, much of the road being almost impracticable. some of his experiences, coming out incidentally, were strange and startling. he told me of a night when the storm was so wild that a man seeking him approached the surgery on all-fours, and once housed, would not again stir out, though the patient was his own wife. the doctor went alone and in the storm and blackness narrowly escaped drowning, emerging from the jawun, usually called the jordan, after an hour's struggle with the flood, to sit up all night in his wet clothes, tending the patient. on another occasion a mountain sheep frightened his horse just as the doctor was filling his pipe. the next passer-by found him insensible. nobody might have passed for a month. a similar misadventure resulted in a broken leg. then on a pitchy night he walked over the cliffs, and was caught near the brink by two rocks which held him wedged tightly until someone found him and pulled him up, with the bag of instruments, which he thinks had saved him. and it was as well to pause in his flight, for the menawn cliffs, with their thousand feet of clean drop, might have given the doctor an ugly fall. two girls, whose male relations had gone to england, had not been seen for three days. nobody would go near the house. the doctor found them both on the floor insensible, down with typhus fever, shut up with the pigs and cows, the room and its odour defying description. the neighbours kept strictly aloof. dr. croly swept and garnished, made fires, and pulled the patients through. "sure, you couldn't expect us to go near whin 'twas the faver," said the neighbourly achilese. mr. salt, the brum-born mission agent, was obliged to remain all night on one of the neighbouring islands--islands are a drug hereabouts--and next morning he found an egg in his hat. fowls are in nearly all the houses. sometimes they have a roost on the ceiling, but they mostly perch on the family bed, when that full-flavoured elysium is not on the floor. i saw an interior which contained one black cow, one black calf, some hens, some ducks, two black-and-white pigs, a mother, and eleven children. where they all slept was a puzzle, as only one bed was visible. the hens went whir-r-r-up, and perched on the bedstead, when the lady smiled and wished me good evening. she looked strong and in good going order. the achilese say good evening all day long. a young girl was grinning in the next doorway, a child of fourteen or fifteen she seemed. "ye wouldn't think that was a married woman, would ye now," said a neighbour, with pardonable pride. "aye, but she is, though, an' a foin lump iv a son ye have, haven't ye, maureen." mr. peter griffin, once a land commissioner, told me that a boy having applied for the fixing of a judicial rent, the commissioners expressed their surprise upon learning that he was married. "arrah, now," said the applicant, "sure 'tis not for the sake of the bit that the crathur would ate that a boy need be widout one o' thim!" in achil, as elsewhere, the better people are certain that the home rule bill will never become law. from their point of view, the thing seems too absurd to be possible. they are face to face with a class of irishmen, among whom civilisation seems to have made no perceptible progress for centuries, who scorn every improvement, and are so tied and bound down by aboriginal ignorance and superstition as to be insensible to everything but their ancient prejudices. it cannot be possible, they argue, that ireland should be given over to the dominion of these people, who, after all, are in the matter of advancement and enlightenment fairly representative of the bulk of the voters for home rule all over the country. the civilised community of achil are unable to realise the possibility of such a surrender. they do not discuss the measure, but rather laugh at it. an able business man said:-- "we get the daily papers a little old, no doubt, but we follow them very closely, and we concur in believing that mr. gladstone will in the long run drop the bill. we think he will turn round and say, 'there now. that's all i can do. haven't i done my best? haven't i kept my promise? now, you can't blame me. the irishmen see it coming, and they will get out of it as much dramatic effect as possible. the party organs are already urging them to open rupture with the government. compulsion is their game, and no doubt, with gladstone, it is the most likely game to pay. but he might rebel. he might grow tired of eating irish dirt; he might pluck up spirit enough to tell these bullies who are jockeying him, and through him the british empire, to go to the divil. then we'd have a fine flare-up. virtuous indignation and patriotic virtue to the fore! the irish members will rush over to ireland, and great demonstrations will be the order of the day. the irish love demonstrations, or indeed anything else which gives a further excuse for laziness. the priests will orate, the members will prate, the ruffians elate will shoot or otherwise murder a few people, who will have mr. gladstone to thank for their death. for what we wanted was twenty years of resolute government, just as lord salisbury said, and if mr. balfour had been left to carry it out ireland would have come her nearest possible to prosperity and contentment. but with steady rule one day, and vacillation, wobbling, and surrender the next, what can you expect? the irish are very smart, cute people, and they soon know where they can take advantage of weakness. the way these poor achil folks, those who have been to england, can reckon up mr. gladstone! they call him a traitor now. and yet he promises to let the irish members arrange their own finance! 'here, my boys,' says he, 'take five millions and spend it your own way.' will john bull stand that? will he pay for the rope that is to hang himself? will he buy the razor to cut his own throat? where are his wits? why does he stand by to witness this unending farce, when he ought to be minding serious business? this irish idiocy is stopping the progress of the empire. why does not bull put his foot on it at once? he must do so in the end. where are the working men of england? surely they know enough to perceive that their own personal interests are involved. "in achil we have practically peasant proprietary and nothing else. eleven hundred men and women are at this moment in england and scotland from achil alone. they will return in october, each bringing back ten, fifteen, or twenty pounds, on which they will live till next season. the irish legislature would begin by establishing peasant proprietary all over ireland. the large farmers would disappear, and men without capital, unable to employ labour, would take their place. instead of mayo, you would have the unemployed of the whole thirty-two counties upon you. ireland would be pauperised from end to end, for everybody who could leave it would do so--that is, every person of means--and as for capital and enterprise, what little we have would leave us. which of the irish nationalist party would start factories, and what would they make? can anybody tell me that?" i submitted that mr. william o'brien, the member for cork, might open a concern for the making of breeches, or that mr. timothy healy, the member for louth, who was reared in a tripe shop, might embark his untold gold in the cowheel and trotter business, or might even prove a keen competitor with walsall in the manufacture of horsewhips, a product of industry of which he has had an altogether exceptional experience. "is not this true?" i enquired. my friend admitted the fact, but declined to believe in the factory. dugort (achil island), june nd. no. .--irish unfitness for self-government. there stands a city neither large nor small, its air and situation sweet and pretty. it matters very little if at all. whether its denizens are dull or witty. whether the ladies there are short or tall, brunettes or blondes--only there stands a city. perhaps 'tis also requisite to minute, that there's a castle and a cobbler in it. it is not big enough to boast a barber. these indispensable adjuncts of civilisation exist in connaught, but only at rare intervals. roughly speaking, there is a space of about a hundred miles between them. from athlone to dugort, a hundred and thirty miles, there is only one, both towns inclusive. castlereagh is a deadly-lively place for business, but keenly awake to politics. the distressful science absorbs the faculties of the people, who care for little else. like all the keltic irish, they are great talkers, and, surely, if talking were working the irish would be the richest nation in the world. "words, words, words," and no deeds. the castlereagh folks are growing despondent. the irish parliament that was to remit taxation, present every able-bodied man with a farm, do away with landlords and police, and reduce the necessity for work to a minimum, seems to them further off than ever. they complain that once again the people of ireland have been betrayed. mr. gladstone has done it all. to be sure they never trusted him, but they thought him an instrument in the hands of fate and the irish parliamentary party. spite of all he is supposed to have done for the irish, mr. gladstone is not popular in ireland, and, as i pointed out months ago, they from the first declined to believe in his sincerity. they rightly regarded his action anent home rule as the result of compulsion, and, rightly or wrongly, believed that he would take the first opportunity of throwing over the whole scheme. that he should act thus treacherously (they say) is precisely what might be expected from an impartial review of his whole career, which presents an unequalled record of in-and-out running--consistent only in its inconsistency. having apparently ridden straight for awhile, it is now time to expect some "pulling." his shameful concessions to the unionist party may be taken as a clear indication of his congenital crookedness, and the refusal of the nationalists at killybegs, on the visit of lord houghton, the other day, to give a single shout for the grand old man, bears out my previous statement as to the popular feeling. amid the carefully organised show of enthusiasm and mock loyalty which greeted the visit of the viceroy, not a cheer could be raised for mr. gladstone. the local wirepullers did their best, but the priests who for weeks have been arranging their automata, at the last moment found that the dummies would not work. there were rounds of cheering for this, that, and the other, and when the mob were in full cry, someone shouted, "three cheers for mr. gladstone." dead silence. the gladstonian viceroy and his following were left high and dry. the flood of enthusiasm instantly receded, and the beating of their own hearts was the only sound they heard. mr. morley's name would have obtained a like reception. the people were doubtless willing to obey their leaders, and to make some slight sacrifice to expediency, but every man left that particular cheer to his neighbour. hence the fiasco for which the people have already been severely reprimanded. someone should have called for cheers for balfour. anyone who knows the west of ireland knows there would have been an outburst of hurrahs, hearty and spontaneous. the irish are delightfully illogical. a respectable old fenian had a poor opinion of the present home rule agitation. he said:--"i am of the school of stephens and mitchel. when a people or nation is radically discontented with its rulers it should throw them off by force. if the irish could hold together long enough to maintain an armed insurrection for two weeks only, help would be forthcoming from all quarters. when a young man i cherished the hope that this would be accomplished, but i have long abandoned the notion that anything of the kind will be possible in my time. for individual englishmen i have as much friendship as anybody, not being himself an englishman, can entertain. what i dislike is english rule, and the present movement does not interest me, because its leaders profess allegiance--for the present, anyhow. no doubt the general idea is to obtain as much advantage as possible, and to gradually increase the strength of ireland; but, in my opinion, the fenian movement was the true and legitimate method, and the one best suited to the genius of the irish nation. notwithstanding all that has been said and written by english speakers and writers, the movement was worthy of honour, and had it been successful, would have received high praise and commendation from every country except england. to be respectable, revolutions or insurrections must be successful, or at any rate, must have a certain amount of success to commence with. the english people never properly understood the fenian movement. to begin with, the name of fenians was not assumed by the irish body of conspirators. the fenians proper were entirely confined to america, where they acted under the instructions of john o'mahony, with michael and colonel corcoran as lieutenants. the colonel commanded the irish brigade of the american army, and was pledged to bring over a strong contingent at the right moment. the irish party in ireland under stephens was called the irish revolutionary brotherhood, to which i am proud to say i belonged. that is all over now, and i am content to be loyal, under compulsion. there is nothing else for it. the young men are all gone to america, and the failure of the enterprise has damaged the prestige of the cause. the organisation was very good, and you might say that the able-bodied population belonged to it, almost to a man. england never knew, does not know even now, how universal was the movement. the escape of james stephens, the great number one, from richmond bridewell, was something of an eye-opener, but not half so astonishing as some things that would have happened if the general movement had been successful. it was daniel byrne and james breslin, who let him out. byrne was a turnkey, breslin was hospital superintendent, and both held their posts on account of their well-known loyalty. byrne was found out, or rather it was discovered that he was a fenian, but they could not prove his guilt in the stephens affair, and he never rounded on breslin, who went on drawing his screw from the british government for many a long day, until he took a trip to america, where his services to the cause landed him in a good situation. so he stayed there, and told everything, and that was the first the british government knew about it, beyond suspicion of byrne. "if stephens had made up his mind for an outbreak the funeral of macmanus was the right occasion. he missed his tip then, and no mistake. there never was another chance like that. he said the arrangements were not complete, and from that moment the thing dwindled away, and we who were working it up in the rural districts began to think he did not really mean business. we were short of arms, but a small success would have improved our condition in that respect. lots of the country organisers went to dublin to see his funeral, and when we saw the crowds and the enthusiasm we all agreed that such a chance was not likely to occur again. macmanus had been a chief of the insurrectionary movement of , and had been transported for life to botany bay, i think. he escaped to america, and died there in . mahony, the fenian commander-in-chief, proposed to spend some of the revolutionary funds in bringing the body to ireland, there to give it a public funeral. this was a great idea, and as the government did not interfere, it turned out a greater success than anyone had anticipated. there were delegates from every city in america, and from every town in ireland. it took about a month to lug macmanus from the far west to dublin, and the excitement increased every day. in my little place we collared all the timid fellows who had been holding back before, until there was not a single man of the peasant class outside the circle. macmanus was worth more dead than alive. "a hundred thousand men followed the hearse through the streets of dublin. at the critical moment number one held back. if the streets had been barricaded on the evening of the funeral the country would have stood an excellent chance of obtaining its independence. the moment was missed, and such chances never come twice. the french would have made a big thing of that affair. stephens was great at organisation, but he had not the pluck to carry out the enterprise. he had not the military training required, nor the decision to act at the right moment. so here we are and here we shall remain, and i am your humble, obedient, loyal servant to command. "no, i do _not_ believe in the present leaders at all. i think they want to be paid big salaries as irish statesmen, and that they are unfit to clean the boots of the men with whom i acted thirty years ago. the fenians, or rather the irish revolutionary brotherhood, had no wish to make money by their patriotism, and what is more, they were ready to risk their skins, whenever called upon to do so. they were willing to fight. these chaps do nothing but spout. the i.r.b. agreed among themselves, and obeyed orders. these fellows can't agree for five minutes together, and their principal subject of quarrel is--who shall be master? gladstone is fooling them now, and good enough for them. a pretty set of men to attempt to govern a country! they don't know what they want. we did. we swore every man to obedience to the irish republic. that was straightforward enough. the young 'uns round here have the same aspirations, but they dislike the idea of fighting. they expect to get round it some other way. "john kennedy, of westport, damaged the cause in mayo more than any man in ireland. he was a young fellow of about five-and-twenty, only a few years in the constabulary, but somehow he got into sworn meetings in disguise, and burst the whole thing up. the queerest feature about this business is the fact that although everybody knew the man not a shot was ever fired at him. that shows the fairness of the fenians. a member of the brotherhood would have been promptly dealt with, you bet. but kennedy was an open enemy, and had a right to circumvent us if he could. give us credit for some chivalrous feeling. we certainly deserved it, as this case amply proves. "the land league? the ruffian league, the burglar league, the pickpocket league, the murder league--that's what i always called it. a hole-and-corner way of carrying on the fight, which had been begun by men, but which the latest fashion of irishmen have not the courage to canduct as men. the fenian conception was high-souled, and had some romance about it. we had a green flag with a rising sun on it, along with the harp of erin. our idea was an open fight against the british empire. there's as much difference between the fenians and their successors as between the ancient romans and the italian organ-grinders with monkeys. good morning, sir, and--god save the queen." this was a jocosity if not a mockery, but it was the first time i had heard the words in ireland. the tune is almost unknown, and the current issue of _united ireland_ ridicules the notion that the irish are going to learn it. the band of the royal irish constabulary, playing in front of their barracks in the phoenix park, dublin, on friday evenings, sometimes include the tune in their programme, but when i heard them it was led up to and preceded by "st. patrick's day in the mornin'," to which it was conjoined by one intervening chord. a castlereagh protestant said:-- "the children here are taught to curse the queen in their cradles. don't know how it is, but hatred to england seems bred in the bone of the catholic irish. they make no secret of their hopes of vengeance. the protestants will have to levant in double-quick time. the people here hate protestants, whether english or irish, likewise anybody who holds a government appointment. some few days ago i was at westport, and while in the post office there, a beggar asked mr. hildebrand for alms. you know that every western town swarms with beggars. he said no, and this tramp immediately turned round and said:-- "'we'll very soon have ye out o' that, _now_.' "a relative of mine, who holds a sub-office, has been told the same thing fifty times. there you have the spirit of the poorer people. and don't forget that the illiterates have the power in their hands. just think what this means. "in england, with all your agricultural districts, with all your back slums of cities, there was only one person in each hundred and seventy who could not write his name, or at all events, one in a hundred and seventy who was unable to manage his voting paper. "in ireland the figures were one in every five, and of the remainder two at least were barely able to perform so simple an operation as making a cross against the right name. are these people fit to govern themselves? "there were two polling booths in westport. there were three priests at each door. tell the english people that, and see what they think of it. "a scotch gentleman staying in westport during the late 'mission' was stopped at the door of the roman catholic church. he was not permitted to enter, because the priests are ashamed to show civilised people the credulity and crass ignorance of their congregation. at one of these services everybody held a lighted candle, and at a given signal, puff! out went out the lights, and with them away went the sins of the people. "a priest was sent for in achil. the case was urgent. a man was dying, and without extreme unction his chances in the next world were reckoned shady. the priest was enjoying himself in some festivity, and the man died before his salvation arrived. a relative declared he would tell the bishop. the priest reassured him with a scrap of paper, whereon were written these words, signed by himself, 'saint peter. admit bearer.' 'stick that in the dead man's fist,' said he. the man went away delighted. these are the intelligent voters whose influence is now paramount in the parliament of england. it is by these poor untutored savages, manipulated by their priests, that the british empire is now worked. the semi-civilised peasants of connaught, with the ignorant herds of leinster and munster, at the bidding of their clergy have completely stopped the course of legislation, and left the long-suffering and industrious working men of england and scotland to wait indefinitely for all the good things they want. the cry is, ireland stops the way. why doesn't england kick it out of the way? "turn about is fair play. let england have a turn now. fair play is a jewel, and ireland has fair play. ireland has privileges of which neither england nor scotland can boast. the protestants of ireland are everywhere prosperous and content. the catholics of ireland are everywhere impoverished and discontented. wherever you go you find this an invariable rule. the two sects may hold their farms from the same landlord, on precisely similar terms, and you will find that the protestants pay their rent, and get on, while the catholics don't pay, and go from bad to worse." "is this extraordinary difference the result of british rule?" many a time i have asked catholics this question. they cannot explain the marked difference on the ground of alien government, as both are subject to the same. they will say, 'oh, protestants are always well off,' as if the thing were a matter of course, and must be looked upon as inevitable. but why? i ask. that they can never tell. stand on a big hill near tipperary and you will see four roman catholic churches of modern build, costing nearly a hundred thousand pounds. father humphreys will tell you how the money was raised, will show you over tipperary cathedral, and will let you see the pig-styes in which the people are housed. that is the man of god who wrote to the papers and complained that it had been reported that the catholic clergy of tipperary had done all they could to stop boycotting. father humphreys said:--"i protest against this libel on me. _i am doing nothing to stop boycotting._" a neighbour of my friend spoke of many changes he had witnessed in the political opinions of people who had become resident in ireland, having previously been gladstonians in england. he said:--"when the achil sound viaduct was opened, chiefly by the efforts of a northern protestant who gave £ , towards the cost, a scotchman named cowan was chief engineer. he came over a rabid home ruler, and such a worshipper of mr. gladstone as cannot be found out of scotland. in six months he was unionist to the backbone, and not only unionist but conservative. the achil folks, when once the bridge was built and given to them, decided to call it michael davitt bridge. it had not cost them a penny, nor had they any part in it. at the priest's orders they rushed forward to christen it; it was all they were good for. they put up a big board with the name. cowan went down alone, he could not get a soul with pluck to go with him, and chopped the thing down, the achil nationalists looking on. in the night they put up another board, a big affair on the trunk of a tree, all well secured. cowan went down and felled it as before, watching it drift away with tide. then they gave it up. they wouldn't go three! carnegie, the customs man, came here a strong home ruler. looking back, he says he cannot conceive how he could be such an ass. a very cute scotchman, too. some of the gladstonians mean well. i don't condemn them wholesale, like father does. you should hear him drop on english home rulers. he understands the irish agitator, but the english separatist beats him. i have been in england, and several times in birmingham, and i have heard them talk. father is very peppery, but i moderate his transports. speaking of the english home rulers he'll say-- "'pack o' rogues.' "'no, no,' says i, 'only fools.' "'infernal idiots,' says he. "'no, no,' says i, 'only ignorant.' "as i said, i have been in england, and have heard them talk, so i know." he asked me if i had noticed the external difference between irish communities which support home rule and those which support the union. i said that a contrast so striking must impress the most casual observer, for that, on the one hand, unionism is always coupled with cleanliness and decency, while on the other the intimate relationship apparently existing between home rule and dunghills is most suggestive and surprising. unionism and order: separatism and ordure--that is about the sum. castlereagh, june th. no. .--object lessons in irish self-government. a small town with a great name, about one hundred miles west of dublin. there is a ruined castle, and one or two ruined abbeys, but nothing else of interest, unless it be the herons which stalk about the streams in its environs, and the royston crows with white or gray breast and back, which seem to be fairly numerous in these parts. ireland is a wonderful country for crows and ravens, which hop about the village streets as tame as barndoor fowls. a king of connaught is buried in saint coenan's abbey, but dead kings are almost as common as crows, and phelim o'connor seems to have done nothing worthy of mention beyond dying in . i had hardly landed when i met a very pronounced anti-home ruler, a grazier, apparently a smart business man, and seemingly well up in the controversy. he said:--"i have argued the question all over ireland, and believe i have made as many converts as anybody. many of my countrymen have been carried away by the popular cry, but when once they have the thing put to them from the other side, and have time to think, they begin to have their doubts. naturally they first lean to the idea of an irish parliament. it flatters irish feeling, and when men look around and see the country so poor and so backward they want to try some change or other. the agitators see their opportunity, and say, 'all this results from english interference. if we managed our own affairs we should be better off all round.' this sounds plausible, and agrees with the traditional distrust of england which the people have inherited from past ages. men who are fairly intelligent, and fairly reasonable, will say, 'we can't be worse off than we are at present.' that is a stock argument all over the country. the people who use it think it settles the business. the general poverty of the people is the strength of the home rule position. the priests tell them that a government composed of irishmen would see them right, and would devote itself to looking after their interests; and really the people have nobody to tell them anything else. nor are they likely to hear the other side, for they are only allowed to read certain papers, and if englishmen of character and ability were to attempt to stump the country they would not get a hearing. the clergy would make it warm for anybody who dared to attend a unionist meeting. so _that_ process is altogether out of the question. isolated roman catholic unionists like myself need to be in a very strong and independent position before they dare to express their views. roman catholics of position are nearly all unionists at heart, but comparatively few of them dare avow their real convictions. to do so is to couple yourself with the obnoxious land question. the people, as a whole, detest landlords and england, and they think that an opponent of home rule is necessarily a sympathiser with british rule and landlordism, and therefore a foe to his country and a traitor to his countrymen. few men have the moral courage to face this indictment. that is why the educated catholic party, as a whole, hang back. and then, they dislike to put themselves in direct opposition to their clergy. englishmen do not care one jot what the parson thinks of their political opinions, but in ireland things are very different. i am against home rule because i am sure it would be bad for ireland. the prosperity of the country is of some importance to me, and for my own sake and apart from sentimental considerations, and for the credit of ireland, i am against home rule. we should be poorer than ever. i would not trust the present irish party to manage anything that required management. they have not the training, nor the business capacity, nor sufficient consistency to work together for a single week. they cannot agree even at this critical moment, when by their own showing, the greatest harmony of action is required in the interests of ireland. i say nothing about their honesty, for the most scrupulously honest men could not succeed without business ability and united action. they are a set of talkers, good for quibbling and squabbling and nothing more. "they are m.p.'s because they can talk. paddy loves a glib talker, and a fellow with a good jaw on him would always beat the best business man, even if paddy were allowed his own choice. of course he has no choice--he votes as the priest tells him; but then the selected men were all good rattling talkers, not in the house, perhaps, but in their own country district in ireland. paddy thinks talking means ability, and when a fellow rattles off plenty of crack-jaw words and red-hot abuse of england, paddy believes him able to regenerate the world. these men are not allowed to speak in the house. they only vote. but let me tell you they are kings in their own country. "since parnell ordered his followers to contest all the elective boards in ireland, the nationalist party have almost monopolised the poor law boards, with the result that nearly every one has been openly bankrupt, or else is in a state of present insolvency. mr. morley has been asked for particulars but has declined to give them. he knows that the list of insolvent poor law boards in ireland, if once given with particulars, to the british public, would show up the prospects of home rule in such a damaging way that 'the cause' would never survive the shock. why does not the unionist party bring about this exposure? surely the information is obtainable, if not from mr. morley, then from some other source. "why are they bankrupt? you ask. partly through incompetence; partly through corruption. in every case of declared bankruptcy government has sent down vice-guardians receiving three hundred pounds to five hundred pounds a year, and notwithstanding this additional burden to the rates the vice-guardians in every case have paid off all debts and left a balance in hand inside of two years. then they retire, and the honorary guardians come back to scuttle the ship again. tell the english people that. mr. morley cannot deny it. you have told them? then tell them again, and again. "in the killarney union the nationalists ran up the rates from one thousand seven hundred pounds to three thousand six hundred pounds. more distress? not a bit of it. but even admitting this, how would you account for the fact that the cost ran up from sixteen shillings a head to twenty-five shillings a head for every person relieved? "the listowel union was perhaps the biggest scandal in the country. the unionist guardians relieved the people at a cost of five shillings a head. the nationalists got in and relieved them at a cost of fifteen shillings a head. and there wasn't a reduction on taking a quantity, for the unionists only had two hundred on the books, while the nationalists had two thousand or more. "at the same period exactly those unions which remained under the old rule showed little or no increase in the rates. kenmare remained unionist, and when the great rise in poor-law expenses followed the election of nationalist guardians kenmare spent less money than ever. "the nationalist guardians have been vising the poor rates to reward their friends and to punish the landlords. they have been fighting the landlords with money raised from the landlords by means of poor rates. evicted tenants generally received a pound or twenty-five shillings a week out-door relief. this punishes the landlords, and saves the funds of the land league, now called the national league. ingenious, isn't it? these are the men who form the class furnishing the irish parliamentary party. these bankrupt, incompetent, and fraudulent guardians are the men with whom english gladstonians are closely allied. the board meetings are usually blackguardly beyond description. you have no idea to what extremes they go. no irishman who loves his country would trust her to the tender mercies of these fellows." i have not yet been present at any meeting of an irish poor law board, and probably, as my friend remarked, i "do not know to what extremes they go." the _mayo news_ of a week or two ago reported an ordinary meeting of the westport board, and i noticed that one guardian accused his colleagues of stealing the potatoes provided out of the rates for the paupers. this was reported in a nationalist print edited by a gentleman who has had the honour of being imprisoned for land league business. the report was evidently verbatim, and has not been contradicted. the westport folks took no notice of the affair, which may therefore be assumed as representing the dead level of an irish poor law debate. to what sublime altitudes they may occasionally rise, to "what extremes" they sometimes go, i know not. the college green parliament, manned by such members, would have a peculiar interest. the speaker might be expected to complain that his umbrella (recently re-covered) had mysteriously disappeared. the chancellor of the exchequer might accuse the president of the board of trade of having appropriated the national stationery, and the master of the rolls might rise to declare that a sanguinary ruffian from ulster had "pinched his wipe." the sane inhabitants of the emerald isle affirm that home rule would be ruinous to trade, but the vendors of shillelaghs and sticking-plaster would certainly have a high old time. an englishman who has had exceptional opportunities of examining the matter said:--"i don't care so much for irish interests as for english interests, and i am of opinion that no englishman in a position to form a correct judgment would for one moment support the bill. the tension is off us now, because we feel that the danger to a great extent is over. the bill could not be expected to survive a public examination. the gladstonians themselves must now see that the scheme was not only absurd and impossible, but iniquitous. under a home rule bill their native land would cut a sorry figure, such as would almost shame the milk-sop radical party, 'friends of every country but their own.' a government with a sufficient majority to carry a british measure might at any time be turned out of office by the eighty irish members, who could at any time make their votes the price of some further concession. and you know the character of the men, how thoroughly unscrupulous they are. all are enemies of england, and yet we who know them and the feeling of their constituencies are asked to believe that they would never abuse their powers. why give them the temptation? then, whatever debts ireland might incur england would have to pay, should ireland repudiate them? the bill provides that england shall be ultimately responsible for three-quarters of a million annually for the servants of the crown in ireland, such servants being at the orders of the irish legislature. it is a divorce case, wherein the husband is to be responsible for the wife's debts incurred after separation. this is mr. gladstone's fine proposition. and then england will have no police under her control to make defaulters pay up. you can't make the people pay rent and taxes with all your present force. how are you going to collect the two or three millions of ireland's share in imperial expenditure without any force at all? the police will be at the orders of the irish parliament, which will be returned by the very men who will owe the money. 'oh yes!' say dillon, healy, o'brien, and all the rest of the no rent and land league men. 'we'll see that the money is paid.' the previous history of these men ought to be enough for englishmen. but if tim healy and co. wished the money to be paid, they would have no power. they must take their orders from the people. how would you collect the interest on the eighteen or twenty millions ireland now owes? the police and civil officers would, under a home rule bill, be the servants of the irish government, and would have no sympathy with england. a hitch would very soon arise between the two parliaments either on the interpretation of this or that clause, or else because the irish parliament fell short of its duty in collecting the tribute. the irish government would stand firm, and would be supported by priests and people. the british grenadiers would then come in, and where would be the union of hearts? irishmen are fond of a catch-word. like the french, they will go to death for a phrase. but the union of hearts never tickled them. the words never fell from irish lips except in mockery. "protection would be the great rallying cry of a home rule government. the bill refuses power to impose protective duties, but ireland would commence by conceding bounties to irish manufacturers, who would there and then be able to undersell english traders. no use going further into the thing, there is not a good point in it for either country. no use flogging a dead horse. there never will be any home rule, and there's no use in discussing it. a liberal measure of local self-government will be the upshot of this agitation, nothing more. and that will come from the tory party, the only friends of poor ireland." the parnellites are strong in roscommon, and to hear them revile the priests is both strange and sad. these are the only catholics who resent clerical dictation. they seem in a quandary. their action seems inconsistent with their expressed sentiments. they plainly see that home rule means rome rule, and, while deprecating priestly influence, they do their best to put the country into priestly hands. they speak of the anti-parnellites with contempt and aversion, calling them rogues and vagabonds, liars and traitors, outside the pale of civilisation, and yet they work for home rule, which would put their beloved ireland in the power of the very men whose baseness and crass incompetence they cannot characterise in terms sufficiently strong. for the anti-parnellites outnumber the parnellites by eight to one; so that the smaller party, although monopolising all virtue, grace and intellect, would have no show at all, unless, indeed, the nationalists were further subdivided, on which contingency the parnellites probably count with certainty. i interviewed a champagny little man whose views were very decided. he said:-- "i think the seventy-three federationists, as they want to be called, are not only traitors to the greatest irishmen of the age, but also mean-spirited tools of the catholic bishops. a man may have proper respect for his faith, and may yet resent the dictation of his family priest. i admit his superior knowledge of spiritual matters, but i think i know what politics suit me best, and i send him to the rightabout. let him look after the world to come. that's his business. i'm going to look after this world for myself. the main difference between the parnellites and the anti-parnellites is just this--the parnellites keep themselves independent of any english party; the anti-parnellites have identified themselves with the english liberals, and bargain with them. my view is this, that the english radicals will use the irish party for their own ends, that they want to utilise them in carrying out the newcastle programme, and that having so used them the irishmen may go and hang themselves. 'we give you home rule and you give us the newcastle budget'--that's the present arrangement. but after that? what then? ireland will want the home rule bill amended. the first bill (if ever we get it) must be very imperfect, and will want no end of improvement. it is bound to be a small, mean affair, and will want expansion and breadth. then the radicals will chuck over the anti-parnellites, who will be equally shunted by the tories, and we shall be left hanging in the air. the parnellites aim at getting everything on its merits, and decline to identify themselves with any party. they wish to be called independents. and they one and all decline to be managed by the priests. the seventy-three anti-parnellites are entirely managed by the clerical party. they have no will of their own any more than the pasteboard men you see in the shop windows, whose legs and arms fly up and down, when you pull a string. they are just like gladstonians in that respect." the parnellites are hard up, and their organ asks america for cash. the dauntless nine want six thousand pounds for pocket-money and hotel expenses. the cause of ireland demands this sacrifice. after so many contributions, surely america will not hold back at the supreme moment. the anti-parnellites are bitterly incensed. to act independently of their faction was of itself most damnable, but still it could be borne. to ask for money from america, to put in a claim for coppers which might have flowed into anti-parnellite pockets, shows a degradation, an unspeakable impudence for which the _freeman_ cannot find adequate adjectives. the priest-ridden journal speaks of its fellow patriots as caluminators and liars, tries to describe their "baseness," their "inconceivable insolence and inconceivable stupidity," and breaks down in the effort. a column and a half of space is devoted to calling the parnellites ill names such as were formerly applied by irish patriots to mr. gladstone. and all because they compete for the cents of irish-american slaveys and bootblacks. the parnellites are not to be deterred by mere idle clamour. both parties are accustomed to be called liars and rogues, and both parties accept the appellations as a matter of course. nothing can stop them when on the trail of cash. is irish sentiment to be again disappointed for a paltry six thousand pounds? is the sisyphean stone of home rule, so laboriously rolled uphill, to again roll down, crushing in its fall the faithful rollers? will not some american millionaire come forward with noble philanthropy _and_ six thousand pounds to rescue and to save the most beautiful, the most unfortunate country in the world from further disappointment? only six thousand pounds now required for the great ultimate, or penultimate, or antepenultimate effort. another twopence and up goes the donkey! roscommon, june th. no. .--the changed spirit of the capital. the dubliners have quite given up the bill. the unionist party have regained their calm, and the nationalists are resigned to the position. nobody, of whatever political colour, or however sanguine, now expects the measure to become law. the separatist rank and file never hoped for so much luck, and their disappointment is therefore anything but unbearable. my first letter indicated this lack of faith and also its cause. the dublin folks never really believed a british parliament would so stultify itself. the old lady who, on my arrival, said "we'll get home rule when a pair of white wings grows out o' me shoulders, an' i fly away like a big blackburd," finds her pendant in the jarvey, who this morning said, "if we'd got the bill i would have been as much surprised as if one o' me childhren got the moon by roarin' for it." distrust of mr. gladstone is more prevalent than ever, and the prophets who all along credited that pious statesman with rank insincerity are now saying "i towld ye so." the lord-lieutenant is making his viceregal progress in an ominous silence. the limerick people let him go without a cheer. at foynes something like a procession was formed, with the parish priest at its head; but the address read by his rivirince reads very like a scolding. it points out that "our rivers are at present without shipping, our mills and factories are idle, and it is a sad sight to see our beautiful shannon, where all her majesty's fleet could safely ride on the estuary of its waters, without almost a ship of merchandise on its surface on account of the general decay of our trade and commerce." the address further shows that "we enjoy a combination of natural advantages in the shape of a secure, sheltered anchorage, together with railway and telegraph in immediate proximity to the harbour and the pier, and postal service twice daily, both inwards and outwards, and a first-class quality of pure water laid on to the pier. the facility for landing or embarking troops, or for discharging or loading goods or stores is as near perfection as possible, and having a range of depth of water of twenty-five feet at low-water spring tide, the harbour can accommodate ships of deep draught at any state of the tide." these advantages, mostly owing to british rule, with others, such as the "unique combination of mountain and river scenery," were not enumerated as subjects for thankfulness, but rather by way of reproach, the effect of the whole address being a veiled indictment of british rule. no doubt lord houghton's first impulse would be to exclaim, "then why on earth don't you use your advantages? with good quays, piers, storehouses, and a broad deep river, opening on the atlantic, why don't you do some business?" but he promised to do his best to send them a guard-ship, in order that the crew might spend some money in the district. the galway folks asked him to do something for them. my previous letters have shown the incapacity of the galwegians to do anything for themselves, and how, being left to their own devices--having, in fact, a full enjoyment of local home rule--their incompetence has saddled the city with a debt of fifty thousand pounds for which they have practically nothing to show, except an additional debt of one thousand pounds decreed against them for knocking the bottom out of a coaling vessel during their "improving" operations, which sum they never expect to pay, as the harbour tolls are collected by the board of works, which thus endeavours to indemnify itself for having lent them the "improvement" funds. the killybegs folks showed the poor viceroy their bay and told him what wonderful things they could do if they only had a pier, or a quay, or something. the achil folks formerly said the same thing. two piers were built but no man ever goes near them. the mulranney folks pointed out that while clew bay, and particularly the nook of it called mulranney bay, was literally alive with fish, the starving peasants of the neighbourhood could do nothing for want of a pier. the brutal saxon built one at once--a fine handsome structure, at once a pier, a breakwater, and a harbour, with boat-slips and three stages with steps, so that boats could be used at any tide. i stepped this massive and costly piece of masonry, and judged it to be a hundred yards long. there were six great mooring posts, but not a boat in sight, nor any trace of fishing operations. a broad new road to the pier was cut and metalled, but no one uses it. the fishing village of mulranney, with its perfect appointments, would not in twelve months furnish you with one poor herring. the pier of killybegs would probably be just as useful to the neighbourhood. the dublin nationalist prints make some show of fight, but the people heed them not. they know too well that their inward conviction that home rule is for the present defunct is founded on rock. in vain the party writers use the whip. your irishman is cute enough to know when he is beaten. the new-born regard of the irish press for parliamentary purity is comical enough. obstruction is the thing they hate. ungentlemanly conduct in the house stinks in their nostrils. fair play is their delight, and underhand dealing they particularly abhor. mr. gladstone is too lenient, and although his failings lean to virtue's side, his action is too oily altogether. he is old and weak, and lubricates too much. they in effect accuse him of fatty degeneration of the brain. something heroic must be done. those low-bred ruffians, the unionists, must be swept from the path of erin, while her eloquent sons, actuated by patriotism and six pounds a week, and spurred on by the hope of even a larger salary, obtain after seven centuries some show of justice to ireland. the irish wire-pullers demand decisive action. they declare that they will no longer submit to the "happy-go-lucky policy of the gentlemen who survey life from the ministerial benches." they must "put themselves in fighting form and show their supporters that they mean business." "unless the ministry mean to throw up the sponge they had better begin the fighting at once." the irish party "are looking for the action of the government which is to make it evident to the opposition that the majority mean to rule in the house of commons, for unless this be done parliamentary government becomes a farce." if mr. gladstone continues the policy of hesitation and waiting on providence, the fate of home rule, and with it the fate of the liberal party, are sealed. "obstruction" (says the parnellite paper) cannot be permitted!" it is the revelation of the impotency of parliament, and parliamentary procedure must be replaced by some quicker means of effecting reform. mr. gladstone's feebleness is an incitement to revolution. the dublin press would manage these things better. an autumn session must not be adventured. if the house should rise before the bill has passed the commons such a confession of weakness would fatally damage the government prestige. the house must "be kept in permanent session, and not kept too long," which sounds like a bull, but the next sentence is plain enough. "the obvious policy is to at once take the opposition by the throat. that will excite enthusiasm, and convince the people that a liberal government is good for something." the nationalist prints are assuming the office of candid friend, a part which suits them admirably, and in the performance of which they make wonderful guesses at truth. the gladstonian ministry "are helpless and impotent in the hands of their opponents. the reforms so ardently desired by the people are seen to be mere mirages, called up to win the votes of the people for men who, once in office, make no real effort to enforce the mandate given to them by the country." the liberal ministry will be "swept out of existence because the people will come to recognise that their promises and programmes are so many hollow phrases, incapable of ministering to the needs or satisfying the aspirations of the multitude." "the real tug of war," says this home rule sheet, "will come in the next election." if irish separatists talk like this, what do irish unionists say? very little, indeed. they are disposed to rest and be thankful. they only want to be let alone. they are quiet and reserved, and thank their stars that the worst is over. the nervousness, the high-strung tension of three months ago, is conspicuous by its absence. they feared that the thing would be rushed, and that mr. bull would stamp the measure without looking at it, would be glad to get rid of it at any price, would say to ireland, "take it, get out of my sight, and be hanged to ye!" thanks to the unionist leaders, whose ability and devotion are here warmly recognised, the dubliners know no fear. the ridiculous abortion has been dragged into the sunlight, and ruthlessly dissected. john's commonsense can be trusted, once he examines for himself, and worthy irishmen lie down in peace. the graver dubliners prefer to speak of something else. the young bloods still make fun of the "patriots," and conjure up illimitable vistas of absurd possibilities under an irish government. they invariably place the hypothetic cabinet under the direct orders of archbishop walsh, and continue to make fun of that great hierarch's famous malediction on freemasonry. the good archbishop, they say, takes a large size in curses. they declare that his curse on the masonic bazaar for orphans was a marvel of comprehensive detail; that it cursed the stall-holders, the purchasers, the tea-pot cosies and fender-stools, the five-o'clock tea-tables and antimacassars, the china ornaments, and embroidered slippers, with every individual bead; the dolls, both large and small; the bran that stuffed the dolls, and the very squeaks which resulted from a squeeze on the doll's ribs. never was heard such a terrible curse. but what gave rise to no little surprise, nobody seemed one penny the worse. these scoffers propose to discontinue the habit of swearing. when the archbishop produces no effect, what's the good of a plain layman's cursing? they declare that the dentists of dublin are all home rulers, and that the selfishness of their political faith is disgustingly obvious. these mocking unionists discuss probable points of etiquette likely to arise in the legislature of college green, and dispute as to whether members will be allowed to attend with decidedly black eyes, or whether they will be excluded until the skin around their orbs has arrived at the pale yellow stage. some are of opinion that no cabinet minister should be allowed to sit while wearing raw beefsteak, and a story is going the rounds to the effect that some of the irish members recently wished to cross the channel for half-a-crown each, and to that end called on a boat agent, a tory, who knew them, when the following conversation took place:-- "can we go across for half-a-crown each?" "no, ye can't, thin." "an' why not?" "because 'tis a cattle boat." "never mind that, sure we're not particular." "no, but the cattle are." there was a great rush for dynamitard daly's letter, and some of his sentences were made subjects of leading articles in the nationalist press. one paragraph seems to have been neglected. he writes--"friend jack, you amazed me when you mentioned the names of ex-felons now honourable members of the imperial parliament. and so they seem to forget the days when _they_ were felons? ah, well, thank god, the people did not forget them in their hour of need, and though some of them may try to palm off their own selfish ambitions on the people to whom they owe everything as genuine patriotism--oh, it won't do!" john daly holds the same opinion of his fellow patriots as is expressed in a remarkable letter to the separatist _dublin evening herald_, wherein the writer says that his party is "disgusted with the duplicity of mr. gladstone," and goes on to say that "no one now believes that the bill will pass, and almost everyone believes it was never intended to pass. i have not yet met anybody who expressed themselves as even remotely satisfied with it. peace to its ashes." i quote this as proving two points i have always endeavoured to urge--first, that the irish distrust mr. gladstone, and are not grateful to him or his party; and, second, that no bill short of complete independence will ever satisfy the irish people. it is what they expect and look forward to as the direct outcome of home rule, which they only want as a stepping-stone. this cannot fail to impress itself on any unbiassed person who rubs against them for long. the teaching of the priests is eminently disloyal, and although the utmost care is taken to prevent their disloyalty becoming public, instances are not lacking to show the general trend. father sheehy, an especial friend of the archbishop walsh aforesaid, thus delivered himself anent a proposed visit of the prince and princess of wales to ireland:--"there is no need for a foreign prince to come to ireland. the irish people have nothing to say to the prince of wales. he has no connection with ireland except that link of the crown that has been formed for the country, which is the symbol of ireland's slavery." this priest said he hated landgrabbers; all except one. "there is but one landgrabber i like, and that is the tsar of russia, who threatens to take territory on the afghan border from england." father arthur ryan, of thurles, the seat of archbishop croke, has printed a manifesto, in which he says:--"ever since the union the best and most honourable of irishmen have looked on rebellion as a sacred duty, provided there were a reasonable chance of success. it has never occurred to me to consider acquiescence to the government of england as a moral obligation or as other than a dire necessity. we have never, thank god, lied to our oppressors by saying we were loyal to them. and when we have condemned the rebels whose heroism and self-sacrifice we have loved and wept over, we condemned not their want of loyalty, but their want of prudence. we thought it wrong to plunge the land into the horrors of war with no hope of success." so much for our trusty and well-beloved fellow-subjects of this realm of england. father ryan is candid, truthful, and outspoken, and commands respect. better an open enemy than a false friend. his summing-up of irish feeling to england is both concise and accurate, but one of his sentences is hardly up to date. he thanks god that the irish have never lied by saying they were loyal. how many irish members can make this their boast? compared with them, the ribbonmen were heroes. the glorious prototypes of the modern member murdered their foes themselves, did their slaughtering in person, and took the risk like men. they hated englishmen, _qua_ englishmen, and made no secret of it. the modern method is easier and more convenient. to murder by proxy, to have your hints carried out without danger to yourself, and to draw pay for your hinting, is a triumph of nineteenth-century ingenuity. to pose as loyal subjects and to disarm suspicion by protestations of friendship and brotherly love may be a more effective means of attaining your end, but it smacks too much of the serpent. the ribbonmen were rough and rugged, but comparatively respectable. the irish separatists are just as disloyal, and infinitely more treacherous. the parchment "loyalty to her most gracious majesty the queen," which lord houghton is in some places receiving, is revolting to all who know the truth. the snake has succeeded the tiger, and most people hate sliminess. nationalist ireland is intensely disloyal from side to side, and from end to end. disloyal and inimical she has been from the first, and disloyal and inimical she remains, and no concessions can change her character. she is religious with a mediæval faith, and she follows her spiritual guides, whose sole aim is religious ascendancy. so long as the roman catholic church is not predominant so long the irish people will complain. you may give them the land for nothing; you may stock their farms--they will expect it; you may indemnify them for the seven hundred years of robbery by the english people--they say they ought to be indemnified; you may furnish every yeoman with a gun and ammunition, with _carte blanche_ as to their use with litigious neighbours; you may lay on whiskey in pipes, like gas and water, but without any whiskey rate; you may compel the queen to do archbishop walsh's washing, and the prince of wales to black his sacred boots, while the english nobility look after the pigs of the foinest pisintry in the wuruld, and still the irish would be malcontents. the church wants absolute predominance, and she won't be happy till she gets it. parnell was protestant and something of a pope. tim healy tried to wear the leader's boots, but bishop walsh reduced him to a pulp. this good man rules dublin, and through dublin, ireland. you cannot walk far without running against his consecrated name. at present the city is labelled as follows:-- "by direction of his grace the archbishop of dublin, the annual collections for our holy father the pope will take place on july the second." the national league and our holy father the pope between them cut very close. no wonder that poor paddy has hardly a feather left to fly with. "an ardent nationalist" thus expresses himself in the separatist _herald_:--"i fear we must reluctantly abandon hope of a home parliament for a few more years. for the present we will have to content ourselves with local government, an ample measure of which will be given by the _conservatives_. on the whole, ardent nationalist as i am, i do not look on this as an unmixed evil. what kind of government would be possible under six or seven factions?" this should be a staggerer for the english home rule party. the italics are in the original, and the writer goes on to say, "it is open to doubt that we should be able to at once manage our own affairs without some preliminary training." the whole letter is a substantial repetition of the sentiments emanating from a home ruler of tralee, recounted in my letter from that town of kerry. parnell is still worshipped in dublin. he looks big beside his successors. his grave in the splendid cemetery of glasnevin is well worth a visit, although there is no monument beyond a cast-iron irish cross painted green, which serves to hang flowers upon. the grave is in a rope-enclosed circle, some twenty yards in diameter, and most of the space is occupied by big glass shades, with flowers and other tributes of respect and affection. i counted more than a hundred, many of them elaborate. the corkmen send the biggest, a small greenhouse with two brown irish harps and the legend done to death. an irish harp worked in embroidery lies sodden on the earth. green shamrock leaves of tin, with the names of all the donors--this is important--obtrude themselves here and there. a six-foot cross of white flowers, like a badge of purity, lies on the grave, labelled katherine parnell, in a lady's hand. the place is swamped with irish harps, and it occurs to me that the badge would not be so popular if the patriots knew that the harp was imposed as an emblem of ireland by english henry the second. the name parnell in iron letters is on the turf, flowers growing through them, a poetical idea. as i walk past they vibrate with a metallic jingle, which reminds me of the shirt of mail the living man wore to preserve himself from his fellow-patriots. tay pay's life of the dead leader proves that his sole secret of success was inflexible purpose, and that his notion of party management was to treat the patriot members as dirt. parnell was an authority in irish matters, and his example should be useful to messrs. gladstone, morley, and co. an eminent irishmen to-day said:--"with your wibble-wobble and your shilly-shally, your pooh-pooh and your pah-pah, you are ruining the country. put down your foot and tell the irish people that they will not now nor at any future time get home rule, and not a word will come out of them." a word (to the wise) is enough. dublin, june th. no. .--at a nationalist meeting. the most remarkable feature of dundalk life is the fact that the people are doing something. not much, perhaps, but still something. the port is handy for liverpool and glasgow, and a steam packet company gives a little life to the quays. the barracks, not far from the shore, indicate one large source of custom, for wherever you find a british regiment you find the people better off. the athlone folks say that but for the soldiers the place would be dead and buried, and the galway people are complaining that the garrison, the hated english garrison, has been withdrawn. this inconsistency at first surprises you, but you soon grow familiarised with the strange inconsistencies of this wonderful island. dundalk has vastly improved during the three dozen years which have elapsed since first i visited the town. there is a catholic church for every hundred yards of street, and on thursday last one of them at least was full to overflowing. it was the festival of saints peter and paul, and england was being solemnly dedicated to rome. there was no getting inside to witness the operation, for the kneeling crowds extended into the street and flopped down on their marrow-bones on the side walks. the men with the collection plates could hardly hold their ground in the portals, and many worshippers were sent empty away, raising their hats as they reluctantly turned from the sacred precincts. this was between eleven and twelve in the forenoon, so that the day's work was hopelessly broken. ireland has endless customs demanding cessation of labour, but none demanding the pious to go to work. the methodist and presbyterian churches were closed, and possibly their adherents were stealing a march on the catholics in the matter of business. the church of ireland has a bright green spire, which at first puzzles the unlearned. its hoisting of the national colour is due to the fact that the whole structure is covered with copper, which in its turn is covered with verdigris. the surroundings of the town are pleasant, and, although thatched cottages abound, they are very superior to the dirty dens of tipperary. nearly all have the half-doors so convenient for gossiping, and the female population of these cabins spend much of their time in leaning over the lower half. the superiority of dundalk is by most people attributed to the strong mixture of northerners there resident, and the favourable position of the port. earnest unionists are by no means scarce, and, as usual, they are the pick of the population. the parnellites are also present in strong force, and this may account for the fact that mr. timothy healy, the respected member for north louth, is unable to visit the chief town of his constituency without a guard of two hundred policemen, paid and commanded by his life-long foe--the base and brutal saxon. a prominent citizen said:-- "we have a number of englishmen coming over here, and most of them are unionists. but a few birds of passage i have seen have vexed me with their confident ignorance, and caused me to believe that english gladstonians are the densest donkeys under the sun. they are so self-opiniated, and so full of self-satisfaction, that it is hard to be patient with them. not a few say simply that they are content to leave the matter in the hands of mr. gladstone, and that as they followed him so far, they will follow him to the end. they decline to examine for themselves, although facilities are offered on the spot. this must be the ruling temper of the english home rule party, for if they stopped to examine for themselves, or even to hear the evidence submitted by men of position and integrity they could never tolerate the insane proposition of an irish parliament for a day. they sometimes say that irishmen should govern their own land, and that no one could venture to dispute this proposition. this is their principal argument, and some are led away by its show of reason. but what is the truth? "irishmen _do_ govern ireland. listen. is england governed by englishmen? now ireland has a far greater number of members in proportion to her population than england has. these men have far more power in the english parliament than england herself, for they hold the balance of parties. in every question, irish or english, they have the casting vote. so that they can almost always decide what is to become law. "dundalk is at this moment placarded with a request that all men should join in the glorious struggle for freedom. unless the irish people were constantly told they were slaves, they would never know it. they are fed on lies from their infancy. the current issue of _united ireland_ states in a leader that the prison authorities have three times tried to get rid of john daly, the dynamitard, by poisoning him in prison. as if they could not do it if they liked! and a few weeks ago, at an amnesty meeting at drumicondra, a speaker stated, in the presence of two or three members of parliament, that five of the thirteen political prisoners still locked up had been driven mad by horrible tortures. what freedom do the irish want? have they not precisely the same freedom as that enjoyed by england, the freest country in the world? have they not the same laws, except where those laws have been relaxed in favour of ireland? have they not religious equality, free trade, a free press, and vote by ballot? and with all this they are told at every turn that they are the most down-trodden nation of slaves on earth. supposed they groaned under conscription like france and germany, what then? "the english people have seen the results of the influence exercised by the present irish leaders. one would think that sensible britons would decline to entrust such men with power. did they not bring about the rule of the land league, with its stories of foul murder which sound like a horrible dream of the tyranny of the middle ages? are these men not hand and glove with the clerical party, which hates england as heretic and excommunicate? it is not proposed by home rule to put in office men who are the mere tools of the catholic church, the most unyielding and intolerant system in the world!" i remembered the leader in the _irish catholic_, which sings a pæan of triumph over alleged successes against the freemasons of italy. british masons may be interested to learn that this authority couples them with atheists, fenians, and ribbonmen, and holds up the craft to contumely and scorn. the acceptance by mr. gladstone of the principle of home rule seems to rejoice the papist heart. "never was it more clear than it now is that the indestructible papacy exercises an authority over the hearts and minds of humanity which nothing, neither fraud, nor oppression, nor misrepresentation, can weaken or destroy. how near may be the day of its inevitable triumph no man can say, while that its coming is as certain as the rising of the morning sun ... none will doubt or deny. that in the moment when the vicar of christ is vindicated before the nations, and the reign of right and truth and justice re-established throughout christendom, ireland can claim to have been faithful when others were untrue, will be the proudest trophy of an affection which no temptation and no tyranny was ever able to weaken or destroy." the freemasons are expressly stated to lie under "the terrible penalty of excommunication," but they are afterwards lightly dealt with. they are regarded with an amused tolerance by irish catholics, who only laugh to see them "hung with a number of trumpery glass and brummagem metal trinkets about their persons, and generally indulging in an amount of fantastic and childish adornment which would turn the king of the cannibal islands green with envy." their profanation of god's holy name and their sacrilegious oaths are regretted, but they will never do much harm in ireland, where the people laugh at their "fantastic tomfoolery." a parallel column advises the public to join in the present pilgrimage to saint patrick's purgatory, where the saint saw, by special favour of god, the purgatorial fires. another column advertises prayers at fixed prices--a reduction on taking a quantity. the men who hold these beliefs and opinions are the sole governors of irish action, the sole creators of irish opinion. for the lay agitators who from time to time have dared to oppose the clerics have been mostly suppressed, and the few still in existence will probably disappear before long. colonel nolan must hold this opinion, for when canvassing in headford, the parish priest came up and cut his head open with a bludgeon. the gallant militarian submitted to this, and would fain have passed the affair in silence. how many englishmen would have stood it? this incident, properly considered, should enlighten britons on the dominant influences of irish parliamentary action. on the way to dundalk i met major studdert, of corofin, county clare. he spoke of the disturbed state of the district, and thought the present condition of things scandalous and intolerable. he mentioned the case of mr. j. blood, who has been four times fired at for dismissing a herdsman. he said:--"mr. blood is universally admitted to be one of the most amiable and benevolent of men. his herdsman had a son who would not work, and who was reckoned one of the greatest blackguards in the county, which is saying a good deal in county clare. mr. blood told him to send away this son, or he himself must leave his situation. he refused, and mr. blood discharged his herdsman, but with an extraordinary liberality gave him one hundred pounds as consolation money. since then mr. blood is everywhere protected by four policemen. one of the bullets aimed at him passed between his back and the back of the chair he was sitting in." "i have only one argument for the country folks who talk of home rule. i challenge them to show me a single industrious man in the whole country who is not well off. they can't do it. what ireland wants is not home rule but industry. when they are at work they do not go at it like englishmen. i go over to cheshire every year for the hunting season, and it is a treat to see the english grooms looking after the horses. they pull off their coats and roll up their sleeves in a way that would astonish irishmen. it is worth all they get to see them at work. they get twice as much as irish grooms, and they are worth the difference. the people around me, the working people, do not perform five months' work in a year." and these are the people who are surprised at their own poverty, and who monopolise the attention of the british parliament, which toils in vain to give them an act which will improve their worldly position. the irish farmer is petted and spoiled, and a victim of over-legislation. do what you will you can never please him. mr. walter gibbons, of south mall, westport, told me of a case which came under his own observation, as follows:--rent, five pounds a year. _none_ paid for seven years. tenant refused possession. landlord paid tenant twenty pounds in cash, and formally remitted all the rent, thirty-five pounds to wit. "i saw the money paid," said mr. gibbons, a fine specimen of the british sailor, present in the cornwallis at the bombardment of sebastopol. "and was the landlord shot?" i inquired. "not that i know of," said the old sailor. most people will agree that if ever a landlord deserved shooting this was the very man. the walls of dundalk were placarded with a flaming incitement to irishmen to meet in the labourers' hall at eight o'clock, to "join in the onward march to freedom." the meeting was to be held under the auspices of the irish national federation--featheration, as the parnellites call it and most of its members pronounce it--and therefore it was likely to be a big thing, especially considering the parliamentary tension existing at the present moment. i determined to be present, to beard the lion in his den, the douglas in his hall; to see the labouring irish in their thousands marching onward to freedom. a friend attempted to dissuade me from the project. "you'll be spotted in a moment, and as you are very obnoxious to the priests, to be recognised at such a meeting might be unpleasant." a public official who pointed out the place followed me up with advice. "unless you are connected with the party, it would be better to keep away. these people are very suspicious." these were fine preliminaries of a public meeting. the building is poor, but not squalid, and seems to have been built within the last few years. a gateway leads to the yard and the hall blocks the way. all the rooms are small, and i looked in vain for anything like an assembly chamber. two roughish-looking men, who nevertheless had about them a refreshing air of real work, stood at the gateway, and from them i learned that the meeting would take place upstairs. twenty-four steps outside the building almost gave me pause. at the top was an open landing, whence the saxon intruder might be projected with painful results. trusting in my luck, i entered a narrow corridor, some fifteen feet long, with doors on each side, and one at the opposite end. that must open on the assembly room. no, it only led to another flight of outside steps, and here it was comforting to observe that the drop might be into the soft soil of a garden, instead of a bricked yard. but where was the great meeting? once more i left the hall and spoke my rugged friends. yes, it was after eight, but the people wanted a bit of margin. half-past eight was the time intended. half-an-hour's march around, and back again. the crowd was swelled from two to three persons. fifteen minutes more, and further inquiry. "when will the meeting begin." "when the people comes." "but they're an hour late already." "sure ye can't hurry thim." at . i went again. "meeting begun yet?" i asked. "just startin' now. the praste's afther goin' in." "you're rather unpunctual." "arrah, how would we begin widout his rivirince!" this was unanswerable. once more into the breach, up the lonely shivery steps. this time i heard voices, and opening a door found a narrow room with about twenty people therein. the show was just agoing to begin, for, as i entered, somebody proposed that the priest should take the chair. a short, stout, red faced man, with black coat and white choker, seemed to expect no less, and moved into the one-and-ninepenny windsor with alacrity. he spoke with the vilest, boggiest kind of brogue, and the hideous accent of vulgar ulster; calling who "hu" with a french u, should "shoed," and pronouncing every word beginning with un as if beginning with on--ontil, onless, ondhersthand, ondhertake. "ye'll excuse me makin' a spache, fur av i did i'd make a varry bad one," said the holy man, and the audience seemed to believe him. enrolment was the order of the day, and the thousands were requested to come forward. a man next me went to the front and paid a shilling, receiving in return a green ticket, with ireland a nation printed at the top. he twirled it round and round, and seemed disappointed to find there was nothing on the other side. the secretary encouraged the meeting by the official statement that the local featheration now numbered nearly sixty members, whereat there was great rejoicing, the masses (to the number of twenty) working off their emotion by thumping their heels on the floor. the meeting, after this exultant outburst, got slower and slower, and threatened to expire of inanition. divil a mother's son could be got to shpake a single wurud. some malevolent influence overhung the masses. his rivirince sent down a messenger to me with the request that i would say a few wuruds. declined, with thanks, as being no speaker. uncertainty as to my colour and object still prevailed; and silence, not loud, but deep, succeeded this artful feeler. father o'murtagh (or words to that effect) to the rescue! the rivirind gintleman arose and delivered a bitter attack on parnell, whom he characterised as mean, base, untruthful, treacherous, and contemptible. the foinest pisintry in the wuruld could not be soiled by contact with anybody like parnell, and therefore the catholic bishops had been compelled to give him up, and to say, get thee behind me, satanas. the dear father did not tell the meeting why the bishops waited sixteen days after the verdict of the court, and until mr. gladstone had delivered judgment, before deciding to cut parnell adrift. father o'murtagh (i think that was the name) made some allusion to the present crisis of public affairs--(he called it cresses)--and assured his masses that the tories were about to be for ever plucked from the pedestal on which they had long been planted by ascendency and greed! this was not so racy as the mixed metaphor of a galway paper, which assures its readers that "the unionist party will soon be compelled to disgorge the favouritism which for so long has been centred in their hands;" but it might pass. his rivirince made some feeble jokes, and the audience tried to laugh, but failed. "they say that whin we luck at ourselves in the lucking lass, we see nothin' but whigs," said the funny father, and the audience sniggered. this was his masterpiece. he finished with "it's wondherful what a spache ye can make whin ye have nothin' to say;" and the masses sniggered again. ten minutes more of silence broken only by whispered confabulations of the secretary and chairman, and i grew tired of obstructing the march to freedom. i left the chair, the only one at my end of the room, with considerable regret. part of the back, one upright, was still remaining, and although the thing had evidently been used in argument at some previous meeting, it hung together, and good work might still have been done with the legs. a gentleman with a complexion like a blast furnace, and a facial expression which looked like a wholesale infraction of the ten commandments, was smoking moodily on the steps. "did ye injy the matein?" he inquired. "thought it rather dead," i replied. "faix, 'twas yerself that kilt it." i feared as much. what happened after i left no man will tell, though doubtless the resolutions adopted by the twenty men sitting on the forrums of ellum would vibrate through the empire, and shake the british monarchy to its iniquitous base. irish meetings must be taken with a grain of salt. a westport man long drew fees for reports of mass meetings which never took place. three or four nationalists met in a back parlour, and their speeches, reported verbatim, rang through ireland. gallant mayo was praised as heading the charge of connaught, and westport was lauded for its public spirit. and all the while the westport folks knew nothing about it. the dundalk folks will doubtless be equally astonished to learn that the cause is advancing so powerfully in their midst. this hole-and-corner meeting, waiting for the priest, addressed by the priest, bossed by the priest, is a fair sample of the humbug which seems inseparable from the irish question. a very short acquaintance with the country and its people is sufficient to convince any reasonable person that the whole movement is based on humbug, sustained by humbug, and is itself a humbug from beginning to end. to see the english parliament managed and exploited by these groups of low-bred and ignorant peasants, nose-led by ignorant and illiterate priests, is enough to make you ashamed of being an englishman. the country has come to something when britons can be worked like puppets by mean-looking animals such as i saw in the dundalk labourers' hall, where the only respectable thing was an iron safe bearing the stamp of turner, of dudley. and this meeting, in status, numbers, and enthusiasm, was quite representative of nationalist meetings all over ireland. the english people are waiting for their turn while papal behests are executed. john bull stands hat in hand, taking his orders from father o'baithershin. the irish say that england is in the first stage of her decadence, and they say it with some reason. england, the land of heroes, sages, statesmen, is the mere registrar of the parish priest and his poor, benighted dupes. raleigh, cromwell, burleigh, pitt, palmerston, are succeeded by healy, morley, sexton, harcourt, gladstone. england is ireland's lackey, and must wait till her betters are served, must toil and moil in her service, receiving in return more kicks than halfpence. britannia is the humble, obedient servant of papal hibernia. to what base uses we may return! dundalk, july st. no. .--in the prosperous north. this is a blessed change from dirt and poverty to tidiness and comfort. after the west of ireland the north looks like another world. after the bareheaded, barelegged, and barefooted women and children of mayo and galway, the smartly-dressed people of newry come as a surprise. you can hardly realise that they belong to the same country. there are no mud cabins here, no pigs under the bed, no cows tethered in the living room, no hens roosting on the family bedstead. the people do not follow the inquiring stranger about, as in ennis or tuam, where they seem to have nothing better to do. the newry folks are minding their own business, and they have some business to mind. three extensive flax spinning mills, two linen weaving factories, and an apron factory, give large employment to girls. there are several flour mills, some of them possessing immense power, and having the most modern machinery. two iron foundries of long-established reputation, two mineral water factories, salt works, stone polishing mills, seven tanneries, cabinet furniture manufactories, and coachbuilding works cater for the town and surrounding district. granite quarries of high repute, such as the rostrevor green granite, exist in the vicinity, and are worked energetically, the products forming a valuable addition to the exports. the town is beautifully situated on a continuation of carlingford lough, the choicest bit of sea around great britain. thackeray says that if england possessed this beautiful inlet it would be reckoned a world's wonder. twenty miles of winding sea running inland like a league-wide river, mountains on both sides, many of them wooded to the furthest height. rostrevor is a bijou watering place such as only france here and there can boast. you walk on the cliff side, steep verdurous heights above and below, looking through tree-tops on the shimmering sea and the purple mountains beyond, for ten miles at a stretch, wondering why nobody else is there. newry is encompassed by mountains, one range above another. even as the hills stand round about jerusalem, so stand the hills about newry. a big trade is done with liverpool and glasgow by means of the dundalk and newry packet company's fine service of boats. for this inland place has been made into a thriving seaport, and these northerners make the water hum. at low tide the artificial cutting of the navigation works looks unpromising enough, but the people of these parts would be doing business if they had to float the boats on mud. the hills are cultivated to the topmost peak, or planted with trees where tillage is impossible. the people seem to have made the most of everything. they are digging, hammering, chopping, excavating, building, mining, and generally bustling around. they break up the mountains piece-meal, and sell the fragments in other lands. to make you buy they show you how it looks when polished, and they are ready to earn an extra profit by polishing all you want by steam power. the streets are clean, well-paved, kept in perfect order. the houses are well-built and far superior to the english average. a little cockney from 'ackney, who has sailed the six hundred and seventeen miles between london and cork and has explored most of the south and west, is quite knocked over by newry. leaning on the "halpenstock" with which he was about to tackle cloughmore, he confessed that newry hupset his hideas of hireland and the hirish. "the folks round 'ere," he said, "are hexactly like hus." he would have accorded higher praise, had he known any. why this great difference? look around the shop-keepers' signs in tipperary or tuam and note the names. ruane, magrath, maguire, o'doherty, o'brien, o'flanagan, o'shaughnessy, and so _in sæcula sæculorum_. in newry you see a striking change. duncan, boyd, wylie, macalister, campbell, mcclelland, mcateer, and so on, greet you in all directions. you are in one of the colonies. the breed is different. you are among the men who make railways, construct bridges, invent engines, bore tunnels, make canals, build ships, and sail them over unknown seas. you are among a people who have the instincts of achievement, of enterprise, of invention, of command, who depend upon themselves, who shift for themselves, and believe in self-help rather than in querulous complaint. the newry folk belong to ulster, where as a whole the people can take care of themselves. a careful perusal of the addresses presented to lord houghton on his current viceregal tour accentuates the difference in the irish breeds. the aborigines all want to know what is going to be done for them. we want a pier, we want a quay, we want a garrison or a gunboat to spend some money in the district. will your excellency use your influence with the powers that be to get us something for nothing? and let it be something to enrich us, or at least to keep us alive without work. we can't be expected to do anything while groaning 'neath the cruel english yoke. the newry folks, and all of their breed, abstain from whining and cadging. the westport people have endless quarries of hard blue marble, which they are too lazy, or too ignorant, or both, to cut. the ulster breed would have quarried, polished, exported a mountain or two long since. the universal verdict of employers of labour proves that a northern irishman is worth two from any other point of the compass, will actually perform double the amount of work, and is, besides, incomparably superior in brains and general reliability. the worthless hordes who approach the viceroy with snuffling petitions are invariably headed by father somebody, without whose permission they would not be there, and without whose leave they dare not raise the feeble and intermittent cheers which here and there have greeted the queen's representative. the lying expressions of loyalty referred to in a previous letter are severely censured by the nationalist papers. one of the leading lights says: "judging from a sentence in the address presented by the mullingar town commissioners to the lord-lieutenant on thursday last, it would appear that these gentlemen are looking forward eagerly to the day when they can write themselves down west britons. this is what they said: 'in your presence as the representative in this island of her most gracious majesty queen victoria, we wish to give expression to our fealty to the throne, convinced as we are that the day will soon be at hand when we can with less restraint, and in a more marked manner, testify our admiration for the sovereignty of the british isles.'" the more sincere newspaper which falls foul of these expressions goes on to say:-- "it is true that ireland is described in the map made by englishmen as one of the british isles, but it is not so written in the true irishman's heart, _and never will be_, in spite of the toadyism of gentlemen like the town commissioners of mullingar." this pronouncement embodies the sentiments of every nationalist irishman. the union of hearts is not expected to succeed the home rule, or any other bill, and to do irishmen justice, they never use the phrase, neither do they profess to look forward to friendliness with england. i have conversed with hundreds of home rulers, and all looked upon the bill as a means of paying off old scores. the tone of the nationalist press should be enough for sensible englishmen. nobody who regularly reads the leading irish separatist papers can ever believe in the friendship supposed to be the inevitable result of the proposed concession. once the present agitation is crowned with success, a tenfold more powerful agitation will at once arise. the irish people will have more grievances than ever. already they are complaining of insult and betrayal. and their reproaches are directed against the g.o.m. and his accomplices, or rather against mr. gladstone and mr. morley, for they know as well as englishmen know that the rest count for nothing; that, in fact, they resemble the faithful and unsophisticated baa-baa of whom we heard in our early infancy. "mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that mary went, the lamb was sure to go." this is the attitude of the english gladstonian party, and the irish people know it. a home ruler i met to-day disavowed loyalty except to ireland, and asked what was the queen and the rest of the british royal pauper party to him or to ireland that he should be loyal? he said:-- "all interest is over here, whether among nationalists or unionist. the fate of the bill affects us no longer. the new financial proposals are the last straw that breaks the camel's back. where is the managing of our own affairs? where does the nationalism come in? and gladstone, in allowing himself to make in the first proposal a mistake of one thousand pounds a day, damaged his prestige as the framer of the bill, and fatally damaged the bill itself. anybody can now say that if he was so grossly mistaken in an ascertainable matter like revenue and figures he stands to be equally wrong (at least) in matters which are not demonstrable, but which are at present only matters of opinion and argument. i am not sure that he ever intended to give us any home rule at all. we are being fooled because we have no leader. the bill, as it stood at first, would never have been prepared for a man like parnell. gladstone dare not have done it. the whole bill is a series of insults. as a reasonable, fair-minded man you will not deny that. it purports to come from friends who confide in us, and yet every line bristles with distrust and suspicion. there is not one spark of generosity in the whole thing from beginning to end. better have no bill at all. for as a business man, i foresee that the passing of any such bill would lead to a complete upset of trade. we should have a most tremendous row. the safeguards would only invite to rebellion. tell a man he must not have something, must not do something, and that is the very thing he wants to do. he might not have thought of it if you had not mentioned it; but the moment you point it out, and particularise the forbidden fruit, from that very moment he is inspired with a very particular wish for that above all things. so with a nation. we want our independence. we want to do as we like. otherwise, why ask for a parliament? gladstone says, yes, my pretty dear, it shall have its ickety-pickety parliament; it shall have its plaything. and it shall ridy-pidy in the coachy-poachy too; all round the parky-warky with the cock-a-doodle-doo. but it mustn't touch! or if it touches it mustn't be rough, for its plaything will break so easily. we don't want this tomfoolery, nor to be treated like children. we want a real parliament, and not one that can be pulled up every five minutes by london. for if the english parliament have the power to veto our wishes, where's the difference? we might have just as well stayed as we were. that's perfectly clear. "so that i for one will be glad when the farce is over. the present bill at best was but a fraud, a tampering with the national sentiment. and i am beginning to think that we have no chance of a national legislature until the coming of the next great irishman. i am not so disappointed or broken-hearted as you might suppose. for the prospect of an irish parliament under present auspices is not very enticing. the country might be made to look ridiculous, and the thing, by bursting up in some absurd way, might make a repetition of the attempt impossible for a century. i would rather wait for a better bill, and also for better men to work it. we are not proud of the irish members. but we didn't want tories, and all the propertied men are tories. what were we to do? we know the want of standing and breeding which marks most of our men, but we did the best we could, and came within an ace of succeeding. let me tell you the exact feeling of the respectable home rule party of ireland at this moment. "having exerted ourselves with enthusiasm, and having undergone considerable pecuniary sacrifice with good chances of success, we now see clearly that all our efforts are for the present thrown away. it is the fortune of war. the fates were against us, and we rest content with the hope that we have furthered the ultimate success of the movement. for the moment, we make our bow, and hope to call on mr. bull at a more propitious season. of course we expect to win in the end." the next politician whose opinions i noted was a horse of quite a different colour. he bore a scottish name, and had the incisive, argumentative style of the typical ulsterman, who unites the cold common-sense and calculating power of the scot with the warmth and impulse of the irish nature. he said:-- "the bare existence of belfast is, or should be, enough to negative all arguments in favour of home rule. the agitators say that ireland is decaying from political causes, while all the while this ulster town is getting richer and more powerful and influential. while the people of cork are begging the viceroy to please to do something for their port, to please to be so kind as to ask mr. bull to favour the city with his patronage, the belfast people, with a far inferior harbour, an inferior climate, an incomparably inferior position, surrounded by far worse land, are knocking out the clyde for shipbuilding, and running the continent very close in linen-weaving. belfast is actually the third in order of the customs ports in the united kingdom. the belfast people flourish without home rule, and what is more, they know their neighbours. they've reckoned these gentry up. "how is it that the catholic population, as a rule, are merely the hewers of wood and drawers of water? they have precisely the same opportunities as their protestant countrymen. where-ever you go you will find the protestants coming to the top. cork is a very bigoted catholic city, and the huge majority of the population are catholics. how is it that most of the leading merchants are protestants? why do heretics flourish where the faithful starve? transfer the populations of cork to belfast and _vice versâ_, and, as everybody knows perfectly well, belfast would at once begin to decay, while cork would at once begin to prosper. therefore it is absurd to say that home rule would cure the poverty existing in catholic districts. yes, there is a party of ascendency. the protestants are distinctly the party of ascendency. they have the ascendency which ability and education and industry will always have over incapacity and ignorance and laziness. now, i know something about the linen trade, and also something about the growth and preparation of flax. "linen has made the north, and flax is grown in the north. but it would grow much better in the south. if they would grow it we would be very glad to buy it. but they won't. and why not? because it needs care and skill, and a lot of watching and management. the beggars are too lazy to grow anything that wants tending from day to day. it would pay them splendidly, and the advantages of flax growing and dressing have over and over again been drummed into them without effect. the climate and soil of southern ireland are far more suitable for flax growing than the north, and as about three-quarters of all the flax woven in belfast is grown on the continent, it is clear that the market is waiting for the stuff. the belfast merchants have done all that in them lay to bring about flax cultivation in the south. they have sent out lecturers and instructors, they have planted patches and grown the stuff, and shown the pecuniary results, and with what effect? absolutely none. the people won't do anything their grandfathers didn't do. they won't be bothered with flax, which wants no end of attention. why, if they grew flax, they'd have to work almost every day! and nobody who knows irishmen, real keltic irishmen, ever expects them to do that, or anything like it. i've been in india, and i deliberately say that i prefer the hindoo to the southern irishman for industry and reliability. "these people, who are too lazy to wash themselves, expect their condition to be improved by a home rule parliament. can anything be more unreasonable or more unlikely? and because there are more of them, their wishes are to be taken into account, and the opinions and wishes of men of whom each one is worth a hundred are to be disregarded. where is the english sense of the eternal fitness of things? "what the irish really seek is some effective substitute for work. they have no idea of developing the resources which lie nearest to them. carlyle says a country belongs to the people who can make the best use of it, and not the people who happen to be found there. ireland for the irish is a favourite cry. why? is not england for the irish, america, australia, new zealand? my ancestors came here in the time of henry the second, and i am told that i have no business in the country. wherever english and scots settlers have been located, there the country is well worked and the people are thriving. if we can thrive, why can't they thrive? if we can get on without home rule, why can't they get on without home rule? if it were going to be a good thing for the country we'd all be on it like a shot. if it were good for them, it ought to be good for us. we have shown by our success that our judgment is sound. their failure in everything they undertake, their dirt, their general habits and character, should cause their statements and opinions to be looked upon with very great suspicion. does it stand to reason that merely by home rule, by the exercise of the privilege of making irish laws by irishmen in dublin, that these people would gain all we have attained by hard and honest labour? that is what they expect up here. "the catholics are our servants, and in selecting them we seldom ask their religion. our employés in most cases expect by the bill to take the place of their masters. that is their conception of home rule. they have been told from infancy that the british government keeps them down because of their religion. they know that the british government is protestant, and they believe that in some occult way the superior position held by the protestants in ireland is due to favouritism. under a home rule parliament, that is, a catholic parliament, this condition of things will be reversed, and they will at once, and by their own innate force, as faithful believers, spring to the top of the tree, and exchange positions with their former masters and mistresses." the general effect of my friend's discourse was well summed up by mr. james mack, of galway, who said:-- "when i see that the belfast men who would make fortunes out of river mud, and who would skin a flea for his hide and tallow, turn their backs on home rule, and declare they will have nothing to do with it, i feel sure it can be no good. then my own experience and observation assure me that, instead of a settlement, it will only be the beginning of trouble for both countries. firmness is wanted, and equal laws for all. at present everything is in favour of ireland." _united ireland_ says:--"it would be better to go on for twenty years in the old miserable mill-horse round of futile and feverish and wasting agitation than to accept this bill as a settlement of national claims. and if the bill passes now it cannot deflect the national agitation by a hair's breadth, or cause its intermission for a day." nobody who knows the irish people ever expected anything else. agitators who live by agitation will always agitate, and only a few namby-pamby radicals ever thought otherwise. those who would fain have sold their souls for the newcastle programme also stand to be taken in. this home rule bill will not do. another must be brought forward immediately. where is this dreary business going to end? when will mr. gladstone consider that england has eaten dirt enough? newry, july th no. .--the prosperous north. this famous historical city must be eminently offensive to irish nationalists. it is so clean and sweet and neat and tidy that you can at once see the hopelessness of expecting home rule patriotism from the place. there are no dunghills for it to grow in, and my somewhat extensive experiences have long ago taught me that home rule and nationalist patriotism will not flourish in ireland without manure, and plenty of it. anyhow, it is mostly associated with heaps of refuse and pungent odours arising from decomposing matter, and in the south and west is scarcely ever found flourishing side by side with modern sanitation. home rule not only, like pumpkins and vegetable marrows, requires a feculent soil, but like them, and indeed like all watery and vaporous vegetables, it needs the forcing-frame. left to its own devices the movement would die at once. there is nothing spontaneous about it. it is a weedy sort of exotic, thriving only by filth and forcing. it cannot live an hour in the climate of armagh. the cold, keen air of these regions nips it in the bud. the peculative patriots who are now monopolising westminster have from time to time made descents on the district, to sow the good seed, as it were, by the wayside. but next day came a frost, a killing frost. the northerners are too mathematical. they have taken lord bacon's advice. they "weigh and consider." they want logic, and will not be content with mere rhetoric. they require demonstrations, and have opinions of their own. before accepting a theory they turn it round and round, and test it with the square, the level, and the line. they care nothing for oratory unless there is sense at the back of it. they know that fine words butter no parsnips, and they know the antecedents of the patriotic orators. they do not believe that a paid parliament-man is necessarily a self-sacrificing patriot, and they note that nationalist members are making their patriotism much more profitable than their original and legitimate pursuits, if any. the armagh folks believe in work, and in keeping things in order. the scots element is dominant. not so much in numbers, as in influence. the kelts are easily traceable, but the races are partly amalgamated, and the genuine irish are greatly improved. i paraded the streets for many hours, but i saw no dirt, rags, wretchedness. it was market day, and the country people came streaming in from all sides, everyone well dressed and respectable, and in every way equal to the farmers and their wives who on market days drive into lichfield or worcester. it was a pleasure to see them, and my cockney friend, quoted in the newry letter, might have been tempted to discard his affected superiority, and drawing himself proudly up, to smite himself on the chest, and to say "and hi, too, ham a hirishman." the country between newry and armagh is very beautiful from a pastoral point of view. after the savage deserts of the west it "comes o'er my soul like the sweet south that breathes upon a bank of violets." every yard of ground is going at its best pace. the valleys stand so thick with corn that they laugh and sing. immense vistas of highly cultivated country unroll themselves in every direction. the land is richly timbered, and tall green hedges spring up everywhere. you are reminded of dorsetshire, of cheshire, of normandy, of rhineland. the people at the wayside stations are all well-dressed and well-shod. achil island seems to be at an immeasurable distance. the semi-savages who in mayo demand autonomy have no supporters here. the ulster folks eschew them and all their works, and would no more associate with them than with hottentots. i use the term because the irish people have ten thousand times been told, and told untruthfully, that lord salisbury had applied the term to the nation at large. the people of mayo and some other parts of connaught are for the most part worthy of the name, if, indeed, it be not a libel on the africans. the disgusting savagery of their funeral customs is of itself sufficient to stamp them as lowest barbarians. i am prepared to prove this to the hilt. let their defenders come forward if they dare. and so it happens that the inhabitants of armagh city are mostly conservatives. they ought to be religious, too, for they have not only two cathedrals and an archbishop, but also a cardinal archbishop, dr. logue, to wit. i saw this distinguished ecclesiastic at newry. he wore the scarlet robe, the extraordinary hat, the immensely thick gold ring of the cardinalate, in a railway carriage. an ordinary sort of man, with the round face and mean features of the typical keltic farmer. he holds that the people should take their political faith from their priests, but the northerners hardly agree, and are not so proud of their cardinal as they should be, seeing that he has been raised from the ranks, his father (so they say) having been lord leitrim's coachman, and the coachman who was driving when lord leitrim was shot. the roman catholic cathedral of armagh has an imposing position on the summit of a steep hill. the portal is approached by sixty or seventy steps in flights of five and ten with steep terraces between, extending over a great space, so that the flights of steps, seen from the bottom of the hill, seem continuous, and have a fine gustave doré effect of vastness and majesty. on a neighbouring steep stands the protestant cathedral, with its sturdy square tower, memorial of remote antiquity. the city is piled up between the two cathedrals, but mostly around the heretic structure, and away from the papist pile, which stands among the fields. the presbyterians have a very beautiful church, apparently of the armagh marble of which the city is built, the perennial whiteness of the stone making the old place appear eternally young. the market-place, behind the market-hall, and on the steep slope to the protestant cathedral, was very busy indeed. market gardeners were there with young plants, useful and ornamental, for sale. home-made chairs with rushen seats were offered by their rural makers. wooden churns, troughs for cattle, and agricultural implements were there galore. crockery was artfully disposed in strategetical corners, and gooseberry stalls were likewise to the fore. none of these features are visible in the western markets. a vendor of second-hand clothing stood on a cart well loaded with unconsidered trifles, and this gentleman was especially interesting. a number of poor women stood around while the salesman, who knew his clientèle to their smallest tricks, displayed his wares and recklessly endeavoured to ruin himself for the good of the country. holding up an article, he would turn it round and round, expatiating on its excellent qualities, and then, after naming the very lowest price consistent with common business principles, would run down the figure to one-tenth or less, with a pause or two here and there for critical comment on his audience, of which he professed to entertain the most unfavourable opinion. then with a final thump, punching the article contemptuously, he would offer it, regardless of consequences, for half his previous offer. sometimes he refused to accept the money because the customer was not quick enough. neither might the people examine his goods. he was master, and more, and found his account in it. he took up a frowsy old gown. "there ye are. ten shillin's worth of stuff in that. an' ten for the makin'. an' that's twinty. i'll take ten, an' i couldn't afford to take a penny less. will ye have it? don't all spake at once. ye won't. but i'll make ye. i'll take five shillin', four, three, two, one, i'll take sixpence. (thump.) take it away. here! have it for thruppence. ye won't? sweet bad luck to the one of ye is worth thruppence. ye wouldn't raise tuppence in the crowd of ye. ye want me to clothe ye for nothin'. an' thin ye'd want me to give ye lodgin' and washin'. 'twas a black day on me whin i come among such a ruinatin' lot. here now, sure this ought to timpt ye. a lady's jacket, an' a large, big, roomy jacket at that--fit for a lady that can ate a stone of praties at a male. thurty shillin's ye'll be offerin' me, but i won't take it. ye can give me ten, av ye're only quick enough. nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two shillin's. eighteenpence. (thump.) take it for a shillin'! ye won't? ye didn't sell yer ducks well. ye didn't get the money for yer eggs. will i lind ye a trifle? what d'ye take me for? am i to stand rammin' me bargains down yer throats like wagon wheels? do yez iver buy any clothes at all, or do yez beg them? me heart's bruk to pieces wid blayguardin' and bullyraggin. luk at this. a boy's coat. an it's lined wid woollen linin'; that's the only fault wid it. an' here's a bonnet. a fortin to any young woman. will ye be plazed to take what ye want for nothin'? tis charity ye want, ye poor misguided crathurs. 'tis a pack of paupers i'm discoorsin', god help me." the armagh shopkeepers are prosperous and content. "no home rule," they say. they are no longer angry with the nationalists. the snake is scotched, if not killed outright, they think. the whole absurdity has received such a damning exposure that it cannot be revived for another generation. the separatist party will be perforce compelled to wait until the people have forgotten what home rule really means. therefore, to work again! useless to waste more time. ulster will sleep with one eye open, bearing in mind the favourite northern saying which advises men to put their trust in providence, but to keep their powder dry. for, like the achilese, they believe that prayer is effective in shaving, only the ulstermen prefer to pray over a keen razor. a genial citizen of armagh said:-- "we would be as ready for home rule as any other irishmen if it meant what we are asked to believe it means. but we know better. we are convinced that it will bring, not prosperity and peace, but bankruptcy and war, intolerance and social retrogression, robbery and spoliation, not only of the landlord but also of everybody else who has anything. the propertied roman catholics are just as dead against home rule as any protestants. only they dare not say so. "england ought to have sense enough to see that instead of freedom from irish difficulties, the old grievances will be intensified, and any bill whatever will at once generate a fresh series of complications, so that the english parliament will be crippled in perpetuity, to the detriment of british interests. the empire, as a whole, must be weakened, because the irish masses are most unfriendly, and the more england concedes the more unfriendly ireland becomes. for ireland regards all concessions as being wrung from england by superior force and skill, and as being, in short, the fruits of compulsion. therefore, the more ireland gets the more exacting she will always become. ask any englishman or scotsman resident in ireland if the irish masses are friendly, and everyone will laugh at you. the english home rule party say, 'just so. let us cure this. this is the principal argument for home rule.' they think this sounds very fine. just as if in private life, a man to whom you have given his due, and more than his due, should continue to abuse you, while you strain every nerve to satisfy him, and go out of your way to obtain peace and quietness, he all the time becoming more and more exacting and more and more discontented. and then as if you were to say, 'i must continue my concessions, my efforts, my sacrifices. i _must_ contrive to satisfy this amiable person.' what a fool any man would be to adopt such a course. a sensible man would say 'you have your due, and you'll get no more.' treat ireland so, and all will be well. be firm and the trouble will amount to nothing. paddy will soon drop shouting when he sees it has no effect. the agitators will soon dry up, or waste their sweetness on the desert air. but so long as there is a prospect of success, so long as you have a weak-kneed old lunatic in power, so long as paddy sees a prospect of obtaining substantial advantages, such as reduction of rent or rent-free farms, so long the row will be kept up. if englishmen could only realize that, the whole movement would cease. for gladstonian englishmen mistakenly think that they can settle the thing by further concession and get to their own business. few of them care for home rule on its own merits. they want ireland out of the way. they are going the wrong way about it. to give this is to give everything. and let me tell you something new. once the bill becomes law, and the exactions of a home rule government were enforced by england a great part of ulster would in pure self-protection, being no longer bound to england by the ties of loyalty, sympathy, and mutual dependence--a great part, practically the whole of ulster, would box the compass and go in for complete independence, as the best thing possible under the circumstances. england would then feel something in her vitals, something serious and something astonishing. the only rebellion that ever gave england any trouble was worked by ulstermen. the most effective agitators have nearly always been renegade protestants. let england think what she is about before she, at the bidding of a foolish old man, turns her back on her faithful friends to throw herself into the arms of her sworn enemies." another conservative, for i met none other in armagh, said:--"surely the minority are worth some consideration. there are one million two hundred thousand loyal protestants, and certainly many thousand roman catholics, who are against the bill. as sir george trevelyan said, 'we must never forget that there are two irelands,' and as john bright said, 'there are more loyal men and women in ireland than the whole population of men and women in wales.' yet mr. gladstone is so very considerate of wales. ireland can point to fully one-third of the entire population, who view with abhorrence the very name of home rule, and are pledged to resist it to the last. these people have been and are the friends of england, and england can be proud of them as having flourished under her rule. they have been and are the english garrison in ireland, and england sorely needs a garrison here. mr. gladstone cares nothing for their opinions. on the other hand, he spends his life in pandering to disloyal ireland, led by men who have openly avowed and gloried in their hatred of england, and who have hundreds of times publicly declared their determination to secure complete independence; men who have broken the law of the land, and have incited others to break it; men who turned a peaceful country into a perfect hell, and have for ever upset the people's notions of honesty. parnellites and anti-parnellites have only one end and aim, and only one sentiment. they hate british rule and british loyalists, and aim at the ultimate repeal of the union, and the absolute separation of the two countries. and they would always be unfriendly. the party of lawlessness, outrage, and rebellion would never hold amicable relations with a law-abiding and peaceful commercial country. there would be no peace for ireland either. the factions of the irish party are yearly becoming more and more numerous. in all except hatred to england they are bitterly opposed. all very well to set up ulster as being the ugly duckling, as being the one dissentient particle of a united ireland. if every protestant left the country ireland would still be divided, and hopelessly divided. personal reviling, riot, and blackguardism are already common between the factions, united though they try to appear, so far as is necessary to deceive the stupid saxon. and if the saxon cannot see the result of trusting the low blackguards who form the working plant of the nationalist party he is stupid indeed, and deserves all that will happen to him. "have you noticed how the irish people are gulled?" yes, i have noticed it. the _freeman's journal_, as the representative paper of the party and the chosen organ of the church, is run on a pabulum of falsehood. englishmen would hardly believe such lying possible, but the _freeman_, as a liar, has, by constant practice, attained virtuosity. what rubinstein is on the piano, what blondin was on the tight-rope, what the bohee brothers are on the banjo, what sims reeves was in the ballad world, what irving is in histrionic art, what spurgeon was as a preacher, what patti is in opera, what gladstone is as a word-spinner, what tim healy is as a whipping-post, what the irish peasant is as a lazybones, what harcourt is as a humbug, what the member for kilanyplace is as a blackguard, so is the _freeman's journal_ as a liar. when quoting great masters examples of their work are always interesting. the late chamberlain-dillon episode is fresh in the minds of all newspaper readers. dillon wanted the date. the date was given him. he promised to answer the charge, but anybody can see that no answer was possible. he failed to come up to time. being lugged to the front by the scurf of the neck, he explained that he _had_ used the words, namely, that when the irish party got power they would remember their enemies, but--much virtue in but--he used the words under the influence of exasperation arising from the mitchelstown affair--which took place a year later! mr. chamberlain pointed this out, and referring to this incident the _freeman_ says:-- "mr. chamberlain literally grew pale under the succession of exposures, and wriggled in his seat, while he attempted to meet them, now by wriggling equivocations, now by reckless denial." "mr. goschen, prompted by mr. bolton," horrified the _freeman's_ delicate taste by "jocose allusions to watertight compartments and to the vessel's toppling over, which grated horribly on the members of the house, with the memory of the recent terrible calamity fresh in their minds." i was in dublin when the news of the victoria disaster arrived, and i heard a typical nationalist express a wish that the whole fleet had perished. such sentiments are the natural result of the lying literature provided by the "patriot" press of dublin and the provinces. well may home rule opinion in ireland be rotten through and through! mirabeau said of a very fat man that his only use was to show how far the skin would stretch without bursting. the _freeman_ exists to show to what lengths human fatuity can go. lying and slander and all uncleanness, envy and hatred and malice and all uncharitableness, are its daily bread. with home rule in ireland, this sheet would be the ruling power. to support home rule is for the _freeman_ to breathe its native air. under an irish parliament, nutriment "thick and slab" would abound, and the patriot print would wax in strength and stature day by day. enlighten the popular mind, and the _freeman's_ hours are numbered. it would vanish as a dream, forgotten by all except some old diver into the history of the past, who having read its pages, will shake his head sadly when he hears of liars, and remembering its parliamentary notes will say-- "there were giants in those days." armagh, july th. no. .--a picture of romish "toleration." the country from armagh to monaghan is a very garden of eden, undulating, well wooded, well watered, and in a high state of cultivation. the intervening towns and villages are neat and sweet, and the people seem to be hard workers. monaghan itself, during the last generation, has wonderfully improved. it suffers by reason of its position on an almost inaccessible branch line, and the complete absence of manufactories, but it has no appearance of poverty. the diamond is a well-built square, and the whole town, mostly built of stone, some of the streets on terraces, many of them thickly planted with trees, has a shady and sylvan look. the gaol, an enormous building crowning a steep hill, looks like the capitol of a fortress, and appears to have exercised a salutary effect on the neighbourhood, for it has long been disused. the district did not furnish malefactors enough to make the establishment pay. the gaol officials stood about with folded hands wishing for something to do, and probably locked up each other in turn by way of keeping up a pretence of work. the governor had nothing to govern, and the turnkeys sighed as they thought of old times. the thing was growing scandalous, and the ever-diminishing output of convicts marked the decadence of the country. day by day the officials climbed to the topmost battlement in the hope that rural crime-hunters might be descried bringing in some turnip-stealer, some poacher, some blacker of his neighbour's eye, and day by day these faithful prison-keepers sadly descended to renew the weary round of mutual incarceration, so necessary if they wished to keep their hands in, and to apply somebody's patent rust-preventer to the darling locks, which formerly in better times they had snapped with honest pride. at last the authorities intervened, discharged the turnkeys, and locked up the place. it was a case of _ichabod_. the fine gold had become dim and the weapons of war had perished. the officials departed in peace, each vowing that the country was going to the divil, and each convinced that such a state of things would never come to pass under home rule. all became earnest nationalists in the sure and certain hope that under an irish parliament business would revive, that the old place would be re-opened, that its venerable walls would again re-echo the songs of happy criminals, that the oakum-picking industry would revive and flourish, and that the treadwheel (which they identify with the weal of the country) would continuously revolve. meanwhile, armagh extends hospitality to stray wrong-doers and monaghan boards them out to the manifest injury of the local turnkey industry. the new roman catholic cathedral is said to be the finest in ireland. it was over thirty years in building, and although the stone of the main fabric cost nothing, the structure cost more than a hundred thousand pounds. the interior is more gorgeous than beautiful, and the money seems to have been expended with execrable taste. the marble mosaic of the chancel floor is beautifully done, the work having been entrusted to italian workmen, who were engaged on it for several years. the numerous statues of carrara marble are well executed, and other items are also of the best. but the effect of the whole is inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation. you are reminded of an over-dressed woman. the pulpit, surmounted by a lofty conical canopy richly gilt, is supported on four lofty pillars of coffee-coloured marble highly polished. the baldacchino is a glittering affair, forty or fifty feet high, and big enough for a mission church. this also rests on marble columns. the sacristy, chapter-house and other offices are splendidly furnished, and the furniture of the doors, brass branches spreading all over them, massive as mediæval work, were remindful of birmingham. the oak drawers of the robing room contain sacerdotal raiment to the tune of two thousand pounds, and the banners, many in number, and of richest work, must also represent a small fortune. beautiful oil paintings from italy hang around, and the bishop's throne is a marvel of gold lace and luxury. a queer-looking utensil, like a low seat, but with round brass bosses at each corner, proved to be merely a sort of crinoline whereon the bishop might extend his robes, so as to look inflated and imposing. so does the noble turkey-cock extend himself when bent on conquest of his trustful mate, gobbling the while strange-sounding incantations. to describe in detail would require a book. the confessionals are snug, with rich external carving. plenty of accommodation for penitents here. amid such surroundings to be a miserable sinner must be indeed a pleasure. the spire is two hundred and fifty feet high. i mounted and saw the great bell, over three tons in weight. i also saw the bishop's robes of wondrous richness and penetrative virtue, the consecrated slippers which the acolytes wear, with their scarlet robes, remindful of egyptian flamens and african flamingoes; the blessed candle-box and the seven-times blessed candles, which at once drop tallow on the holder's clothes and benison on his sin-struck soul. all this expense in poor ireland, all these advantages for poor ireland. and still the irish are not happy. with roman catholic cathedrals on every hand, with monasteries, nunneries, seminaries, confraternities, colleges, convents, carmelites, christian brothers, and collections whichever way they turn, the irish people should be content. what could they wish for more? the principal shopkeepers of monaghan have unpatriotic names. crawford, jenkins, henry, campbell, kerr, mcentee, macdonald, and their like must in some way be accountable for the smartness of the town and for the emptiness of the prison on the hill. and you soon see that the cathedral was needed, for besides the protestant church, the town is polluted by two presbyterian churches, to say nothing of a schism-shop used by the wesleyan methodists. a monaghan man said:-- "the respectable people are nearly all protestants, and all the protestants, and most of the respectable catholics, if not all, are unionists. in point of numbers the catholics have the pull, and in the event of a home rule parliament, which, god forbid, our position as protestants would be no longer tenable. we should have to knock under, and to become persons of no consideration. the small farmers among the protestant population would have an especially hard time of it. they mostly held aloof from the land league and such-like associations; and when the other party get the upper hand they will have to smart for it. what mr. dillon said about remembering in the day of their power who had been their enemies, is always present to the minds of the lower classes of the irish people. it is that they may have the power of punishing all sympathisers with england that some of them say they want home rule. no doubt they have other temptations, but certainly that is one great incentive. so keenly are they bent on getting power that they in some cases quite disregard any possible disadvantages accruing from the success of the movement. 'let us get the power,' they say, 'never mind the money.' i have heard the remark made more than once, and it represents the dominant feeling in the minds of many. rubbish about struggling for equal rights. where are the disabilities of irish catholics? "ascendency is their game. would they be tolerant? why ask such a question? when was roman catholicism tolerant, and where? is not the whole system of popery based on intolerance, on infallibility, on strict exclusiveness? let me give you a few local facts to show their 'tolerance.' "in the old times the monaghan town commissioners were a mixed body. catholics and protestants met together in friendly converse, and the voting went anyhow, both religions on both sides, according to each man's opinion of the business. nowadays, wherever in ireland the two sects are represented the thing is worked differently, and you may know the voting beforehand by reference to the members' religion. we are not troubled with this in monaghan, and for the very best of reasons--all the members but one are roman catholics, and the solitary protestant is a lawyer who has always been identified with them, and has always managed their legal business. he is practically one of themselves, having always acted with them. "when the modern political agitation became rife, the romans of monaghan, under the orders of their priests, at once ousted all protestants, except the one i have mentioned, who does not count, and monopolised the town council ever since. they forgot something--lord rossmore has a claim on the market-tolls and other similar payments which amount to about three hundred pounds a year, but so long as the town council was worked by a mixed body of catholics and protestants he consented to forego this claim, and made the town a present of the money, which was expended in various improvements. three hundred a year is a large sum in a small country town where labour is cheap, and in fifty years this sum, carefully laid out in ornamental and sanitary arrangements, quite changed the aspect of the place. when, however, the priests came on the scene and determined to have things exclusively in their own hands, lord rossmore did not quite see why he should any longer give the money to the town. and let it be understood that his agent had always been a prominent figure on the monaghan town council, which was very right, having regard to the three hundred pounds given by lord rossmore, and to the agent's superior knowledge and business experience. he had been kicked out with the rest, and so it was made known that in future my lord would keep the money in his own pocket. they were astonished and suddenly cast down. 'fear came upon them, and sorrow even as upon a woman,' &c.--you know the text. they said the money belonged to them, and really they had had it so long that they might be excused for believing this. lord rossmore was firm. they fought the thing out; but where was the good? they were beaten at every point. they had no case. so the town is three hundred pounds a year worse off, and lord rossmore three hundred pounds better. and still they will not allow a protestant on the council, although nearly all the best business men are of that persuasion. how's that for tolerance? and if such a thing be done in the green tree what will be done in the dry? if they flog us now with whips, won't they flog us then with scorpions?" another thraitor to his counthry's cause, said:--"a great idea with the priests is this--to get hold of the education of the country. they do not like the present system of national education. they do not approve of their youthful adherents growing up side by side with protestant children. at first the catholic bishops welcomed the scheme of national education, but now they are averse to it. they have seen how it works. it goes against them. it has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. the catholic children grew up in amity with their neighbours, and got dangerously liberal ideas on the subject of religion. they were getting to believe that it mattered little whether catholic or protestant so long as a man's life was right. i went to school with catholics, grew up with them, was always friendly with them, and we keep up the friendship to this day. the catholic bishops disapprove of this. they want the line of cleavage sharp and distinct. fifty years ago mixed marriages were common enough. such a thing never happens now-a-days. it is most stringently forbidden by the catholic church. a priest told me that emigrants to america, such as had been educated in irish national schools, along with protestant children, were very apt to drop their romanism when once separated from their native parish, and to become protestants. i suppose he meant to say that long familiarity with the unclean thing had undermined the wholesome dislike of heresy which every catholic should feel, and that therefore such familiarity should be, if possible, avoided. years ago the priest would be friendly with his protestant neighbours. we all lived together pretty comfortably. of late a great change has taken place. the clergy as far as possible leave us, and cause us to be left, out in the cold. the question of home rule is entirely a religious question. parnell was actuated by what might fairly be called patriotism; that is, comparatively speaking. the clergy saw in his fall a grand opportunity to use the movement he had created for the furtherance of their own ends. home rule is a purely roman catholic movement, and has had the most regrettable results on the amity of neighbours everywhere. formerly the question of religion never arose. now nothing else is considered. the papists are almost unbearable, while they as yet have only the hope of power. what they would become if once they grasped the reality god only knows. i am not prepared to stand it, whatever it be. my arrangements to leave the country have long been made. at my age it will be a great grief, but i have always lived in a free country, and i will die in a free country. i was born in the town, and hoped to end my days at my birthplace. but i shall go, if it almost broke my heart, rather than see myself and the worthy men who have made the place domineered over and patronised by maynooth priests. _ubi bene, ibi patria._ where i'm most happy, that will be my country." the road to kilmore is through a beautiful park-like country heavily timbered with oak, ash, beech, chestnut, and fir. tall hedgerows twenty feet high line most of the way, which in many parts is completely overhung with trees in green arches impervious to rain. the country is undulating, with sharp descents and long clumps of beeches and imposing pine woods, bosky entrances to country seats and grassy hills, covered with thriving kine. from the church itself an extensive landscape is seen on every side. a deep valley intervenes between the church and a pretty farmhouse. i find a narrow lane with high hedges, covered with honeysuckles, which seems to lead thitherward. a man is toiling in a field hard by, digging for dear life, bare-armed and swarthy. i mount the gate and make for him. he remains unconscious, and goes on digging like mad. his brow is wet with honest sweat, and he seems bent on earning whate'er he can. perhaps he wishes to look the whole world in the face, having an ambition to owe no rent to any man. i woke him and asked why the flags were flying on kilmore steeple. "to the pious, glorious, and immortal memory of william of orange, who gave us an open bible, and delivered us from popery brass money, and wooden shoes. we put them up on the first of july and fly them till the twelfth, when we walk in procession through monaghan." "an orangeman, and a black protestant, i fear?" he laughed merrily, and said he was proud and thankful to be both. "if we didn't hold together, and associate in some way, we might quit the country at once. by banding together we hold our ground, and we will do so until home rule comes on us. then we'll have to give in, about here. we're in a minority." "don't you think the papists would be tolerant?" "aye, aye! toleration indeed. as tolerant as a cat to a mouse. as tolerant as i am to this thistle, bad scran to it," said my friend, fetching up the obnoxious weed with a vigorous stroke, and chopping it to pieces with the spade, after which he shovelled it to the bottom of the trench. "why, sir, the papists are beginning to assume mastership already. before this government had been a fortnight in office the dirty scum began to give themselves airs. i mean, of course, the lowest of them. they were not so civil as before. tolerant, ye say! sure anybody that heard ye say the like of that would know ye were a stranger in the counthry." the farm house was a model of cleanliness and neatness, james hanna a model of a hard-working, debt-paying, honourable farmer. the living rooms had every accommodation required for the decent bringing-up of a family; and the parlour, with its carpets, knick-knacks, and highly-polished solid furniture, showed both taste and luxury. mrs. hanna, a buxom lady of middle age, was hard at work, but for all that, the picture of comeliness and neatness. the children were just coming in from school, well clad and good-looking, the boys ruddy and strong, the girls modest and lady-like. mr. hanna was hard at it in some contiguous field, but he came round and told me that he held twenty acres of land, that the rent was £ s., that his father had the farm for more than fifty years, that he was a protestant, a unionist, and a strong opponent of home rule. i have visited two other farms of the same size in mayo and achil, both held by catholic home rulers. the rent of the achil farm described by its holder, mr. mcgreal, as "very good land," was seventeen-and-sixpence for the whole twenty acres. mcgreal was very poor, and looked it. his house was of the type described in my previous letters. mr. james hanna pays more for each acre than mcgreal for his whole farm, and yet the kilmore man is prosperous, his house, his family, all his belongings suggestive of the most enviable lot. a gun was hanging over the fire-place, which was a grate, not a turf-stone. i asked him if he used the shooting-iron to keep his landlord in order. he said no, he was no hunter of big game. i may be accused of too favourable an account of this farmhouse and its inmates, but i have (perhaps somewhat indiscreetly) given the name and address, and monaghan people will agree with me. a more delightful picture of arcadia i certainly never saw. cannot englishmen reckon up the home rule agitation from such facts as these, the accuracy of which is easily ascertainable by anybody? everywhere the same thing in endless repetition. everywhere laziness, ignorance, uncleanliness, dishonesty, disloyalty, ask for home rule. everywhere industry, intelligence, cleanliness, honesty, loyalty, declare that to sanction home rule is to open the floodgates to an inrush of barbarism, to put back the clock for centuries, to put a premium on fetichism, superstition, crime of all kinds, to say nothing of roguery and rank laziness. what are englishmen going to do? which party will they prefer to believe? when will john bull put on his biggest boots and kick the rascal faction to the moon? monaghan, july th. no. .--a bit of foreign opinion. the military call and spell the name inniskilling, which corruption is probably due to the proverbial stupidity of the brutal saxon, and is undoubtedly another injustice to ireland. the inniskilling dragoons have won their fame on many a stricken field, and to them the town owes any celebrity it may possess. from a tourist's point of view it deserves to be better known. it is a veritable town amidst the waters, and almost encircled by the meandering channels that connect upper and lower lough erne. it consists almost entirely of one long, irregular, but tolerably-built street, at both ends of which you cross the river erne. a wooded knoll, crowned by a monument to sir lowry cole, who did good service under wellington, is a conspicuous object, and through openings purposely cut through the trees, affords some very pleasing views. a hundred steps lead to the top, and the ascent repays the climb. the cuilgach range, source of the shannon, the blue stack mountains of donegal, the ancient church and round tower of devenish, an island in the great lough erne, and due west the benbulben hills, are easily visible. devenish island is about two miles away, and, although without a tree, is very interesting. some of the priory still remains, and i have found a latin inscription in lombardic characters which, being interpreted, reads mathew o'dughagan built this, bartholomew o'flauragan being prior, a.d. . there is a graveyard next the ruins, and a restored round tower, eighty-five feet high, not far away, the door of which is ten feet from the ground. these towers are sprinkled all over the country, and in nearly all the door is eight feet to twenty feet from the ground. the process of eviction seems to have been present to the minds of the builders. the sheriffs' officers of a thousand years ago must have been absolutely powerless in presence of a no rent manifesto. steamers are running on the lower lough from enniskillen to belleek, about twenty-two miles. you can sail there and back for eighteen-pence. the upper lough is said to be still more beautiful, the tourist agents have recently been trying to open up this lovely island-studded lake. the beauties of ireland are as unspeakable as they are unknown. the strip of sea holds some tourists back, and others seek the prestige of holiday on the continong. a german traveller, hight bröcker, declares that ireland beats his previous record, and that the awful grandeur of the antrim coast has not its equal in europe, while the wild west with its heavy atlantic seas, is finer far than switzerland. germans are everywhere. the westenra arms of monaghan boasted a waiter from the lake of constanz, and i met a german philologist at enniskillen who had his own notions about irish politics. he ridiculed the attitude of england, or rather of gladstonian england, and rated home rulers generally in good set terms. "the business of england is to rule ireland. justly, of course, but to rule. that is if england has any regard for her own reputation. a colonel must rule his regiment, a teacher must rule his class, the captain must rule his crew, or disorder and damage to all parties will be the inevitable result. england stands to her acquisitions, whether conquered or peacefully colonised, in the relationship of head of the family. she has one member who is troublesome. there is always one black sheep in the flock. there was a judas among the twelve. england has one, only one, at present, of her numerous family who gives extraordinary anxiety. and why? "difference of race and difference of religion. the double difference is too much. the races would amalgamate but for the religious difference. they would intermarry, and in time a sufficient mixture would take place; would have taken place long since but for the action of rome. rome keeps open the old wound, rome irritates the old sores. rome holds the two nations apart. we in germany see all this quite plainly. we have no interests at stake, and then, you know, lookers-on see better than players. rome keeps ireland in hand as a drag on the most influential disseminator of protestantism in the world. ireland suits her purpose as a backward nation. we have quite snuffed out the pope in germany. education is fatal to the political power of rome. ireland is not educated, and suits her purpose admirably. you will not succeed in satisfying ireland, because rome will not allow the irish to remain quiescent. rome will not permit ireland to rest and be thankful, to fraternise with england, to take the hand of friendship, and to work together for good. this would not do for the church. any romish priest will tell you that his church is destined to overspread and conquer every country in the world, and that of all possible events that is a thousand times the most desirable. an independent ireland, whose resources would be in the hands of the romish clergy, and whose strategetical position would be the means of aiding some catholic power to crush the prestige of england--that is not a possibility too remote for the imagination of romish wirepullers. are englishmen acquainted with the history of papal rome? have they adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the foresight of this most wonderful religious system? i think not, or they would be more on their guard against her jesuitical advances. the idea of your gladstone going to your parliament to hand over this country to rome under the specious pretence of remedying irish grievances, is too ridiculous. i ask myself where is the english commonsense of which we have heard so much in germany? "england must be master. not with tyranny; of that there is no danger, but with a judicial firmness. your system of party government has good points, but it has weak points, and the irish make you feel them. you pay too much attention to irish clamour. i have been partly living in england for twenty-two years, and i have seen your gladstone 'finally' contenting the irish three or four times. now, if he understood the subject at all, he ought to know that for the reason i have stated satisfaction is impossible. no use healing and dressing a wound which is constantly re-opened. no use in dressing a sore which is deliberately irritated. rome will keep england going. with your home rule bills, your irish church bills, your successive land bills, how much have you done? how far have you succeeded in pacifying ireland? are you any nearer success now than ever you were? on the other hand, does not appetite grow with what it feeds on? the more you give, the more they want. they are far more discontented than they were before the passage of the three land bills, by each of which your gladstone, your amusing gladstone, declared he would pacify and content the irish. and now your gladstone is at it again. funny fellow! he is like the auctioneer with his last time, for the last time, for the very last time, for the very _very_ last time. and the grave english nation allows itself to be made a sport. it is mocked, derided, by a number of lawyers' clerks and nonentities from third-rate irish towns. it is bullied by a handful of professional politicians, paid by your american enemies, and governed by the flabby-looking priests you see skulking about the irish railway stations and parks and pleasure resorts. as i said before, england must be master, as the captain is of his crew, as the tutor of his class, as the colonel of his regiment; or she will go down, and down, and down, until she has no place nor influence among the nations. and she will deserve none, for she knew not how to rule. "england is at present like a ship's captain, who in his futile endeavours to please one of his crew first neglects the management of the ship, and, then (if she grants home rule) allows the discontented person to steer the course. and all to please one silly old man, who should long ago have retired from public life. what man at eighty-four would be reckoned competent to manage a complicated business enterprise such as a bank, or an insurance business, or a big manufacturing affair, or a newspaper office? yet you allow gladstone to manage an empire! where, i ask is the english sense, of which we hear so much in germany? you want a bismarck to make short work of these popish preachers of sedition. you want a bismarck to rid your country of the irish vermin that torment her. the best irishmen are the most brilliant, polite, scholarly men i ever met. none of them are home rulers. that should be enough for england without further argument. your house of lords has sense. that will be your salvation against gladstone and rome." at the _imperial_ was a warm discussion anent the propriety of keeping alive the memory of the battle of the boyne, which the orangemen celebrate with great pomp on july . "the counthry's heart-sick of orange william an' his black-mouths," said a dark-visaged farmer. by black-mouths he meant protestants. "the blayguards are not allowed to shout to hell wid the pope now-a-days. in belfast they'd be fined forty shillin's. an' they know that, and they daren't shout to hell wid the pope, so they roar to hell wid the forty shillin's. that's what i call a colourable evasion. but the law favours them." a man of mighty beard looked on the speaker with contempt. "sure, 'tis as raisonable to celebrate king william, who _did_ live as a saint like patrick, phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. at laste, that's what some of them say. ye mix the life an' work of half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all saint patrick. sure, most of him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. ye can't agree among yerselves as to whin he was born." turning to me, the bearded man said, "did ye ever hear the pome about saint patrick's birthday?" i regretfully admitted that the masterpiece in question had escaped my research, but pleaded in extenuation that i came from england, where the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of oirish litherature have not yet permeated the barbarian population. barbatus then recited as follows:-- "on the eighth day iv march, as sum people say, st. patrick at midnight he furst saw the day. while others declare on the ninth he was born, sure, 'tis all a mistake between midnight and morn! now, the furst faction fight in oireland, they say, was all on account of st. patrick's birthday. some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die-- who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye. at length both the parties so positive grew, they each kept a birthday, so patrick got two. till father mulcahy (who showed them their sins) said, no man can have two birthdays (barrin' he was twins). an' boys, don't be fightin' for eight or for nine; don't be always disputin', but sumtimes combine. combine eight wid nine, seventeen is the mark, let that be his birthday." "amen," said the clerk. "tho' he wasn't a twin, as history does show-- yet he's worth any other two saints that we know. so they all got blind drunk, which complated their bliss, an' they kept up the custom from that day to this." "an' why wouldn't we remimber king william? an' why wouldn't we remimber that the enniskillen protestants went out an' smashed up the papists under lord mountcashel, at newtownbutler, on august , ? the very day of the relief of derry--so it was. an' more than ever now we need to keep our heads above wather. ye've an old fule over there that's thryin' to upset the counthry wid his fulery an' his home rule. but we'll not have it! never will we bow the neck to rome. in the name of god, we'll resist to the last moment. every man will stand to his arms. leave us to settle with the papists, and we'd hunt them like flies. thim an' their army of independence! 'twas an' army of independence they levied to help the french invasion. the poor parleyvoos landed at killala (ye can see where they entrenched their camp), and marched with the irish army of independence to castlebar, where the english smashed them up, the irish catholic levies bolting at first fire or before it." four or five nameless stones mark the graves of french officers killed in this engagement. i saw them on my way from castlebar to turlough's tower. my orange friend went on:--"we'll send a hundred orangemen to fight their army of independence. they shall be armed with dog-whips, to bring the brutes to heel. no, we'll not send a hundred, either. we'll send thirty-two, one for each county of ireland. 'twould be a trate to see the army of independence hidin' thimsilves in the bogs, an' callin' on the rocks an' hills to fall down an' cover thim, an' the airth to swallow them up." a political tradesman recommended to me as a perfect encyclopædia of argument on the home rule question, said:--"the great difficulty is to get the english people to understand the duplicity of this sacerdotal movement. of course, you understand that the agitation is really religious, and not, strictly speaking, political at all. in england the romish priests are a better class of men, and no doubt they are loyal enough for practical purposes. and then they have neither numbers nor influence. you look upon the catholic laity of england very much as we look upon the plymouth brethren of ireland--that is, as a well-meaning, well-conducted body of people with whom you don't agree. the catholic laity of ireland would be all right if they were left alone, if they were allowed to follow the dictates of their natural humanity. my catholic neighbours were very good, none better, until this accursed agitation began. left to themselves the irish people would agree better and better every year. but that would not suit rome. the church, which is very astute, too much so for england, sees in agrarian agitation a means of influence and the acquisition of power; and once an irish parliament became dominant, intolerance would make itself felt. not as of old by the fires and tortures of the inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting, by every species of rascality. how can you expect tolerance from a church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? when everybody outside the pale of that church is outside the pale of salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and everything is permissible to compel them to come in. that is their doctrine, and they, of course, call it benevolence. "mr. gladstone has said,--'my firm belief is that the influence of great britain in every irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were ireland detached from her political connection with this country and left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land.' there is the passage, in my scrap-book. the speech was made in the house. the english home rulers believe that their troubles will be over when once irishmen rule from college green, and they trust the irish catholic members, who from childhood have been taught that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. that is a fundamental tenet of the church of rome. still, england will have no excuse for being so grossly deceived, for these men have at one time or other been pretty candid. william o'brien said that the country would in the end 'own no flag but the green flag of an independent irish nation,' and j.e. redmond in march last said that it was the utmost folly to talk of finality in connection with the home rule bill. then you must remember what parnell said about taking off his coat. he would not have done it for anything short of independence. mr. gladstone himself saw through this, and with all other liberals consistently and determinedly opposed every demand for home rule until his desire for power compelled him to surrender unconditionally to parnell. at aberdeen the g.o.m. said,--'can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of all mankind?' no sane man ever supposed it, no honest man ever believed that mr. gladstone would ever sell himself to irish traitors for a short period of power. the thing was incredible. in another speech mr. gladstone said he would never consent to give ireland any principle which could not be given on equal terms to scotland or any other part of the kingdom. so we may expect scotch and welsh home rule bills after this, and then a separate parliament for every country that wants it. there's the speech, you can copy the reference. "england is like an old-established business with a shop over the way which only just pays, and is an awful lot of trouble; in fact, more trouble than it's worth. you might say, let it go then. but if you let it go somebody else will take it, and run in opposition. home rule means the immediate return of the irish-american ruffians who were here during the fenian agitation, or their successors. home rule means that armed rebellion can be organised with much more reasonable chances of success. the police will be under the control of traitors, and it took you all your time to keep the country in order when the police were in your own hands. whatever happens to john bull will be the proper reward of his asinine stupidity. he'll have his hands full, with an irish parliament against him. and if he gets a big quarrel on his hands with russia or france, or any other powerful military nation, that is the time he'll feel it. are you going to put into the hands of your enemies the power to ruin you merely by biding their time?" i saw several other enniskilleners, but they added nothing to the disquisitions of those already quoted. a feeling of deep disgust was the prevailing sentiment. encamped in the enemy's country, from childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of papal policy, and the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. the history of the home rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most extraordinary combination of knavery, slavery, and credulity the world has ever seen. and yet some englishmen believe in it. after all, this is not so wonderful. there were people who believed in cagliostro, mormon smith, joanna southcote of exeter, mrs. girling, the tichborne claimant, general boulanger, electric sugar, the south sea bubble, and a thousand other exploded humbugs. no doctrine could be invented too absurd for human belief. no impostor would fail to attract adherents, except through lack of audacity. thousands of people believe in the winking virgin of loretto, and tens of thousands, a few months ago, went to worship the holy coat of tièves. so people are found who vote for home rule as a means of settling the irish question, and rendering justice to ireland. _populus decipi vult._ doubtless the pleasure is as great, in being cheated as to cheat. enniskillen, july th. no. .--the loyalists and the lawless. clones, which must be pronounced as a dissyllable, is a city set upon a hill which cannot be hid. viewed from the railway the clustered houses surround the church spire like an enormous beehive. like other ancient irish towns, it possesses the ancient cross, the ancient round tower, and the ancient abbey, without which none is genuine. it has not the sylvan, terraced, cheltenham-cum-bath appearance of its neighbour monaghan, though it somewhat resembles bath in its general outline. the ruins want tidying up, and no doubt they will be looked after when the demand is greater. ruins are a drug in ireland, and as mark twain would say--most of them are dreadfully out of repair. the irish have no notion of making them attractive, of exploiting them, of turning an honest penny by their exhibition. the inhabitants of any given neighbourhood can never give information as to their date, use, decay, general history, beyond the stereotyped "they were built by the owld ancient folks long ago." the clones people are no exception to the general rule. the town is on the main line from dublin to londonderry, but is little troubled by tourists. the place is quiet and tidy enough, and like many other irish country towns seems to live on the surrounding country, which sends in a strong contingent on market days. the people are also quiet, civil, and decent, and the land in the neighbourhood seems fertile and well cultivated. industry is evident on every side. everybody has something to do. a farmer living just outside the town said he experienced the greatest difficulty in getting extra hands for harvest time. in his opinion the people were incomparably better off than in the days of his youth, some thirty years ago. he said "the labouring classes are far better housed, better clothed, and better fed, than in old times. they live far better than the well-to-do farmers of a generation ago. and the queerest thing about it is the fact that the better off they are, the more discontented they seem; and during the last few months they are becoming unbearable. they are giving themselves airs in advance. and no wonder, when they see the british parliament entirely occupied with their affairs, to the exclusion of all english business. they may well feel important. they boast that they have compelled this attention, and that they shortly will have their own way in everything. last sunday a drunken fellow was making a row near my house. i told him to go away, and he said, 'before long you'll have to go away and every blackface in the country. we'll be masters in another month.' he was alluding to mr. gladstone's gagging motion, which the poor folks here in their ignorance believe to mean that home rule will set in about the beginning of august. they are acting accordingly, and they expect to have the land which the protestant farmers now hold--at once. it is to be divided amongst them by ballot. we feel very anxious about here, for we feel that we are only staying on sufferance, and we have no confidence in the support of the present government. we have expended our labour and our substance on the land, and if we lose these we lose all. you may say there is no fear of that, as such a piece of iniquity would never be tolerated by the english people. but when i see them tolerating so much, i think we have good reason to feel uneasy and unsettled. for my part, i have no heart for hard work, when i feel that somebody else may reap the reward. and with a catholic parliament in dublin we should very soon have to give up. they can get at the farming class in so many ways. we protestants are pretty strong about here, and all the way to monaghan, but still we are in a considerable minority. the mountain folks are catholics, every one, and that is where we are outnumbered. we could hold our own if the country were like the town. we should be bound under home rule to suffer a large increase of taxation, because all grants from imperial sources are to cease upon the passing of the bill. then the country will be more disturbed than over, because the bill is only valued as a stepping-stone to an irish republic, and the success of the agitators in obtaining the bill will encourage them and their supporters to persevere. instead of the end of the trouble it would only be the beginning. it is a black look-out for both ireland and england. "most of the protestant farmers think that land purchase would be stopped. if that could go steadily on, there would be in time prosperity and contentment. the people would like this well enough, and would be quiet enough, if they were let alone. but where is the money to come from to purchase land? who would lend money on irish securities? who would trust an irish parliament with millions? then the better classes, who have money to spend, would leave the country, and we should be poorer all round. "the loyal party in an irish parliament would always be in a minority, and for any good they could do, might as well stay away. for no matter how the nationalist factions might quarrel among themselves, the priestly party would always have the pull. the english protestants ought to believe that we know the reality of the danger that threatens us better than they can possibly do. there are nearly three thousand protestant ministers in ireland, and only six or seven are in favour of home rule. are these men all infatuated? are they all liars? are they in a position to know the facts? of course they are truthful men, and they understand if anybody does. then why not take their advice? the meath election petitions ought to have settled home rule. englishmen cannot have read the reports of these trials. mr. gladstone is fooling the people on both sides the water. he is satisfying nobody, whether home rulers or not. the nationalists round here say the bill is an insult, but that they will take it as an instalment. the end will be that both loyalists and traitors will be more discontented than ever--a poor result after so much fuss and waste of precious time." if my friend had known of it he might have quoted mr. william heath, an englishman resident for six months in tyrone. he arrived in ireland a bigoted home ruler, but six months in the country knocked his nonsense out of him. he said:--"i have seen enough of romanism to convince me that protestantism would be crushed if home rule became law. i have seen the men who demand it, and i have seen the men who are determined to oppose home rule--the one set idle, dissolute, poverty-stricken, disloyal, and priest-ridden; the other industrious, thrifty, comfortable, and loyal to england. i go back to england a unionist, and will do all i can to spread the light on the true state of affairs in this unhappy country. if the people of england and scotland saw nationalists as i have seen them they would not force home rule on the loyalists of ulster so as to leave them at the mercy of such a party." a primitive methodist minister, the rev. j. angliss, who came to ireland a faithful follower of mr. gladstone, changed his mind when acquainted with the facts, and confessed himself a convert to unionism. he said that he had used his influence against the return of sir richard webster, the late attorney-general, but since his visit to ireland he had come to the conclusion that the bill would be a tremendous evil. he was "prepared to go back to the very platform in the isle of wight from which he had supported home rule and to tell the people he was converted. english people who come here to investigate for themselves must be forced to the conclusion that the bill means confiscation and robbery." a thriving tradesman of clones said:--"i am surprised that any englishmen can be found to pin their faith to mr. gladstone, or to any man with such an extraordinary record of change. mr. bright used to say he could not turn his back on himself, but mr. gladstone spins round and round like a teetotum. i should think that such an instance has never been known since that good old parson who sung, 'whatsoever king may reign, still i'll be vicar of bray, sir.' downing street is the grand old man's vicarage, and he endeavours to cling to it at all costs. in he said, 'i will not be a party to giving ireland a legislative body to manage irish concerns and at the same time have irish members in london acting and voting on english and scottish concerns.' in seven years and one month he insists on that very thing, and votes for it, with his crowd of noughts behind him. for i reckon all his parliamentary supporters as noughts, to which a value is given by the figure at their head. isn't that true? what would the rest be without him? the bulk of his adherents are precisely the kind of men nobody ever pays any attention to. there's morley, a good writer, but not a man of business. then there's harcourt. how can englishmen stand such a hollow humbug? he'll say anything, any blessed thing. i prefer tim healy, even, to harcourt. tim was roughly brought up, and, as he gets his living by politics, he is to some extent excusable. the way that harcourt attacked the irish party, so long as mr. gladstone attacked them! the things he said, the strong language he used so long as that course pleased mr. gladstone! now he turns round and calls them beauties; and for that matter so they are. it's what i mostly call them myself. beauties. "the arrangement to keep the irish nationalists at westminster is something for englishmen to consider. if they can swallow that they can swallow anything. they can have no pride about them, or else they are taking no further interest in their own affairs. to give the irish members power to vote on all questions coming before the imperial parliament, while conceding to them the privilege of managing their own affairs without interference, is indeed an eye-opener. the british parliament had sunk low enough when it began to heed the clamour of a set of american-paid blackguards such as the bulk of the irish members are, by their own supporters, admitted to be. but how much lower has england sunk when she accepts the dictation of these men, and says, 'you can manage your own affairs and direct my business too.' these fellows are to be masters of ireland _and_ masters of england. for of course, they can always exert a preponderating influence in british affairs, holding as they do the balance of voting power. and englishmen will submit to this; and will let their members be gagged and the clauses shoved through the house by hydraulic power. englishmen are so fond of boasting of their freedom and independence. why, they are being treated like fools and slaves. and by such a low set of fellows. some of the nationalist members wipe their noses on the tails of their coats, and when those are worn out they use their coat-sleeves. one of them was staying in an hotel where i was, and i saw him eat eggs. he cut off the top, and worked up the yolk with the handle of his spoon, mixing pepper and mustard. then he cut his bacon into dice, and dipped each square in the egg before stoking himself. that is a sample of the class now working the british parliament. there was an irish patriot m.p. "dillon is comparatively respectable, and if you knew dillon you wouldn't think that meant much. chamberlain showed him up, but why stop at one quotation? i see the judge is now in tipperary. that was the place dillon, along with o'brien, got to conspire against the law with such frightful results. you remember they were sentenced to six months' imprisonment, but breaking their bail they both ran away, while the poor men who had got into trouble, without funds to bolt with, went to hard labour. dillon once said that if certain people had cattle on land '_the cattle wouldn't prosper very much_,' and sure enough a number of cattle near tipperary have had their tails cut off. dillon, i say, is reckoned one of the most respectable. that does not say much for the others. you are giving these men power. will they use that power to wring further concessions? they have often declared that they will. the english home rulers say that they won't, that irishmen will be too grateful. they know not what they say. you'll have a hostile government at your very doors. what did parnell say? 'when england is at war and beaten to her knees, the idea of the irish nationalists may be realised.' and sexton, this very sexton who is now so much to the front, said that the 'one prevailing and unchangeable passion between ireland and england is the passion of hate.' then what hope is there of friendship in a home rule bill which will infinitely increase the number of points of dispute? and these men don't mean to be pleased, either. they don't mean to try to be content. it wouldn't pay them. they have their living to get. well, they have shown themselves clever. they can work england." a friend has furnished me with a few gems from the orations of the dillon aforesaid, whose threat of what would be done to loyalists under an irish parliament has recently attracted so much notice. he tried to show that this was said in a moment of warmth, in a fit of exasperation at the "mitchelstown massacre," which took place a year afterwards. what had annoyed him when at limerick he said that any man who stood aside from the national movement was "a dastard and a coward, and he and his children after him would be remembered in the days that are near at hand, when ireland was a free nation?"--date september th, . dillon delights in dates. again, what had ruffled the patriot soul, when at maryborough he spoke of dissentients in the following terms:--"when the struggle is ended and the people of this country have obtained that control over their own affairs which must come very soon, he will be pointed out to his neighbours as a coward and a traitor?"--january th, . it was on november st, , at limerick, that the same friend of england said "let the people of ireland get arms in their hands," and promised to "manage ulster." it was at dublin on august rd, , that mr. dillon said:--"if there is a man in ireland base enough to back down, to turn his back on the fight, i will denounce him from public platforms _by name_, and i pledge myself to the government that, let that man be who he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in ireland or across the seas." all this, be it observed, was after the promulgation of the union of hearts. well might mr. gladstone, speaking of mr. dillon, who is now one of his closest allies, say in the house of commons:-- "the honourable gentleman comes here as the apostle of a creed which is a creed of force, which is a creed of oppression, which is a creed of the destruction of all liberty, and of the erection of a despotism against it, and on its ruins, different from every other despotism only in this,--that it is more absolutely detached from all law, from all tradition, and from all restraint." sir william harcourt also referring to mr. dillon in the house once said, "the doctrine of the land league, expounded by the man who has authority to explain it, is the doctrine of treason and assassination;" and in addition to this strong pronouncement sir william called it "a vile conspiracy." both mr. gladstone and sir william harcourt are now hand-and-glove with the men of whom mr. gladstone said at leeds:--"they are not ashamed to point out in the press which they maintain how the ships of her majesty's navy ought to be blown into the air, and how gentlemen they are pleased to select ought to be the object of the knife of the assassin and deprived of life because they do not conform to the new irish gospel." mr. chamberlain's exposure of dillon has brought down the thunders of the nationalist press. did he ever say anything stronger than this? one nationalist paper, speaking of the member for west birmingham, says:--"there was something devilish in the exultation of the strident voice and pale malignant face." the home rule penmen are always describing him as "livid with impotent rage," "trembling with ill-concealed vindictive passion," "hurrying from the house to escape the mocking laughter of the amused senate." the member for bordesley is dealt with more lightly. "mr. jesse collings occupied some minutes with his usual amusing inanity" and so forth. according to these writers the house rapidly empties when mr. balfour or mr. chamberlain would fain hold forth, and fills to suffocation to hear the noble periods of dillon, sexton, and healy. mr. deasy, m.p. for west mayo, has recently been before the public rather prominently, and his opinion of the irish question may be interesting at the present juncture. i heard much of this gentleman at westport, where he is well known. he is disgusted with the show of loyalty to which his colleagues have treated mr. gladstone, who boasts of their "satisfactory assurances." he knew that the nationalist members, speaking in england, made use of amicable expressions which no irish nationalist audience would tolerate, and speaking of this he said:--"i have never said on an english platform what i would not say here this night. i have not been saying that we all want to be part and parcel of the british empire--with the lie on the top of my tongue, i am not going to disgrace my constituency by going over to england and uttering falsehoods there, and coming back and saying that i was deceiving england at the time." this speech was made in , only two years ago. is not this big print enough? surely no reasonable person will any longer believe in the loyal friendship of nationalist ireland. to do so is to violate common sense. only the fatuous gladstonians, whose eyes will scarcely serve at most to guard their wearers 'gainst a post, can be expected to take it in. it is hard to find a decent person in favour of the bill. its supporters are eminently unsatisfactory, inasmuch as they furnish no readable matter, and content themselves with saying that ireland will have her freedom, and that prosperity will follow, as the night the day, in the wake of the bill. but they can never indicate wherein is their want of freedom, nor can they ever say _how_ the bill will bring about prosperity. then, as a rule, the voters for the bill are persons whose opinion no sane person would act upon in the most unimportant matter. they never know the population of their own town, nor the distance to the next. they are mostly sunk fathoms deep in blackest ignorance, and characterised by most cantankerous perversity, now rapidly merging, as the bill proceeds, into insolent bumptiousness. the lord-lieutenant has returned to dublin after having endured such snubs and slights as mr. balfour never encountered. and yet lord houghton waved the olive-branch. everybody seems to have asked him for a pier. i have given many instances of useless piers on the western irish coast. the parish priests who met the viceroy asked for more, and again more. mr. morley has been asked in the house what is going to be done about the piers the priests have asked for. let him appoint a commission to inquire into the history of western irish piers. the report will be startling, and also instructive. a glengariff man admitted to me that the people of that famous town would make no use of the pier if they had it. "but," said he, "the building of it would bring a thousand pounds into the village." the english people are said to dearly love a lord. the irish people dearly love a pier. clones, july th. no. .--a search for "orange rowdyism." belfast is still of the same mind. its citizens will not have home rule. they are more than ever determined that the fruits of their industry shall not be placed at the mercy of men who have consistently advocated the doctrine of plunder. the law-abiding men of belfast will never submit to the rule of law-breakers, many of whom have expiated their offences in the convict's cell. this debt-paying community will not consent to be under the thumb of men whose most successful doctrine has been the repudiation of legal contracts. the famous merchants and manufacturers of the true capital of ireland decline to place their future fortunes in the hands of the unscrupulous and beggarly adventurers who would form the bulk of a college green parliament. the hard-working artizans of belfast are firm in their determination to resist the imposition of a legislature which will drive capital from the country, diminish the sources of employment, strangle all beneficial enterprise, and by destroying security undermine and wreck all irish industry. they know how the agitation originates, and by whom it is directed. they have the results of papal influence before their eyes. while belfast as a whole is clean, open, airy, with splendid streets and magnificent buildings, the catholic portions of the city are as much like the pestilent dens of tuam and tipperary as the authorities will permit. the uninstructed stranger can pick out the home rule streets. in belfast as elsewhere, sweetness, light, and loyalty are inseparably conjoined, while evil smells and dinginess are the invariable concomitants of disloyalty and separatism. fortunately for the ulster city, the loyalists number three to one, which fact accounts for its general cleanliness, the thriving aspect of its commercial concerns, the decency and order of its well-kept thoroughfares. and whatever belfasters want they pay for themselves. belfast receives no government grants for any municipal purpose, while disloyal dublin, screaming for equality of treatment, is largely subsidised from imperial sources. the belfast people entirely support their hospitals. the dublin hospitals are largely supported out of the public revenues. the belfast botanic gardens are kept going by belfast. the dublin botanical gardens are wholly supported by government. further examples are needless, the facts being simple as they are undeniable. dublin gets everything. belfast gets absolutely nothing. disloyalty is at a premium. motley's the only wear. the screamers are always getting something to stop their mouths, a sop, not a gag. steady, quiet, hard-working folks are of no account. the belfast men ask for nothing, and get it. they want no pecuniary aid, being used to self-help, and liking it best. stiff in opinion, they know their own minds, and are accustomed to victory. they do not in turn threaten and complain and cringe and curse and fawn. they keep a level course and run on an even keel. they are bad to beat, and can do with much letting alone. they are pious in their way, and talk like cromwell's puritans. they abhor popery, judging the tree by its fruits, a test recommended by their chiefest classic. they believe that protestantism is daylight, that popery is darkness, and that the sun is rising. they believe with carlyle that "popery cannot come back any more than paganism, which also lingers in some countries." they also believe with the sage that "there is a perennial nobleness and even sacredness in work. were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man who actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair." so they work every day and all the day, save on rare occasions, and for these holidays they make up by overtime. they think home rule is useless at best, and not only useless, but dangerous. they declare it would affect their liberties, and this notion is ineradicable. touch them in their freedom and the secold northerners become aflame. and while the irish kelts burn like straw--a flame and a puff of smoke, and there an end--these scots settlers are like oaken logs, slow to take fire, but hard to extinguish. they prosper under the union, and therefore, say they, the union is good. what the poor irish need is industry, not acts of parliament. the land is rich, the laws are just, the judges are honest, and industry is encouraged. the fault is in the people themselves, and in their pastors and masters. the convergence of ulster opinion reminds me of an old line, which fitly illustrates the position of the irish malcontent party-- _heu mihi! quam pingui macer est mihi taurus in arvo._ quaint old thomas fuller (as i remember) has rendered this-- my starveling bull, ah, woe is me, in pasture full how lean is he! i am almost disposed to believe that horace anticipated the case; or that, like mr. john dillon, he had the gift of remembering occurrences before they took place. much has been spoken and written in england concerning "orange rowdyism." i saw the twenty thousand orangemen who walked through belfast to knocknagoney on wednesday last. they had nearly five miles to march on a hot day before they reached the meeting-place, some hours to stand there listening to speeches, and then the long march back again. large numbers went to the orange halls, there to conclude the day. i followed them thither, heard their speeches, noted their modes of enjoyment, watched them unnoticed and unknown, save in one instance, until they finally dispersed. next day i went to scarva, forty miles away, to see the great sham fight which annually takes place there between representatives of king james and king william of orange. there were sixty-four special trains, at cheap fares, running to scarva, besides the ordinary service, and let it be remembered that scarva is on the main line from dublin to belfast. now let me state precisely what i saw. the belfast procession was very like the tail of the belfast balfour demonstration, and with good reason, for both consisted of twenty thousand orangemen. but on wednesday the orangemen, instead of being preceded by a hundred thousand citizens of ulster, had it all to themselves. the authorities know the character of orangemen. they know that scorching weather and long dusty marches are apt to lead to copious libations, especially in holiday time. they know that political feeling runs high, and that the present moment is one of undue excitement. they know that the papist party have taunted orangemen with the supposed progress of the bill, and that the same people say daily that orangeism will be at once abolished, and that this year sees the last orange procession in belfast. "this is yer last kick before we kick ye to hell," said a broken-nosed gentleman at the corner of carrick hill. the authorities knew all these things, and taking into account the known character of orangeism, with the special exasperation of the moment, and remembering their own responsibility in the matter of order, how many extra policemen were drafted into the city? not one. the men who really know orangemen knew that no precautions were needed. there were brass bands, drum and fife bands, and bands of bagpipes. the drums were something tremendous. the belfast drumming is a thing apart, like a plymouth brother. we have nothing like it in england. the big drums run in couples, borne by stout fellows of infinite muscle, and tireless energy. the kettle-drums hunt in packs, like beagles. the big drums are the biggest the climate will grow, and the drummers lash them into fury with thin canes, having no knob, no wrapper of felt, no softening or mitigating influence whatever. the bands played "god save the queen," "rule britannia," "the boyne water," and "the death of nelson." the fifes screamed shrilly, the brass tubes blared, and every drummer drummed as if he had the pope himself under his especial care. the vigour and verve of these marching musicians is very surprising. you cannot tire them out. the tenth mile ended as fresh as the first, though every performer had worked like a horse. there is a reason for this. their hearts are in the work. to them it means something. the scarves and busbies and uniforms and desperate paroxysms of drumming are somewhat comical to strangers, but the people looked earnest, and as if engaged in serious business. thousands of well-dressed people walked with the procession, or looked gravely on. there was no horse-play, and no noise other than the music. no bare feet, no bare heads, no rags, no dirt, no disorder. a papist sprang from his lair in a side street and tried to snatch the scarf from a young man, who promptly drove him back to his den. nothing else happened. at midnight there were for the whole city twenty police cases against thirty-nine for last year's twelfth. so much for orange rowdies in the streets. let us look upon their private orgies. at seven o'clock i went to the orange hall, clifton street, the headquarters of the body. the various lodges were dispersed in several rooms, where they seemed to be taking tea with their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. a turn outside landed me opposite saint patrick's roman catholic church, and here was a strong guard of police. the neighbouring streets of carrick hill, north street, and another, literally swarmed with filthy, bare-footed women, wearing the hooded shawl of limerick, of tuam, of tipperary. the men had a dangerous look. many were drunk, and some had bandaged heads. more policemen half-way down carrick hill, and more still at the end. the people who pay no taxes cost most to keep in order. i have somewhere seen a body of returns showing that while the unionist population requires only ten or twelve policemen to every ten thousand people, the home rule provinces take from forty-eight to fifty-two to manage the same number. returning to the orange hall a number of dirty, bare-footed children walked in procession past the door singing vociferously. they sung with great spirit to the tune of "tramp, tramp, tramp, the boys are marching," and seemed to enjoy it amazingly. i did not catch the words. they stopped as i came up, but a young fellow on guard at the hall said, "they grind up the children in songs of a party nature, and send them here to annoy us. of course, we can't notice little children." this time i dropped in the thick of the entertainment. a mild, mild man occupied the chair, young men and maidens, old men and children sitting around. they were inebriating on ginger beer and biscuits, and their wildest revelry was the singing of "the old folks at home" by a young lady in white. mr. e.j. fullwood, of birmingham, who was there as a visitor, made a rattling speech, and received a great ovation. a quiet gentleman, by special request, made a few remarks on the political situation. he said:--"we will resist a home rule parliament at any cost and at every cost. we will not have it. our faith is plighted, and we are not the men to go back of our word." his manner was very subdued, and the audience also kept very quiet. what these men say they say in their sober senses, and not by reason of excitement. another room was livelier. an english gentleman was holding forth. then the band played "no surrender," after which a lady sang "killarney's hills and vales." in a third room a brother was calling on the brethren to give three cheers for "our beloved queen," under whose benignant reign blessings had been shed upon the british empire, "to which we belong, and to which we still belong, so long as they will have us." in a fourth room the listening orangemen sat under a discourse on the efficacy of prayer, which they were urged to make a living part of their everyday life. all this was very disappointing, and when in royal avenue the helmeted watchman of the night assured me that nothing had happened, and that nothing was likely to happen, i abandoned all hope of orange rowdyism. next day at ten, i went to scarva, or, as the natives spell it, scarvagh. a neat little place full of black protestants. the houses are clean and tidy, and the people have a well-to-do look. there was a great crowd at the station, and a band of drummers were laying on with such thundering effect that my very coat sleeves vibrated with the concussion. a big arch of orange lilies bore the one word welcome, and the roadside was lined with stalls selling provisions and ginger beer. the church on the hill flew the orange flag with the union jack. the presbyterian meeting-house and a methodist chapel complete the tale of worship-houses. the place is without rags, dirt, beggars, or any other symptoms of home rule patriotism. neither is there a roman catholic chapel. the signboards bore scots and english names. mr. j. hawthorne stood at his door, big-boned and burly, with a handsome good-humoured face. "ye'll gang up the brae, till ye see an avenue with lots of folk intil it," said this "irishman," whose ancestors have lived at scarva from time immemorial. "yes, we pit up the airch o' lilies to welcome our friends. they come every year, and a gude mony o' them too, so we pit up that bit thing oot o' friendship like." i told him this was to be the last occasion, as mr. dillon was determined to manage ulster. he laughed good-naturedly. "mon alive, d'ye tell me that any mon said sic a fuleish speech? mon, its borne in on me that we'll tak a dooms lot of managin'. these chaps dinna ken ower weel what they're talkin' aboot. an' they maun say somethin' to please the fellows that keep them in siller. these things hae gane on in scarva sin' auld lang syne, an' nothin' e'er stappit them. they went on when the party processions act was law, an' tho' the sojers ance cam frae dublin to stop the demonstration, the orangemen mustered in sic force that they never interfered aifter all. an' in ulster we'll hauld our own, d'ye mind that? we've tauld them oor mind, an' that we wunna hae home rule. we've tauld them that, an' we'll stand by it. they've gotten oor ultimatum, an' they can mak a kirk or a mill o' it." i gangit up the brae through dense crowds constantly increasing as the sixty-four specials gradually came in. the way was sylvan and pretty, big beech trees and elms meeting overhead, the road running along the side of a steep hill sloping down to a small river, the slope carefully tilled, and showing good husbandry. then a beautifully wooded and extensive demesne, and a mile of avenue, with many thousands of well-dressed orderly people, the ladies forming about half the company. then a large low, brown mansion with a gravelled quadrangle, around which marched fife and drum bands playing "no surrender" and "the boyne water." and everywhere incessant drumming and drinking of ginger beer. banners were there of every size, shape, and colour, many with painted devices, more or less well done. the lurgan temperance lodge exhibited moses in the wilderness, holding up the brazen serpent. "three-fourths of the orange lodges are based on temperance principles," said an orange authority standing by, "and what is more, they don't allow smoking. we orange rowdies are to a great extent temperance men." i remembered that the three meetings of the night before were smokeless concerts, and that the fourth resembled a methodist love-feast, with an old brother telling his experiences. also that captain milligen, a leading plymouth brother of warrenpoint, had told me that he had been present at a scarva meeting, and that from beginning to end he never heard a bad word, nor saw anything objectionable. the sham fight took place on a hill hard by. two fine young fellows fenced with old cavalry swords, and king james, with green coat and plumes, succumbed to king william with orange coat and plumes, while their respective armies to the number of about thirty, fifteen on each side, fired in the air. i noticed that while a few had ancient brass-bound muskets, which looked as if converted from flint locks, most were armed with snider rifles of army pattern. the drums excelled themselves, and the fifers shrieked martial airs. the people waved their hats and cheered, and that was the whole of it. returning to the station, a good young man gave me a tract, wherein i found myself addressed as a dear unsaved reader, and later as a hell-deserving sinner. then a salvation army man telling a crowd to escape for their lives, which i was just doing, and that once he had loved pleasure, which seemed likely enough. then a big banner whereon was depicted david in the act of beheading goliath with a yeomanry sword, the wicklow mountains in the distance. then an old man on the bridge declaring to the multitude that he would not be a papist for all that earth could give, and that nothing could induce his fellow-citizens to submit to home rule for one second of time. "no, never, never, never. rather than accept of popish rule, we'll take arms in our hands as our fathers did, and like them we will conquer. have we not their example before us? are we such dastards as to give up that for which they shed their blood? shall the sons be unworthy of the sires? never shall it be said that the children were unworthy their inheritance of freedom. old as i am, i would take a musket, and go forth in the name of the lord. shame on the scots and english if they desert us in our hour of need. are they not our own kith and kin? but whether they aid us, or whether they desert us, we will stand firm, and be true to ourselves. our cause is good, and we are bound to win, as we won before. only stand firm, shoulder to shoulder. shall we bow down to popery? no, by the god that made us, no. shall we truckle to rome, shall we become slaves to popish knaves, shall we become subservient to priestcraft and lying and roguery and trickery? never shall it be said of us. we claim to be part and parcel of the glorious british empire. we have helped to upbuild that empire, and we claim our inheritance. we will not sell our birthright, we will not connive at the destruction of britain's greatness, we will not have home rule. 'shall we from the union sever? by the god that made us, never!'" the people listened silently, with grave, earnest faces. they mean business. during my first visit to belfast i interviewed the leading citizens, the clergy, nobility, and gentry. this time i spoke with artisans and craftsmen, and i found the same feeling, a deep and immovable resolve to fight till the last extremity. it should be remembered that all ulstermen are not orangemen. but the religious bodies which have held aloof from orangeism are just as determined. on the irish church question the orange body stood alone. the dissenting sects were against them everywhere. all are united now, and the attempt to force home rule on these resolute men would be attended by the most awful consequences. they are not of a breed that easily knocks under. they remind you of the scottish covenanters. they are men with whom you would rather dine than fight. in belfast, besides mr. fullwood, of birmingham, previously mentioned, i met with mr. lyons, of newcastle-on-tyne, who in his walks abroad in the city had put down in his pocket-book the names of all streets he judged to be exclusively catholic. he was right save in three cases, where the people were mixed. he also observed that in the poorer quarters the windows of all protestant places of worship were protected by wire netting, but that the catholic chapels were not so protected. as the protestants are three to one, he thought this a curious commentary on the statements anent orange rowdyism. mr. deacon, of manchester, and the englishmen hereinbefore mentioned were present at the orange hall, and all saw what i have related. mr. henry charlton, j.p., of gateshead-on-tyne, agrees with them that the religious question is the secret of the whole agitation, and that the sooner a leading statesman meets the home rule movement on this, the true ground, the better for the country. "we are too squeamish in england. we fear to offend our catholic friends, with whom there is no fault to be found. but we want an influential speaker to say at once that the conflict is reality between protestantism and popery. the best plan would be to state things as they are, and to meet the enemy directly." so spoke one of these visitors, a gentleman of great political experience. is this opinion not well worth consideration? is not the time for soft speaking nearly over? mr. dillon says he will manage ulster. he will need the british army at his back. his army of independence will not avail him much. the position of the nationalist members towards ulster is not unlike that of the chinaman who wanted an english sailor punished. "there he stands," said the skipper, "go and punch his head." "no, no," said the celestial complainant, "me no likee-pikee that way. but spose three, five, 'leven big sailors tie him up, hold him fast, then very much me bamboo he." and that is how the dillonites would hope to manage ulster. belfast, july th. no. .--the constitution of the orange lodges. portadown is another of the clean, well-built towns of ulster dependent for its prosperity on the linen trade. the river bann flows through it, a fine stone bridge spanning its waters in the principal street. everybody seems comfortably off, and dirty slums are nowhere to be found. some of the shops are very much larger than the size of the town would seem to warrant, and one ironmonger's store is far larger than any similar shop in birmingham. the presbyterian meeting-house, on the right as you enter, and the protestant church, which occupies a conspicuous position at the meeting of two main thoroughfares, are plain, substantial buildings without any striking architectural pretensions, and the orange hall, which seems an indispensable adjunct of all "settler" towns, is also modest and unassuming. the meadows bordering the bann are spread with miles of bleaching linen, for which the river is especially famous, its waters having a very superior reputation for the production of dazzling whiteness. the town is half-a-mile from the station, which is an important junction, and the number of cars in waiting show that the people expect the coming of business men. when first i visited the town, placards announcing drill meetings at the orange hall were everywhere stuck up, but i saw none during my last march round. perhaps the orangemen have completed their arrangements. the portadown people have no intention of accepting home rule. on the contrary they are determined to have none of it. at present they are quiet enough, because they are confident that the bill can never pass, and they do not wish to meet trouble halfway. the house of lords is their best bower anchor, and for the present they leave the matter with the peers. so they mind their work, and spend their time in making linen. when they demonstrate they do it with a will, but they cannot live by demonstrations, and they are used to paying their way. they see what happens in so-called "patriotic" districts, how neglect of duty accompanies eternal agitation, and how the result is poverty and failure to meet the ordinary obligations of social life. the artisans of portadown go to work every day, and the farmers do their level best with the land, which all about this region is highly cultivated. they claim to belong to the party of law and order, and they agree with the great orator who once said:--"the party of law and order includes every farmer who does not want to rob the landlord of his due and who does not want to be forced to pay blackmail to agitation--every poor fellow who desires to be at liberty to earn a day's wages by whomsoever they are offered him, without being shunned, insulted, beaten, or too probably murdered." the orator in question bears the well-known name of william ewart gladstone, now intimately associated with the names of dillon, o'brien, sexton, o'connor, tim healy, and the rest of the agitators to whom he was referring in the above-quoted speech, delivered at hawick just ten years ago. a portadown orangeman complained bitterly of the attitude of the english gladstonian party with reference to his order. he said:--"we have been denounced as rowdies and orange blackguards until the english people seem to believe it. they never think of comparing our record with the record of the party denouncing us, nor do they know anything of the history and constitution of the order. we have always been loyal, always friends of england, and that is why the nationalist party so strongly disapprove of us. we have never occupied the time of the english parliament, nor have we leagued ourselves with the enemies of england. we have maintained order, and taken care of english interests in ireland, besides looking after our own personal affairs. we have not stood everlastingly hat in hand, crying, like the daughter of the horse-leech, give, give. and great is our reward. we are to be handed over to a pack of papist traitors and robbers, who for years have made the country a perfect hell. mr. gladstone would fain give rich, industrious ulster into the hands of lazy, improvident connaught. let them try it on. let them impose their taxes, and let them try to collect them. they'll find in ulster something to run up against. we prefer business to fighting and disturbance, but when once we make up our minds for a row we shall go in for a big thing. most of our people have a deep sense of religion, and they will look upon it as a religious war. it will be the sword of the lord and of gideon. we never will bow down to popery. and that is what home rule means. we see the abject condition of the papists, and we know their slavish superstitions. the bulk of them are body and soul in the hands of the priests, and that is the secret of their non-success in life. the poorest among them are taxed to death by the church. a fee must be paid for christening, and unless you pay a stiff figure you won't have a priest at your funeral. the poor catholics are buried without any religious service whatever. they are taken to the churchyard by their friends and put in a hole, like a dog. pay, pay, pay, from the cradle to the grave. and when the priests wish to raise money, they dictate how much each person is to give. they do not believe in free-will offerings, otherwise their receipts would be very small indeed. there you have one explanation of papist poverty. are we to put our necks under the heels of a parliament worked by bishop walsh of dublin? never, as long as we can strike a blow for freedom. we look to england at present. if england fails us, we shall look to ourselves. our fathers died to preserve us from king james and popery, and we are not going back to it at this time of day. "english home rulers have actually taken up the cry of equality, and down with protestant ascendency. such foolish ignorance almost amounts to crime. where are the roman catholic disabilities? for two generations the papists have had absolute equality. every office is open to them on the judicial bench. there have been roman catholic lord chancellors, and lord chief justices. o'laughlin, o'hagan, naish, pallas, barry, o'brien, keogh, and many others are all roman catholic judges. the papists have an overwhelming preponderance in parliamentary representation. they are looked after in the matter of education, whether elementary, intermediate, or university. the system of the national board was introduced to meet the objections of the roman catholics. they objected to the use of the bible. as you know the papists object very strongly to the bible, and as it came out some time since, before the commissioners of education, of four hundred maynooth students only one in forty had a bible at all. theological students without a bible! but each was compelled to have a copy of some jesuit writer. "where is the inequality? the romanists have their own college, this very maynooth, entirely under the control of their own bishops, where they educate the sons of small farmers and peasants and whiskey-shop keepers by means of funds very largely taken from the protestant church of ireland. they do not desire equality, they are resolved on ascendency. we who live in ireland know and feel the spirit of intolerance which marks the romanist body. it is proposed to make of ireland a sort of papal state. we have the declarations of cardinal logue, of archbishop walsh, of archbishop croke before us. we need to know no more. the english people pay no attention to them, or have forgotten them. we bear them in mind, and we shall act accordingly." my friend's statements anent the raising of money by the roman catholic clergy and the alleged poverty of ireland reminded me that a year ago at the opening of the redemptorist church of dundalk the collections of one day realised twelve hundred pounds, and that in the same town a priest refused to baptise the child of a poor woman for less than five shillings. she tendered four shillings and sixpence, but the man of god sent her home for the odd sixpence. she then went to the protestant minister, who baptised the child for nothing. in warrenpoint the priest decided what subscriptions each and every person should pay to the funds of the new catholic church, and in monaghan three well-to-do papists had their cheques returned, as being insufficient. the romanist cathedral of that poor little town is currently reported to have cost half a million, but that it cost at least a hundred thousand pounds, exclusive of the stone, which was given by the protestant landowner, lord rossmore, is admitted by the most reliable authorities. the landlord agreed to give the stone on condition that the quarry should be filled up and the land levelled as it was found at first. stone for the cathedral, a convent, and many other buildings was taken, but the conditions were not fulfilled, and a hole with forty feet of water was left, so that the field was dangerous for cattle. the catholic party refused to level, and a lawsuit was the result. my monaghan letter related the total exclusion of protestants, including lord rossmore's agent, from the town council. so much for papal tolerance and gratitude. the english prejudice against orangemen is ill-founded. their sheet-anchor is an open bible, and their principles, as expressed by their constitution, are such as ought to ensure the approval and support of englishmen. they read as follows:--"the institution is composed of protestants resolved to the utmost of their power to support and defend the rightful sovereign, the protestant religion, the laws of the country, the legislative union, and the succession to the throne being protestant, and united further for the defence of their own persons and properties and the maintenance of the public peace. it is exclusively an association of those who are attached to the religion of the reformation, and _will not admit into the brotherhood persons whom an intolerant spirit leads to persecute, injure, or upbraid any man on account of his religious opinions_. they associate also in honour of king william the third, prince of orange, whose name they bear, as supporters of his glorious memory." i have italicised a few words which clear the association from the charge of organised intolerance, which is made alike by english and irish home rulers. the portadown folks are especially well-versed in the history of the movement, and in the perils which impelled their forefathers to band themselves together. according to froude, it was on the th september, , that a peace was formally signed at portadown between the peep-o'-day boys and the defenders, and the hatchet was apparently buried. but the incongruous elements were drawn together only for a more violent recoil. the very same day mr. atkinson, a protestant, one of the defender subscribers, was shot at. the following day a party of protestants were waylaid and beaten. on the st both parties collected in force, and at a village in tyrone, from which the event took the name by which it is known, was fought the battle of the diamond. the protestants won the day, though outnumbered. eight and forty defenders were left dead on the field, and the same evening was established the first lodge of an institution which was to gather into it all that was best and noblest in ireland. the name of orangemen had long existed. it had been used by loyal protestants to designate those of themselves who adhered most faithfully to the principles of . threatened now with a general roman catholic insurrection, with the executive authority powerless, and determined at all events not to offer the throats of themselves and their families to the roman catholic knife, they organised themselves into a volunteer police to prevent murder, and to awe into submission the roving bands of assassins who were scaring sleep from the bedside of every protestant household. they became the abhorrence of traitors whose crimes they thwarted. the government looked askance at a body of men who interfered with the time-honoured policy of overcoming sedition by tenderness and softness of speech. but the lodges grew and multiplied. honest men of all ranks sought admission into them as into spontaneous vigilance committees to supply the place of the constabulary which ought to have been, but was not, established; and if they did their work with some roughness and irregularity, the work nevertheless was done. by the spring of they could place twenty thousand men at the disposition of the authorities. in they filled the ranks of the yeomanry, and beyond all other influences the orange organisation counteracted and thwarted the progress of the united irishmen in ulster, and when the moment of danger arrived, had broken the right arm of the insurrection. after this brief sketch of the origin of the movement it would not be surprising if the constitutions of the body inculcated intolerance, or even revenge. on the contrary, both these things are sternly prohibited, and their contraries expressly insisted on. a pious brother of portadown said:--"as protestants we endeavour to make the bible our rule and guide. we endeavour to love our neighbour as ourselves, we obey the constituted authorities, we maintain and uphold the law, we fear god and honour the queen. we are firmly resolved to maintain our present position to the british crown, and we deny the right of mr. gladstone to give us away, or to barter us for power. by the confession of his own followers, all his previous legislation for ireland has been a failure, for if it be not so, why the present measure? we claim no ascendency, and we will submit to none. it was from our ancestors that ascendency received its death-blow. ever since our leading doctrine has been equality for all, without distinction of class or creed. by thrift and industry we have created a state of commercial prosperity which is a credit and an honour to the empire, while the nationalist party under precisely similar conditions have discredited the empire, and by perpetual agitation, and not sticking to business, have brought every part of the country under their influence to degradation and poverty; besides which they have, by their repudiation of contracts, undermined the morality of their supporters all over ireland. the nationalist farmers prefer to have twenty-five per cent. off their rent by agitation or intimidation rather than to double or treble the productiveness of their land by hard work and the application of modern principles of farming. we have seen from the first that the whole movement was originated in roguery and sustained by roguery, and we see that it is carried on by roguery. we not only know the men who keep up the agitation, but we know the influences at work behind them. all their talk is of protestant ascendency. can they point out a single instance in which we have the upper hand, or state anything in which we as protestants have any advantage whatever? mr. gladstone himself cannot do it. he has said so in as plain terms as he can be got to use. but the time for talking is over. we have said our say, and we are prepared to do our do. the papists round here are very confident that before long they will have a marked ascendency. they expect no less. let them attempt it. we shall be ready to stand our ground. as the poet says, now the field is not far off when we must give the world a proof of deeds, not words, and such as suit another manner of dispute." a home ruler encountered casually showed some temper. he said:--"all the prosperity of which the protestants boast is due to the fact that for centuries they have been the favoured party. england has petted them, and helped them, and encouraged them in every way. we were a conquered people, and these settlements of methodists, and presbyterians, and quakers, and all the tag-rag-and-bob-tail of dissent, were thrown into the country to hold it for england, and to act as spies on the real possessors of the land, in the interests of england. they were, and are, the english garrison. they have no part with the natives, the original sons of the soil. what right, moral or legal, have these colquhouns, these galbraiths, these andersons, to irish soil? none but the right of the sword, the right of superior force. other nations have succumbed to the yoke of england, the greatest tyrant with which the earth was ever cursed. the scots and welsh lick the boots of the english because it pays them to do so. the irish have never given in, and they never will. for seven hundred years we have rebelled, and as an irishman i am proud of it. it shows a spirit that no tyranny can break. what tyranny do we now undergo? the tyranny of a master we do not like, and in whom we have no confidence. we never agreed to accept the yoke of england. now all we ask is to be allowed to govern ireland according to irish ideas, and after promising that we shall do so a bill is brought in which is a perfect farce, and which puts us in a far worse condition than ever. some say that when once we get an irish parliament we can arrange these small details. and mind this, we shall exact considerably more because of english distrust and english meanness." i note in saturday's issue of the party sheets a quotation from an irish-american paper, the _saint louis republic_, which thus opines as to the policy of the irish leaders:-- "they would better hold off until they have the bill out of the woods before they start a scrimmage over small details. ireland and america will think any bill which establishes local government a progressive step of glory enough for one year. if ireland cannot improve the law after it gets a legislature it needs a few american politicians, more than an extra fund." how does this promise for the peace that is to follow this great measure of "justice" to ireland? with the improved methods of the irish-american politicians, who, on the establishment of an irish parliament, would inundate the country, finding in its chaotic and helpless state a fit subject for plunder, the meek-and-mild radicals of the bread-and-butter type, who trollop through the lobbies after the grand old bell-wether, would be highly delighted. how did the items get into parliament at all? why did they desert the mothers' meetings, the band-of-hope committees, the five o'clock tea parties at which they made their reputations? there, indeed, they found congenial society, there they were listened to with rapt attention, there they could coruscate like tritons among minnows. among the blind a one-eyed man is king. the english home rule members are a collection of intellectual cyclops. they can vote, though. they can walk about, and that suffices their leader. if weak in the head, they are strong in the legs. legislation must in future be pronounced with a hard g, or to avoid confusion of terms, and to preserve a pure etymology, a new term is needed to describe the law-making of the home rule members. pedislation might serve at a pinch. i humbly commend the term to the attention of my countrymen. judged by classification of its friends and enemies, home rule comes out badly indeed. the capitalists, manufacturers, merchants, industrial community, professional men are against it. six hundred thousand irish churchmen are against it. five hundred thousand methodists and presbyterians are against it. sixty thousand members of smaller denominations are against it. a hundred and seventy-four thousand protestants in leinster, and a hundred and six thousand in munster and connaught are against it. the educated and loyal roman catholic laity are against it. all who care for england and are willing to join in singing "god save the queen" are against it. on the other hand amongst those who are for it, and allied with them, we find the dynamiters of america, the fenians and invincibles, the illiterate voters of ireland, the idlers, the disloyal, the mutilators of cattle, the boycotters, the moonlighters and outragemongers, the murderers, the village ruffians, the city corner boys, and all the rest of the blackguards who have flourished and been secure under the land league's fostering wing. are we to stand quietly aside and see the destinies of decent people entrusted to the leaders of a movement which owes its success to such supporters? are englishmen willing to be longer fooled by a government of nincompoops? those who have studied the thing on the spot will excuse a little warmth. and then, i am subject to a kind of dillonism. i am exasperated at the recollection of what may possibly take place next year. portadown, july th. no. .--the hollowness of home rule. this beautiful watering place cannot be compared with the celebrated holiday resorts of england, wales, scotland, or france without doing it injustice. it is unique in its characteristics, and globe-trotters aver that earth does not show a spot with an outlook more beautiful. from the beach the view of the mountain-bordered lough extends for many miles seaward. on the opposite slopes to the right are the fresh green pastures and woods of omeath, backed by the carlingford mountains. on the left are wooded hills a thousand feet high which lead the eye to the mourne mountains at rostrevor, where is the famous cloughmore (big stone), a granite block nine feet high by fifteen feet long, poised on the very apex of the mountain in the most remarkable way. how it got there is indeed a puzzle, as it stands on a bed of limestone nine hundred and fifty-seven feet above sea level. you can see it from the square of warrenpoint, four miles away, and no doubt good eyes would make it out at a much greater distance. geologists talk about the glacial age, and say that the boulder was left there by an iceberg from the north; but the mountain peasants know better. they know that fin mccoul heaved it at brian boru, jerking it across the lough from the opposite mountain five or six miles away, as an indication that he didn't care a button for his rival. these modern mountaineers are almost as easily gulled as their ancestors. they believe in home rule because they will, under an irish legislature, "get all they want." they have votes, and they use them under clerical advice. "i don't know anything about home rule except that we are to get all we want." those are the very words of an enlightened and independent elector resident near cloughmore. never was there more simple faith, or more concise _credenda_. the newcastle programme is comparatively unpromising. the wildest radical, the most advanced socialist, never came up to this. the grand old man himself in his most desperate struggles for place and power, never exactly promised everything that everybody wished. to get all you want is, indeed, the _summum bonum_, the ultima thule, the _ne plus ultra_ of political management. after this the old cries of peace, retrenchment, and reform sound beggarly indeed. never was there such a succinct and complete compendium of political belief. nobody can outbid the man who offers "all you want." for compactness and simplicity and general satisfactoriness this phase of home rule diplomacy takes the cake. failure to fulfil the promise is of course to be charged to the brutal saxon. meanwhile the promise costs nothing, and like sheep's-head broth is very filling at the price. not long ago the point in the lough was a rabbit warren, whence the name. before that the situation was too exposed to the incursions of rovers to tempt settlers, and narrow-water castle, built to defend the pass, was (and is) between the town and newry. but times have changed. settlers flocked across from ayr, from troon, from ardrossan, and other scots ports lying handy. a smart, attractive town has sprung up, starting with a square a hundred yards across. big ships which cannot get up to newry discharge in the lough by means of lighters. an eight-hundred-ton barque from italy is unloading before my window. there is a first-rate quay, with moorings for many vessels. the harbour is connected by rail with all parts of ireland, and in it seven hundred to eight hundred ships yearly discharge cargoes. the grassy beach-promenade is half-a-mile long, and an open tramcar runs along the shore for three miles. the residents are alive to the importance of catering for visitors, and the town commissioners, a mixed body, have provided bathing accommodation for both sexes. galway, with thrice the population, a fine promenade, good sands, and a grand bay, has no such arrangements; and westport has very little accommodation for tourists. the contrast between the north of ireland and the south and west comes out in everything. the methodists and presbyterians are strong in the town, to say nothing of the two protestant churches, one in warrenpoint and another in the clonallon suburb. the catholic chapel is counterbalanced by the masonic hall. wherefore it is not surprising to learn that the bulk of the townsmen are staunch unionists. the nationalist papers have little sale hereabouts, the _belfast news letter_ and the _irish times_ having the pull. a business man, who has lived here for forty years, said:-- "we are fairly matched in numbers but the conservatives have the wealth and respectability. the fishermen and labourers are nearly all home rulers, simply because they are catholics. they are quite incapable of saying _why_ they are home rulers, and some of them even profess to regard the proposed change with alarm, and say they prefer that things should remain as they are. but although they speak so fairly, yet when the time comes to vote, they vote as the priest tells them. they have no option, with their belief. i don't blame the poor fellows one bit. i followed the report of the south meath election petition very closely, and i know that the same kind of pressure was exerted here. at castlejordan chapel father o'connell commanded the people, in a sermon, to go to a nationalist meeting, and said he would be there, and that their parish priest expected them to go. he said that if any were absent he would expect them to give a good and sufficient reason for their absence. on another occasion a priest met a number of men who were going to an opposition meeting, and turned them back with threats. these priests not only threatened to refuse extreme unction to persons who voted against the clerical party, but they also threatened personal violence, and then said, 'don't hit back, for i have the holy sacrament on me.' father john fay, parish priest of summerhill, county meath, told his people that they must not look on him as a mere man; if they did they might have some prejudice against him, for all had their shortcomings. 'the priest is the ambassador of jesus christ, and not like other ambassadors. he carries his lord and master about with him, and when the priest is with the people almighty god is with them.' that is what father fay reckoned himself. almighty god, no less. he alluded to the consecrated wafers he had in his pocket. the doctrine of transubstantiation is here invoked to assist in carrying a home rule candidate of the right clerical shade. and all the awful language used from the altar, in the confessional, all the threats of eternal damnation, and burning in the fires of hell, all the refusals of mass, and to hear dying confessions, were directed against another section of the home rule party, and not against a unionist at all. how does this promise for the working of an irish parliament? "i note that the english home rule papers say nothing good of the bill. they are always praising the management of the old parliamentary hand. they beslaver him with fulsome adoration. they cannot point out anything good in the provisions of the bill, nor in the central idea of the bill, but they must fill up somehow, and they praise his artfulness, how he dodged this, and dexterously managed that. they have nothing but admiration for his jugglery and house-of-commons tricks. they bring him down to the level of a practised conjuror or a thimblerigger. but, with all his wonderful cleverness, he is not admired or supported by any intelligent body of public men. the gag-trick ought to settle him. we in ulster feel sure that a general election to-morrow would for ever deprive him of power. of course the old hand knows that, and will not give the country an opportunity of pronouncing judgment. he and his flock of baa-lambs will put off the day of reckoning as long as ever they can. either on the present or next year's register he is bound to be badly beaten. his course is clear. he used to have three courses open to him, but now he has only one. he must try to weather the storm until he has a chance of faking the voters' lists so as to improve his own chances. it is said that mr. henry fowler is already preparing such a scheme. like enough. if tricks will win, i back the g.o.m. there are more tricks in him than in a waggon-load of monkeys. the strangest thing i ever saw or ever heard of is the calmness with which the english people take the proposition that ireland shall manage english affairs, while ireland is to manage her own without any interference. i should have expected the british workman to processionise about this. i should have thought the british middle-classes would have been up in arms at the bare thought of so monstrous a proposition. and so they would if they thought it would become law. but, like us, they know there will never be any home rule. then, they are not so nervous as we in ireland are, because they don't know as we do what home rule really means. "no earthly power can assist the irish peasantry so long as they remain under the dominion of the priests. popery is the vampire that is sucking the life-blood of the country. it is fashionable nowadays to abstain from denouncing other religious systems, on the plea of toleration. i agree with perfect toleration, and i am not desirous of making reference to romanism. but they force it upon us. the papist clergy say that the poverty of the country is due to english rule. we who live here know that it is due to romish rule. how is it that all protestants are well off, and make no complaint? how is it that their children never run barefoot? how is it that their families are well educated, that their dwellings are clean, and that they pay their way? home rule may impoverish those whom the teachings and habits of protestantism have enriched, but neither home rule nor anything else will enrich those whom popery has impoverished. england should turn a deaf ear to the cry for home rule, which means the ruin of her only friends in ireland, and unknown damage to herself. to give her enemies the means wherewithal to damage her is very midsummer madness." the difference between protestant and roman catholic farmers was shown in striking contrast on the marquess of lansdowne's estate in queen's county. most of the tenants were non-judicial, and the total rents amounted to £ , , of which the marquess allowed £ , to be annually expended on the estate. in the tenants demanded thirty-five per cent. reduction on non-judicial and twenty-five per cent. on judicial rents, threatening as an alternative to adopt the plan of campaign. the marquess refused to comply with this exorbitant demand, but offered reductions of fifteen to twenty-five per cent. on non judicial rents. the tenants declined to pay anything, and the landlord enforced his rights, mr. denis kilbride, m.p., declaring that "these evictions differed from most of the other evictions to this extent,--that they were able to pay the rent. it was a fight of intelligence against intelligence, a case of diamond cut diamond." mr. kilbride, who held a large farm at a rental of seven hundred and sixty pounds was one of the evicted. another of these poor destitute, homeless tenants, brutally turned out on the roadside to starve, or die like a dog from exposure, was no sooner evicted than he entered a racehorse for the great contest of the curragh. this victim of saxon tyranny was named john dunne, and his holding comprised more than thirteen hundred acres. let us hope the colt did him credit. let us trust that the evicted quadruped carried off the blue ribbon of kildare. for under the lansdowne "rack-rents" the struggling farmer could barely keep one racehorse, which, like the fabled ewe-lamb of ancient story, was his little all. perhaps mr. dunne's colt was related to that well-bred travelling horse, of which the picture adorned the walls of limerick and its vicinity, and which gloried in the name of justice to ireland. there were no evicted protestants on the lansdowne estate. every protestant farmer paid his rent and steadfastly refused to join the plan of campaign. the injustice of an irish rent largely depends on the question, to whom is it due? a good nationalist may draw a higher rent than a loyalist. a sound home ruler may ask for and insist on an exorbitant rent, but he is never denounced by the nationalist press. the corporation of dublin is red-hot in the matter of patriotism. its parnellite members have from time to time comprised the pick of the nationalist agitators. the dublin "patriot" press has ever been foremost in denouncing rack-rents. but the city of dublin is a landlord. it has agricultural tenants who are never allowed under pain of eviction to get into arrears. the members of the corporation fixed the rents, and, strange to say, the tenants at the first opportunity appealed to the land commissioners. six of them holding four hundred and twenty-seven acres of land, were paying £ s. d. the rent was therefore over £ an acre, which is perhaps double the average. the government valuation was £ s. the new rent was finally settled at £ , being an all-round reduction of twenty-three per cent. lord clanricarde is frequently denounced by nationalists for excessive rents, lack of conscience, and non-residence. the land commissioners were unable to deduct anything like twenty-three per cent. from the clanricarde rent-roll. the councillors of dublin were never upbraided, nor put in danger of their lives. the loughrea people shot lord clanricarde's agent, his driver, his wife, and several other people, in protest against the clanricarde rents and to encourage the landlord to live on the estate. about a dozen were murdered altogether. surely these parallel cases should demonstrate the utter hollowness of the home rule agitation. the protestants of warrenpoint, like those of newry and belfast, are confident of their ability to hold their own. their attitude is very different from that of the trembling heretics of tuam or tipperary. they are strong in numbers, discipline, and resolution, and in addition to upholding their own personal cause they declare that their isolated co-religionists in leinster, munster, and connaught shall not be forsaken nor left to their own shifts. a rough and ready farmer thus spoke forth his mind:--"england may give the papists a parliament to manage papists, but not to manage protestants. we should never begin to consider the advisability of submitting to it. the thing's clean impossible. what! let papists tax us! pay for the spread of popery! did you ever hear anything so absurd? not one farthing would _i_ ever pay. i'd leave the country first. so would all the decent, industrious folks. we know what happens in every country where popery gets the mastery. look at spain, italy, and the catholic parts of ireland. if england sends an army of redcoats to punish us for our loyalty, we shall give way at once. we've sense enough to know that we could do nothing against the queen's troops, even if we wished to fight them. but to take arms against the soldiers of england would be quite against our principles. what we should ultimately do, under military compulsion, we have not yet decided, but we should never under any circumstances show fight against the queen. we don't think the day will ever come when england would send the military to shoot us for sticking to england. as for the police of the irish parliament, that's another thing. they would have no assistance in ulster. the sheriff's officers, when engaged in the compulsory raising of taxes, would have a lively time, and i am sure they would never get any money. we don't take it seriously yet. if the bill were actually on the statute book and an irish house of commons doing the finnigan's wake business with the furniture legs of the college green lunatic asylum, even then we would not take it seriously. we shall never think it worth while to be serious until we see the british army firing on us. it's too ridiculous. we pay no attention to the irish nationalist members, whom we regard as a bankrupt lot of bursted windbags. why, hardly one of them could be trusted with the till of a totty-wallop shop. to how many of them would gladstone lend a sovereign? how many of them could get tick in london for a new rig-out? dublin is out of the question, of course, because in dublin these statesmen are known. would englishmen let such men govern their country? not likely. nor will we." i submitted that, so far as at present enacted, these very heroes were really going to govern both england and ireland. the great organ of english roman catholicism objecting to this has given great offence to the irish papists, and the nationalist press is shrieking with futile rage. english catholicism and irish catholicism seem to be entirely different politically. englishmen are englishmen first, and catholics next. irishmen look first to rome, and cordially hate england,--there is the difference. the conservative catholic organ says, referring to the retention of members at westminster:-- "with just as much reason might we import a band of eighty south africans, and whether they were eighty zulus or eighty archangels in disguise, their presence in the british house of commons would be a gross violation of the principles of representative government. at present, as members of the common parliament of an united kingdom, english and irish members have correlative rights, but when irish affairs are withdrawn from the parliament at westminster, on that day must the irish members cease to take part in purely british legislation. we are asked to grant home rule to ireland in deference to the wishes of the local majority, and then we are told we must let the local majority in great britain be dictated to by eighty men who have neither stake in the country nor business in her parliament, and who do not represent so much as even a rotten borough between them." my warrenpoint friend may well say that he cannot take it seriously. the dignity of the english parliament is, however, a matter of great concern to englishmen, and that for the present seems consigned to the charge of dillon, healy, and co. and all to further the union of hearts. yet misther tay day sullivan, not content with the management of both england and ireland, proposes to oust us from india! the irish faction will boss the wuruld from ind to ind. begorra, they will. tay day says:-- england fears for india, for there her cruel work was just as foul and hateful as any of the turk. but when god sends us thither her rule to overthrow, with fearless hearts rejoicing to work his will we'll go. stupid little england thinks to say us nay, but paltry little england shall never stop our way. there is a tribute of affection! there is an outpouring of loyalty! there is an anthem to celebrate the union of hearts! it should be sung round a table, gladstonians and irish home rulers hand in hand, as in "auld lang syne," and given out by pastor w.e. gladstone, as short metre, two lines at a time. why not? stranger things are happening every day. warrenpoint, july th. no. .--the irish press on "finality." englishmen who have any doubt remaining anent home rule should read the irish nationalist press. those who propose to concede the measure for the sake of peace and finality should read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the _united ireland_ leader, which commences: "let it be pretended no more that the fate of the present home rule bill is henceforth a matter of vital interest to us," and afterwards says, "we shall have to go on fighting--to go on fighting--without even a temporary intermission, and whether this bill pass or not, this year or next, or the year after, no matter what becomes of it." "mr. gladstone's bill in its present form is exactly such a central council as mr. chamberlain would have agreed to at the time of the round table conference. if it pass it can be no more than a milestone on our march. to talk of finality any more would be simply grotesque, and yet the gladstonians have urged, in season and out of season, that the bill would be nothing if not 'final, reasonably final.'" the english home rulers are dealt with as severely as the most hardened unionist could wish. the writer speaks of their "disastrous fatuity in consuming the whole of this session of the imperial parliament, and the greater part of one or two more, over a home rule bill which will settle nothing, no, not even for three years." disastrous fatuity is a good phrase, an excellent good phrase, in sooth. i thank thee, jew, for teaching me that word. those who believe in the security of the gladstonian safeguards, and the pacific disposition of the nationalist party, will perhaps be able to put a friendly construction on the passage which begins:--"and it is already settled that no man in ireland is to bear a rifle unless he be a soldier of the army of occupation, which will still be encamped on our soil 'to mak siccare.' this hateful and degrading prohibition is what no parnellite can pretend to consent to for any reasonable or unreasonable fraction of a period of reasonable finality." those who believe in the severe commercial morality and rigid honesty of the authors of the plan of campaign will doubtless find their favourable opinion confirmed by the succeeding remarkable complaint. "and the irish legislature--would it not be better policy now to refuse to regard it as a parliament and to refuse to call it so?--is forbidden to take away any person's property except by process of law, in accordance with settled principles and precedents. there's trouble here." there is indeed trouble here. an irish parliament which could not "take away any person's property except by process of law" would be shorn of its principal functions, would fail to justify its existence, would fall immeasurably short of the popular expectation, would have, in fact, no earthly _raison d' être_. an irish parliament without power to take from him that hath, and give unto him that hath not, would be without functions, and the foinest pisintry in the wuruld would instantly rebel against such a nonentity. the farmers remember the oft-repeated statements of mr. timothy healy to the effect that "landlordism is the prop of the british government, and it is that we want to kick away." and the benefit accruing from this vigorous action was by the same eloquent patriot very plainly stated. "the people of this country ought never to be satisfied so long as a single penny of rent is paid for a sod of land in the whole of ireland." and they never will be satisfied, with or without rent. their dissatisfaction has enabled mr. healy to put money in his purse. the wail of a great people whose parliament will not be allowed to rob from all and sundry is accounted for towards the close of the article. there will be trouble "as soon as the dublin legislature becomes hard pushed for money, which will be desperately often from the beginning, as is now plain." these considerations are closely observed by the people of strabane, the best of whom are steady loyalists. the town is bright, brisk, thriving, and scotch. or rather the scottish element is conspicuous in the main street, with its mccollum and mackey, its crawford and aikin, its colhoun and finlay, its lowry and mcanaw. there are several shirt factories, of which the biggest is run by stewart and macdonald. a number of names which may be either english or scotch are equally to the front, taylor, white, and simms, cheek by jowl with doubtful cases like mccosker and mcelhinney, which, however, smack somewhat of the tartan. macfarlane issues a notice, which is printed by blair, and besides white i notice black and gray. the establishment of mr. snodgrass, near the scotch boot stores, was remindful of charles dickens, and the small flautist piping "annie laurie," put me in mind of robert burns, the hairdresser of warrenpoint. it became difficult to realise that this was ireland. not far away are two mountains, named respectively mary gray and bessie bell. the hills round strabane retain their irish names, but the genius of the place is distinctly scottish. there are irish parts of strabane, but they are unpleasant and unimportant. the unionists pay three-fourths of the rates, but there is only one loyalist on the town council, which has nine members, of which number three retire annually in rotation. the town commissioners, as a whole, are not highly esteemed by the people of strabane. one of them, the leading light of the local nationalist party, is rated at £ . another, a working plasterer, is the accredited agent of the home rule party in this division of tyrone, and is playfully called the objector-general, on account of his characteristic method of working in the registry court. the chairman, who occupies the position of mayor, but without the title, is rated at £ . two small publicans are rated at £ and £ respectively. the remainder, including the conservative member, are rated sufficiently high to be regarded as having some stake in the country, and no objection is taken on this score. but the strabane town commissioners are intolerant. apart from the fact that they admit only one unionist to a body which derives three-fourths of its funds from unionists, they are distinctly intolerant in the matter of employment. they employ no protestants. their solicitor, mr. william wilson, is indeed of the proscribed faith, but he seems to have inherited the office from his father. no protestants need apply for any situation, however small, under the strabane town council, which pays its servants with the money of protestants. this is the party which clamours for equality of treatment, and eternally complains of the exclusiveness of protestantism. a well-known strabaner said:-- "if we are shut out from the town council, it is, to some extent, our own fault. two causes mainly contributed to this result--the apathy of the unionist voters, and the unwillingness of our best men to rub up against some of the men put forward by the other party. i say some only, not all. we did not care to be mixed up with fellows of low class, especially when they are as ignorant as possible. then again, we are well represented on the poor law board, which really has all the power, attending as it does to sanitation and so forth. the nationalists greedily snap at every shred and semblance of power, and leave no stone unturned to get the mastery. there has come a sad change over the poor folks, that is, the roman catholics. formerly they were civil and kind, and we all got on famously together. if a protestant was out in the country a mile or two away, and rain came on, they were hospitable with that beautiful old courtesy which was one of the best things the nation possessed. it was something to boast of. it was unique, and could not be found in such perfection out of ireland. it's all over now. since mr. gladstone commenced to destroy the country the poor folks hereabouts have changed very much for the worse, and if you now got caught in a shower while out in the country you might be drowned before they would ask you to take shelter. they expect to be enjoying our property very shortly. they fully believe that they will soon have the land and goods that we have worked for and earned by the sweat of our brows, while they have stood by complaining, instead of doing their best to get on. what shall i do if home rule becomes law? just this--i shall get out of the country in double-quick time. there will be no security for life or property. the country will be a perfect hell upon earth." there are three rivers at strabane, which, notwithstanding the neglect of the guide-books, is well worth the tourist's attention. the mourne, a really beautiful river, runs beside the town, washing the very houses of a long street, and meeting the finn, another fine river, in the meadows near lifford, which is in donegal, but for all that only ten minutes' walk from strabane. from the confluence the river is called the foyle, so that from the splendid bridge leading into lifford may be seen the rare spectacle of three considerable rivers in one meadow. lifford is very clean and very pretty. the gaol is the most striking building, and i wandered through its deserted corridors, desolate as those of monaghan. there were some strange marks in the principal square; a number of parallel lines which puzzled me. i turned to the gaoler who had just liberated me for some explanation. "faith, thin, it's the militia officers that made them." "studying fortification?" "divil a fortification, thin. 'tis lawn tennis it is, jist." and so it was. two courts of lawn tennis in the square of the county town of donegal! that will give some idea of the business traffic. an experienced electioneerer said:--"we had an awful fight before we could return lord frederick hamilton for north tyrone. we had all our work cut out, for although we have on paper a majority of about one hundred, many of our people are non-resident landlords, or army and navy men, and they are not here to vote for us. so that our majority of forty-nine was a close thing, though not so close as we expected. the other side do not fight fair. their tricks in the registry court are most discreditable. both parties fight the register, the nationalists expending any amount of time and money, and showing such enthusiasm as our people never show. and this is the reason. our scots farmers--for they are as scottish as their ancestors of two hundred years ago--_will_ stick to their work, and persist in making their work the paramount concern of their lives. they cannot believe that objections will be made to their names on the register, and when such objections have been raised they must appear in person, and there comes the difficulty. for if it's harvest time, or if engaged on any necessary work, you cannot get them to the court. at newtonstewart where the bulk of the voters are protestant, no less than five substantial farmers were objected to successively. the inspector, that is, the nationalist agent who is supposed to look into the claims of the unionist party, said that one had assigned the farm to his son, or that another was not the real tenant, or that something else was wrong, and as this statement established a _primâ-facie_ case, it became necessary for the persons whose votes were questioned to come into court. now, there is the rub. the objector calculates that some will not come, for he knows how hard it is to get them to come. then they stuff the register with bogus names. they put down dozens of people who don't exist, with the object of polling somebody for them--if any of them should escape the scrutiny of the opposite party--and with the further object of causing the unionist party expense and loss of time. for there is a stamp duty of threepence to be paid for every objection, and then the loyalist lawyer and his staff are kept at work for six weeks, instead of a fortnight or three weeks, which should be the outside time taken. then the annoyance and loss of time to the industrious unionist voters, who have to leave their work. this does not hurt the opposite party, who have nothing else to do, and who in these wrangling affairs are in their native element, thoroughly enjoying themselves. what makes the work so hard for the loyalist lawyer is the fact that our folks are all for business and look upon politics as a nuisance, while the other side make politics the principal business of their lives. they are tremendously energetic in this, but wonderfully supine in everything else. in politics they spare neither time nor money, nor (for the matter of that) swearing. the lying that goes on in the registry court would astonish englishmen. the papist party themselves admit that they are awful liars, but they laugh it off, and plead that all is fair in love and war. "the priest sits in the revision court all day long. in these revision courts every priest is an agent of the separatist party. they watch the inspectors and witnesses, keeping a keen eye on those who do not swear hard enough, ready to reward or censure, as the case may be. every sunday the people are instructed from the altar as to their political action. this eternal elbowing-on keeps them up to their work, as well as the promises of the good things to come. our folks are never worked up. that makes it very hard for us. they came up pretty well last time, though. but when one side is all for business, and the other side all for politics, the business folks are handicapped. "the nationalists ran john dillon on one occasion. we smashed him up. no respectable constituency would ever return any of his class, and we resented the attempt to couple us with a man of that stamp. he was beaten by several hundreds. then they ran a mr. wylie, who had been a land commissioner for this district. we thought that positively indecent, and we wondered that any gentleman would put himself in such a position. he had been round here reducing rents, and then he came forward as a candidate. we accuse him of bad taste, nothing worse. he only made one speech, though, and that was to thank the people for placing him at the bottom of the poll. he confined himself to canvassing. if he had once mounted the hustings we would have heckled him about the land commission business. he knew that and never gave us a chance. it was a cute stroke of policy to bring him forward. he was a presbyterian, and might be land commissioner again. at least the people thought so. then they tried a professor dougherty, of londonderry, another home rule presbyterian; for there are a few, though you could count them off on your fingers, and they are a hundred times outnumbered by the conservative catholics. he belonged to magee college, and we trotted out the whole of his co-professors against him. we never had a meeting without one or other of his colleagues pitching into him--a great joke it was. "over the water mr. e.t. herdman tried to get in for east donegal, a very popular man who pays thirty or forty thousand pounds a year in wages. the people promised to support him. the priests promised to support him. they asked what would they do else, and what did he take them for? they are so anxious about employment, these good men. all they want is the good of the people. you saw how they ran after the lord lieutenant saying: only find us work! you see how they run after the countess of aberdeen, who is encouraging industry (and about whom there are some pickings). what did the people of east donegal do, under the guidance of their clergy? they returned arthur o'connor, who never did anything for them, who never darkens their doors, and who is utterly unknown to them. what can you say for them after that?" the politician who was preferred to mr. herdman probably promised to give the people "all they want," while the unionist was only paying them wages for working all the year round. and besides this, mr. o'connor's speeches were probably more full-flavoured, more soul-satisfying, than those of mr. herdman, who, being a practical man of business, and having a sense of responsibility, would only talk common-sense, and would promise no more than he could hope to perform. mr. o'connor speaks in the epic style. he reminds you of bombastes furioso, or ancient pistol, with a subtle admixture of falstaff and parolles. he belongs to the lime-light and blue fire school of oratory, and backs up a vivid imagination with a virulent hatred of england. the raging sea of sedition which surged around us is now silent enough. it now hath quite forgot to rave while birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. the reason why is plain or should be plain to anything above the level of a gladstonian intellect. it cannot be amiss, though, to recall a specimen of mr. arthur o'connor's style, that so we may judge of his superior acceptability to the people of east donegal. speaking after the union of hearts had been invented and patented (provisionally), mr. o'connor said:-- "i know it to be a fact that in whatever war great britain may be involved, whatever power she may have to struggle with, that power can count on a hundred thousand irish arms to fight under her flag against great britain--(great cheering). does not the government of the united states know perfectly well that at three days' notice it could have a force, of which one hundred thousand would only be a fraction, a force willing to serve against great britain for the love of the thing, without any pay?--(renewed applause). and it is not amiss that the government of england should know it also"--(continued applause). the m.p. who made this speech is one of the politicians now dominating the english parliament at westminster. it is in response to the clamour of him and his sort that the gag is put on men like balfour, goschen, chamberlain. this little gem set in the silver sea, this isle, this realm, this england, is becoming a paltry concern, is fast being gladstoned into drivelling imbecility. what does o'connor mean by the , irish arms? does he mean , irishmen? the point is obscure, as will be seen from the oratory of another distinguished patriot, who said, "ten millions of irish hearts are beating with high anticipation, ten millions of eyes are looking forward to the passing of the bill." a very large number of one-eyed irishry. the _irish catholic_ makes a slip. the journal approves of mr. gladstone's closure, but with reference to the refusal of a newspaper to print a dr. laggan's letter about, something delivers itself thus:-- the application of the gag in polities has always been the resort of the stupid, incapable, and tyrannical politician. whether tried in russia, in france, or in england of old, it has invariably failed in its purpose. the stifling of the individual voice becomes of small advantage when the object-lesson of its possessor with a bandage across his mouth, and his hands tied behind his back, is presented to the populace. just as the gag has failed elsewhere it is, we are glad to think, destined to fail in ireland also, and, indeed, if it were not so destined, ireland would be precisely the best country to live out of. so much for absent-mindedness. it is pleasant to be able to agree with the _irish catholic_ for once. on the whole, the confusion is deepening. the grand juries of ireland are passing unanimous resolutions condemning the bill. the nationalist party condemns the bill. the scottish covenanters, who have not delivered a political pronouncement for more than two hundred years, and who never vote either way, have risen in their might and cursed the bill, smiting the papists hip and thigh with great slaughter, and denouncing the movement as purely in the interests of romanist ascendency. be it understood that these religionists live in ireland and date their malediction from coleraine. but nothing will stop the g.o.m.'s gallop over the precipice. let him go, but let him not drag the country after him. and in after years his administration will be described in words like those of burke, who, speaking of the gladstone of his day, said, "he made an administration so checked and speckled, he put together a piece of joinery so crossly indented and whimsically dovetailed, a cabinet so variously inlaid, such a piece of diversified mosaic, such a tesselated pavement without cement, that it was indeed a curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand upon. the colleagues whom he had assorted at the same boards, stared at each other, and were obliged to ask, 'sir, your name?' 'sir, you have the advantage of me. mr. such-a-one, i beg a thousand pardons.' i venture to say that persons were there who had never spoken to each other in their lives until they found themselves together they knew not how, pigging together heads and points in the same truckle bed." this is prophecy. have you heard that mr. balfour, who went through ireland without an escort, is unable to move about england without the protection of a hundred and fifty mounted police to save him from english home rulers who are burning to avenge the wrongs of ireland? no? england is badly served in the matter of news. they manage these things better in ireland. a leading dublin nationalist print has a number of prominent headlines referring to the "facts." "the arch-coercionist protected by police. caught in his own trap." the writer even goes into particulars and tells how "effusively" the ex-secretary thanked the police for protecting his "frail personality." the irish moonlight patriots are gratified. balfour was their aversion. during his reign it could no longer be said that the safest place in ireland, the one spot where no harm could befall you, was the criminal dock. balfour stamped out midnight villainy, and helped the industrious poor. wherefore he is honoured by honest irishmen and hated by all rascalry. ireland needs him again with his _suaviter in modo, fortiter in re_; his fairness and firmness, his hatred of tyranny, his determination to do right though the heavens should fall. with balfour in office the irish agitators have hard work to keep the broil agoing. they hate him because of the integrity which won the confidence of the irish people, and because of the substantial benefit arising from his rule, a benefit there was no denying because it was seen and known of all men. the return of balfour to power threatens to cut the ground from under the feet of those who live by agitation. they dread him above everything. they are horror-stricken at the prospect of a return to his light railways and heavy sentences. hence this attempt to damage his prestige. unhappy mr. balfour! to be protected by one hundred and fifty mounted police, and not to know of it! and the venal english press which conceals the fact, what shall be said of it? where would england be but for irish newspaper enterprise? strabane, july nd. no. .--how the priests control the people. this is a terribly protestant place. the people are unpatriotic and do not want home rule. they speak of the nationalist members with contempt, and say they would rather be represented by gentlemen. they are very incredulous, and refuse to believe in the honesty of "honest" john dillon. they say that davitt is a humbug and healy a blackguard. they speak of o'brien's breeches without weeping, and opine that davitt's imprisonments and healy's horse-whipping served them both right. these misguided irishmen affect to believe that the english laws are good, that ireland is a splendid country, and that things would be far better as they are. raphoe is on the road to nowhere, and yet it runs a rattling tweed mill--the proprietor is a unionist, of course. queer it is to see this flourishing affair in the wilds of donegal. blankets, travelling rugs, and tweed for both sexes, of excellent quality and pretty patterns. raphoe has a cathedral, but without features of note. the bishop's palace is in ruins. in the bishopric was annexed to derry. the police of this district are sad at heart. there are but few of them, very few indeed, and they have no work to do. these protestant districts afford no pleasurable excitement. work, work, work, without any intervals of moonlighting and landlord shooting. these saxon settlers have no imagination. like mill horses, they move in one everlasting round, unvaried even by a modicum of brigandage. an occasional murder, a small suspicion of arson, might relieve the wearisome monotony of their prosaic existence, but they lack the poetic instinct. they have not the sporting tastes of their keltic countrymen. they are not ashamed of this, but even glory in it. an orangeman asked me to quote a case of shooting from behind a wall by any of his order. he says no such thing ever took place, and actually boasted of it! he declared that if the body had in future any shooting to do they would do it in the open. the nationalist patriots are more advanced. they know a trick worth two of that. the protestant party have no experience in premeditated murder, and must take a back seat as authorities in the matter. they have not yet discovered that shooting from behind a wall is comparatively safe, and safety is a paramount consideration. landlords and agents carry rifles, and should they be missed unpleasant results might ensue. the case of smith, quoted in a mayo letter, shows the danger of missing. it is not well to place the lives of experienced and valuable murderers at the mercy of a worthless agent. the nationalist party cannot afford to expose to danger the priceless ruffians whose efforts have converted mr. gladstone and his tail. the patriots need every man who can shoot, and the stone walls of ireland are a clear dispensation of providence. to shoot in the open is a flying in the face of natural laws. the patriots are wedded to the walls, or, as they call them in ireland, ditches. the "back iv a ditch" is a proverbial expression for the coign of vantage assumed for the slaying of your enemy. like general jackson, the irish are stone-wallers, but in another sense. they have brought the art of murder with safety to its highest pitch of perfection. they are the leading exponents of mural musketry. a moderate unionist said:--"to speak of tolerance in the same breath with irish roman catholicism is simply nonsense. you will not find any believers in this theory among the protestants of this district, although being more numerous they are not so much alarmed as the unfortunate residents in romanist centres. we cannot believe anything so entirely opposed to the evidence of our senses. a protestant farmer of my acquaintance, the only protestant on a certain estate, has confided to me his intention of leaving the district should the bill pass, because he thinks he could not afterwards live comfortably among his old neighbours. a woman who had occupied the position of servant in a protestant family for forty years, recently went to her mistress with tears in her eyes, and said her clergy had ordered her to leave, as further continuance in the situation would be dangerous to her eternal interests. a girl who had been four years in another situation has also left on the same plea. the progress of romanism is distinctly towards intolerance. it becomes narrower and narrower as time goes on. this is proved by the fact that formerly dispensations were granted for mixed marriages--that is, catholic and protestant--on the understanding that the children should be brought up, the boys in the father's faith, the girls in the mother's. all that is now changed, and dispensations are only granted on condition that all the children shall be roman catholics. the absolute despotism of the catholic clergy is every year becoming more marked. they rule with a rod of iron. a bailiff of my acquaintance who had paid all his clerical dues, was very badly treated because he was a bailiff and for no other earthly reason. no priest in ireland would perform the marriage ceremony for his daughter, who actually went to america to be married. she was compelled to this, the bridegroom going out in another boat. the ceremony being performed, they returned to ireland, and the girl's father assures me that the affair cost him fifty pounds. the case of mrs. taylor, of ballinamore, was a very cruel one, which a word from the priest of the district would have altogether prevented. but that word was not spoken, for she was a protestant. her brother had discharged a cotter, i do not know whether justly or unjustly, but although mrs. taylor had nothing whatever to do with the affair--and it was not asserted that she had--she was severely boycotted. the brother, who was the guilty party, if anybody was guilty, was rather out of the way, and being a substantial farmer, quite able to hold his own, could not be got at. but mrs. taylor was a widow, and lived by running a corn mill. nobody went near it, nobody would have anything to do with the widow, who, however, struggled on, until the mill was burnt to the ground. she was compensated by the county, and rebuilt the mill. this spring it was again burnt down, and she is ruined. her property is now in the receiver's hands, and she is going through the bankruptcy court. "the home rule bill has produced, with much that is tragic, some comical effects. since the passing of the second reading our servant has become unmanageable. she is evidently affected in the same way as many of the most ignorant papists, believing that the time will soon come when, by the operation of the new act, she will so far rise in the social scale as to be quite independent of her situation. this kind of thing is visible all around. there is work for everyone about here, but the farmers cannot get labourers. in many parts of ireland the cry is 'there is no employment,' but here it is not so. there is plenty of work at good wages, waiting to be done, but men cannot be got to do it. the sion mills, which employ twelve hundred people, eight hundred catholics and four hundred protestants, would employ many more if they could be had. the labourers of this district are catholic, and they prefer to stand loafing about to the performance of regular work. they believe that a perpetual holiday is coming, and that they may as well have a foretaste of the ease which is to come. up to the times of the home rule bill they were industrious enough. the catholics of tyrone and donegal are not like those of the south and west. they are very superior, both in cleanliness and industry. having for so long mingled with the saxon settlers of the north, they have imbibed some of their industrial spirit, and until lately there was no reasonable ground of complaint. their morale is unhappily now sadly shaken, and whether the bill passes or not it will be long, very long, before they resume their industrial pursuits with the energy and regularity of men who have nothing on which to depend but their own exertions. and whatever happens to the bill, the country will be the poorer for its introduction. ireland is now an excellent country to live out of, and those who can leave it have the most enviable lot." a man of few words said:--"under home rule the landlords may take their hook at once. their property will disappear instanter. the tenant has already more lien on the land than the fee-simple _in toto_ is worth, and with a nationalist parliament he would pay no rent at all. the judges would not grant processes, and if they did their warrants could not be enforced. the destruction of the landlord class means the destruction of english influence in ireland. a short time ago two men were talking together. one was doubtful, and said, 'michael davitt says we must have only five acres of land. now you have twenty-five acres, you'll lose twenty.' 'ye didn't read it right,' said the other. ''tis the landlords and them that holds a thousand and two thousand acres that'll be dispossessed, and their land divided among the people. in six years we'll have the counthry independent, and then we'll do as we like. every saxon will be cleared out of the counthry. only keep yer tongue between yer teeth. be quiet and wait a bit till ye see what happens.' "'but,' said the objector, 'them ulster fellows'll give us no peace. they have arms, and i'm towld they have a lot of sojers among them, and that they're drilled, and have officers, regular military officers. sure, how would we do as we liked, wid an army of them fellows agin us? and they're devils to fight, they say.' "'arrah now, sure, ye're mighty ignorant, thin. sure, they say they'll not pay taxes. thin the sojers comes in and shoots them down, and you and i stands by wid our tongues in our cheeks. 'tis no consarn of ours. we have nothin' to say to it, one way or another. the orangemen can shoot the troops, and the troops can shoot the orangemen, and they can murdher each other to their heart's contint, and fight like kilkenny cats, till there's nothin' left but the tail. and good enough for the likes of them. sure, twill be great divarshun for them that looks on. and that's the way of it, d'ye mind me?'" this worthy politician must have been a perfect machiavelli. his favourite saying was doubtless 'a plague on both your houses,' and with equal certainty his favourite quotation the bardic 'whether roderigo kill cassio, or cassio kill roderigo, or each kill the other, every way makes my gain.' his theory of nationalist progress was four-square and complete, and showed a neat dovetailing of means with the end. there is some justification for his simple faith. he has seen mr. gladstone and his supporters, converted _en bloc_, including the great sir william harcourt, styled by the parnellite sheet "the new-born, emancipator of ireland," the unambitious and retiring labouchere, the potent cunninghame graham, the profound conybeare, and the pertinacious cobb--he has seen these great luminaries throwing in their lot with the sworn enemies of england, and doing all that in them lies to disintegrate and destroy the empire, and the rude peasant may be pardoned for expecting that the british army will, at his call, complete what these worthies have so well begun. to narrow loyalist liberties, to tax loyalist industry, to create a loyalist rebellion, and to have the loyalists shot by other loyalists is an excellent all-round scheme. this is indeed a high-souled patriotism. continuing, my friend said:--"a romanist neighbour of mine had promised to vote for lord frederick hamilton, for, as he said, he had no confidence in any irish parliament. just before the battle he called and said he must vote the other way, for father somebody had called on him and said, 'i hear you are going to vote for lord frederick hamilton.' admitted. 'then you may call in lord frederick hamilton to visit you on your death-bed. you can get him to administer the sacraments of the church.' 'what could i do?' said the farmer. 'i couldn't go against the priest. i could not incur the anger of my clergy without imperilling my immortal soul. besides that, i'd be made a mark and a mock of. perhaps i'd be refused admission to mass, like the men in south meath who voted contrary to the orders of the priest. so to save my soul i'll have to vote against my conscience. no use in telling me we will vote by ballot. them priests knows everything. they fix themselves in the polling booths, and they can read what way ye went in your face. sure, they know us all inside and out, since we were so high. we couldn't desave them.' then they always act as personation agents, and they order people who can read and write to say they can't do either. so they have to declare aloud whom they will vote for, and the priest hears for himself. this is the true explanation of the fearful illiteracy of donegal, as revealed by the voting papers. is it likely that in one quarter of donegal--that is, in one-fourth part of one county--there should be more illiterates than in the whole of scotland? yet according to the election returns, it was even so. the fact that the people declared themselves illiterate at the orders of the priest, when they were not illiterate, shows how degraded are the people, and how completely they are under the thumb of the priests." a protestant clergyman on his holidays, and not belonging to these parts, was very eloquent on the subject of political popery. in all my journeyings i have never interviewed a protestant parson, save and except dr. kane, whom i met in the royal avenue, belfast, along with the marquess of londonderry and colonel saunderson, as recorded in an early letter. i was disposed to believe that the english public might regard their evidence as being prejudiced, and therefore of little value. but my raphoe acquaintance was a singularly modest and moderate man, upon whose opinion you at once felt you could rely. he said:--"my catholic neighbours were friends until lately. nobody could have been more kind and obliging. there was no sensible difference between us, except that they did not come to church. they would do anything for me and my family; we would do anything for them. lately they have changed their manner. they have grown cold. their children playing with mine have let out the secret. through them we learn that the days of the protestants are numbered. father says this, and mother says that. my land is disposed of among my papist neighbours. all my congregation have similar experiences. this makes things very unpleasant, and nothing can ever bring back the kind, neighbourly feeling of old. the papist clergy are the cause of it all. their church is nothing if not absolute, and dominancy is their aim. the protestant party will get no quarter. i do not say we shall be murdered, or even personally maltreated. but when the large majority of a district want to see the back of you, with the idea of dividing your farm or your church lands, they have many ways of making things so unpleasant that you would soon be glad to go. for my own part, i should endeavour to leave the country at the earliest possible moment. and that is what protestants out of , would tell you. the clergy are inimical to england. here and there you find a conservative, and, strange to say, the scholarly men, what you might call the gentlemanly party, are against home rule. these, unhappily, are very few. the maynooth men are violently against england." this cleric called attention to the opinion of dr. wylie, of edinburgh, who has made a special study of the matter. the learned professor says the more palpable decadence of ireland dates from the erection of maynooth. before the institution of this school the irish priests were educated in france, then the least ultramontane country in popish europe. they could not be there without imbibing a certain portion of the spirit of "gallican liberties." it was argued that by educating them at home, we should have a class of priests more national and more attached to british rule; at least we would have gentlemen and scholars, who would humanise their flocks. these have since been shown to be miserable sophisms. "maynooth is a thoroughly ultramontane school. we have exchanged the french-bred priest, illread in dens, with low notions of the supremacy, and proportionally high notions of the british crown, for a race of crafty, jesuitical, intriguing, thorough-trained priests of the ultramontane school, who recognise but one power in the world--the pontifical--and who are incurably alienated from british interests and rule. the loud and fearful curses fulminated from the altar, which come rolling across the channel, mingled with the wrathful howls of a priest-ridden and maddened people, proclaim the result. these are your maynooth scholars and gentlemen! these are your pious flocks, tended and fed by the lettered priests of maynooth! better had we flung our money into the sea, than sent it across the channel, to be a curse in the first place to ireland, and a curse in the second place to ourselves, by the demoralising and anti-national sentiments it has been employed to propagate. the better a priest, the worse a citizen. and whom have government found their bitterest enemies? who are the parties who have invariably withstood all their plans for civilising ireland? why, those very priests whom they have clothed, and educated, and fed." such, according to an expert, are the men who now manipulate the voting powers of the irish people. the priests do not deny that they have this full control; they merely say they have a right to it. bishop walsh, of dublin, says that as priests, and independent of all human organisations, they have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide the people in this momentous proceeding, as in every other proceeding where the interests of catholicity as well as the interests of irish nationality are involved. he suggested, and the suggestion was adopted, that at all the political conventions held in the various irish counties an ex-officio vote should be given to the priests! this embodied the principle that if home rule became law the irish priesthood would have privileges which would make them absolute rulers of ireland. cardinal logue says:--"we are face to face at the present moment with a great disobedience to ecclesiastical authority." this was in view of the parnellite rebellion against priestly dictation. "the doctrines of the present day," said the good cardinal, "are calculated (horror!) to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and (here the cardinal must have shivered with unspeakable disgust) to let the people use their own judgment." these are cardinal's words, not mine. to make any comment would be to gild refined gold, to paint the lily, to throw a perfume o'er the violet. well might mr. gladstone say nineteen years ago:--"it is the peculiarity of roman theology, that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." archbishop croke was the inspirer of the tipperary troubles, worked out by his tools, dillon, o'brien, and humphreys. dr. croke helped to found the gaelic athletic association, which is well-known to be the nucleus of a rebel army. dr. croke gave £ to the manchester murderers' memorial fund, and accompanied the gift with a letter stating that the men who murdered police-sergeant brett were "wrongfully arrested, unfairly tried, barbarously executed, and went like heroes to their doom." it was dr. croke who supported a movement to raise a pension for james stephens, the fenian head-centre, the famous number one, the general of the irish revolutionary brotherhood. we are asked to believe that this gentleman and his crew of subordinate clergy are eminently loyal, and that the moment a home rule bill puts it into their power to injure england, from that very moment they will become friendly indeed, will cease to do evil and learn to do well, and that the altars from which england is now every sunday hotly denounced will in future vibrate with the resonant expression of sacerdotal affection. these gentlemen must have a wonderful opinion of the gullibility of the great saxon race. but as they see a certain portion believe in mr. gladstone they may expect them to believe in anything. to swallow the g.o.m. plus harcourt, healy, conybeare, cobb, o'brien, and the home rule bill is indeed a wonderful feat of deglutition. raphoe, (co. donegal), july th. no. .--what they think in county donegal. the stranorlar people can be excessively funny. in a well-known public resort yesterday i witnessed a specimen of their sportive style. a young fellow was complaining that the examining doctor of some recruiting station had refused him "by raison of my feet." "i heerd tell they wouldn't take men wid more than fifteen inches of foot on thim," remarked a bystander. "the queen couldn't shtand the expinse at all at all in leather." "arrah, now, will ye be aisy," said another. "sure, micky isn't all out so bad as tim gallagher over there beyant, that has to get up an' go downstairs afore he can tur-rn round in bed. an' all on account iv the size iv his feet. 'tis thrue what i spake, divil a lie i tell ye. the boy has to get up and go down shtairs, an' go into the sthreet, an' come up the other way afore he can tur-rn round, the crathur." "hould yer whist, now, till i tell ye," said another. "ye know kerrigan's whiskey-shop. well, one day kerrigan was standin' chattin' wid his wife, when the shop-windy all at once wint dark, an' kerrigan roars out, 'what for are ye puttin' up the shutters so airly?' says he. an' faix, 'twas no wondher ye'd think it, for ould hennessy of ballybofey had fallen down in the street, an' it was the two good-lookin' feet of him stickin' up that was darkenin' the shop. ax kerrigan himself av it wasn't." a roar of laughter followed this sally, and the rejected recruit was comforted. stranorlar is pleasantly situated on the river finn, in a fertile valley surrounded by an amphitheatre of green hills, beyond which may in some direction be seen the more imposing summits of the donegal highlands. the walk to meenglas, lord lifford's irish residence, would be considered of wonderful beauty if its extensive views were visible anywhere near birmingham; but in ireland, where lovely scenery is so uncommonly common, you hardly give it a second glance. the tenantry are mostly nationalist, if they can be said to be anything at all. they one and all speak highly of lord lifford, whose kindness and long-suffering are administered _con amore_ by genial captain baillie. they have no opinions on home rule or, indeed, on any other political subject, and will agree with anything the stranger may wish. whatever you profess as your own opinion is certain to be theirs, and like artemus ward they might conclude their letters with "i don't know what your politics are, but i agree with them." every man jack of the catholic peasantry votes as he is told by his priest, and no amount of argument, no amount of most convincing logic, no earthly power could make him do otherwise. he will agree with you, will swear all you say, will go further than you go yourself, will clinch every argument you offer in the most enthusiastic way. then he will vote in the opposite direction. he thinks that in voting against the priest he would be voting against god, and his religion compels him to conscientiously vote against his conscience, if any. a burning and shining light among the home rulers of stranorlar having been indicated, i contrived to meet him accidentally as it were, and after some preliminary remarks of a casual nature my friend informed me that he was agin home rule, as, in his opinion, it would desthroy the counthry; that the farmers believed they would get the land for nothing, and that they were told this by "priests and lawyers;" that he believed this to be a delusion from which the people would have a dreadful awakening; that protestants were better off, cleaner, honester than catholics; that they were much more industrious and far better farmers, and so forth, and so forth. this man is a red hot nationalist, and was under the impression he was "having his leg pulled," hence his accommodating speech. when taxed with flagrant insincerity he only smiled, and tacitly admitted the soft impeachment. farmers you meet in rural lanes will profess earnest unionism, but--find out their religion--you need ask no more. whatever they may say, whatever their alleged opinions may be, matters not a straw. they must and will vote as the priest tells them. so that the last franchise act endows every priest with a thousand votes or so. will anybody attempt to disprove this? will any living irishman venture to contradict this statement? the fact being admitted, englishmen may be trusted to see its effect. is there any class or trading interest which would be by working men entrusted with such enormous power? and these thousand-vote priests are unfriendly to england, as is proved by their own utterances and by innumerable overt acts. all of which merits consideration. the stranorlar folks are warm politicians. at the present moment feeling runs particularly high, on account of the riot on king william's day, to wit, july twelfth. two orangemen were returning from castlefinn, a few miles away, where a demonstration had taken place, and passing through stranorlar, accompanied by their sisters, they were set upon by the populace, and brutally maltreated. several shots were fired, and some of the rioters were slightly wounded or rather grazed by snipe shot, but not so seriously as to stop their daily avocations. the catholic party allege that the orangemen assaulted the village in general, firing without provocation. the protestant party say that this is absurd, and that it is not yet known who fired the shots. a second case, less serious, is also on the carpet. a solitary orangeman returning from the same celebration is said to have been waylaid, beaten, and robbed by a number of men who went two miles to meet with him. this also is claimed as orange rowdyism. a protestant handicraftsman said:--"if we had a catholic parliament in dublin we should not be able to put our head out of doors. those who in england say otherwise are very ignorant. i have no patience with them. only the other day i heard an englishman who had been in the country six hours, all of which he had spent in a railway train, arguing against an irish gentleman who has spent all his life in the country. 'give 'em their civil rights,' says this english fellow. he could say nothing else. give 'em their civil rights,' says he. 'what civil rights are they deprived of?' says the other. 'give 'em their civil rights,' says he. that was all he could say. he was for all the world like a poll-parrot. he was one of these well-fed fellows, with about three inches of fat on his ribs and three inches of bone in his skull, and a power of sinse _outside_ his head. he turned round on me and asked me to agree with him. when i didn't he insulted me. 'i see by your hands,' says he, 'that you've been working with them, and not with your brains,' says he. well, he was a man with a gray beard, but not a sign of gray hair on his head, so says i, 'your beard,' says i, 'is twenty-five years younger than the rest of your hair, and it looks twenty-five years older.' i see,' says i, 'that _you_ have been working with your jaws and not with your brains.' that made him vexed. he didn't know what to say next, and 'twas well for him. he was too ignorant for this counthry, though he might do very well for them places where they vote for such men as harcourt or the like of him. "the people of these parts are skinned alive by their religion. not a hand's turn can be done without money. money for christening, for confession, for everything from the cradle to the grave. and when they're dead the poor folks are still ruining the counthry, for their relatives run up and down begging money to get their souls out of purgatory. i have no objection to that; let them do it if they like, but let them not say they are poor because of england. the more money they pay the sooner their father's or mother's soul is out of torment. of course they spend all they have. i was speaking with a priest lately, and i said, 'suppose i fell into finn-water, and a man who saw me drowning said, "i'll pull ye out for half-a-crown or a sovereign," what would ye think of him?' says the priest, 'i'd think him a brute and a heathen.' 'but suppose, instead of finn-water it was purgatory i was in, and the priest said, "i'll pull ye out for five pounds," what about him?' 'good morning to ye,' says the sogarth aroon (dear priest). there was no answer for me." another stranorlar man said:--"when the bill passed the second reading, there was not a hill round about, for many a mile, without a blazing tar-barrel on it, and the houses were lit up till ye'd think the places were on fire. the people were rejoicing for they knew not what. says one to me, 'ye can pack up yer clothes,' says he. they think they will now get rid of the english, and have things all their own way. that's their general idea. all their rejoicing passed off without a word of dissent from any unionist. but if we rejoiced--! suppose the bill were thrown out, and we lit a tar-barrel. we'd be stoned, and, if possible, swept off the very face of the earth. on st. patrick's day, march , they march over the place, flags flying, drums beating, bands playing, and nobody says a word against it. but if we started an orange procession on july in stranorlar, we'd be knocked into smithereens. and yet in the town we are about half-and-half. of course, when you get out into the wild districts the romanists greatly outnumber us. the plea of reduction of rent being required is very absurd when you come to examine the matter. many of them pay three or four pounds a year only. what reduction on that sum would do them any real good?" a land agent of donegal showed me one page of a rent book, that i might bear witness to indisputable facts. there were twenty-one annual rents on the page, and eleven of them were under two pounds--most of them, in fact, were under thirty shillings. one man held thirty-three acres for thirty-three shillings per annum. he had paid no rent for two years. another estate in donegal has two thousand tenants for a total rent of £ , . the agent has to look after all these "farmers"--to conciliate, threaten, soother, bully, beg, pray, promise, cajole, hunt, treat, fight, curse, and comether the whole two thousand a whole year for, and in consideration of, the princely sum of a hundred and forty pounds. many of the farmers have the privilege of selling turf enough to clear the rent several times over, and of course every man can shoot at the agent as much as he chooses, his sport in this direction being only limited by his supply of ammunition. of late their powder has given out. could not something be done for these deserving men? a superior home ruler, one of those honest visionaries sometimes met in ireland, said:--"for my own part, i confess that i aspire to complete independence. then, and not till then, would the two countries be friendly. we in ulster are ten times more patriotic than irishmen elsewhere, for it is in ulster that we have been most deeply wronged. the hamiltons of abercorn planted the country round here with scotch settlers, and various agencies between and are said to have brought over more than fifty thousand scottish families to ulster, which was already populated to its utmost extent. the irish were dispossessed, kicked out, and they have been out ever since. the earls of tyrone and tyrconnel took flight to save their heads, and six counties were declared confiscated--londonderry, donegal, tyrone, fermanagh, cavan, and armagh. these were all 'planted' with english and scotch colonists. the land was given to certain favourites by the english government, which at that time was the stronger, and has remained so ever since when we ask for our own again you cry out 'robbery, robbery!' _we_ are the people to say 'stop thief!' you say the owners of the land rebelled, and their property was rightly confiscated. we say they had a right to rebel, and that rebellion was an honourable action. you took the country at first by force and fraud. we have, and always had, a right to regain what belongs to us, by any means in our power. we have never expressed affection for the english crown. we have never affected loyalty. we have been open, honourable enemies, and have always said we were biding our time. we are accused of fraud, of duplicity. never was any accusation so ill-founded. i can refer to a hundred, aye, to a thousand utterances of my countrymen which clearly set forth the sentiments which animate every single individual irishman. these settlers are not irishmen. their best friends would never claim for them irish nationality. most of them came from the south-west of scotland, where the most rigid and bigoted presbyterianism flourished. their creed, as well as ours, forbade any intermarrying. separate they were, and separate they remain. you might as well try to mix dogs and cats. and the attitude of the two races is mutually antagonistic--exactly like dogs and cats. they have led a dog and cat life from the first, and if the scots have thriven while the kelts have made little progress, it is because the scots have been favoured by the english government, which is composed of teutons like themselves. let the scots stick to england. it suits them, it does not suit us. the welsh don't like you either, but they have not the pluck to spit it out. they will tell irishmen what they think, and it is not flattering to england. they are quite as bitter as irishmen, and, like them, look on england as the biggest humbug, hypocrite, and robber in the world. i never heard a welshman speak well of england, and i have spoken with scores of them. now, we have a religious difference with england, which taffy has not. "we claim that our nation is more talented than stupid england, more sparkling, more brilliant. but we also say that as we are more sentimental, and as sentiment is to us a matter of life and death, we cannot develop our industries, we cannot do ourselves justice, while subjugated by england. freedom is our watchword. we want an army, a navy, a diplomacy of our own. we do not admit that england has any right to control our action, and we defy any man to prove that any country has a right to dictate our laws. independence must come in the long run. everything is tending in that direction. we may not get home rule at present, but we _shall_ get it. then we shall be able to report progress. i believe that the material prosperity of this country will increase by leaps and bounds in exact proportion to the loosening of saxon restraint, and freedom from selfish english interference. our trade has been deliberately strangled, our manufactures deliberately ruined, by english influence on behalf of english interests. then you ask us to believe that we have benefited by our union with england! we do not believe it. england has been the greatest modern curse, spreading her octopus arms over every weak country in the world. she goes to make money, and says she only wishes to push forward civilisation. read labouchere's opinion of england, and you will see what she is--a greedy, whining hypocrite. she holds india by fear, at the point of the bayonet--all for greed. then her speakers get up on their philanthropic platforms, and after shooting a few thousand niggers and poisoning off the rest with rum, they say that such and such a country is now under the blessed rule of england, which is established merely for the propagation of the truth as it is in jesus. you make out that your rum, rifles, and missionaries are only instruments in the hands of the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts. away with such hypocrisy! england is a big bully, crushing the weak and truckling to the strong--truckling to the weak, even, when fairly taken to. look at the transvaal. when i see what a handful of dutch farmers did with your grand army--when i see how a country with less than a quarter of the population of ireland freed itself and knocked your bold army into a cocked hat, i am ashamed to be an irishman submitting to foreign rule. you will at any rate see why we irishmen in ulster are even more rebellious than our southern countrymen. it is because these devilish plantations were in the north, and because we are outnumbered in the north by men who are really foreigners. let them be loyal. no doubt it suits them best. but we will only be loyal to our country, which is ireland, not england. and if these scots, wrongly called ulstermen, don't like the new arrangement, they can leave the country. no obstacle will be placed in the way of their departure. that i can promise you. they will leave the land, i suppose? that being so, we can spare the settlers. and as they got the land for nothing, they must be content to part with it on the same terms. now you understand the no rent cry. now you understand the no landlord cry. the land was stolen from the people, and the people carefully remember the fact. you hear nationalists speaking ill of the irish members. the members have done well for us. they have done grandly. fourscore irishmen have conquered the british empire, and without firing a shot. that after all beats the record of the boers, but they got complete independence. we are not yet there; but it will come, it will come." an equally intelligent unionist, who bore a scottish name, said:--"does it suit england to throw us overboard? because that means the giving up of the country. you can't hold ireland without a friend in it. twice the protestant population have saved it for you. its geographical position forbids you to give it up. that would ruin you at once. and yet immediate separation would be far better than a wasting agitation. better plunge over a precipice than be bled to death. better blow out your brains than be roasted at a slow fire. england is being kicked to death by spiders. and all in the interests of rome. if the people here had any opinions i would not say a word against anything they might do, but they have none at all. they show their teeth because they are told to do so. all the disturbances which disgrace the country are excited by the priests, who pretend to disapprove of them, but who secretly approve. for the priests have the people thoroughly in hand, and whatever they really disapprove they can stop in one moment. "there is an organised clerical conspiracy to resist the law and to keep the agitation on foot, with the object of obtaining a complete catholic ascendency. they bleed the poor people to death with their exactions, and the number of new buildings they have lately erected in ireland almost exceeds belief. we have a splendid new romanist church in this little place. well may the people say they can't pay rent. when cardinal logue's father died there was a collection for the general church which realised more than eight hundred pounds. when a priest dies or when a priest's relative dies there is always a collection for the cause. eight hundred pounds out of the starving peasantry of donegal, for whose relief the english are always collecting money! cardinal logue's father was lord leitrim's coachman, and was on the spot when my lord was shot. the horse fell lame at the right moment. curious coincidence--very. this home rule farce is growing rather stale. cannot the english see that it is urged by a set of thieves and traitors? cannot they see that brains and property are everywhere against it? and gladstone's speeches show such ignorance of the subject that no irishman can read or listen with common patience. to judge from his irish orations i should say that he is not fit to be prime minister to a parliament of idiots. what do you think?" i was sorry to dissent, but i said that to the best of my knowledge and belief mr. gladstone was of all men best fitted for such a post. stranorlar (co. donegal), july th. no. .--a sample of irish "loyalty." the country round here seems especially rich in minerals of all sorts. bog-ore, to be spoken of as bog ore, is abundant, and manganese is known to exist in large quantities. soapstone of excellent quality is also plentiful, and the peasantry will tell you that on the passing of the home rule bill they will at once proceed to dig out the inexhaustible stores of gold, silver, lead, iron, tin, and coal, with which the district abounds. ireland is a perfect el dorado, and when the brutal saxon shall have taken his foot off her throat, when parlimint and the sojers allow the quarries to be worked, the mines to be sunk, the diamonds under belfast to be dug up, the country will once more be prosperous, as in the owld ancient times, when the o'briens and o'connells cut each other's throats in peace, and harried their respective neighbourhoods without interference. captain ricky, of mount hall, is exploiting the bog-ore, and sending it to england by thousands of tons. the stuff is an oxide of iron and is used for purifying gas. the queerest feature of the use of bog-ore is the fact that when used up it is worth twenty-five per cent. more than before. delivered to the gas companies at thirty shillings a ton, it fetches forty shillings when the gas-men have done with it. it seems to be composed of peat which by a few millions of years of saturation in water containing iron has become like iron-rust. the soapstone of killygordon is used instead of fire-clay, and is also made into french chalk. or rather it might be, but that the captain declines to proceed with its extraction pending the home rule scare. there is much alder on the estate, which is watered by the river finn. this is the right wood for the manufacture of clogs for the people of lancashire and yorkshire. captain ricky sends tons of these interesting articles to the sister isle. men are turning out these favourite instruments of feminine correction, in a rough state, by boat loads. when the coster's done a-jumping on his mother, he should thank ireland for his clogs. when the festive miner rejoices, his dancing would lack the distinguishing clatter which is its richest charm, without alder grown on the banks of the donegal finn. the countries were made to run in harness. one is the complement of the other. the brainy dwellers of hibernia know this, and stick like limpets to england. only the visionary, the lazy, the ne'er-do weels, the incompetent, the disorderly, the ignorant, the ambitious, want home rule. the contemners of law and order want to flourish and grow fat. the healys and sextons and all of that ilk know that while under an irish parliament their country would be ruined, yet that they themselves would pick up something in the general confusion, while dillon, like mrs. gargery, could be ever on the rampage, carrying out his promises of dire revenge, and flourishing like a young bay tree. nobody here rejoiced when the bill was reported amended. they are losing faith in its merits. their simple faith received a severe shock after the return to power of the three-acres-and-a-cow government. then the labourers' dwellings act proved a fraud. the peasantry asked the neighbouring landowners for an acre of ground and a new cottage. a neighbouring j.p. to-day told me that he had more than twenty applications from people who are now awaiting the gold mines, the great factories which the new irish government are about to open. if you would remain poor, vote for the unionist candidate. if you would become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, if you would occupy the place of the protestant landlords, if you would preserve your immortal soul from eternal flames, vote as instructed by father gilhooly. a patriot priest yesterday said that the day of independence would be the "day of ireland." he should have called it the _dies iræ_. a scottish covenanter, not of the straitest sect, has no faith in the home rule bill. he said:--"the people up in the mountains, those who want home rule, or rather those who have voted for it and expect to benefit by it, are all of the class no act of parliament would ever help. they don't farm their land, and they don't want to farm it. half of it lies to waste every year, and they cut turf which they get for nothing, and sell it in the small towns about for three or four shillings a load, instead of making the land produce all it will. go to their houses at ten in the morning, and you will find them smoking over the fire. my people are up and at work by six o'clock every morning in the week. the scots farmers round strabane are that keen on getting on that you can't get them away from their work, which is their pleasure. they are so keen on making the most of the ground that they are doing away with the hedges, and substituting barbed wire, merely to gain the difference in area of ground to till. look at yon brae-face. every yard tilled right up to the top. the papist peasantry would never do that. you want to know what's the reason? goodness knows. all the protestants round here have got on till they have farms. there are no protestant labourers. if english working men, agricultural fellows, would settle in ireland, they would soon get their three acres and a cow. the people who can and will do the best with the land ought to have it, that's my theory. ireland everywhere illustrates the principle of the survival of the fittest. the only way to succeed is by work. the catholic irish are so accustomed to leave everything to the priest that they have no self-reliance, and in worldly matters they always ask, who will help us? they are all beggars by nature. the duchess of marlborough and other kind but mistaken ladies have pauperised some districts of donegal. the people have a natural indisposition to work, and a natural disposition to beg. as for loyalty and tolerance, they have none of either. you never saw industry without other virtues, you never saw laziness without other vices. these everlasting grumblers are a generation of vipers. they are a peevish and perverse set of lazy, skulking swindlers. they can pay. every man could pay his rent and be comfortably off if he liked. the protestant farmers pay and get along. and we agree that the landlords favour the other sect. they know that we will do the right thing, and they let us do it, but the papists may do less--for less than the right thing is what the landlord expects from them. he thinks himself lucky if his papist tenants come anyway near the mark. therefore i say, and any protestant will say, the papists are favoured by the landlords." a staunch conservative, though not a land-owner, said:--"we want amendment of the parliamentary voting regulations. no clergyman should be allowed to sit in the revision court. scandals without end could be cited to show the necessity of this. i would, of course, exclude all sects, though no protestant preacher ever takes part directly or indirectly in any of our political meetings. when a man has to make oath as to the validity of his claim to the suffrage he will often look at the priest who sits watching him. he gets a nod, and he goes on with his swearing. the perjury of the irish revision courts is something fearful, and no one pays any attention to it. the papists swear just anything. they get absolved, but a protestant has not this great advantage and that holds him back. that is the papist explanation. in my presence the home rule inspector of this district--we call the people who watch and work the registers the inspectors--swore that james kelly, of cross roads, killygordon, was the present tenant, the holder of the license, and the freeholder of a public-house at the spot mentioned. besides this he swore that the name james kelly was on the signboard. he therefore proposed to poll a james kelly. now the person in question went to america in , and never returned. his name was not on the signboard, and the license was for another person. the judge declined to hear any further evidence from inspector francis mclaughlin. that was the only penalty enforced. such things happen every day in irish revision courts. "a man named james burns put in a claim for a vote on behalf of land held at stroangebbah. he had none there. what he had was at aughkeely, and this was not sufficient to entitle him to vote. yes, his name should be spelt byrnes, but the irish often prefer the protestant form of the name. well, nobody believed that he was the tenant of stroangebbah; he was said to be a lodger only. the judge asked him for proof. he presented a paper purporting to be a receipt for rent for stroangebbah, but in reality the receipt was for the ground at aughkeely, which did not qualify. he curled up the paper so as to show that his name was on it, and the judge instantly passed his claim, and placed him on the roll. a young fellow named robert ewing at once exposed the trick, but the judge declared that having placed burns on the roll, he must remain there until next revision. judge keogh was his name. yes, you would think an irishman and a good catholic would have seen through such a trumpery trick. "when an illiterate declares for whom he will vote, we sometimes have from twenty to thirty outsiders in the polling-booth. in england the court is cleared, and even the policeman has to go outside. but in this favoured country any blackguard who likes to fill up a declaration of secrecy, and go before a magistrate, can be present at the whole of the proceedings. there is no secrecy for the illiterates. any corner-boy, any ruffian, any blackguard in the district can come in and hear for whom men vote. these corner boys all get declarations in their fists, and they march in gangs from one booth to another. it's intimidation, no less. get some m.p. to mention this as having taken place at stranorlar. the people of whom i complain were not even voters. anybody could be present. ridiculous to talk of the ballot-box in ireland. "the morley magistrates are in many cases a disgrace to the country. we used to have an idea in these parts that a small publican could not legally sit on the bench. james mcglinchy, j.p., is a small publican of brockagh. barring his trade, he's not so bad, as he can read and write. but if you saw the lists, and if you knew the men recommended----! englishmen have no idea what low scoundrels have been placed on the bench in this country. imperfect education we do not so much mind when conjoined with character. o'donnell is not a bad sort, but he couldn't write 'adjourned.' two magistrates were needed, and nobody else arrived. therefore the difficult word was necessary, and o'donnell felt it was beyond him. he called up a policeman, and ordered him to do it. whereat the county makes merry. there should be an education test. can all the english magistrates spell 'adjourned'? you think so? that's very good. not right that a man who can't spell 'adjourned' should give another man a spell of imprisonment." a roman catholic gentleman thus summed up the character of his particular neighbourhood:--"the upper classes of both sects are in every way equal. among the lower classes i observe that the protestants do as much work as they can, while the papists do as little as they can. this accounts for the difference in their appearance and position. then the protestants are far better educated, and have arrived at the knowledge that everything that is good must be gained by exertion, and that there is for them at least no substitute. the others talk as if after the establishment of an irish parliament money would be found growing on the bushes. no one need try to change their opinion. when the time comes to vote they will vote as their priest tells them. someone has said that the british government might subsidise the church, and so buy her off. it could not be done. the bishops want power. i do not agree with them, and i do not support or admit their claim to direct their flocks in political matters." the marquess of conyngham, whom i met at strabane, said:--"the people of donegal are pleasant, kind, and civil. taking them all round, they are much more energetic than the southerners, and we were making fair progress until these home rule bills were brought in. the country was being opened up, and things were beginning to improve, when the bill came and blighted everything. now the people are growing idle and discontented. they are all right when left alone. everybody likes the donegal peasants, and they deserve to be liked. only leave them alone; that's what they want; and not home rule nor any other quackery." strange things continue to happen in ireland. this does not refer to the continuous cutting-off of cows' tails, the slitting of horses' tongues, and other similar expressions of impatience for the good time coming, but to some strange things that have happened in connection with agricultural affairs. sir samuel hayes decided to abandon a farm which would not pay, although he had no rent to meet. he was his own landlord, but he did not work the farm. that was done by a bailiff, who, curiously enough, was the highest bidder for the land. he of all men should have known that if the farm would not pay expenses when there was no rent, it would not reward the man who had rent to pay. this reasoning proved fallacious. the farm which without rent proved a loss, in the same hands turned out when rent was charged a perfect gold-mine. in another case, a bailiff on leaving his employ expended on land the accumulated savings of his thrifty years, and--strange to say--his savings amounted to about three times the sum of his wages during his life's service. a man who, having a pound a week, can save three pounds, would in england be regarded as a prodigy. in ireland such things happen every day. particulars as to the cases hereinbefore-mentioned can be obtained from anybody in killygordon, which is altogether a remarkable place--to say nothing of its name, which for obvious reasons has the misfortune to be unpleasant to the grand old man. _nomen, omen?_ an octogenarian j.p. said:--"they talk of gold and silver mines, and lead and copper mines, and iron and quicksilver mines, but mining in ireland cannot, as a rule, be made to pay. everything exists in ireland, but in such small quantities. the seams and veins are so small. mr. ritchie, of belfast, spent several fortunes in mining for coal, iron, and other things. there was iron at ballyshannon, but what was the good? it cost less to bring iron to england from algiers. we had no railway to donegal, fifteen miles away, and cartage was too expensive. so far from home rule doing us any good, it would be a cruel blow to the country, and especially to the poor. employment would become very scarce, as everybody who had money invested in ireland would be in haste to realise and get it away. there would be no new enterprises, although the poor folk say, "we'll get employment in big factories and mines." where's the money to come from? from the irish parliament, they say. and where will they get it from? oh, a parliament always has money. all the money comes from parliament, which, in fact, actually makes money. the english parliament makes all the goold sovereigns, and when the irish parliament commences to manufacture goold sovereigns at dublin, then ireland must be rich. did not mr. gladstone say there would be too much money? did not he say that in parliament? that's what the poorest and most ignorant people of donegal say. the english home rulers, by their support of the movement are inflicting injury on the irish poor. we want the country opening up with railways. the tourist district is unequalled in europe. good hotels now, but you reach them mostly by cars. balfour was giving us rails. that one man in five years did more good to ireland than all other agencies operating for the previous forty years. i have thought the thing out, and i can speak for that period with certainty. why could not they let him alone? the blackguards of these parts still shout 'hell to balfour.' "home rule means to england a weakening, a loss of prestige, a new and a terrible danger. the _independent_ says, 'when ireland next fights england she will not fight alone?' very true. there is a strong anti-english feeling among the lower american classes, who are largely irish, who have votes, and by their votes can influence american policy. let me point out the opinion of lieutenant-colonel butler as recorded in 'the great lone land.' here it is:-- "you will be told that the hostility of the inhabitants of the united states is confined to one class, and that class, though numerically large, is politically insignificant. do not believe it for one instant; the hostility to england is universal, it is more deep-rooted than any other feeling, it is an instinct and not a reason, and consequently possesses the dogged strength of unreasoning antipathy. i tell you, mr. bull, that were you pitted to-morrow against a race that had not one idea in kindred with your own, were you fighting a deadly struggle against a despotism the most galling on earth, were you engaged with an enemy whose grip was around your neck and whose foot was on your chest, that english-speaking cousin of yours over the atlantic, whose language is your language, whose literature is your literature, whose civil code is begotten from your digests of law, would stir no hand, no foot, to save you, would gloat over your agony, would keep the ring while you were being knocked out of all semblance of motion and power, and would not be very far distant when the moment came to hold a feast of eagles over your vast, disjointed limbs. make no mistake about it, and be not blinded by ties of kindred or belief." and, further, "you will find them the firm friend of the russian, because that russian is likely to become your enemy in herat, in cabul, in kashgar, in constantinople. nay, even should any woman-killing sepoy put you to sore strait by indiscriminate and ruthless slaughter, he will be your cousin's friend for the simple reason that he is your enemy." without accepting the gallant colonel's dictum, it is as well to bear it in mind. a pensive youth in ballybofey was deeply engaged with a scrap of ballad literature, not by any means without literary merit. for and in consideration of a saxon sixpence i became the proprietor of the lay, which is being circulated by thousands throughout ireland. those who uphold the reputation of their irish allies for loyalty to the queen, and friendship to the english nation, will, doubtless, find their convictions deepened and strengthened by the following sample verses addressed to intending recruits:-- ye whose spirits will not bow in peace to parish tyrants longer, ye who wear the villain brow, and ye who pine in hopeless hunger, fools, without the brave man's faith, all slaves and starvelings who are willing to sell yourselves to shame and death, accept the fatal saxon shilling. ere you from your mountains go to feel the scourge of foreign fever, swear to serve the faithless foe who lures you from your land for ever, swear henceforth its tools to be to slaughter trained by ceaseless drilling, honour, home, and liberty abandoned for a saxon shilling. go--to find 'mid crime and toil the doom to which such guilt is hurried, go--to leave on indian soil your bones to bleach, accursed, unburied, go--to crush the just and brave whose wrongs with wrath the world are filling, go--to slay each brother slave, or spurn the blood-stained saxon shilling. irish hearts! why should you bleed, to swell the tide of english glory? aiding despots in their need, who've changed our green so oft to gory? none save those who wish to see the noblest killed, the meanest killing, and true hearts severed from the free, will take again the saxon shilling. the british soldier is the meanest killing the noblest. the poet's name is buggy. all this is very surprising. painted by paddy mr. john bull, j.p., will hardly recognise himself. throughout the nationalist literature he is represented as a liar, a coward, a bully, a hypocrite, a tyrant, and a robber. if he now consented to be made the instrument of persons whose ascertained opinions exactly harmonise with those enunciated above, the epithets of fool and idiot will doubtless be added to the list. and in this instance the evil speakers would be quite right. _quod demonstrandum est._ killygordon, july th. no. .--a truly patriotic priest. the rhythmical rocking of the little engine of the west donegal line running across from killygordon seemed to say ceaselessly-- here's a health to ye, father o'flynn, slainthe (health), and slainthe, and slainthe agin-- powerfullest pracher, an' tinderest tacher, an' kindliest crature in ould donegal! father o'flynn must have been like a priest i met on sunday, a loyalist and a conservative. priests of the old school are becoming scarcer and scarcer every year, but one or two still exist. they do not "get on." it is understood that their political attitude forbids promotion. a priest who confesses to a respect for the queen is not likely to be acceptable to the multitude. a priest who believes that the british laws are just and equitable, and that things would be better remaining as they are, is looked upon as a _lusus naturæ_. he said:--"i am a south of ireland man, and was educated at douai. i have no sympathy with the great bulk of the maynooth men, who are mostly peasants and the sons of peasants. i do not think that the maynooth course is sufficient in one generation to lift the sons to any great intellectual height above the besotted ignorance of the parents. i believe in heredity, and i say that most of my colleagues are only shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years. the low-bred men are now the dominant power. instead of tranquillising the people, which i hold to be the duty of the clergy, they have done all they could to awaken and keep alive their most dangerous passions. and to rouse the irish, especially the southern irish, is a matter of the greatest facility. i hold that the clergy by degenerating into mere political agents are strangely short-sighted. their spiritual influence will in time be dangerously undermined, and in the long run they will take nothing by their motion. the parnellite party will grow stronger and stronger, and the extreme party, the party of revolution, which now lacks a leader, would on the passing of a home rule bill become the dominant power. that is a great and salient factor of which up to the present english politicians have taken no account. the party of revolution is the party which under an irish parliament would be master of the situation. leaders will not be lacking. but at present the party must from the necessity of the case be amorphous, and therefore, politically and as a power, practically non-existent. pass the bill, and then you will see something. a new party, the party of independence, or, as they will call it, of freedom, will take shape and formidably influence events. the temptation to take the lead will be great. independence and separation will be a most popular cry. the present men must either join the swim or be denounced as traitors, and as healy cannot now visit dundalk without two hundred policemen to protect him, while william o'brien was nearly torn to pieces at cork--would, in fact, have been murdered but for the police--you may conceive what would be the state of things when we have a revolutionary party and when the police were no longer under the fair and judicial control of the british government. pass the bill and look out for the revolutionary party. they will have an immense backing in point of numbers. and numbers rule in ireland, not intelligence. the bill will, of course, give nothing that the peasants expect. the fault will assuredly lie with john bull. the expectations of the ignorant, that is, the great mass of the people, will be woefully disappointed. who is to blame? they will ask. numbers of politicians are waiting to tell them. who but the brutal, greedy, selfish, perfidious saxon? an agitation will succeed, compared with which the worst times of the land league were preferable. i shudder to think of the chaos, the seething and weltering confusion of the time to come. the irish people, the poor ignorants, will suffer most. and yet they are innocent in this matter. they have, indeed, been blamed with the excesses of a few of their number, but they are, if left to themselves, a most kindly and law-abiding people. the donegal peasants are the best in the country. you will see poverty, but the degradation of filthiness and laziness is not nearly so marked as in the south and west, where the climate is warm, moist, enervating. "what, then, are my opinions, expressed in a concise form? i will tell you. they are what _you_ would call sound. they are the opinions of balfour, of lord salisbury. i hold mr. balfour in profound esteem as a wise and sagacious administrator, a terror to evil-doers, and an encourager of those who do well. i have a real affection for mr. balfour, as for a great benefactor of my beloved country. for i love my country so well that i feel the keenest personal interest in her welfare. perhaps i have a deeper affection for ireland than even tim healy or sexton or harcourt or o'brien. what do i think of gladstone? i think him a scourge of ireland, a curse, a destroyer far worse than oliver cromwell. a heaven-born statesman? do his followers call him that? well, i can only say that i hope and trust that heaven will not be blessed with any further family." a military officer resident in this region, an irishman bred and born, said, "it's all a matter of religion. i was the other day reading maxwell's account of the irish rebellion of , and i observed that although the northern rebellion, which was the most dangerous, as being the best organised, was mainly led by protestants, yet in other parts of ireland, when a suspected person was captured by the rebels, the first question was, not are you in favour of the irish republic, but what is your religion? and the protestants generally had their throats cut. the same thing would occur again, under similar circumstances. religion would be the test. if a general state of lawlessness should at any time arise, the protestants in lonely districts would not be safe from murder. yes, i _do_ say it, and i stick to it. a very large number of outrages have been committed which would not have taken place but for the religion of the offending party. it is a virtue to lie to a heretic, to cheat him, to damage him, to keep him out of heaven if possible. anybody who knows catholic ireland would agree with this most heartily. they believe that whosoever killeth heretics doeth god service. "irish folks are better than the people of other nations, and also much worse. when they are good they are very good, and when they are bad they are very bad. they run to extremes in a way which cool-headed britons do not understand. they are impulsive, and they jump to conclusions. their great disadvantage is a crushing clerical influence. what's the use of thinking about anything when father pat does it for them? what's the use of listening to argument when you must in the end vote as father pat orders? "englishmen have no idea what a splendid fellow the irish peasant really is when his mind is not poisoned and his unfortunate ignorance exploited. i could give you instances of fidelity, affectionate self-sacrifice and devotion which would astonish you. not isolated or sporadic cases, but arising from the average level of the irish character. after considerable travel, and a painstaking study of the characteristics of various nations, i have come to the conclusion that, taking one consideration with another, i prefer paddy, ignorant as he is. for after all his ignorance is not his own fault. he sees no newspapers except an occasional local sheet, which is almost certain to be a wretched, lying, priest-inspired rag. if he were seen looking at any other it would be bad for him. but newspapers are practically unknown in the agricultural districts. and men do not meet in crowds as in england. they have not the attrition which wears away the angularities. they live solitary among the mountains, or away in the fields, and they never hear lectures, have no institutes, get no chance of improvement. the priest is their clan chieftain, their spiritual adviser, their temporal adviser, their newspaper, their only channel of superior information." at this point a tall, red-bearded man who was passing touched his hat to the colonel, who said, "my gamekeeper. a fine, rough-coated scotsman. came over here a mad gladstonian. pinned his faith to the g.o.m. followed him blindly, and owned he was content to do it. get into conversation with him. observe the change, the decided change in his opinions." soon i had velveteens in full cry. his opinions were indeed decided. having admitted that they had boxed the compass during a six months' residence in this down-trodden country, he went on to say, "the only way ye could cure the discontent is to make no attempt at it. then the agitation would stop. the people are the biggest fules i ever saw. instead of returning a sound, advanced radical like emerson t. herdman, a man who pays them thirty or forty thousand a year, and who spends all his money in their midst, the fules go and vote for a thing like arthur o'connor, who never was here but once, and who never did them the compliment of issuing an address. when mr. herdman came to stranorlar the people stoned him and his friends. and yet nobody ever said, or could say, a word against the herdmans, who are among the most popular people in ireland, and who deserve the best that can be said of them. o'connor costs these poor folks two hundred pounds a year. they raise it in the constituency. mr. herdman would have cost them nothing, and might have spent even more than he does at present. he has opened up the greatest industry in the north-west of ireland, keeps a whole country-side going, and is an out-and-out liberal. the greatest exertions were made to secure his return, and the catholics promised to vote for him. he stumped the country, and left no stone unturned. the nationalist candidate never came here till the last moment, and, as i said, issued no address. the people knew nothing of him, and had never heard of him. but they voted as the priests told them, and they would have voted for a stick. ought such people to have the franchise? "what would i do to settle the irish question? i've heard that somebody proposed sinking the country for twenty-four hours. that might do. or you could withdraw the police and military, and in every market town open a depôt for the gratuitous distribution of arms and ammunition. in ten days there would only be a very small population, and you could then plant the country with people who would make the best of it, and mind their work, instead of spending their time standing about waiting for home rule to make them rich without work. or you could make a law which required every priest in the country to clear out in twenty-four hours, on penalty of death. that is as impossible as sinking the island, but it would be quite as sure a cure. those are my opinions, and those must be the opinions of every man who has lived here and looked about him for a reasonable length of time. the scots gladstonians are very decent folk. they mean well, and they are friendly to ireland. their only fault lies in following their hero, and in thinking that he cannot do wrong. if they knew what i know, they would be of my mind. for i was as great a gladstonian as any of them." a presbyterian farmer said:--"on this estate the whole of the tenants are presbyterians. the agent told me that early in june the whole of the rents up to may were paid, and that he would think that there was not such another case in ireland. how is that? well, if the tenants had been romanists they would have so many things to pay. the priests live like fighting cocks. father mcfadden, of gweedore, makes from a thousand to fifteen hundred a year. that is the man on whose door-step inspector martin was murdered. the crowd beat out his brains with palings, and when he tried to get into the priest's house, the door was shut in his face. the clergy live well, and drink like troopers. the easiest job in ireland, and--if your conscience would allow it--the best in every way. you are treated with great respect, you have great influence, you have nothing to do, and you are extremely well paid for it. sometimes i think that humbug pays better than hard work. the priests do _not_ look after the poor. they do _not_ work among the destitute and ignorant after the fashion of the english clergy. they are always extracting, extracting, extracting. the poor are ground down by their exactions till they can't pay their rent. and that is why the agent said that probably no other estate in ireland could show such a record as ours. "home rule will not satisfy the people. an irish parliament will do them no good, no, nor fifty irish parliaments. they are unfriendly to england because she is protestant. people of the only true faith cannot bear to be governed by a heretic nation. the laws are all right, and they know it, but their animosity is excited by stories of wrong-doing in their forefathers' days, and while on the one hand they feel that they might easily be better off, on the other they are told that the brutal saxon keeps them poor. all this is done by the priests. they actually admit that the english laws are excellent, but then they fall back on the allegation that their administration is corrupt. in vain you point to the roman catholic judges. in vain you go over england's successive attempts to pacify ireland by conciliatory measures. the priest ruins all, for while your friend seems to agree with you--they are so easily led--yet the priest will secure his vote to a certainty. so long as a heretic power is at the head, so long ireland will be discontented. if the country were under the rule of a roman catholic power, the people of ireland would be satisfied with any laws whatever. they would not grumble at anything. the only alternative is the spread of education, and that goes on very slowly in ireland. we are very, very backward in donegal, but not nearly so bad as in the south and west. we have a bad name for poverty and ignorance, but we do not deserve it in the same degree as the munster and connaught folks. we dislike the connaught people just as much as you do in england. we hate dirt, and lawlessness and disorder, and therefore we claim to be superior to the rest of the poor counties. this is, of course, the civilised part of donegal. but wherever you go, you see nothing like the dirt of counties galway and mayo. "we want railways to open up the country. balfour was building them for us, and his institution of the congested districts board did wonderful things for us. why, if he had done nothing but improve the breed of fowls he would still have been worthy of remembrance as a benefactor of this country. before the congested board committee introduced superior breeds of fowls, the chickens were like blackbirds. you could sit down and eat half-a-dozen of them. they were no bigger than your thumb. but now we can get fowls equal to anything you have in england. the same may be said of the horses, the pigs, the cows, and all kinds of domestic animals and poultry. the fishing industry has saved whole districts from starvation, and has done good all round. when we get an irish parliament the grants for all these purposes will be discontinued, and the tide of progress will be checked. the poor folks are quite unable to see that by sticking to england we have a wealthy neighbour to borrow from, and that this is an inestimable advantage to a poor country like ireland. not long ago i mentioned this to a priest, but he said, 'when we have a parliament of our own we'll not need to borrow money, for we'll have more than we know what to do with. did not mr. gladstone say we should have a chronic plethora of money? john bull certainly sends some money over here, but he had it from here to begin with. he stole it from ireland, and he is only like a thief whose conscience urges him to restore a portion, a very small portion, of the stolen goods. when we get independence--he used the word independence--we shall be in a position to lend money instead of needing to borrow!' the person who said all this is the most influential politician of this district. his word to his flock is law. not one of them dare for his life vote otherwise than as he tells them. they do not think this a hardship. they have no political convictions, and would just as soon vote any one way as any other." a donegal home ruler said that the poor folks were quite right in following the priests, and wanted to know if they would be right in following the tories. he said:--"they are no more ignorant than the british working men, and not less independent. don't the working classes follow their leaders, voting in heaps, just as they are told, without any notion of the empire's greatness, and entirely with a view to their own interests? could anybody be more stupid, more totally incapable of giving a valid reason for his action than your vaunted british workman? why, if the specimens we get over here are any guide, if the samples are anything like the bulk, you might as well poll a flock of sheep as a crowd of british working men. i say the irish peasantry are superior in intellect, conduct, and chayracther, and that in following the priest they are acting as reasonable as your british working-man, who follows his strike leaders and trade agitators, and is perpetually cutting off his nose to spite his face. no, we shall not get home rule now, but we must have it later on. then we shall demand more. every time we have to ask we shall want more and more. we shall wring it from england, and we shall make her pay for the trouble she gives. she must be charged a sort of war indemnity." the dundalk press is on my track. i heard of this in newry, but the dundalk papers do not reach the next town to dundalk, and not a sheet could be had for love or money. a friend having told me that the _gazette_ was reviled, great efforts were made to obtain the reviling print, but in vain. at last i saw the _dundalk democrat_, which in a two-column comment on its colleague's maledictions of your humble commissioner cleared me of the charges brought by the original thunderer, which i have not yet been able to see. one of the said charges is based on the statement that i asked to be allowed to be present at the meeting, which permission was readily accorded. the meeting was public and was placarded from one end of dundalk to the other. the public were invited to assemble in their thousands, and to join in the onward march to freedom. not more than twenty people answered to the call, and the meeting was therefore a dead failure. the idea of asking leave to be present at a public meeting is absurd. the vituperative print says that i was _not_ asked to deliver an address, but was told that i could "do so if i liked." the truth is manifest by the admitted fact that i declined, as being no speaker. such is the minute hair-splitting of irish argumentation. the quips and cranks of tipperary humphreys will be remembered, the paltry quibbles by which he sought to establish a case, and his final retreat under cover of the statement that he could not have believed that "such a state of things was possible." the dundalk marchers to freedom (to the number of twenty) were not precisely the pick of the local respectability, and my escape must be regarded as providential. as to their outpourings of abuse, my philosophy resembles that of the old whipper-in of the meynell-ingram hounds:--"i bain't a cruel chap, i bain't. but when i puts the lash among the hounds i _dew_ like to hear 'em yowl; i _dew_ like to see 'em skip, and writhe, and look mad. for if ye don't make 'em feel, and if ye can't hear 'em yowl, there's railly no pleasure in thrashin' of 'em." donegal, august st. no. .--do-nothing donegal. donegal improves on acquaintance. at first dull, dreary, and disappointing, a more extended examination reveals much that is interesting. the river eske runs through the town, rippling over a rocky bed of limestone like the dee at llangollen. mountains arise on every hand, some in the foreground, green and pleasant, backed by sterile ranges having serrated summits, dark and frowning. the harbour has an old-world look, with its quaint fishing boats and groves of trees running down to the water's edge. the land is decidedly humpy, and the sea meanders among the meadows in long fillets like trout brooks, sometimes tapering off to narrow ditches over which you can easily step at highest tide. the land is fertile, mostly grazing, and the cattle are of large and superior breed. the country is well wooded, and the hedgerows are tall and well-kept. the ancient abbey, like mr. gladstone's reputation, is in ruins. there is a ruined castle on the river bank, and on the other side, exactly opposite, a methodist church, bearing the legend, all are welcome. the principal "square" is triangular, and has some good shops, which do most of their business on market-days. an enormous anchor, half embedded in the mud of the harbour, was left there by the french fleet during "the throubles of the ruction." it is rather in the way, but three generations of irishmen have not found time to remove it. "like ourselves and our counthry it will stick in the mud until the end of time," said a native. there is much lounging at corners by men who are probably waiting for the home rule bill, but the people compare favourably with those of the south and west. they have more grit, more industry, more perseverance. they are simple, civil, and obliging. they are also cleaner and more tidy than the southerners, though decidedly poorer. "they get no price for their produce, no reasonable wages for their industry. their patience and contentment are surprising, considering their circumstances. you can get work done for twopence a day. the southerners get thrice the money for their farm produce. we have no ready means of getting things on the market. i have thirty tons of hay to sell, and nobody in the district would give me a pound for it." thus spake one of the leading citizens, a roman catholic, dead against home rule. "the resident gentry are all we have to depend upon. once plant a parliament in dublin, and there will be a general exodus of the moneyed classes. then the poor folks will have nobody to look to, and they must follow them to england--which will certainly be overrun with destitute irish. things have grown worse and worse during the last ten years. under a steady government the country would gradually improve until the comfort of the people would give the agitators nothing to work upon. but with change upon change, with one final settlement upon another final settlement, we don't know where we are, nor what is going to happen next. how can we settle down to work? how can we launch out into industrial enterprises? every man who has anything holds his hand for fear of loss. an irish parliament would be a parliament of confiscation, and nobody knows where they would draw the line. mr. gladstone's land legislation has been a succession of swindles. the principle of judicial rents is an atrocious violation of the principles of business, one of which lays down the dictum that a thing is worth as much as it will fetch. surely the landlord ought to be allowed to accept the offer of the highest bidder. and if you take from him that right, and say to him you shall only accept such a price, then you should at least guarantee the payment. but no, mr. gladstone says you shall only have a certain price, and you must recover the money as best you can. the judicial rent law, so much vaunted, is not so good as it looks. it is often a premium on indolence and a punishment of industry, and therefore grossly unjust. let me tell you how it works in donegal. "thirty years ago two men took contiguous farms of exactly the same extent, at the same rent. there was not a pin to choose in the land, either. one of them worked continuously, improving the farm until he almost wrought himself to pieces. he and his children were at it night and day, and their industry did wonders, as it always does. the other was a lazy fellow, who lay in bed till mid-day and spent half his waking hours at fairs and dances. the land in his occupation deteriorated until it seemed to want reclaiming. the rent of both farms was ten pounds a year. the land commission had both cases before them, and, of course, based their estimate on the present value of the land, without reference to any other considerations. now mark what happened-- "the industrious man, who should have received a premium as a benefactor of his country, had his rent raised from ten pounds to eighteen. "the lazy man, who should have been kicked out of the country as worthless, and an enemy to progress, had his rent reduced from ten pounds to two pounds fifteen shillings. "the judicial reductions have hardly ever been of real benefit. the average irish peasant is so constituted that when he has less to pay he simply makes less effort, or spends the difference, and more than the difference, in extra whiskey. "the donegal peasantry derive much benefit from the irish practice of con-acre. con-acre means that the land is rented for one crop. it pays the landowner well, and he always gets his money. the man who has no land hires a piece for his potatoes, or for his oats, takes possession when he puts in his seed, and delivers up possession when he gets his crop off the ground. they pay, i think, because they have not the land long enough to long for it altogether." i climbed the hill behind the arran hotel in company with the proprietor, mr. timony, who also runs several large shops in donegal. the view is magnificent, extending in one direction to carnowee and the blue stack mountains, in another far over the wood-fringed bay, and southward to the benbulben range, terminated by a steep descent like the end of a house. mr. timony is a romanist, but is strongly opposed to home rule, which in his opinion would lead to endless trouble and confusion, and would, bring distress on the district, and not prosperity. the hill was covered with mushrooms, which were rotting unregarded. mine host confessed that he did not know the edible from the poisonous fungi, and said that the peasants of donegal were in the same case. "there are tons of these things on the mountains, but no one gathers them. they would be afraid to go near them for fear they would drop down dead on the spot." he showed me a large stock of hand-woven cloth made by the peasantry, who, to their credit, have mastered the process from beginning to end, and with their rude appliances produce a good-looking article, of which the only fault is that it can never be worn out. irishmen will not buy it, but england is an excellent customer, and the trade, already large, is rapidly increasing. good tweed, twenty-seven inches wide, may be bought in donegal for a shilling a yard, and stout twills for one-and-sixpence. the people shear the wool, card it, spin it, dye the yarn made from herbs growing on the sea-shore, on the rocks, in the meadows, and weave it into cloth, which is much in vogue for shooting suits and ladies' dresses. the pieces run from twenty to seventy yards long, and whole families are engaged on the work, which commands a ready sale at the wholesale depôts, the price being regulated by the fineness, evenness of texture, and equality of tint throughout. the nationalist advice to burn everything english except english coals, is as hollow as other patriotic utterances. but for england the donegal peasantry would have no market for their goods. "it isn't fine enough for irishmen," said mr. timony. "they prefer english shoddy. they like the smooth-looking cloth such as i have seen made in yorkshire, manufactured out of rags. there's not ten pounds of wool in a thousand yards of it. it looks more eyeable, but there is no length nor toughness in the thread, which is made out of old worn-out cloth. our folks couldn't spin it. they must use good new yarn, or they couldn't work at all. the yorkshire folks have machinery, and you can do anything with machinery." a good old methodist said:--"the english people ought now to realise 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 rd. no. .--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 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 ' 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. "the backwardness of the irish and their poverty are, in my opinion, due to their inferiority as a race of men. wherever there is a factory, you will find all the foremen protestants--that is, saxons. and irishmen expect it. they will not work under irish foremen, if they can help it. the catholic labourer will work for the protestant farmer, for choice, every time. the catholic housekeeper goes to the protestant shop, by preference. where their own personal and earthly interests are concerned, the papist population always prefer the guidance of the cursed heretic. and yet they express for the black-mouths the greatest contempt and aversion, and would willingly put them out of the country to-morrow. that is because they wish to possess our goods. they vote for home rule in the belief that they are paving the way for a dismissal of protestants, and the division of their property. they do not know the name of the man who represents them, the title of the parliamentary division for which he sits, or even, in many cases, the name of the county in which they themselves reside. to talk reason to such people would be absurd. trained from their infancy to regard england as an enemy, they would not listen to anyone speaking on her behalf. they declare that they are barefoot because england wears their shoes, that they are starving that england may be over-fed. the how, the why, the wherefore are not within their ken, but they are sure of the facts. they had them from father dick, tom, or harry, and the holy man would not tell a lie. stupid people over the channel, listening to this iterated complaint, are acting as though it were true. gladstone took it up, and his followers followed. no doubt it was all that most of them could do. result,--tumult, disturbance, confusion worse confounded. home rule means that the country will be deluged with blood, that civilisation will receive a shock which will send back the island for a century. the causes of ireland's poverty are laziness and lack of enterprise, the latter accentuated by everlasting disturbance. before the nationalists we had the fenians, the whiteboys, the ribbon-men, the united irishmen, the defenders, the goodness-knows-what, running back in continuous line up to the dawn of history. no wonder we are poor. cannot gladstonians read the records? if they did so, and if they were acquainted with the character of the irish when in their native land, they would agree with my cook, herself a kelt of kelts, who says that irishmen are leather, good leather, but fit only for the sole, and not for the uppers. "i used to regard mr. gladstone as an honest man. now i think otherwise. as for the ruck that follow him--well, if they were intelligent when honest, or honest when intelligent, nobody could understand their deviation from the path of reason and rectitude. but the rogues will of course do anything they think will suit them best, no matter what befalls their country; and as for the rest, why of course no reasonable man would blame people for not thinking, when providence has not provided them with the requisite machinery." ballyshannon, august th. no. .--the truth about bundoran. there is no railway between donegal and ballyshannon, fifteen miles away. the largest town in the county is not connected with the principal port. but you can steam from ballyshannon to bundoran, the favourite watering-place of donegal, quaint and romantic, with a deep bay and grassy cliffs. the bathing-grounds have a smooth floor of limestone, and the atlantic rolls in majestically, sending aloft columns of white spray as its waters strike the outlying islands of rock, each with a green crown of vegetation. the bare-headed and bare-legged natives walk side by side with the fashionably-dressed citizens of dublin, belfast, and londonderry. the poorest folks are tolerably clean, and, unlike the southerners, occasionally wash their feet. the town is small, but there is plenty of good accommodation for holiday makers. bundoran is catholic and intolerant. although depending on their protestant countrymen for nine-tenths of their livelihood, the people of bundoran object to protestantism, and the intensity of their antipathy to the black-mouths has impelled them to quarrel with their bread-and-butter. of late the question of tolerance has been much discussed. sapient persons whose assumption is equal to their ignorance of the subject, affect to despise the fears of the scattered protestant population whose alarm is based on the experience of a lifetime. english home rulers who wish to create effect unblushingly affirm that the protestants are the only intolerants, and that the papists are as distinguished for affectionate toleration as for industry and honesty. in direct opposition to daily experience and the evidence of history, they assert that the papists are the persecuted party, and that they only practise their religion with fear and trembling. notwithstanding the well-known doctrine of the roman church, which preserves heaven exclusively for those within its own pale, these eccentric politicians aver that under a roman catholic parliament, elected by the clergy alone, the isolated protestants of catholic ireland, known in the papist vernacular as black-faces, black-mouths, heretics, soupers, and jumpers, would be treated with perfect consideration, would enjoy the fullest freedom, the most indulgent toleration, would, in short, be placed in a position of equality with the predestined inhabitants of paradise, or, to quote catechism, the inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. the persons most nearly concerned know better. the shrewd farmers of ulster, like the puritan brethren of leinster, munster, and connaught, are entirely devoid of faith in the promised papist toleration. protestant equality under a home rule parliament! you might as well tell them to plant potatoes and expect therefrom a crop of oats. men do not gather grapes off thorns nor figs off thistles. the bundoran protestants have evidence to offer. the date is recent. not two hundred years ago, but in the year of grace eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-three. seeing that the little seaside resort was full of holiday-makers from the protestant counties of fermanagh and tyrone, two young protestant clergymen determined to hold gospel services in a tent which was pitched in a field the property of mr. james a. hamilton, j.p. for about a week beforehand handbills announcing the services for july had been distributed in the town and suburbs, but no controversial topic was mentioned, nor was it intended that the services should be other than strictly evangelical. the tent was erected solely to accommodate the great influx of visitors, after the manner so familiar in england. here was a test of papal toleration. the tent was on private ground, and if papists did not like it they could easily keep away, making a wry face and spitting out the abomination as they passed, after their liberal custom. this, however, was not enough. no sooner had the handbills been issued, than a most scurrilous placard appeared, calculated to inflame the passions of the ignorant, and to make them act after their kind. the gospellers were accused of an attempt to poach on the papal preserves, and it was mockingly stated that they had at last come to christianise the benighted papists. the effect of this placard was soon evident. it became known that the roman catholics of the district had determined that they would allow no gospel services in bundoran. the police authorities, who know all about papist "tolerance," increased the small village force to twenty-five men, but, as the result proved, these were absolutely useless. a mob of more than a thousand pious ruffians gathered early in the evening, and attacked in a brutal and merciless manner every person they suspected of being on the way to the meeting. the two evangelists went to the tent under the escort of the twenty-five policemen, but before they could commence the service the apostles of toleration made a desperate rush on the congregation, most of whom were struck with bludgeons and stones, knocked down, kicked, and otherwise maltreated. the constabulary with great determination, but with much difficulty, protected the two young clergymen, upon whom a most venomous attack was made. the protestants defended themselves with umbrellas, walking-sticks, and the like, but being strongly charged these proved of little avail against the wild onslaught of the party of toleration. well may the local paper say that "a regular panic pervades the resident and visiting protestant families." mr. morley, replying to a question in the house, said the reports were exaggerated. the hapless irish secretary, unable to meet this and similar charges with denial, always relies on the plea of "exaggeration." the statement given above is derived from eye-witnesses of both creeds, and from an official source. one word as to the plea of exaggeration. when i had investigated the fifteen moonlighting atrocities of four weeks in county limerick, the county inspector, who had just returned from a conference with mr. morley, said to me:-- "everything is ve-ry quiet. we're going on very nicely now." but the _gazette_ gave particulars of the shooting in the legs of the four members of the quirke family, and mr. morley was obliged to admit the fifteen outrages which constituted county inspector moriarty's idea of "quiet." subordinates will say there is peace when there is no peace, if the master requires it. the bundoran outrage is not susceptible of exaggeration. call another witness. the _sligo independent_, which being published on the spot can speak with authority, says that "the intolerant and bigoted roman catholics of bundoran and surrounding districts look upon protestantism as a kind of leprosy which ought at all hazards to be stamped out," and further states that "even the ladies did not escape their fanatical hatred and fury. several people were severely injured, and a clergyman who was coming to the meeting with his bible in his hand, was thrown down and badly beaten, the book being torn from him and destroyed. what may protestants expect should the home rule bill ever become law, when such disgraceful outbursts of religious bigotry are quite common under the existing _régime_? the natural conclusion is that all such gospel meetings would be put down with a strong hand, and protestant religious liberty trampled under foot by their unscrupulous roman catholic fellow-countrymen. and yet loyalists are told to trust in them and all will be well!" thus the sligo journal; and its editor may perhaps, under the circumstances, be pardoned for suggesting that "it were better for loyalists not to put themselves in the power of men who have proved themselves unfit even to associate with civilised beings. bundoran will feel the evil effects of these insane attacks upon defenceless people next season when tourists and pleasure-seekers will avoid this seat of stupid bigotry, and visit some other summer resort where they will at least be allowed to worship their maker according to their own desires." exactly. many visitors left at once, and will never return. during my six hours' stay i heard complaints of the falling-off of business. if the place be empty next summer the people will attribute the loss to the british government, and especially to the machinations of the tory party. an old fisherman said the fish had left the bay. i assured him they would return under a dublin parliament. he refused to be comforted, because they were not. there is no railway from bundoran to sligo, that is, no direct railway. the great lines mostly run from east to west, but the west lacks connecting links. look at the map of ireland. cast your eye on the west coast. if you would go by rail from westport to sligo, you must first go east to mullingar. if you would go by rail from sligo to bundoran, you must first go east to enniskillen. if from bundoran to donegal, less than twenty miles, you must again go to enniskillen, thence to strabane, where you arrive after the best part of a day's journey, ten miles further away than when you started, thence to stranorlar, changing there to the narrow-gauge railway for your final trip. travelling on the west coast is tedious and expensive, whether you go round by rail or drive direct. many of the most attractive tourist districts are almost inaccessible. to open them up is to enrich the neighbourhood. few englishmen know what the balfour railways really mean. the following statement gives particulars respecting the light railways authorised by the salisbury government, and constructed either wholly or in part by the nation. these railways introduce tourists to those parts of ireland which are best worth visiting, and the economy of time, money, and muscular tissue effected by them would be hard to overestimate. but this is not all, nor was this their primary purpose. they gave and still give employment to the people of the district, and besides bringing the money of the tourists into the country, enable the natives to send their produce out of it, to place it on the market, to turn it into gold. there is no railway from dugort, in achil, to any market. fish caught in blacksod bay are therefore worth nothing except as food for the fisherman's family. large crabs were offered to me for one halfpenny each. does this fact impress the usefulness of balfour's railways? here they are complete:-- length in balfour's name. miles. contribution. donegal and killybegs - / £ , stranorlar and glenties - / , on this line you run for twelve miles from stranorlar without seeing a single cottage. there are none within sight on either side. downpatrick and ardglass - / £ , galway and clifden , this will run in connection with the splendid system of the midland and western railway, opening up the grand scenery of connemara, which to the average britisher is like a new world. no end of fishing here among virgin shoals of trout and salmon, and nearly always for nothing. it was along the first sixteen miles of this line, still unopened, that i ran on the engine to oughterard. westport to mulranney - / £ , to which is added the achil island extension - / , this will enable travellers to steam from dublin to achil island viâ midland and western, instead of the ten hours on an open car, which on their arrival at westport now awaits visitors to dugort. it was on this line that i had the startling adventures on a fiery untamed bogey engine, lent to the _gazette_ by mr. robert worthington, of dublin. but i must condense. claremorris and collooney £ , ballina and killala - / , bantry extension , baltimore extension , west kerry and valentia , headford and kenmare , milltown, malbay, kilkee, and kilrush % on , tuam and claremorris " , ballinrobe and claremorris " , besides these, similar lines have been constructed, and are now working between tralee, dingle, and castlegregory; skibbereen and skull; ballinscarty, timoleague, and courtmacsherry. the cork and muskerry railway, which runs through the groves of blarney, owes its completion and success to mr. balfour's administration. driving from bray to the dargle, my jarvey pointed to the ruins of a light railway undertaken without the aid of the british intellect. "'tis a nice mess they made iv it, the quarrelin' pack o' consated eejits! they must run a chape little thing to the dargle, about two miles away, along the roadside, just as balfour showed them the way. what have they done? desthroyed the road. lost all the money they could raise. got the maker to take back the rails (for they bought thim afore they wanted thim), an' the only thing they now have in the shape of shareholders' property is a lawsuit wid the wicklow folks about desthroyin' the road. faix, an iligant dividend is that same. an' them's the chaps that's to rule the counthry. that's the sort of thim, i mane. many's the time i seen the irish mimbers. sorra a thing can they do, barrin' dhrink an' talk. i wouldn't thrust one of thim to rub down a horse, nor wid a bottle of poteen. divil a one of thim but would dhrink as much whiskey as would wash down a car, an' if they could run as fast as they can talk, begorra, ye might hunt hares wid thim. rule the counthry, would ye. whe-w-w-w!" he whistled with a "dying fall," like the strain in _twelfth night_. i drove from bundoran to sligo, the sea on the right, the benbulben mountains on the left, singularly shaped but splendid. the round towers and ancient irish crosses, the lakes and rivers of sligo, are full of interest and beauty. the abbey ruins are exceptionally fine. the town is fairly well built, but it is easy to realise that once more it is connaught. during a turn round bridge street, a country cart heaves alongside, steered by a stalwart man in hodden gray. he notes the stranger, and politely says, "can i be of any use? i see you are a visitor." we fell into conversation. presently i said, "everything will be well when you get home rule." he stopped the cart and protested against this statement. unknowingly i had tapped a celebrity. my hodden-gray friend was none other than the famous detective james magee, who arrested james stephens, the number one, the head centre of the irish revolutionary brotherhood; also john o'leary, editor of the fenian _irish people_, of which o'donovan rossa was business manager. o'leary was a doctor hailing from tipperary. he asked magee if he might have his "night-cap," and his captor allowed him to call for the whiskey at a well-known dublin resort, on parole of honour. later, as a crowded street was reached, o'leary said, "there are three thousand of my friends there. if you go that way i cannot save you. better try a back street." "that was handsome," said mr. magee. "o'leary was a gentleman. stephens was only a 'blower.'" my friend was unalterably set against home rule, which he regards as an empty, foolish cry. being a pensioner he wishes to be reticent, but his opinion is pronounced, and the sligo people know it. he has a high opinion of the law-abiding instincts of his compatriots, and believes that "if they were left to themselves" the district would need no police. "a better-hearted, kinder, more obliging people never lived," said this excellent judge, who after twenty-seven years of police service, returned to end his days among them. and my short experience of the sligo folks confirms this statement. they were not all so reserved as detective-sergeant magee. a thriving shopkeeper said:--"the majority, if you count noses, are for home rule, but if you count only brains and intelligence you would find an overwhelming majority against it. mr. gladstone and his set of blockheads seem quite impervious to reason, and even the constituencies of england seem to lack information. the reason is plain. while we have been minding our work the nationalists have been agitating. for thirteen years they have been on the stump, and have stolen a march on us and they take a lot of catching up. we allowed them to empty their wind-bags, forgetting that the english people were not so conversant with the facts or with the character of the orators as we are. we thought that no precautions were required, and that their preposterous statements would be received in england as intelligent, enlightened people would receive them here. their strength in ireland is almost entirely among the illiterates, who in the polling booths are coerced by their priests. i have seen a man crying because he had not been allowed to vote for the candidate supported by his employer. such a ridiculous thing could not happen in england, and englishmen who do not know ireland and the irish will scarcely credit it. this shows how unable most saxons are to understand irish character and motive. "all our civilisation is from england, all our progress, all our enlightenment, and nearly all our money. as a poor, helpless, semi-barbaric country, we ought to cleave to england with all our might and main. a more and more complete and perfect unity is our best hope. to ask for separation is the wildest absurdity. and just as we were beginning to go along smoothly! that was entirely due to the just but firm administration of the balfour period. "among irishmen justice with firmness is always appreciated in the long run. an irish secretary needs the hand of iron in the velvet glove. paddy spots the philanthropic fumbler in a moment, and uses him, laughing the while at what he rightly calls his 'philandering.' morley means well, but nobody here respects him. he knows no more of irish character than a blind bull-pup. his master in my opinion is worse, if possible. he is deaf to all the arguments of irish sense and irish culture, and proposes to finally resolve the unresolvable, to settle the irish difficulty by a catholic parliament. as well go out with a net to catch the wind. he listens to the representatives of ruffianism, counting them first. we kept silent too long. we thought the donkeys might bray for ever without shaking down the stars. we were wrong. now we are almost powerless. for what are a handful of reasonable men against a crowd of blackguards with big sticks?" while conversing with detective magee, that astute gentleman pointed out the o'connor, lineal king of connaught, and a staunch unionist! a devout catholic and intensely irish, yet the uncrowned king is a loyalist. but the o'connor is a man of superior understanding. after this i saw three home rulers--yea, i conversed with four, one a positive person whom i mistook for a farm labourer, but who proved to be a national schoolmaster who absorbed whiskey like the desert sands. a decent farmer who thought the land league the finest thing in the wuruld, complained that while the british government have contracted for hay at £ s., yet he and his friends could only get £ for "best saved." his idea of home rule was--no rent to pay. a ferocious commercial traveller, whose jaw and cheekbones were as much too large as his eyes and forehead were too small, wanted to know "what right had england to rule ireland? ye have no more right to rule ireland than to rule france." this was his only idea. he was a patriot of the sentimental type, and wished that ireland might take her place as an independent nation with belgium, switzerland, holland. his hero was paddy o'donnell, of bedlam--_clarum et venerabile nomen_--who for five days held his house, since called the fort, against a strong force of police. "if all was like o'donnell, we'd soon have the counthry to ourselves," said my commercial friend. "an' if ye don't let us go, we'll make ye wish ye did. wait till ye get into throuble with france. the siam business may yet turn up thrumps." he was very voluble, very loud, very illiterate, and i declined to discuss the question except in irish, which he did not speak. like most of the patriot orators of ireland, he was as ignorant of his native language as of his native literature, and every other. this is the class from whom the political speakers who infest country places are drawn. at first sight they seem unworthy of notice, but contempt may be pushed too far. even wasps become dangerous when in swarms. and hatred is like fire: it makes even light rubbish deadly. sligo, august th. no. .--irish nationalism is not patriotism. my tour through ireland having now come to an end, i propose to sum up 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 £ per week, and that they were increasing to £ 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 , 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 th. no. .--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. _sæva 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. and irish land hunger is largely responsible for irish rents. friends and neighbours--aye, even relatives near as brothers and sisters, compete against each other, and eagerly force up the price. every irish land agent will tell you of underhand intrigue in connection with land. not only do brothers secretly strive to obtain advantage over each other by means of higher bidding, but bribery is tried. mr. robert hare, of the dublin board of works, said:--"my father was an agent, and on one occasion he was weighing the respective claims of two brothers to a piece of land which was about to become vacant and perhaps considering their respective offers, when one sent him a ten-pound note. he cut it in two and returned one-half, with an intimation that on receiving a receipt he would forward the other." i never met anyone in ireland who would not readily admit that high rents were mainly due to the action of the tenants themselves, who, being actuated by what is called land-hunger, which is nothing more in the majority of cases than the necessity to live, had in their desperation bid more than the land was worth. mr. thomas manley, of trim, county meath, said:--"the tenant farmer has cried himself up, and the nationalists have cried him up as the finest, most industrious, most self-sacrificing fellow in the world. but he isn't. not a bit of it. the landlords and their agents have over and over again been shot for rack-renting when the rents had been forced up by secret competition among neighbours and even relations. ask any living irish farmer if i am right, and he will say, yes, ten times yes." as an irish farmer and the son of an irish farmer, living for sixty years on irish farms, and from his occupation as a horse-dealer, claiming to have an intimate acquaintance with the whole of ireland, and with almost every farmer who can breed and rear a horse, mr. manley is worth a hearing. continuing, in the presence of several intelligent irishmen, some of them home rulers, but all agreeing with the speaker, mr. manley said:--"rents have been forced up by people going behind each other's backs and offering more and more, in their eagerness to acquire the holding outbidding each other. landlords are human; agents, if possible, still more human. they handed over the land to the highest bidder. what more natural? the farmers offered more than the land could pay. but why curse the landlords for what was their own deliberate act?" mr. manley's knowledge of england enabled him to say that "the irish farmer is much better off than the english, scotch, or welsh farmer, not only in the matter of law, but also in the matter of soil." the legal point is demonstrable. let us see how the irish tenant stands. the disinclination of the irish for factory work, as exemplified in the closing of the galway jute factory, because of irregularity of attendance, and the refusal of the starving peasantry of congested donegal and connemara to accept regular employment in the thread factory of dunbar, macmaster and co., notwithstanding the most tempting inducements, as set forth in my letters from ireland, has strangled enterprise, except in the north. the ceaseless agitation of the revolutionary party has given rise to a feeling of insecurity which deters capitalists from investing money in ireland. and it is only fair to say that a large majority of the most intelligent men of every political colour concur in attributing much of the poverty of ireland to unrestricted free trade. thus a variety of causes have created land hunger, with its resulting land clamour, which has brought about extraordinary legislation--extraordinary because going far beyond the principles recognised by republican america, which in the first article of its constitution draws the line thus:--"_no state shall pass any law impairing the obligation of contracts._" well might lord salisbury, in extending the land purchase act, carefully dissociate the conservative party from the principle of interference with free contract in the open market. in england a thing is worth what it will fetch. it is not so in ireland. a tenant can never be evicted unless a whole year's rent is due. the landlord might want the land for himself or for his son, but he cannot have it. the tenant must have six months' notice of eviction, and when actually evicted can recover possession by paying what he owes, and in that case the landlord becomes liable to the tenant for the crops on the land, and for the profits he (the landlord) _might_ have made. in america the length of notice preceding eviction varies from three days to thirty, the latter only in the state of maine. yet in ireland, where we hear so much of brutal evictions, six months' notice is required, a year's rent being due, this boon having been conferred by a "coercion" government. an irish tenant even when voluntarily leaving his farm must be compensated by the landlord for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, or must be permitted to sell his improvements to the incoming tenant. the tenant-right of a small farm is sometimes a surprising sum. the moonlighting case i investigated at newcastlewest, co. limerick, arose from a tenant-right transaction, william quirke having bid £ for the tenant-right of forty-nine acres formerly held by j. dore who was selling, as against £ bid by dore's cousin. quirke and three of his family were therefore shot in the legs, by way of impressing the advisability of joining in the onward march to freedom. but although the tenant is settled on the land for ever, and, so long as he owes less than a year's rent, cannot be molested, it must not be supposed that the rent he agreed to is unchangeable. suppose the tenant to be paying a judicial rent, which is decided by three persons, one of them a lawyer, the other two acting respectively in the interests of landlord and tenant, having examined and valued the farm. assume that the tenant gets more than a year behindhand. the landlord desires to evict. even then the tenant, by applying for another "fair rent," can stay eviction. but while the rent may be lowered, the landlord can never raise it under any circumstances. the law is decidely one-sided. leases may be broken. all leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the land act of may go to court, have their contracts broken, and a judicial rent fixed. no countervailing advantage is given to the landlords. when a tenant's valuation does not exceed £ , the court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of any debt, whether for beef, bread, groceries, clothes, or whiskey, is empowered to stay eviction, can allow the debtor to pay by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment without limit. to the average british mind this will smack of over-legislation, and serious irishmen make the same complaint. and still, to quote father mahony, of cork, "still the irish peasant mourns, still groans beneath the cruel english yoke." the fact is, he is almost killed with kindness. he is weighed down by the multitude of benefactions. he reminds you of the tame sparrow you once suffocated by overfeeding. so much has been done for him that he naturally expects more, and instead of being grateful he grumbles more than ever. he regards mr. gladstone as having acted under compulsion, and as being an opportunist. the peasantry of ireland have no respect for the grand old man. "shure, we bate the bills out iv him. shure, he never gave us anythin' till we kicked it out iv his skin. divil thank him for doin' what we ordhered him to do." but perhaps the tory land purchase acts are most promising in, the direction of finality. lord ashbourne's act, as it was called ( ), conferred on irish tenants opportunities of purchasing their holdings of quite an exceptional kind, and its scope and advantages were enormously increased under the land purchase act passed in . if a tenant wishes to buy his holding and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from an ordinary rentpayer into that of a payer of an annuity, terminable in forty-nine years, and actually less in amount than the rent! most irish landlords are willing to take less than twenty years' purchase, but the tenants are by their leaders advised not to buy. otherwise the government is prepared to advance the necessary purchase money, to be repaid at the rate of four per cent. per annum, which covers both principal and interest. suppose the tenant's rent to be £ , and that he agreed to buy at the seventeen years' purchase so strongly discountenanced by the priest quoted in my last. his rent or rather the annual payment substituted for rent, would amount to £ , being a reduction of thirty-two per cent. if he bought at fifteen years' purchase, rent £ , he would only pay £ a year, a reduction of forty per cent. if he bought at twenty years, rent £ , he would have £ a year to pay, being a reduction of twenty per cent. in forty-nine years the holding would belong to him, or to his children. in any case he must largely benefit. his rent is lower, his share in the ownership is always becoming larger, and, if he chooses, he can at any time sell his interest in the concern. mr. palmer, of tuam, said that those who had purchased under this act were happy and prosperous. lord shannon's tenants bought at twelve years' purchase. in other words they exchanged their rent for one-half the amount, payable to government, the land to be their own in forty-nine years. lord lansdowne's tenants agreed to buy at eighteen years' purchase, all arrears to be forgiven on payment of half a year's rent. these buyers are quiet and apparently contented. their payments are regular, and if they were left alone they would doubtless continue in the path of rectitude. but the agitators, who find nick-names for everything, have already begun to call this repayment of purchase-money a tribute to england; and the past history of irish leaders leads honest irishmen, as well as englishmen, to the conviction that, once an irish parliament were established, with an irish constabulary under its rule, a no tribute campaign would ensue, which would lead to deplorable results. the privileges of irish tenants are far more numerous than i have space to indicate, but perhaps enough has been said to give a clear idea of the chief causes and effects of land hunger in ireland. the remedy, in the opinion of many advanced and enlightened home rulers, must come from a tory government. from the multitude of counsellors i met in the thirty-two counties of ireland, i will select two who represent the vast majority of able men of every political party. mr. thomas manley said:--"settle the land question, reform the poor laws and the grand jury laws, and reclaim the land, which would pay ten per cent." mr. mason, of mullingar, said:--"the whole agitation would be knocked on the head by the introduction of a severe land measure. previous legislation has been very severe, and i do not say that a further measure would be just and equitable. i merely say that the people do not want home rule, but that they want the advantages which they are told will accrue from home rule." and so said everyone. to settle the land question is to settle everything. religious animosity would be silenced by self-interest. the operation of the land purchase act has undoubtedly done much to turn the people using its provisions into good conservatives--law-abiding and law-supporting, as having a stake in the country. the people have not the land for nothing but they look forward to its becoming honestly their own, and meanwhile they enjoy the security insured by the government of england. in any attempt to settle this great problem, a conservative government would probably be largely supported by the landlords themselves, while the rank and file of ireland would look with respect and confidence on any bill bearing the honoured name of balfour. but how shall we decide the scope and character of such a final land bill? i do not hesitate to say that it must contain a very strong infusion of the compulsory element. the great measure of is generous to a fault, but it is voluntary, and the result is that the tenants who give greatest trouble--the poor, idle, ignorant dupes of a scheming priesthood and a corrupt political conspiracy--never come under its benefits, because they unquestioningly accept the advice given them to wait until an irish parliament lets them have the land for nothing. compulsion is not required for the landlords half so much as it is for the tenants. the conclusion arrived at may be stated in a few words. perhaps it may be worthy the consideration of our brilliant and far-seeing unionist leaders:-- the land purchase act, , should be amended by a bill providing ( ) that the existing land commission shall be strengthened in order to form a court to which either landlords or tenants shall have the right to apply for an order of the court placing them under the provisions of the act of , or such extension of that act as may hereafter be made. ( ) it should be the duty of the court to inquire into the relations of landlord and tenant, the condition of the estate and of the tenants, and such other circumstances as may in the wisdom of the court seem necessary. ( ) if the court decides to issue an order, the parties shall at once be placed in the same position as if they had entered into a mutual agreement under the land purchase act, ; but it shall be the duty of the court to fix the number of years' purchase; and it shall have power either to restrict or to enlarge the number of holdings over which its order shall take effect. this is offered as the mere germ of a suggestion. i am familiar with the arguments that may be brought against it. for the most part they can be urged with equal effect against the whole system of interference with that freedom of contract which prevails in england and scotland, but which, as i have pointed out, has already been destroyed in ireland. what i claim is that there _must_ be a means of defeating such a conspiracy to make the law inoperative as that practised--to the grave detriment of irish tenants' interests--by the omnipresent agencies of the national league, ever since the unionist party set itself to solve the agrarian sources of irish discontent. birmingham, august th. no. .--clerical domination and its consequences. those who play at bowls must expect rubbers. the roman priesthood of ireland having assumed the manipulation of irish politics, have laid themselves open to mundane criticism. said mr. gladstone:--"it is the peculiarity of roman theology that by thrusting itself into the temporal domain, it naturally, and even necessarily, comes to be a frequent theme of political discussion." priestly pretensions to authority are without limit. the catholic clergy of ireland claim the right to coerce the laity in political matters, themselves remaining exempt from public criticism. they also claim to be exempt from civil jurisdiction, and to have the right of overruling the law of the land, with every moral obligation, when clashing with the interests of the church. they distinctly teach that every political question is a question of morals, and that to vote against the priest's instructions is a deadly sin. such being a few of the claims advanced by the irish priesthood, let us see on what rests the hope of these extraordinary demands being recognised. a.m. sullivan, a roman catholic nationalist m.p., says:--"of all catholic nations or countries in the world--the tyrol alone excepted--ireland is perhaps the most papal, the most ultramontane. in ireland religious conviction--what may be called active catholicism--marks the population, enters into their daily life and thought and action. the churches are crowded as well by men as by women, and in every sacrament and ceremony of their religion participation is extensive and earnest. reverence for the sacerdotal character is so deep and strong as to be called superstition by observers who belong to a different faith; and devotion to the pope, attachment to the roman see, is probably more intense in ireland than in any other part of the habitable globe, the leonine city itself not excluded." in other words, the irish are more roman than the romans themselves. here we have on the one hand the claims of the romish priesthood, and on the other the disposition of the irish people. but as the alleged claims will to the majority of englishmen appear monstrous and incredible, it becomes necessary to prove that these claims are actually made. the fall of parnell brought the clergy into striking prominence. the powerful personality of the irish leader, his great popularity, and his determination to rule alone, had to some extent forced the church into the background. parnell once removed, the church at once aimed at undivided rule, directing all her energies to this end mercilessly and without scruple. her instruments were worthy of the work. the modern irish priest is usually low-bred, vulgar, and ignorant. the priest of lever's novels, brimming over with animal spirits, full of _bonhomie_, sparkling with wit and abounding with jovial good-nature, is nowhere to be found. the men of the olden time were educated in france, and by rubbing against the cultured professors of douai or saint omer, had acquired a polish, a breadth of view, a _savoir faire_, denied to the illiterate hordes of maynooth. the olden priest was loyal, just as cultured irishmen who have travelled, whether in america, england, or elsewhere, are loyal and averse to home rule. the modern priest, usually the son of an irishman such as visits england at harvest time, brought up amidst squalor and filth, is in full sympathy with the limited ideas of the peasantry among whom he was reared. the conversation of his parents and associates would relate to the burden of the saxon yoke, and his surroundings would perpetually re-echo the stories of ireland's wrongs and woes. any literature he might absorb would be a priest-written history of ireland, with the rebel doggerel of and the more seductive sedition of later years. at maynooth he meets a crowd of students like himself, crammed to the throat with his own prejudices, viewing everything from the same standpoint. he returns to the people a full blown ecclesiastic, saturated with a sense of his own importance and the absolute supremacy of the church he represents; knowing nothing of mankind outside his own narrow sphere, profoundly ignorant of the world's political systems, and intensely inimical to england. average keltic priests fully bear out the description furnished by a loyal priest of donegal, who, on alluding to their social status and maynooth course, said:--"they are merely shaved labourers, stall-fed for three years." as to their exceptional claims. the attitude of omniscience and omnipotence has often been crudely stated by the catholic hierarchy. archbishop walsh, of dublin, has declared that there is no dividing line between religion and politics. dr. walsh has also laid down the dictum that, "as priests and independent of all human organisations, we have an inalienable and indisputable right to guide our people in every proceeding where the interests of catholics as well as the interests of irish nationality are involved." this prelate rescinded the wholesome rule enforced by his predecessors, forbidding the clergy to take part in political demonstrations. he went further. he ordered that at all political conventions an _ex-officio_ vote should be given to the priests. it is in view of this fact that the unionists of ireland not unreasonably declare that under a home rule bill the roman catholic clergy would become endowed with civil privileges which would make them absolute rulers of ireland. it may be urged that bishop walsh is discredited at rome, and that therefore his utterances may be somewhat discounted. but what of the new irish cardinal, archbishop logue, of armagh? he agrees with dr. walsh, and with reference to the parnellite split, thus delivers himself:--"we are face to face with a grave disobedience to ecclesiastical authority! the doctrines of the present day are calculated to wean the people from the priests' advice, to separate the priests from the people, and _to let the people use their own judgment_!" surely nothing could be clearer or more uncompromising than this. bishop nulty, alluding to the refusal of mr. redmond's political party to accept without question the political commands of the church, thus hinted at the consequences to recalcitrant papists:--"it is exclusively through us that the clean and holy oblation of the mass is offered daily for the living and the dead on the thousands of altars throughout our country. it is through our ministry that the poor penitent gets forgiveness of his sins in the sacrament of penance. the dying parnellite will hardly dare to face the justice of his creator till he has been prepared and anointed by us for the last awful struggle and for the terrible judgment that will immediately follow it." this threat of eternal damnation was eagerly taken up and re-echoed by the inferior clergy. father patrick o'connell speaking from the altar at ballinabrackey said that no parnellite could receive the sacrament worthily, and warned all parents against allowing their sons or daughters to attend a parnellite meeting, as it was not a merely political matter, but a matter of their holy religion. in his sermon he referred to a meeting of the political party favoured by the church, and said that every man, woman, and child must be present. all must assemble at the chapel, and all must be in time to walk in procession to the place of meeting. he would be there with father mcloughlin, and the pair would go round to see who was absent. all absentees must let him know the reason why, and if the reason did not satisfy him he would meet them in the highways and in the byways, at the communion rails, and would "set fire to their heels and toes." he would make it hot for them. there would be no compromise. all voters against clerical instruction he denounced as "infidels and heretics." mr. edward weir, who was suspected of having opinions of his own, was denounced in castlejordan chapel as a 'pigotted guardian.' he was a member of the poor law board. he was threatened to be 'met at the communion rails,' by which he understood that the sacrament would be refused to him. two nights afterwards the hedge around his house was set on fire, and fire was placed on the gate in front of it. this was a gentle hint that the people were backing the priest, and that unless he complied his house might be next destroyed. when mr. michael saurin, j.p., a member of the ballinabrackey congregation, went to vote, the door of the booth was crammed to keep him out. the crowd booed and shouted at him, and he was spat upon. the priests were present in force. nicholas cooney was also spat upon, and so was his brother, both on their clothes and in their faces. father woods was looking on. matthew brogan, who was also thought to be against clerical dictation, was refused admission to mass; and not only poor matthew himself, but his son, daughter-in-law, her children, and two friends who were suspected of sympathy. the woman insisted on entering the chapel, when one of the crowd of true believers "near cut the hand off her." michael kenny and peter fagan were served with the same sauce by these enthusiastic preachers of the onward march to freedom, poor fagan exhibiting the touching devotion of the irish peasantry by kneeling outside during the whole of the service. englishmen do not realise what these refusals mean to irish catholics. they constitute the cruellest and most effective coercion possible. to be refused the sacraments, to be turned away from the door of his chapel, is to the irish peasant a turning away from the gates of paradise, a denial of the kingdom of heaven, a condemnation to everlasting torment, to say nothing of the accompanying odium in which he is held by his neighbours and associates, and the ever present dread of boycotting. thomas brogan dare not leave the polling-booth for his life, until mr. carew took him on his car. he had been threatened by the priest, who drew a circle round him with a walking stick, to show that he was cut off from his fellows, and that contamination must be feared. patrick hogan, whose views were not in accordance with those of the priest, was afraid to vote. he went to the booth, but feared to proceed. thomas dunn was more plucky, but his temerity resulted in a cut face and a black eye for his wife at the hands of a patriot named james mitchell. father mcentee tore down a party flag belonging to the station-master of drumree, a parnellite, and jumped on it, in a towering rage, saying that the owner must follow the instructions of the bishop. he then threw the flag into a field. father crinnion, of batterstown, standing in his vestments at the altar, called out the names of all persons supposed to be disaffected to the clerical cause, and ordered them to meet him in the vestry after mass. he asked for their votes, and showed a ballot paper. he had previously read in chapel the opinion of bishop nulty, quoted above. father tynan told patrick king that unless he voted "straight" he would not receive the sacraments on his deathbed. the same priest told john cowley, of kilcavan, that unless he voted for the right candidate he would be expelled from the church, and would be deprived of christian burial when he died. cases of this kind might be multiplied _ad infinitum_. father shaw, of longwood, accentuated the horrible condition of the party who refused to vote under his orders by asking his congregation to pray for them. father cassidy sailed on the same tack, and besides thanked god that the "wrong 'uns" were so few. father fay, of cool, said (between the gospels) that his political opponents should be "treated like wild beasts," and that he would never forget the men who voted against his orders. thomas darby was canvassed by his priest, who, on finding that his parishioner was pledged the other way, curtly said, "then you'll go to hell," to which darby replied that he would at any rate have a few companions. james guerin has no confidence in the secrecy of illiterate voting, for after voting in the presence of a priest he had to jump a wall and hide in a wood to escape the vengeance of the people. when he came out, at ten o'clock at night, he was stoned. father o'donnell, presumably in the interests of peace, advised his congregation to take their sticks to a certain meeting, and promised to be there with his own faithful blackthorn. the peasant fagan, who said his prayers outside the chapel, was burned in effigy, but priestly displeasure was not satisfied until his cowshed, with a cart and harness were also destroyed by fire. to have independent opinions costs something substantial in ireland. the aspirations of a people and the onward march to freedom are not kept up for nothing. the patriots are not afraid of their trouble. they will not spoil the union of hearts for want of a little incendiarism. now and then, but very seldom, the priests meet their match. they presume on their spiritual immunity. the priest who refused to leave a house into which he had intruded was threatened by colonel dopping with expulsion. "dare to touch my consecrated body," said the "shaved labourer." "your consecrated body be hanged!" said the colonel, and out went father mcfadden. father fay, of summerhill, said in a sermon delivered at dangan:--"you must not look upon me as a mere man! the priest is the ambassador of jesus christ, and not like other ambassadors either. he carries his lord and master about with him, and when the priest is with the people, almighty god is with them!" father fagan, of kildalkey, was so vexed with the refusal of john murtagh to vote according to clerical instructions that he said:--"may the landlords come and hunt the whole of ye to hell's blazes." murtagh said, "ye wish yer neighbour well, sorr!" the man of god threatened to kick poor murtagh into the ditch, to which the erring parishioner replied that in that case he would kick the good shepherd like a puppy. "ah," said father fagan, "you ruffian, you'll want me at the last day," and refused to hear his wife's confession. the woman was dying, the husband had been for the priest, and on the way to what proved a death-bed, father fagan improved the shining hour by trying to nobble a straying vote. the clergy make the most of their opportunities. at boardmills father skelly spread out a ballot paper on the altar at sunday service. having described the situation of the names, he pointed out where they were to make the cross. he then went on with the mass. he thought of something else! some of them, he hinted, were pledged to the other side. they could shout for this candidate, but when they went to vote they must "wink the other eye," as advised by the music-hall song. colonel nolan, m.p., when canvasing at headford, was violently assaulted by a priest, who cut open the parnellite head with a stout blackthorn. like a good catholic, the colonel would fain have endured this clerical argument; but the police authorities insisted on the matter seeing the light. clerical domination and the means by which it is attained are therefore proven by undeniable evidence. the papal hierarchy and their subordinates are resolved to be supreme. _aut cæsar, aut nullus._ and it is a striking fact that by none is this doctrine so strongly deprecated, so bitterly resented, as by the educated and enlightened portion of roman catholic ireland. _their_ aspirations are all on the side of toleration, harmony and peaceful progress. _they_ are not only law-abiding, but loyal, and unlike the ignorant clergy and their still more ignorant dupes, are ever ready to join in singing "god save the queen." from an english, even a conservative point of view, the educated catholics of ireland, like all classes of english catholics, are everything that can be desired. but what are they among so many? the consequences of clerical domination, obtained by spiritual and physical intimidation, are obvious enough. i have not space to show how the system has been carried into the confessional, but numerous examples are on record. neither was it within the scope of this article to prove, as could easily be done, that the clergy of rome claim to be above and outside the action of the statute law, and that their action is calculated to make the position of protestants untenable. the moral degradation of the people, as exemplified by their dread of the priest, who escorts them in hundreds to the polling-booth, and by his persistent action and untiring vigilance exploits their electoral power for his own aggrandisement, and for the acquisition of papal supremacy in ireland, is to englishmen of all considerations the most important. recent events have demonstrated the fact that the politics of ireland--and therefore the politics of england--can be almost completely controlled for any purpose by the thirty prelates who practically command the votes of an entire people. a roman catholic barrister said to me:--"i do not blame the priests for doing the best they can for themselves. they have the power, and they use it for their own purposes. i say they use it unfairly, and the meath election petition has proved that they use it illegally. they think otherwise, but without arguing this point, i say that clerical domination will ruin the country. irish election returns are for the most part worthless as an expression of public opinion." another talented irishman said:--"the glorious british empire is now bossed by a party of priests." and that this is unhappily true must be conceded by every observant and impartial englishman. yet some there are, blind followers of the blind, obtuse to every argument, impregnable to incontrovertible facts, who have cast in their lot with the avowed enemies of england. they have their day--every dog has it--but their day is far spent, and their night is at hand. for england will never again submit to romish rule. nor will ireland when her eyes are opened. birmingham, august th. no. .--civil war a certainty of home rule. english supporters of mr. gladstone affect to ridicule the fears of armed and organised conflict between the rival races and religions of ireland. their attitude in this respect is doubtless due to a slavish following of their master. they keep their eye upon their figure-head. when it frowns they become serious. when it smiles they try to be funny. when it assumes an aspect of virtuous indignation, the tears immediately spring to their eyes, and they go about saying what a shame it is. they remind you of professor anderson and his inexhaustible bottle. like paddy byrne's barometer, they are "stuck fast at changeable." they are always on the move. like virgil's lady, they are _varium et mutabile_. like shakespeare's gentlemen, they are deceivers ever, one foot on shore and one foot on sea, to one thing constant never. every morning they nervously scan the journals to see what change of sentiment is required. without this precaution they would run the risk of meeting their political friends with the wrong facial expression. the reason for all this is well known. their motto is _ad exemplum regis_. to-day mr. gladstone believes (or says he believes) that if ireland were left to herself, and the disturbing, domineering, tyrannising influence of england were removed, the rival races and religions would live together in perfect harmony and brotherly love. his followers eagerly adopt this belief. but yesterday mr. gladstone believed (or said he believed) "that the influence of great britain in every irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were ireland left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land." his followers believed that too, and they would believe it again to-morrow if their leader harked back. the quotation is from hansard, and commences, "it is my firm belief." what do mr. gladstone's infirm beliefs resemble? putting aside the changeable premier, gyrating like a dancing dervish, and his penny-in-the-slot party, let us call respectable evidence; let us hear the opinion of competent and trustworthy witnesses; let us examine the character of the forces which will be brought into antagonism; let us observe what steps have been taken in view of possibilities more or less remote; and then let us form our own conclusions. and first as to opinions and evidence, let us hear mr. j.a. froude, of all english historians the most famous expert on irish subjects. "the effect of grattan's constitution was to stimulate political agitation and the conflict of the two races." that was a home rule parliament. and again mr. froude says:--"ireland is geographically and politically attached to this country, and cannot be allowed to leave us if she wishes. in passing over the executive power to an irish parliament we only increase the difficulty of retaining ireland. we shall alienate the loyal part of the population, who will regard themselves as betrayed. the necessity of reconquest will remain, but the evils of it and the bloodshed to be occasioned by it will be infinitely enhanced. such respect for law and order as exists in ireland is entirely due to english authority. remove it, and the old anarchy will and must return. if the home rule bill is passed there will be a dangerous and desperate war, in which other countries may take part who would gladly see our power broken." in mr. froude's opinion, there would be war between england and ireland, as well as between ulster and the south. his last sentence is curiously confirmed by the _irish daily independent_, which says:--"what england forgets is the fact that when next ireland fights she will not fight alone." this is not a warning, like the prophecy of mr. froude, it is a threat, for the _independent_ is not only a nationalist, but an intensely anti-english paper. another great historian, mr. lecky, thus expresses himself:--"the parliament mr. gladstone proposes to set up would be in violent hostility to the richest and most industrious portion of the community. it is regarded with horror by nearly every man who is a leader of industry in ireland. all the great names in irish finance, manufacture, and trade are against it, and the men who would undoubtedly lead it are men whom mr. gladstone not long ago described with great justice as preaching the doctrine of public plunder." the state of feeling here indicated could have but one result; but mr. lecky is still more precise. "the assertion that irish catholics have never shown any jealousy of irish protestants is of a kind which i find it difficult to characterise with proper moderation. jealousy, unhappily, is far too feeble a word to describe adequately the fierce reciprocal animosity which has dislocated ireland for centuries. it blazed into a furious flame in the religious wars of elizabeth, in the great rebellion of , in the jacobite struggle of , in the religious war into which the rebellion of speedily degenerated. these facts are about as conspicuous in the history of ireland as magna charta and the commonwealth in the history of england. no one who knows ireland will deny that the policy of mr. gladstone has contributed more than any other single cause to revive and deepen the divisions which every good irishman deplores." mr. lecky believes that history repeats itself, and that the establishment of an irish parliament would lead to a great irish convulsion, similar to those which he refers. my experience among irish churchmen convinces me that their feeling is understated in the petition signed by nearly fifteen thousand select vestrymen, and adopted by the general synod, "that we regard the measure as fraught with peril to our civil and religious liberties, which are our prized inheritance; that conflicts of interest and collisions of authority would create a condition of frequent irritation and intolerable strain." the methodists in full conference gave it as their opinion "that in the judgment of this committee the bill, if it were to become law, so far from being a message of peace to ireland, would be a most fruitful occasion of distressing discord and strife; that class would be arrayed against class and party against party with a virulence now rare and unknown; and that the inevitable result would be the overturning of all order and good government." what does this mean if not civil war? be it understood that the existing feeling is now being demonstrated by appeal to the most reliable authorities, all speaking under a due sense of responsibility, and therefore with a studied moderation. the presbyterians, a numerous and powerful body, speaking in the general assembly, after declaring that the proposed measure imperils their civil and religious liberties, and expressing their determined opposition to an irish legislature and executive, controlled by men "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the empire," whom a special commission found to be guilty of a criminal conspiracy, and who invented, supported, and tried to justify the land league, the plan of campaign, and boycotting--after this preamble, the presbyterians declare that the bill is "calculated to embitter the hostility of conflicting creeds and parties in ireland." the united presbyterian church of scotland resolved at a meeting of its irish presbytery "that home rule would greatly intensify the antagonism now existing between the two peoples inhabiting ireland." the quakers come out pretty strong. they first ask to be believed. they hope that englishmen will give credence to the sincerity of their convictions and the disinterestedness of their motives, and then they say that home rule "cannot fail to be disastrous to ireland, and must tend to perpetuate and intensify the strife and discord which we have so long lamented and which we earnestly desire, so far as in us lies, to mitigate and allay." these protests are not all from ulster. every grand jury in ireland has expressed itself in similar terms. the leading mercantile men of the three southern provinces of ireland have declared in writing that "the bill of the government throws amongst us a new apple of discord, and plunges ireland again into a state of political and party ferment." pages of quotation might be added. but if those already adduced are not sufficient to satisfy my readers as to the feeling of the irish unionist party, they would hardly be persuaded though one rose from the dead. the feeling of the other party is still stronger, and has been so often and openly expressed as to stand in no need of proof. mr. dillon has threatened to "manage ulster;" and others have over and over again declared that the protestant settlers are not irishmen, and therefore have no right in the country. the lower classes of irish nationalists regard an irish legislature as an instrument to secure ascendency and plunder. the ruling idea is loot. the unionists are determined at all costs to maintain religious equality and to hold their own. in ulster masters and men, landlords and tenants, are of one mind. they do not bluster and brag. those who represent them as rowdies do them grievous wrong. they are sober, thrifty, industrious, pious. in character they resemble cromwell's puritans, or the scottish covenanters of old, and no wonder, for they are of the same stock. they are by nature kindly and peaceful, but they become dangerous indeed on the points of liberty, religion, and property. we can partly judge their future by their past. in the dark and troublous days of rebellion they held the country for england, established a police, did for ireland all that government neglected to do, and then, having restored order, the small but mighty minority threw aside their arms and went back to their work. they are before everything industrial. wars and rumours of wars they detest, as injurious to trade, as well as to higher interests. but when they take off their coats they always win. they put into their efforts, whether in war or peace, such a strenuous determination, such an unwavering resolution to succeed, that they become invincible. they have the confidence inspired by invariable success. their opponents have the flabbiness and the lack of self-reliance resulting from seven hundred years of whining and querulous complaint. if mr. gladstone were to offer complete separation to-morrow the irish leaders dare not take it. they know what would happen if ulster took the field. spite of their boasting, dillon & co. know full well that their vaunted numbers would avail them naught. the venerable william arthur, a nonconformist minister, says:--"we will not be put under a parliament in dublin. the imperial franchise and all which that guarantees is our birthright. no man shall take it from us. we will never sell it. if englishmen and scotchmen will not let us live and die in the freedom we were born to, they will have to come and kill us. on that ground stands the strongest party in ireland. for as sure as the home rule party is the larger, so surely is the unionist party the stronger. ask any military man who has spent a few years in the country. settle the irish question by putting the stronger party under the weaker! you would only change a count of heads into a trial of strength. instead of the polling-booth, where nothing counts but heads, you would set for the two parties another trysting place. there brains count, education counts, purses count, habits of hard work count, habits of command and habits of obedience count, habits of success count, delight in overcoming difficulties count, northern tenacity counts, and there are other things which i do not mention that would count. let not the two parties be summoned to that trysting place!" during my visit to belfast i had exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the probabilities of armed resistance to the authority of a dublin parliament. i visited what might fairly be called the ulster war department, and there saw regular preparation for an open campaign, the arrangements being under the most able and expert superintendence. the tables were covered with documents connected with the sale and purchase of rifles and munitions of war. one of them set forth the particulars of a german offer of two hundred and forty-five thousand mauser rifles, the arm lately discarded by the prussian government, with fifty million cartridges. as i had frequent opportunities of observing the manufacture of a hundred and fifty thousand of these weapons by the national arms and ammunition company of sparkbrook, i noted the present quotation, which was s. each, the cartridges to be thrown in for nothing. another offer referred to a hundred and forty-nine thousand stand of arms with thirty million cartridges. there were numerous offers from birmingham, and a large consignment of rifles and bayonets were about to be delivered in ireland, the entire freight of a small steamer, at a place which i was then forbidden to mention, but which i may now say was portaferry. an enormous correspondence was submitted to me in confidence, and i was surprised to see how deep and sincere was the sympathy of the working men of england, who with gentlemen of position and influence, and rifle volunteers by thousands were offering their aid in the field should the bill become law. i saw a letter from a distinguished english soldier with an offer of five hundred pounds and two hundred men. money was coming in plentifully, and all the correspondence was unsought. the office had over fifty thousand pounds in hand, and promises for more than half a million. the forces at that moment, organised and drilled, numbered , , all duly enrolled and pledged to act together anywhere and at any time, many of them already well armed, and the remainder about to be furnished with modern weapons. the government was becoming nervous. an order from headquarters required a complete survey of the three barracks of belfast, with an exhaustive report as to their defensive capabilities. plans of existing musketry loopholes were to be made, and commanding officers were to state if it would be advisable to add to them. suggestions were invited, and mr. morley, who at that very moment was telling parliament that no precautions were being taken, wanted to know if the said barracks could be held against an organised force of civilians, arriving unexpectedly, and when tommy atkins was taking his walks abroad. at the same time, military officers were being secretly sworn in as magistrates. does this look like the fear of civil war? these statements, made in the _gazette_ five months ago, have not been contradicted. the rank and file of the english home rule party know nothing of this--and by what their priestly allies would call "invincible ignorance" they may be excused their inability to believe in stern resistance to anything. the party of surrender are totally incapable of understanding that men exist who would lay down their lives for a principle. mr. gladstone and his items, like the irish leaders and their dupes, are easily overmastered. you have only to stand up to them, and they curl up like mongrel curs. but for this fact were would be no home rule bill. of the two parties the irish were the stoutest, and the weakest went to the wall. the english home rulers cannot conceive that their conquerors could be easily beaten, or even that men can be found to meet them on the field. on the contrary, the men of ulster who know these heroes hold them in deepest contempt, and in the event of an appeal to arms would treat them as so many mice. spite of their army of independence, the nationalists tacitly admit this, and would defer separation until they have first by legislative enactments driven away "the english garrison," or compelled ulster in self-defence to declare against english rule. and, strange to say, they propose to use to this end the force of english arms. they calculate on the resistance of ulster as a measure of assistance to their own ultimate purposes. "all we have to do is to stand by while british soldiers shoot them down like dogs." that is their expectation, as expressed by one of themselves. their plans are well hid. but "the best-laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft agley," as the priest-governed schemers may find to their cost. a second and more recent sojourn in ulster deepened the impression given by my first visit. throughout the province the feeling is still the same--an immovable determination to resist at all hazards the imposts of a dublin parliament. they will have no acts or part in it. they will send no members, they will pay no taxes, they will not accord to it one jot or tittle of authority. they will offer armed resistance to any force of police or sheriff's officers acting under warrants issued by the college green legislators. resistance to the queen's authority they regard as altogether out of the question. but it remains to be seen whether british troops will "shoot them down like dogs." the ulstermen think not, and they have good reasons for this opinion. the mere threat of home rule in cost forty lives in the streets of belfast alone. who can say what would be the results of the bill becoming law? surely every reliable test points in one direction. the gladstonian party, without a shadow of reason, have affected to doubt the courage and resolution of the northerners, but the breed of the men and their long history are a sufficient answer to these cavillers. true it is that their courage has not been demonstrated by murder, by shooting from behind a wall, or the battering out of a policeman's brains, a hundred against one, or the discharging of snipe-shot into the legs of old women and young children, after the fashion so popular with the party with whom mr. gladstone and his heterogeneous crew are now acting. but for all that, the pluck and tenacity of ulstermen are undeniable. their cause is good, and left to themselves they would win hands down. it is therefore demonstrated by a consensus of the weightiest authorities and by the results of personal investigation that not only would civil war between irish parties be the inevitable result of home rule, but that there would also be war between ireland and england; that irish unionists are determined to resist to the last, and that they possess the means of resistance. they are touched on the subjects they hold most sacred--religion, freedom, property; and despite the assurances of mr. gladstone, who desires to judge the nationalist party by their future, the keen ulstermen prefer to judge them by their past. and bearing these things in mind, it is not unreasonable to say that englishmen who support the present policy of the separatist party are at once enemies of ireland and traitors to their native land. and now my task as your special commissioner in ireland is at an end. without fear or favour i have described the country as i found it, and have exposed the character and the motives of the men to whom mr. gladstone would entrust its future government. i was no bigoted partisan when my task began, but in a period of six months i have traversed the country from end to end, and at every step my first impressions have been deepened. it would be a folly--yea, it would be a crime--to withdraw from ireland that mitigating influence of british rule which alone prevents a lovely island becoming the foul and blood-stained arena of remorseless sectarian strife. birmingham, august th. finis. general index achil islands, . agriculture, mr. balfour's aids to, and . "all you want," an irish programme, . american tourist's opinion, and ; help for ireland, . aran islands, . armagh, . ashbourne act, happy results of, . athenry, . balfour, right hon. a.j., reception in belfast, ; reception in dublin, ; galway fisheries, ; ditto, ; the man for ireland, ; aids agriculture, ; secret of success, ; list of his light railways, . ballymena, description of, . banks, effects of home rule bill on, . beggars, irish, , , and . belfast, newcastle miners in, ; belfast and dublin corporations compared, ; chamber of commerce, ; riots of , ; later opinions, . blarney stone, the, . bodyke, visit to, ; history of estate, ; evictions at, and ; tenants could pay, . boycotting (_see also_ outrage, &c.). the darcy family, ; mr. strachan, of tuam, ; children starving, ; for expressing political opinions, ; father humphreys on, ; mrs. taylor's case, . boyne, battle of the, . bundoran, attack on protestants at, . cables, nationalists and atlantic, . chamberlain, right hon. j., and mr. dillon, . cappawhite, assault, . capital, idle irish, . cathedrals, tipperary, ; monaghan, . catholics, roman, opinion of unionist, ; hatred of protestants, (_see also_ intolerance); the loyalist, and . cattle in living rooms, . character sketches--a kerry shopkeeper, ; philip fahy, ; an old woman, ; local names, ; ladies and their boots, ; bailiffs and gangers, ; achil car driver, . charity, effects of home rule bill on, ; hopelessness of helping the irish by, . churchyard, an irish, . clare, "unmanageable devils," ; the curse of county, ; civil war in, . coercion, irish legislature and, . congested districts, a precise definition of, ; description of, . cork, sentiment in, . credulity of irish, , , and ; belief in fairies, ; hill full of diamonds, . croke, archbishop, . customs, collection of, under home rule, . de burgho, lady, and evictions, . degradation, glimpses of irish, . dillon, john, convicted at tipperary, . disloyalty (_see also_ union of hearts); "to hell with queen victoria," ; the town crier, ; cursing the queen, ; father ryan's manifesto, ; irish press admits, ; poem against joining the army, ; t.d. sullivan's verses, . donegal, do-nothing, . dublin, opinions in, ; compared with belfast, . dugort, . dundalk, . dynamite, use of, justified, ; daly, . education, catholic designs on, . elections (_see also_ voting) in ulster, ; false swearing, . england, apathy of electors in, ; effects of home rule on english industries, , also and ; english ignorance of ireland, ; not governed by englishmen, . evictions (_see also_ bodyke). sadleir case, ; ruane, ; what they mean, ; in queen's county, . factories, galway bag, ; ditto, ; flour mills, &c., idle, . famine in achil, ; "please god we'll have a famine," . farmers, english and irish compared, ; irish petted and spoiled, . fenians, opinion of, ; o'leary and stephens, . fisheries, priests' falsehoods about, ; galway, ; price of fish, ; aran island, ; curing taught, . flax-growing neglected, . forest planting in congested districts, . fowl breeding encouraged, . franchise, effects of lowering, . freemasons, archbishop walsh and, . funerals in connaught, . gag, _irish catholic_ on, . galway, board of guardians, ; harbour folly, . geographical necessity, . gladstone, right hon. w.e., attacks parnell, ; "oi'm goin' across the say," ; mob rule, ; as a "jumper," ; his "firm belief," ; "the party of law and order," . gladstonians converted in ireland, , , and . gort, description of, . grubb, sir howard, . guardians, boards of, and rates, . harrington, "tim," . harvest hands for england, irish, , , ; _see also under_ england. healy, "tim," his parentage, . holy water, . home rule, a coffin for, ; nationalist opinions of bill, ; how nationalists will work, ; a peasant's view of, ; not yet, ; home rule from mr. balfour, ; mr. manley on, ; praying against, ; masses don't want, ; "let us have chaos," ; "can we eat it?" ; an irish criticism of, ; who oppose it? ; _united ireland_ on, ; german view of, ; its friends and enemies, ; parnellites dread it now, . houghton, lord, , , . humorous incidents narrated: the phoenix park orator, ; an "iligant" tenant, ; "the devil's bite," ; the timprance man, ; a lending transaction, ; the galway fisherman, ; "when i'm sober," ; "'tis home rule ye want," ; mr. morley and the car-driver, ; the wild ass, ; michael and the postal service, ; the cattle boat, ; a question of feet, ; an irish retort, ; finn water _v._ purgatory, . ignorance, the kerry folks', . immigration, effects of home rule on, . improvidence, in connaught, ; irish farmers', . intimidation (_see also_ bodyke), sadleir's case, ; how it is done, . intolerance, irish, , . ireland, another injustice to, . irish language, . irish national federation, commissioner attends a "mass meeting" of the, ; sequel thereto, . irish members, popular opinions of, and ; protected by police, ; contempt for, ; why distrusted, ; matt harris, ; fenians on, . juries, the cork, . landlords must exist, ; tim healy on, . land (_see also_ rent), sub-division of, ; land hunger, (_see also_ summary article, ); tenants real owners, ; a farmer's view, ; must be worth something, ; land commission rewards idleness, . land league, defying the, ; reign at loughrea, ; overmatched, ; gladstone and harcourt on, . land purchase, falsehoods about, . laziness, examples of, ; mr. james dunn on irish, ; mr. mcmaster's offer, ; in england work, in ireland play, ; an excuse for, ; death and, ; "going to," . legislation, with a hard g, . lies, nationalist, about daly, ; about westminster, ; about mr. balfour, . linen trade of londonderry, . local government, a nationalist on, . logan, m.p., false statements about rents, . logue, cardinal, ; his father, . londonderry, description of, . macadam, mr., bodyke agent, . mcfadden, father, his income, . magee, detective james, . mansions in ruins, . marriage customs in connaught, ; in achil islands, ; juvenile, . maynooth, enemy of england, , ; dr. wylie on, . mines, delusions about, , , , , , . minority, the, , . monaghan, . morley, right hon. john, soliloquy, ; on the side of crime, ; tight-fisted, ; the cab-driver and, ; police on, ; philandering, . mullingar, . nationalism, its real nature, ; _see also_ summary article, . newry, . nolan, colonel, interview with, ; a parnellite, ; assaulted by a priest, . o'brien, william, convicted at tipperary, . o'callaghan, colonel, . o'shaughnessy, dr., on home rule, . orange lodges, their toleration, ; demonstrations, ; charged with rowdyism, ; constitution of the, . outrages: two girls brutally assaulted, ; fifteen in county clare, ; hushing up, ; dread of, ; loughrea, ; a terrible list of, ; a fire, ; mr. moloney shot, ; castle explosion, ; mr. blood fired at, . parliament, an irish, what it could do, ; fancy picture of, . parnellites and anti-parnellites defined, . parnell, mr., priests and, ; secret of his success, ; still worshipped in dublin, . peace, ireland needs, . pledges and promises, value of irish, . police, the dublin, ; refuse protection at bodyke, ; mr. morley and the, . ponsonby rents, . post office savings bank, run on, . potato seed wasted, . poverty, english and irish, . press, the irish, ; on finality, . priests and people (_see also_ voting): a terrible danger, ; priests' one idea, ; priests at home rule convention, ; never denounced outrage, ; people believe anything priest tells them, ; present day priests, ; "i am responsible," ; "admit bearer," ; "pay, pay, pay, from the cradle to the grave," ; spiritual tyranny, ; refusing the sacrament, ; a loyal priest, . protectionists, . protestants, attack on, at cappawhite, ; persecution of, at tuam, ; colony at dugort, ; why they are unionists, ; bundoran outrage upon, . railways--mr. balfour's--cork and muskerry, ; the connemara, ; a ride on a new line, ; an engine ride, ; building on a bog, ; a dangerous ride, ; full list of balfour light railways, . registration frauds, . rents, the ponsonby, ; rack renting, ; quite low enough, ; what rack rent means, ; land must be worth something, ; to whom is rent due? ; dublin corporation tenants and clanricarde tenants compared, ; a donegal rent book, . republic, an irish, ; could we reconquer? . ribbonmen and nationalists compared, . rossmore, lord, and monaghan town council, . ruins, irish, . salthill, . st. patrick, . scotch and irish compared, and . securities, effect of home rule bill on, . secret societies, . sentiment, a priest on irish, . smith barry, mr., . soap as a remedy for ireland's ills, . soldiers, irish girls and, ; complaint when withdrawn, . strabane agricultural show, . stranorlar, . strike leaders and nationalists compared, . sullivan, t.d., on india, . summary articles:-- --irish nationalism is not patriotism, . --land hunger: its cause, effect, and remedy, . --clerical domination and its consequences. --civil war a certainty of home rule. superstition (_see also_ credulity), the holy man, . tenants' losses, . terrorism in dublin, ; rev. r. eager, ; at tipperary, . tipperary, new and old, . toleration, would catholics show? and . trade, home rule effects on (_see also_ england), and . tradition, effects of, . tuam, ; indignation meeting, . ulster, feeling on home rule bill in, ; preparation for war, ; english sympathy with, ; loyalist programme, ; character of ulstermen, ; articles on, ; "tak a doom'd lot of managin'," . union of hearts, dublin mob on, ; "when england's bur-r-sted up," ; miss gonne, ; union jack cut down, ; "when britons first at hell's command" (_see also_ disloyalty), . victoria disaster, irish opinion of, . voting, priests and, , ; priests endowed with a thousand votes, ; regulations wanted against priests, . walsh, archbishop, . war, preparations for, in ulster, ; mr. morley's precautions, ; ireland's policy when england is at war, ; danger of civil war, . worthington, mr. robert, on ruin by home rule, . * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : ballymera replaced with ballymena | | page : neighboughhood replaced with neighbourhood | | page : mcadam replaced with macadam | | page : indentification replaced with identification | | page : thelr replaced with their | | page : goverment replaced with government | | page : "villager iu ireland" replaced with | | "villager in ireland" | | page : estabblished replaced with established | | page : "people offer to to swop" replaced with | | "people offer to swop" | | page : enthusiam replaced with enthusiasm | | page : fiasca replaced with fiasco | | page : indentify replaced with identify | | page : indentified replaced with identified | | page : "the rulings power" replaced with | | "the ruling power" | | page : waa replaced with was | | page : againt replaced with against | | page : rome rule replaced with home rule | | page : innnumerable replaced with innumerable | | page : obained replaced with obtained | | page : "we should should have" replaced with | | "we should have" | | page : linerick replaced with limerick | | page : "tha beggars" replaced with "the beggars" | | page : politican replaced with politician | | page : "had stated that the the black-mouths" | | replaced with | | "had stated that the black-mouths" | | index: mcadam was replaced with macadam | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * ireland and poland a comparison by t. w. rolleston first hon. secretary of the irish literary society, london; late assistant editor of the "new irish library," and co-editor of "a treasury of irish poetry"; author of "myths and legends of the celtic race," etc. new york george h. doran company publishers in america for hodder & stoughton mcmxvii ireland and poland the united kingdom is composed of four distinct nationalities. each of these has retained its own distinct character, its own national history, its own patriotism and self-respect. their affairs, great and small, general or local, are administered by one parliament in which each is fully represented. a large majority of the irish people have, however, asked that in addition to some representation in the united parliament they shall be granted a local parliament for the management of their own internal affairs. the fact that this demand, which has an important imperial as well as local bearing, has not yet been complied with has constantly been used by the enemies of the entente powers to represent as false and hypocritical the claims of those powers to be regarded as the champions of the rights of small nationalities; and the case of ireland has been compared with that of prussian poland, as though the peoples of these two countries were suffering the same kind of oppression, the same injustice, the same denial of the right of every man to live and prosper in his own land on equal terms with his fellow-citizens in every other part of the realm. the best answer to this charge is to tell plainly, without contention or exaggeration, what the united parliament has done for ireland since the beginning of the period of reform nearly fifty years ago. that is what is here attempted, so far as it can be done in a few pages. it must be fully understood that on the home rule question the present statement has no bearing whatever. that difficult problem lies in an altogether different sphere of politics, and must he judged by considerations which cannot be touched on here. without, however, trenching in any degree on controversial ground, it may be pointed out that the crucial difficulty of the home rule question lies, and has always lain, in the fact that in ireland a substantial and important minority amounting to about per cent. of the population, and differing from the rest of the country in religion, national traditions, and economic development, has hitherto been resolutely opposed to passing from the immediate government of the imperial parliament to that of any other body. this minority being, for the most part, grouped together in the north-east counties, the late government attempted to solve the difficulty by offering immediate home rule to that section of ireland which desires it, while leaving the remainder as it is until parliament should otherwise decree. this proposal was rejected by the general opinion of nationalist ireland, which was firmly opposed to the partition of the country for any indefinite period. the question, therefore, remains for the present in suspense, until a solution can be found which will not only ensure the integrity and security of the empire but reconcile the conflicting desires and interests of irishmen themselves. ireland fifty years ago so much to clear the ground in regard to the home rule controversy. i shall now ask the reader to glance for a moment at the condition of ireland fifty years ago. at that time almost the whole agricultural population were in the position of tenants-at-will, with no security either against increased rents or arbitrary eviction. the housing of the rural population, and especially of the agricultural labourers, was wretched in the extreme. local taxation and administration were wholly in the hands of grand juries, bodies appointed by the crown from among the country gentlemen in each district. irish roman catholics were without any system of university education comparable to that which protestants had enjoyed for three hundred years in the university of dublin. a church which, whatever its historic claims may have been, numbered only about per cent. of the population was established by law and supported by tithes levied on the whole country. technical education was inaccessible to the great bulk of the nation; and in no department of public education, of any grade or by whomsoever administered, was any attention paid to irish history, the irish language, irish literature, or any subject which might lead young irishmen to a better knowledge and understanding of the special problems of their country and its special claims to the love and respect of its children. that was the ireland of fifty years ago. it is an ireland which at the present day lives only on the lips of anti-british orators and journalists. it is an ireland as dead as the france of louis xiv. of the abuses and disabilities just recounted not one survives to-day. the measures by which they have been removed place to the credit of the united kingdom a record of reform the details of which, for the benefit of friends or foes, may be here very briefly set down. religious equality in the protestant episcopal church was disestablished and disendowed, and is now--many churchmen believe to its great spiritual advantage--on the same level as regards its means of support as every other denomination in ireland. it may be mentioned that the roman catholic church in ireland was long in the enjoyment of a state subsidy for the education of its clergy, a subsidy commuted in for a capital sum of , pounds. land reform as comparisons have been drawn between the systems of government in ireland and in poland, let us consider for a moment the condition of the polish rural population under german rule. it must be noted that the recent promises of polish autonomy made by germany--obviously for military and temporary reasons--refer only to those portions of polish territory held by other states. no change is to be made in the position of prussian poland. here, for many years, it has been, and still is, the avowed object of the prussian government either to extirpate or forcibly teutonise this slavonic population, and to replant the country with german colonists. the german chancellor in , prince von buelow, defended this anti-polish policy in the cynical saying that "rabbits breed faster than hares," and the meaner animal, the pole, must therefore be drastically kept down in favour of the german. between and the prussian government was spending over a million sterling a year in buying out polish landowners, great and small, and planting germans in their stead. the measure proved futile; the "rabbits" still multiplied, for the poles bought land from german owners faster than the government did from them. in , in order to check the development of polish agriculture and land-settlement, the government took the extreme step of forbidding poles to build new farmhouses without a licence. a still more oppressive measure came in , when, in clear defiance of the german constitution, the prussian government actually took powers and were voted funds--from taxation paid by poles and germans alike--for the compulsory expropriation of polish owners against whom nothing whatever could be alleged except their non-german nationality. these powers have been put into operation, and every pole in prussia now holds his patrimony on his own soil on the sufferance of a government which regards his very existence as a nuisance, because he occupies a place which a german might otherwise fill. during precisely the same period the british government in ireland has been bending the wealth and credit of the united kingdom to objects precisely the reverse. ireland, owing to the wars and confiscations of the seventeenth century, had come to have a land-owning aristocracy mainly of english descent with a celtic peasantry holding their farms as yearly tenants. the object of british land-legislation has been to expropriate the landlords, so far as their tenanted land is concerned, and to establish the irish peasant, as absolute owner of the land he tills. the irish tenant is now subject only to rents fixed by law; he can at any time sell the interest in his farm, which he has, therefore, a direct interest in improving; he is also assisted by a great scheme of land-purchase to become owner of his land on paying the price by terminable instalments, which are usually some per cent. less than the amount he formerly paid as rent. under this scheme about two-thirds of the irish tenantry have already become owners of their farms, while the remainder enjoy a tenure which is almost as easy and secure as ownership itself. it is not surprising, then, that a german economist who has made a special study of this subject should declare that "the irish tenants have had conditions assured to them more favourable than any other tenantry in the world enjoy"; adding the dry comment that in ireland the "magic of property" appears to consist in the fact that it is cheaper to acquire it than not.[*] that magic has been worked for ireland by the british legislature and by british credit. as in prussia, compulsory powers (limited by certain conditions and to certain districts) stand behind the schemes of the government; but the compulsion is exercised not against the irishman in favour of the english settler, but against the (usually) english landlord in favour of the irish tenant. the state is now pledged to about , , pounds for the furtherance of this scheme, the instalments and sinking fund to the amount of about , , pounds a year being paid with exemplary regularity by the farmers who have taken advantage of it. [footnote *: professor m. bonn, of munich university. "modern ireland and her agrarian problem," pp. , , translated from "die irische agrarfrage." _archiv fuer sozialwissenschaft_; mohr, tuebingen.] the congested districts board in the poorer and more backward regions of the west it has been felt that the above measures are not enough, and a special agency has been constituted with very wide powers to help the western farmer, and not only the farmer, but the fisherman, the weaver, or anyone pursuing a productive occupation there, to make the most of his resources and to develop his industry in the best possible way. this board commands a statutory endowment of , pounds a year. a system of light railways which now covers these remote districts has given new and valuable facilities for the marketing of fish and every kind of produce. the various boards and other agencies by which these measures are carried into execution are manned almost exclusively by irishmen. the agricultural labourer there is a world of difference between the present lot of the irish agricultural labourer and his condition in , when reform in this department was first taken in hand. cottages can now be provided by the rural district councils and let at nominal rents. nearly nine millions sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking fund, and up to the present date , cottages have been built, each with its plot of land, while several thousand more are sanctioned. of the results of the labourers' act a recent observer writes: "the irish agricultural labourer can now obtain a cottage with three rooms, a piggery, and garden allotment of an acre or half an acre, and for this he is charged a rent of one to two shillings a week ... these cottages by the wayside give a hopeful aspect to the country ... flowers are before the doors of the new cottages and creepers upon the walls. the labourer can keep pigs, poultry, and a goat, and grow his potatoes and vegetables in his garden allotment."[*] [footnote *: padraic colum: "my irish year," pp. , .] local government in a local government bill was passed for ireland which placed the administration of the poor law and other local affairs for rural districts on the same footing as in england. the rule of the grand juries, which had lasted for two and a half centuries, and which had, on the whole, carried on local affairs with credit and success, was now entirely swept away, and elected bodies were placed in full control of local taxation, administration, and patronage. in the case of the larger towns free municipal institutions had already existed for some sixty years. in these the franchise was now reduced, and is wide enough both in town and country to admit every class of the population. since the new elective bodies have had important duties to fulfil in regard to the development of agriculture and technical instruction. the department of agriculture and technical instruction this new irish department of state grew out of a demand formulated after long inquiry and discussion by a voluntary irish committee representing both unionist and nationalist opinion. it was established in , and now commands the large endowment of , pounds a year, with a capital sum of over , pounds. the annual endowment is clear of all charges for offices and staff, which are on the civil service estimates. its head is a minister responsible to parliament, but associated with him are boards of agriculture and technical instruction, two-thirds of which are elected respectively by county and borough councils. without their concurrence no expenditure can be undertaken, and local work is largely carried on through committees appointed by these councils. the people at large are therefore intimately and responsibly associated with the work of the department, the annual meetings of which form a kind of industrial parliament, where the whole economic organisation of ireland can be reviewed, debated, and developed. the department works by teaching, by inquiry, by experiment, and has an immense field of activity in dealing with cattle diseases, the improvement of stock, the control of creameries, the marketing of produce, etc. it has also brought facilities for technical instruction into every important centre of population. university education this important question was settled in by the foundation of a new university, the "national university," with its central authority in dublin and colleges in dublin (the old catholic university of which cardinal newman was rector), in cork, and in galway. the university is open to all creeds, and may not impose religious tests upon its students, but its government is mainly in the hands of the roman catholic hierarchy, and it is accepted as a fair settlement of the question of catholic higher education in ireland. in the management of its internal affairs, the appointment of professors, the selection of textbooks, etc., the national university is wholly autonomous and free from government interference. one of its most remarkable features is that the irish language has been made an obligatory subject for matriculation. the endowment of the university, with its constituent colleges, amounts to , pounds a year, and it was voted a capital sum for building and equipment of , pounds. it need hardly be said that no parallel to this institution exists in prussian poland. language and native culture in this as in other respects a comparison with the theory and practice of german administration may help to place the policy of the united kingdom in its proper light. when at the congress of vienna, , prussia definitely acquired her present share of polish territory, king friedrich wilhelm iii promised for himself and his successors, "on my kingly word," that the poles should have religious freedom, the use of the polish language in administration, in the law courts and in the schools, and be in all respects on an equality with their german fellow-citizens. we have already seen how these promises were kept in regard to the vital question of the ownership of land. they have been no less flagrantly broken in regard to the national language. the use of polish is strictly prohibited at all public meetings. no polish deputy to the reichstag may address his constituents in the only language they understand. since german alone may be taught in the national schools. the language of instruction must be german wherever half the pupils are capable of understanding it, and after it is decreed that no other language must be heard in the schoolroom. a decree of forbids teachers to use polish even in their own family circles. anyone who is caught teaching polish, even gratuitously, is punished by fine or imprisonment. polish literature found in the houses of private persons is confiscated, and its possessors imprisoned, if the police consider it to bear the least trace of any propagandist character.[*] [footnote *: "the evolution of modern germany," by w. h. dawson, brings together in its twenty-third chapter most of the facts relating to this question. see especially a letter from a prominent member of the polish aristocracy quoted on p. .] all this, it will be seen, is merely the drastic execution tion of the policy laid down by treitschke, the prophet of modern germany, and more recently urged by the most popular living representative of prussian ideals, h. s. chamberlain. "there is," writes chamberlain, "no task before us so important as that of forcing the german language on the world (_die deutsche sprache der welt aufzuzwingen_.)" the german has "a twofold duty" laid on him: "never must a german abandon his own speech, neither he nor his children's children; and in every place, at every time, he must remember to compel others to use it until it has triumphed everywhere as the german army has done in war. ... so far as the german empire extends, the clergy must preach in german alone, in german alone the teacher must give his lessons ... mankind must be made to understand that anyone who cannot speak german is a pariah."[*] [footnote *: "kriegsaufsaetze," .] such are the ideals and such the practice of the people whom roger casement and one or two other enthusiasts for gaelic culture in ireland have sought to make the dominant power in that country, because it will rid them of "english" rule. let us now see what "english" rule (it is not really english at all, but the rule of the united kingdom) is actually like in regard to this particular subject. up to the decade - it may be said that the irish language was spoken by fully half the population of ireland. no restrictive measures were in force against it. but during that decade a general system of elementary education was introduced, and in the board schools the language withered away with astonishing rapidity. at the last census ( ) only , persons were recorded as speaking irish alone, while the number of those who knew anything of the language was only about per cent. of the population. whether this change was a blessing or a bane to ireland is a subject which is outside the range of this discussion, but whatever it was the irish people themselves had a full share of responsibility for the result. with scarcely an exception, the abandonment of irish was approved by the clergy, the political leaders, and the masses of the people "the killing of the language," writes dr. douglas hyde, "took place under the eye of o'connell and the parliamentarians, and, of course, under the eye and with the sanction of the catholic priesthood and prelates ... from a complexity of causes which i am afraid to explain, the men who for the last sixty years have had the ear of the irish race have persistently shown the cold shoulder to everything that was irish and racial."[*] their attitude is easily understood. irish had long ceased to be used for literary purposes. no irish newspapers, no irish books were printed; english was regarded as the only available key to the world of modern culture, and ireland became an english-speaking country without a struggle and almost without a regret. [footnote *: "beside the fire," pp. xliii, xliv ( ). dr. hyde was the first president of the gaelic league, and is now professor of modern irish in the national university.] in the early 'nineties, however, a popular movement took shape for the rescue of what still remained of the language and for its restoration, so far as was practically possible. classes for the study of irish were formed all over the country, folk-tales were collected, mss. of half-forgotten poets were disinterred and edited, the first scholarly and adequate dictionary of modern irish was compiled,[*] and plays, poems, and stories began to be written in the re-discovered language. these activities were mostly organised and directed by the gaelic league, a body founded in . one can easily imagine how a prussian government would have dealt with such a movement, especially as a certain disaffected element in the country immediately began to make use of it for its own ends. the british government looked on not only calmly but approvingly. when a general demand arose for the effective teaching of irish in the elementary schools--though at this time only about , old people were recorded in the census as ignorant of english--it was at once agreed to. irish had been permitted and paid for, though not markedly encouraged, since . it was now placed on a list of subjects which might be taught in school hours, and extra fees were allotted for teaching it at the rate of ten shillings per pupil--twice the amount allowed for french, latin, or music. grants are also made to certain colleges where teachers of the language can be trained. all this began in , and since that time over , pounds a year has been paid for irish teaching directly from imperial funds--about twice the amount collected in the same period by voluntary contributions from ireland and the rest of the world. nor is this the limit of the grant; it is limited only by the willingness of school managers and parents to make use of it. indirectly, the state is paying much more, for the various professorships and lectureships in irish subjects--language history, archaeology, and economies--established under the national university account for well over , pounds a year. taking the direct expenditure on elementary education alone, the state has paid for irish teaching since a sum of no less than , pounds. it may therefore be claimed that in cultivating her ancient language and native traditions, ireland enjoys the fairest and most liberal treatment ever accorded to a small nationality incorporated in a great empire. [footnote *: by the rev. p. s. dineen; published by the irish tests society.] reforms and their results on the reforms which have been thus briefly sketched, one or two general remarks may be in place. it has sometimes been contended that except by violence, or the menace of violence, ireland has never obtained anything from the english legislature. it would be truer to say that she has never obtained anything at all. england is not a sovereign power, and does not administer irish affairs, nor even her own. what has been gained has been gained from the legislature of the united kingdom, in which irishmen, like every other race inhabiting that kingdom, have had their full share of representation and of influence. and if in ireland, as in other countries, the necessity of reform has sometimes been made evident by disorder, it is wholly untrue to say that this has been always or even usually the case. land-reform in its earliest stages, like trade unionism in england, was accompanied by disorder. but the greatest measure of irish land-reform--the wyndham act of --was worked out on irish soil by peaceable discussion among the parties concerned, and parliament acted at once upon their joint demand. it was in precisely the same way that the department of agriculture came into being; nor did the great measures of local government, of university education for catholics, of the labourers' acts, or the recognition extended to the gaelic movement, owe their origin to any other cause than the wholesome influences of reason and goodwill. the internal condition of ireland already shows a marked response to the altered state of things. it is visible, as many travellers have noticed, in the face of the country; it is proved by official records and statistics. emigration has declined to its lowest point; education has spread amongst the people. irish emigrants, when they do leave their own shores, take higher positions than ever before. a population of some four millions, largely composed of small farmers, has lent forty-seven millions sterling to the government; and, what is still more significant, the deposits in post office savings banks have risen from six millions in to over thirteen millions the year before the war. the new war loan is reported to have had an extraordinary success in ireland. on the last day of subscription a single dublin bank took in one million sterling.[*] with some self-appointed champions of ireland abuse of the british empire is a very popular amusement, but the irish farmer and the irish trader put their money in it, and with it they stand to win or lose. [footnote *: the times, feb. , .] irish agriculture, partly owing to climatic conditions and partly to the fact that ireland has a monopoly of the export of live cattle to england, has developed hitherto rather in the direction of cattle-raising than of tillage; and cattle have increased since from three million to over five million head, and sheep from two millions to three million six hundred thousand. poultry have nearly quadrupled in the same period. the gross railway receipts--another significant symptom--were , , pounds in . in they had risen to , , pounds. the co-operative agricultural associations, in which ireland has shown the way to the english-speaking world, now number about , , and do a trade of well over five millions a year. the thousands of labourers' cottages which have sprung up, each with its plot of land, have been to the irish labourers what the land acts have been to the farmer--they have completely transformed his economic status in the country. accompanying these symptoms of material progress, we have witnessed in recent years a striking outburst of intellectual activity. irish literature, in poetry and drama, has attracted the attention of the whole world of culture, and exact and scholarly research in history and archaeology have flourished and found audiences as they were never known to do in ireland till now. this has not been the work of any one section of the people, either in creed or in politics; but the whole movement has been inspired by an irish patriotism which no sane person regards as conflicting in any degree with allegiance to the empire under the shelter of which it has grown and prospered. the circumstances above set forth do not pretend to be the whole story about modern ireland, nor do they show that the millennium has arrived in that country. apart from home rule, which is outside our present field, much still remains to be done--there is elementary education to be advanced, commercial facilities to be developed, land-purchase to be completed. but it is contended that the real facts about ireland are wholly and absurdly inconsistent with the picture of that country which the friends of germany circulate so industriously at the present time. ireland is not an oppressed and plundered nation, ground under the heel of a foreign power, and with her individual life deliberately stifled like that of poland in the german empire. only through ignorance or malice could such an illusion gain currency, and it needs only the touch of reality--reality which every one can easily see or verify for himself--to dispel it for ever from the mind of every candid inquirer. none proofreading team. the crime against europe * * * * * _a possible outcome of the war of _ by sir roger casement * * * * * copyrighted * * * * * introduction. * * * * * the reader must remember that these articles were written before the war began. they are in a sense prophetic and show a remarkable understanding of the conditions which brought about the present great war in europe. the writer has made european history a life study and his training in the english consular service placed him in a position to secure the facts upon which he bases his arguments. sir roger casement was born in ireland in september, . he was made consul to lorenzo marques in , being transferred to a similar post in the portuguese possessions in west africa, which included the consulate to the gaboon and the congo free state. he held this post from to , when he was given the consulate of santos. the following year he was appointed consul to hayti and san domingo, but did not proceed, going instead to para, where he served until , when he became consul-general to rio de janeiro. he was created a knight in . he was one of the organizers of the irish volunteers at dublin in november, , being one of their provisional committee. at present he is a member of the governing body of that organization. he spent the summer of this year in the united states. sir roger is at present in berlin, where, after a visit paid to the foreign office by him, the german chancellor caused to be issued the statement that "should the german forces reach the shores of ireland they would come not as conquerors but as friends." sir roger is well known for his investigation into the putomayo rubber district atrocities in . december, . chapter i the causes of the war and the foundation of peace since the war, foreshadowed in these pages, has come and finds public opinion in america gravely shocked at a war it believes to be solely due to certain phases of european militarism, the writer is now persuaded to publish these articles, which at least have the merit of having been written well before the event, in the hope that they may furnish a more useful point of view. for if one thing is certain it is that european militarism is no more the cause of this war than of any previous war. europe is not fighting to see who has the best army, or to test mere military efficiency, but because certain peoples wish certain things and are determined to get and keep them by an appeal to force. if the armies and fleets were small the war would have broken out just the same, the parties and their claims, intentions, and positions being what they are. to find the causes of the war we must seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. to find the causes of the war we should turn not to blue books or white papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations themselves. once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the real reason. the war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago. it was not brought about through the faults or temper of sovereigns or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in europe, but because certain powers, and one power in particular, nourished ambitions and asserted claims that involved not only ever increasing armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. in these cases peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about. as mr. bernard shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "after having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to london to be kindly but firmly spoken to by sir edward grey." to find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all europe into war in the short space of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (july th to august th, ), but in the long anterior activities that led the great powers of europe into definite commitments to each other. for the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact," viz.:--servia, belgium and japan, and confine our study of the causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal combatants. for it is clear that in the quarrel between servia and austria, hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that divides europe into armed camps. were categoric proof sought of how small a part the quarrel between vienna and belgrade played in the larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the russian government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities. as early as the th of july, the russian government sought to prevail upon great britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with russia and france, and on the british ambassador in st. petersburg pointing out that "direct british interests in servia were nil, and a war on behalf of that country would never be sanctioned by british public opinion," the russian minister of foreign affairs replied that "we must not forget that the _general european_ question was involved, the servian question being but a part of the former, and that great britain could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_." (despatch of sir g. buchanan to sir e. grey, th july, ). those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of servia to austria, the neutrality of belgium or the wish of japan to keep the peace of the east by seizing kiao-chau. the neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been decided on and had actually broken out; while japan came into the contest solely because europe had obligingly provided one, and because one european power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger in the sun. coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them to four. austria-hungary and germany in this war are indivisible. while each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that, perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation, that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies." in this war austria fights of necessity as a germanic power, although the challenge to her has been on the ground of her slav obligations and activities. germany is compelled to support austria by a law of necessity that a glance at the map of europe explains. hence, for the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the germanic peoples of central europe and those who have quarreled with them. we thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted allies as england, russia and france be at war with the german people?" the answer is not to be found in the white book, or in any statement publicly put forward by great britain, russia or france. but the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war, and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this world conflict. to accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that germany has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation a stultifying contradiction. it is of course much easier to put the blame on the kaiser. this line of thought is highly popular: it accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct. the german people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control. we thus arrive at "the real crime against germany," which explains everything but the thing it set out to explain. it leaves unexplained the real crime against europe. to explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the alliances of england, france and russia against germany. for the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. the defence of the _entente cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the triple alliance. but the answer to that is that whereas the triple alliance was formed thirty years ago, it has never declared war on anyone, while the _triple entente_ before it is eight years old has involved europe, america, africa, and asia in a world conflict. we must find the motive for england allying herself with france and russia in an admittedly anti-german "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the present war and why it is that many besides bernard shaw hold that "after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was idle for the british government to assume a death-bed solicitude for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel for the gun. when that motive is apparent we shall realise who it was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal to arms. the _entente cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. there is nothing in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone else. it is wrongly named. it is founded not on predilections but on prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. to put it crudely it is a bond of hate not of love. none of the parties to it like or admire each other, or have consistent aims, save one. that satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their ensuing quarrel. great britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all) is a democracy. russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy. great britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her dealings with the great white communities of canada, australia, new zealand, and south africa. she is not democratic in her dealings with subject races within the empire--the indians, notably, or the irish. to the indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by force; to the irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing them with cattle for british consumption. in both instances britain is notably false to her professions of devotion to democratic principles. her affinity with russia is found then, not in the cases where her institutions are good, but in those where they are bad. an alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil. to such it gave birth in persia, to such it must give birth in the present war. in persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government, destroy an infant constitution and disembowel the constitutionalists, whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of persian patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown. the alliance with france, while more natural than that with russia if we regard great britain as a democracy (by eliminating india, egypt, ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity of aims than on affinity of antipathies. the _entente cordiale_, the more closely we inspect it, we find is based not on a cordial regard of the parties to it for each other, but on a cordial disregard all three participants share for the party it is aimed against. it will be said that germany must have done something to justify the resentment that could bring about so strangely assorted a combination against herself. what has been the crime of germany against the powers now assailing her? she has doubtless committed many crimes, as have all the great powers, but in what respect has she so grievously sinned against europe that the czar, the emperor of india, the king of great britain and ireland, the mikado and the president of the french republic--to say nothing of those minor potentates who like voltaire's minor prophets seem _capable de tout_--should now be pledged, by irrevocable pact, to her destruction as a great power? "german militarism," the reply that springs to the lips, is no more a threat to civilisation than french or russian militarism. it was born, not of wars of aggression, but of wars of defence and unification. since it was welded by blood and iron into the great human organism of the last forty years it has not been employed beyond the frontiers of germany until last year. can the same be said of russian militarism or of french militarism or of british navalism? we are told the things differ in quality. the answer is what about the intent and the uses made. german militarism has kept peace and has not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal attack. russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the confines of russian territory; french militarism, since it was overthrown at sedan, has carried fire and sword across all northern africa, has penetrated from the atlantic to the nile, has raided tonquin, siam, madagascar, morocco, while english navalism in the last forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and landed raiding parties throughout asia and africa, to say nothing of the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the british army in india, burma, south africa, egypt, tibet, or afghanistan, within the same period. as to the quality of the materialism of the great continental powers there is nothing to prefer in the french and russian systems to the german system. each involved enormous sacrifices on the people sustaining it. we are asked, however, to believe that french militarism is maintained by a "democracy" and german militarism by an "autocracy." without appealing to the captive queen of madagascar for an opinion on the authenticity of french democracy we may confine the question to the elected representatives of the two peoples. in both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies responsible to french and german opinion. the elected representatives of germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of france, and the german reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for the support of german armaments. as to russian militarism, it may be presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the russian duma is more truly representative of the russian people than the parliament of the federated peoples of germany at berlin. the machines being then approximately the same machines, we must seek the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put. for what does france, for what does russia maintain a great army? why does germany call so many youthful germans to the colours? on what grounds of moral sanction does great britain maintain a navy, whose cost far exceeds all the burdens of german militarism? russia stretches across the entire area of central asia and comprises much of the greater part of europe as well. in its own territory, it is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. no power can plunder or weaken russia as long as she remains within her own borders. of all the great powers in europe she is the one that after england has the least need of a great army. she cannot be assailed with success at home, and she has no need to leave her own territories in search of lands to colonize. her population, secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for all future needs of expansion the continent of siberia into which to overflow. russia cannot be threatened within russia and has no need to go outside russia. a russian army of , , is not necessary to self-defence. its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion at the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing russian frontiers. as i write it is engaged not in a war of defence but in a war of invasion, and is the instrument of a policy of avowed aggression. not the protection of the slavs from austria, herself so largely a slavic power and one that does not need to learn the principles of good government from russia, but the incorporation of the slavs within the mightiest empire upon earth--this is the main reason why russia maintains the mightiest army upon earth. its threat to germany, as the protector of austria-hungary, has been clear, and if we would find the reason for german militarism we shall find at least one half of it across the russian frontier. the huge machine of the french army, its first line troops almost equal to germany's, is not a thing of yesterday. it was not german aggression founded it--although germany felt it once at jena. founded by kings of france, french militarism has flourished under republic, empire, constitutional monarchy, and empire again until to-day we find its greatest bloom full blown under the mild breath of the third republic. what is the purpose of this perfect machine? self-defence? from what attack? germany has had it in her power, again and again within the last thirty years to attack france at a disadvantage, if not even with impunity. why has she refrained--whose hand restrained her? not russia's--not england's. during the russo-japanese war or during the boer war, france could have been assailed with ease and her army broken to pieces. but german militarism refrained from striking that blow. the object of the great army france maintains is not to be found in reasons of self-defence, but may be found, like that of russia in hopes of armed expansion. since the aim in both cases was the same, to wage a war of aggression to be termed of "recovery" in one case and "protection" in the other, it was not surprising that czar and president should come together, and that the cause of the slavs should become identified with the cause of strasburg. to "protect" the slavs meant assailing austria-hungary (another way of attacking germany), and to "recover" strasburg meant a _mes-alliance_ between democrat of france and cossack of the don. we come now to the third party to die entente, and it is now we begin to perceive how it was that a cordial understanding with england rendered a russo-french attack upon germany only a question of time and opportunity. until england appeared upon the scene neither russia nor france, nor both combined, could summon up courage to strike the blow. willing to wound they were both afraid to strike. it needed a third courage, a keener purpose and a greater immunity. german militarism was too formidable a factor in the life of , , of the most capable people in europe to be lightly assailed even by france and russia combined. russia needed money to perfect the machinery of invasion, so sorely tried by the disastrous failure to invade korea and manchuria. france had the money to advance, but she still doubted the ability of her stagnant population of , , to face the growing magnitude of the great people across the rhine. it needed another guarantee--and england brought it. from the day that great britain and her mighty fleet joined the separated allies with their mighty armies, the bond between them and the circle round germany grew taut. from that day the counsels of the allies and their new found "friend" thickened and quickened. the immovable "menace across the rhine" in one case had become the active "menace across the north sea" in the other case. the sin of german militarism was at last out. it could take to the water as kindly as to the land. as long as the war machine guaranteed the inviolability of german territory it was no threat to european peace, but when it assumed the task of safe-guarding german rights at sea it became the enemy of civilization. these trading people not content with an army that kept french "revanche" discreetly silent and slav "unity" a dream of the future presumed to have a sea-born commerce that grew by leaps and bounds, and they dared to build a navy to defend and even to extend it. _delenda est carthago!_ from that day the doom of "german militarism" was sealed; and england, democratic england, lay down with the czar in the same bed to which the french housewife had already transferred her republican counterpane. the duration of peace became only a question of time, and the war of to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext. each of the parties to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while the aim to each was different the end was the same. germany's power of defence must be destroyed. that done each of the sleeping partners to the unsigned compact would get the share of the spoils, guarded by armed german manhood, he coveted. to russia, the dismemberment of austria-hungary and the incorporation of the slav elements in part into her own vast empire, in part into a vassal and subordinate balkan confederacy. to france the restoration of lorraine, with metz, and of alsace with strasburg and their , , of german speaking teutons to the french empire. to england, the destruction of german sea-power and along with it the permanent crippling of german competition in the markets of the world. incidentally german colonies would disappear along with german shipping, and with both gone a german navy would become a useless burden for a nation of philosophers to maintain, so that the future status of maritime efficiency in europe could be left to the power that polices the seas to equitably fix for all mankind, as well as for the defeated rival. such an outline was the altruistic scope of the unsigned agreement entered into by the three parties of the _triple entente_; and it only remained to get ready for the day when the matter could be brought to issue. the murder of the archduke ferdinand furnished russia with the occasion, since she felt that her armies were ready, the sword sharpened, and the entente sure and binding. the mobilization by russia was all that france needed "to do that which might be required of her by her interests." (reply of the french government to the german ambassador at paris, august st, .) had the neutrality of belgium been respected as completely as the neutrality of holland, england would have joined her "friends" in the assault on germany, as sir edward grey was forced to admit when the german ambassador in vain pressed him to state his own terms as the price of english neutrality. the hour had struck. russia was sure of herself, and the rest followed automatically since all had been provided for long before. the french fleet was in the mediterranean, as the result of the military compact between france and england signed, sealed and delivered in november, , and _withheld from the cognizance of the british parliament until after war had been declared_. the british fleet had been mobilized early in july in anticipation of russia's mobilization on land--and here again it is sir edward grey who incidentally supplies the proof. in his anxiety, while there was still the fear that russia might hold her hand, he telegraphed to the british ambassador in st. petersburg on th of july, requiring him to assure the russian foreign minister, that the british fleet, "which is concentrated, _as it happens_" would not disperse from portland. that "as it happens" is quite the most illuminating slip in the british white paper, and is best comprehended by those who know what have been the secret orders of the british fleet since , and what was the end in view when king george reviewed it earlier in the month, and when his majesty so hurriedly summoned the unconstitutional "home rule" conference at buckingham palace on th of july. nothing remained for the "friends" but to so manoeuvre that germany should be driven to declare war, or see her frontiers crossed. if she did the first, she became the "aggressor"; if she waited to be attacked she incurred the peril of destruction. such, in outline, are the causes and steps that led to the outbreak of war. the writer has seen those steps well and carefully laid, tested and tried beforehand. every rung of the scaling ladder being raised for the storming of the german defences on land and sea was planed and polished in the british foreign office. as sir edward grey confessed three years ago, he was "but the fly on the wheel." that wheel was the ever faster driven purpose of great britain to destroy the growing sea-power and commerce of germany. the strain had reached the breaking point. during the first six months of , german export trade almost equalled that of great britain. another year of peace, and it would certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of world trade great britain would have been put in the second place. german exports from january to june had swelled to the enormous total of $ , , , as against the $ , , , of great britain. a war against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it must be transferred to the seas. day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old, the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded. england fights not to defend the neutrality of belgium, not to destroy german militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in war, her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas. this is the crime against europe, the crime against the world that, among other victims the united states are invited to approve, in order that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture with that of a defeated germany. with the kiel canal "handed to denmark," as one of the fruits of british victory, as lord charles beresford yesterday magnanimously suggested, how long may it be before the panama canal shall be found to be "a threat to peace" in the hands of those who constructed it? a rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be teuton or anglo-saxon unless the admiralty controlling it is seated at whitehall, will always be an eyesore to the mistress of the seas, in other words, "a threat to the peace of the world." the war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the german people. to hand europe over to a triumphal alliance of russian and french militarism, while england controls the highways and waterways of mankind by a fleet whose function is "to dictate the maritime law of nations," will beget indeed a new europe, but a europe whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of well-sustained force--a europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress. the laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail. the crime of germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts of war as in the products of peace. if she go down to-day before a combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall cannot be permanent. germany has within herself the forces that ensure revival, and revival means recovery. neither france nor russia nor both combined, can give to europe what britain now designs to take from it by their help. whatever may be the result of this war on the field of battle, to france indeed it can bring only one end. for her there is no future save that of a military empire. her life blood is dried up. this war will sweep away all power of recuperation. she will remain impotent to increase her race, sterile of new forces for good, her young men's blood gone to win the barren fields of alsace. her one purpose in the new europe will be to hold a sword, not her own, over the struggling form of a resurgent germany in the interests of another people. let germany lose , , men in the fighting of to-day, she can recover them in two years of peace. but to france the losses of this war, whether she win or lose, cannot be made good in a quarter of a century of child births. whatever comes to russia, to england, france as a great free power is gone. her future function will be to act in a subordinate capacity alone; supported and encouraged by england she will be forced to keep up a great army in order that the most capable people of the continent, with a population no defeat can arrest, shall not fill the place in europe and in the world they are called on surely to fill, and one that conflicts only with british aims and appetites. german expansion was no threat to france. it was directed to other fields, chiefly those of commerce. in order to keep it from those fields england fanned the dying fires of french resentment and strove by every agency to kindle a natural sentiment into an active passion. the historian of the future will record that whatever the immediate fate of germany may be, the permanent victim was france. the day england won her to an active policy of vengeance against the victor of , she wooed her to abiding loss. her true place in europe was one of friendship with germany. but that meant, inevitably, the discovery by europe that the chief barrier to european concord lay not in the armies of the powers, but in the ring of hostile battleships that constrained her peoples into armed camps. european militarism rests on english navalism. english navalism requires for its continued existence a disunited europe; and a europe kept apart is a europe armed, anxious and watchful, bent on mutual attack, its eyes fixed on the _earth_. europe must lift its eyes to the sea. there lies the highway of the nations, the only road to freedom--the sole path to peace. for the pent millions of europe there can be no peace, no laying aside of arms, no sincere development of trade or culture while one people, _in europe but not of europe_, immune themselves from all attack, and sure that whatever suffering they inflict on others can never be visited on their own shores, have it in their power to foment strife with impunity and to call up war from the ends of the earth while they themselves enjoy the blessing of peace. england, the soul and brain of this confederacy of war abroad remains at peace at home. as i write these words a despatch from sir alfred sharpe, the correspondent of a london paper in france, comes to hand. it should be placarded in every foreign office of the world, in every temple of justice, in every house of prayer. "it is difficult for the people in england to realize the condition of northern france at the present time. although the papers are full of accounts of desolation and destruction caused by the german invasion, it is only by an actual experience that a full realization of the horror comes. to return to england after visiting the french war zone is to come back to a land of perfect peace, where everything is normal and where it is not easy to believe we are almost within hearing distance of the cannonade on the aisne." (sir alfred sharpe, to the _daily chronicle_ from the front, september nd, .) it is this immunity from the horror of war that makes all englishmen jingoes. they are never troubled by the consequences of belligerency. since it is only by "an actual experience that the full realization of the horror comes." until that horror strikes deep on english soil her statesmen, her ministers, her members of parliament, her editors, will never sincerely love peace, but will plan always to ensure war abroad, whenever british need or ambition demands it. were england herself so placed that responsibility for her acts could be enforced on her own soil, among her own people, and on the head of those who devise her policies, then we might talk of arbitration treaties with hope, and sign compacts of goodwill sure that they were indeed cordial understandings. but as long as great britain retains undisputed ownership of the chief factor that ensures at will peace or war on others, there can be only armaments in europe, ill-will among men and war fever in the blood of mankind. british democracy loves freedom of the sea in precisely the same spirit as imperial rome viewed the spectacle of celtic freedom beyond the outposts of the roman legions; as agricola phrased it, something "to wear down and take possession of so that freedom may be put out of sight." the names change but the spirit of imperial exploitation, whether it call itself an empire or a democracy, does not change. just as the athenian empire, in the name of a democracy, sought to impose servitude at sea on the greek world, so the british empire, in the name of a democracy, seeks to encompass mankind within the long walls of london. the modern sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats assailing her from east and west. but let the world be under no illusions. if germany go down to-day, vanquished by a combination of asiatic, african, american, canadian and european enemies, the gain will not be to the world nor to the cause of peace. the mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring freedom and peace to the world. the cause that begot this war will remain to beget new wars. the next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged fields of mid-europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded seaports of the atlantic and pacific oceans. a permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. a sure foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all. chapter ii the keeper of the seas as long ago as an irishman pointed out that if the english press did not abandon the campaign of prejudiced suspicion it was even then conducting against germany, the time for an understanding between great britain and the german people would be gone for ever. it was charles lever who delivered this shrewd appreciation of the onlooker. writing from trieste on august th, , to john blackwood, he stated: "be assured the _standard_ is making a great blunder by its anti-germanism and english opinion has _just now_ a value in germany which if the nation be once disgusted with us will be gone for ever." lever preserved enough of the irishman through all his official connection to see the two sides of a question and appreciate the point of view of the other man. what lever pointed out during the early stages of the franco-german war has come to pass. the _standard_ of forty years ago is the british press of to-day, with here and there the weak voice of an impotent liberalism crying in the wilderness. germany has, indeed, become thoroughly disgusted and the hour of reconciliation has long since gone by. in lever's time it was now or never; the chance not taken then would be lost for ever, and the english publicist of to-day is not in doubt that it is now too late. his heart-searchings need another formula of expression--no longer a conditional assertion of doubt, but a positive questioning of impending fact, "is it too soon." that the growing german navy must be smashed he is convinced, but how or when to do it he is not so clear. the situation is not yet quite intolerable, and so, although many urge an immediate attack before the enemy grows too strong, the old-time british love of compromise and trust in luck still holds his hand. the american "alliance" too, may yet come off. the entente with france, already of great value, can be developed into something more assuredly anti-german, and if present-day relations of friendship with the united states can be but tightened into a mutual committal of both powers to a common foreign policy, then the raid on germany may never be needed. she can be bottled up without it. no man who studies the british mind can have any doubt of the fixed trend of british thought. it can be summed up in one phrase. german expansion is not to be tolerated. it can only be a threat to or attained at the expense of british interests. those interests being world-wide, with the seas for their raiment nay, with the earth for their footstool--it follows that wherever germany may turn for an outlet she is met by the british challenge: "not there!" british interests interdict the old world; the monroe doctrine, maintained, it is alleged by british naval supremacy, forbids the new. let germany acquire a coaling station, a sanitorium, a health resort, the ground for a hotel even, on some foreign shore, and "british interests" spring to attention, english jealousy is aroused. how long this state of tension can last without snapping could, perhaps, be best answered in the german naval yards. it is evident that some , , of the best educated race in the world, physically strong, mentally stronger, homogeneous, highly trained, highly skilled, capable and energetic and obedient to a discipline that rests upon and is moulded by a lofty conception of patriotism, cannot permanently be confined to a strictly limited area by a less numerous race, less well educated, less strong mentally and physically and assuredly less well trained, skilled and disciplined. stated thus the problem admits of a simple answer; and were there no other factor governing the situation, that answer would have been long since given. it is not the ethical superiority of the english race that accounts for their lead, but the favourable geographical situation from which they have been able to develop and direct their policy of expansion. england has triumphed mainly from her position. the qualities of her people have, undoubtedly, counted for much, but her unrivalled position in the lap of the atlantic, barring the seaways and closing the tideways of central and north-eastern europe, has counted for more. with this key she has opened the world to herself and closed it to her rivals. the long wars with france ended in the enhancement of this position by the destruction of the only rival fleet in being. europe, without navies, without shipping became for england a mere westward projection of asia, dominated by warlike peoples who could always be set by the ears and made to fight upon points of dynastic honour, while england appropriated the markets of mankind. thenceforth, for the best part of a century, while europe was spent in what, to the superior britain were tribal conflicts, the seas and coasts of the world lay open to the intrusions of his commerce, his colonists, his finance, until there was seemingly nothing left outside the two americas worth laying hands on. this highly favoured maritime position depends, however, upon an unnamed factor, the unchallenged possession and use of which by england has been the true foundation of her imperial greatness. without ireland there would be to-day no british empire. the vital importance of ireland to england is understood, but never proclaimed by every british statesman. to subdue that western and ocean-closing island and to exploit its resources, its people and, above all its position, to the sole advantage of the eastern island, has been the set aim of every english government from the days of henry viii onwards. the vital importance of ireland to europe is not and has not been understood by any european statesman. to them it has not been a european island, a vital and necessary element of european development, but an appanage of england, an island beyond an island, a mere geographical expression in the titles of the conqueror. louis xiv, came nearest, perhaps, of european rulers to realizing its importance in the conflict of european interests when he sought to establish james ii on its throne as rival to the monarch of great britain and counterpoise to the british sovereignty in the western seas. montesquieu alone of french writers grasped the importance of ireland in the international affairs of his time, and he blames the vacillation of louis, who failed to put forth his strength, to establish james upon the throne of ireland and thus by a successful act of perpetual separation to _affaiblir le voisin_. napoleon, too late, in st. helena, realized his error: "had i gone to ireland instead of to egypt the empire of england was at an end." with these two utterances of the french writer and of the french ruler we begin and end the reference of ireland to european affairs which continental statecraft has up to now emitted, and so far has failed to apply. to-day there is probably no european thinker (although germany produced one in recent times), who, when he faces the over-powering supremacy of great britain's influence in world affairs and the relative subordination of european rights to the asserted interests of that small island, gives a thought to the other and smaller island beyond its shores. and yet the key to british supremacy lies there. perhaps the one latter day european who perceived the true relation of ireland to great britain was neibuhr. "should england," he said, "not change her conduct, ireland may still for a long period belong to her, but not always; and the loss of that country is the death day, not only to her greatness, but of her very existence." i propose to point out as briefly as may be possible in dealing with so unexpected a proposition, that the restoration of ireland to european life lies at the bottom of all successful european effort to break the bonds that now shackle every continental people that would assert itself and extend its ideals, as opposed to british interests, outside the limits of europe. it may be well first to define "british interests" and to show that these are not necessarily synonymous with european interests. british interests are: first, the control of all the seas of all the world--in full military and commercial control. if this be not challenged peace is permitted: to dispute it seriously means war. next in order of british interests stands the right of pre-emption to all healthy, fertile, "unoccupied" lands of the globe not already in possession of a people capable of seriously disputing invasion, with the right of reversion to such other regions as may, from time to time prove commercially desirable or financially exploitable, whether suitable for british colonization or not. in a word, british interests assume that the future of the world shall be an english-speaking future. it is clear that sooner or later the british colonies, so called, must develop into separate nationalities, and that the link of a common crown cannot bind them forever. but, as sir wilfred laurier said at the recent imperial conference: "we bring you british institutions"--english language, english law, english trade, english supremacy, in a word--this is the ideal reserved for mankind and summed up in words "british interests." turn where you will these interests are in effective occupation, and whether it be madeira, teneriffe, agadir, tahiti, bagdad, the unseen flag is more potent to exclude the non-british intruder than the visible standard of the occupying tenant. england is the landlord of civilization, mankind her tenantry, and the earth her estate. if this be not a highly exaggerated definition of british interests, and in truth it is but a strongly coloured chart of the broad outline of the design, then it is clear that europe has a very serious problem to face if european civilization and ideals, as differing from the british type, are to find a place for their ultimate expansion in any region favoured by the sun. the actual conflict of european interests in morocco is a fair illustration of english methods.[ ] [footnote : this was written in august, .] in the past france was the great antagonist, but since she is to-day no longer able to seriously dispute the british usufruct of the overseas world she is used (and rewarded) in the struggle now maintained to exclude germany at all costs from the arena. were france still dangerous she would never have been allowed to go to algeciras, or from algeciras to fez. she has uses, however, in the anti-german prize ring and so morocco is the price of her hire. that germany should presume to inspect the transaction or claim a share in the settlement has filled the british mind with profound indignation, the echoes of which are heard rumbling round the world from the guildhall to gaboon and from the congo to tahiti. the mere press rumour that france might barter tahiti for german goods filled the british newspaper world with supermundane wrath. that france should presume to offer or germany should accept a french pacific island in part discharge of liabilities contracted at algeciras was a threat to british interests. tahiti in the hands of a decadent republic, the greatest if you will, but still one of the dying nations, is a thing to be borne with, but tahiti possibly in the hands of germany becomes at once a challenge and a threat. and so we learn that "australasia protests" to the home government at the mere rumour that france may choose to part with one of her possessions to win german goodwill in morocco. neither france nor germany can be permitted to be a free agent in a transaction that however regarded as essential to their own interests might affect, even by a shadow on the sea, the world orbit of british interests. these interests it will be noted have reached such a stage of development as to require that all foreign states that cannot be used as tools, or regarded as agencies, must be treated as enemies. germany with her growing population, her advancing industries, her keen commercial ability, and her ever expanding navy has become the enemy of civilization. far too strong to be openly assailed on land she must at all costs be pent up in central europe and by a ring-fence of armed understandings prohibited from a wider growth that would certainly introduce a rival factor to those british institutions and that world language that are seriously if not piously meditated as the ordained future for mankind. for english mentality is such that whatever england does is divinely ordained, and whether she stamps out a nation or merely sinks a ship the hymn of action is "nearer my god, to thee." in a recent deputation to king george v it will be remembered that certain british religious bodies congratulated that monarch on the third centenary of the translation into english of the bible. both the addresses of the subjects, eminent, religious and cultured men, and the sovereign's reply were highly informative of the mental attitude of this extraordinary people. the bible, it appeared, was the "greatest possession of the english race." "the british bible" was the first and greatest of british investments and upon the moral dividends derived from its possession was founded the imperial greatness of this island empire. that other peoples possessed the bible and had even translated it before england was not so much as hinted at. that the bible was greek and hebrew in origin was never whispered. it began and ended with the english authorised version. the british bible was the bible that counted. it was the bible upon which the sun never sets, the bible that had blown indian mutineers from its muzzle in the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other mutineers, teuton or turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the meek shall inherit the earth. the unctuous rectitude that converts the word of god into wadding for a gun is certainly a formidable opponent, as cromwell proved. to challenge english supremacy becomes not merely a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. and yet this world-wide empire broad based upon the british bible and the english navy, and maintained by a very inflexible interpretation of the one and a very skilful handling of the other, rests upon a sunk foundation that is older than both and will surely bring both to final shipwreck. the british empire is founded not upon the british bible or the british dreadnought but upon ireland. the empire that began upon an island, ravaged, sacked and plundered shall end on an island, "which whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or the influence of the stars, or that almighty god hath not yet appointed the time of her reformation, or that he reserveth her in this unquiet state still for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto england, it is hard to be known but yet much to be feared." thus edmund spenser years ago, whose muse drew profit from an irish estate (one of the first fruits of empire) and who being a poet had imagination to perceive that a day of payment must some day be called and that the first robbed might be the first to repay. the empire founded on ireland by henry and elizabeth tudor has expanded into mighty things. england deprived of ireland resumes her natural proportions, those of a powerful kingdom. still possessing ireland she is always an empire. for just as great britain bars the gateways of northern and west central europe, to hold up at will the trade and block the ports of every coast from the baltic to the bay of biscay, so ireland stands between britain and the greater seas of the west and blocks for her the highways of the ocean. an ireland strong, independent and self-contained, a member of the european family of nations, restored to her kindred, would be the surest guarantee for the healthy development of european interests in those regions whence they are to-day excluded by the anti-european policy of england. the relation of ireland to great britain has been in no wise understood on the continent. the policy of england has been for centuries to conceal the true source of her supplies and to prevent an audit of transactions with the remoter island. as long ago as the reign of elizabeth tudor this shutting off of ireland from contact with europe was a settled point of english policy. the three "german earls" with letters from the queen who visited dublin in were prevented by the lord deputy from seeing for themselves anything beyond the walls of the city.[ ] [footnote : this time-honoured british precept--that foreigners should not see for themselves the workings of english rule in ireland--finds frequent expression in the irish state papers. in a letter from dublin castle of august, , from the lord deputy fitzwilliam to burghley elizabeth's chief minister, we are told that the "three german earls" with "their conductor," mr. rogers, have arrived. the viceroy adds, as his successors have done up to the present day: "according to your lordship's direction they shall travell as little way into the cuntry as i can."] to represent the island as a poverty striken land inhabited by a turbulent and ignorant race whom she has with unrewarded solicitude sought to civilise, uplift and educate has been a staple of england's diplomatic trade since modern diplomacy began. to compel the trade of ireland to be with herself alone; to cut off all direct communication between europe and this second of european islands until no channel remained save through britain; to enforce the most abject political and economic servitude one people ever imposed upon another; to exploit all irish resources, lands, ports, people, wealth, even her religion, everything in fine that ireland held, to the sole profit and advancement of england, and to keep all the books and rigorously refuse an audit of the transaction has been the secret but determined policy of england. we have read lately something of mexican peonage, of how a people can be reduced to a lawless slavery, their land expropriated, their bodies enslaved, their labour appropriated, and how the nexus of this fraudulent connection lies in a falsified account. the hacenade holds the peon by a debt bondage. his palace in mexico city, or on the sisal plains of yucatan is reared on the stolen labour of a people whose bondage is based on a lie. the hacenade keeps the books and debits the slave with the cost of the lash that scourges him into the fields. ireland is the english peon, the great peon of the british empire. the books and the palaces are in london but the work and the wealth have come from peons on the irish estate. the armies that overthrew napoleon; the fleets that swept the navies of france and spain from the seas were recruited from this slave pen of english civilisation. during the last years probably , , irishmen have been drafted into the english fleets and armies from a land purposely drained of its food. fully the same number, driven by executive-controlled famines have given cheap labour to england and have built up her great industries, manned her shipping, dug her mines, and built her ports and railways while irish harbours silted up and irish factories closed down. while england grew fat on the crops and beef of ireland, ireland starved in her own green fields and irishmen grew lean in the strife of europe. while a million irishmen died of hunger on the most fertile plains of europe, english imperialism drew over one thousand million pounds sterling for investment in a world policy from an island that was represented to that world as too poor to even bury its dead. the profit to england from irish peonage cannot be assessed in terms of trade, or finance, or taxation. it far transcends lord macdonnell's recent estimate at belfast of £ , , --"an empire's ransom," as he bluntly put it. not an empire's ransom but the sum of an empire's achievement, the cost of an empire's founding, and to-day the chief bond of an empire's existence. detach ireland from the map of the british empire and restore it to the map of europe and that day england resumes her native proportions and europe assumes its rightful stature in the empire of the world. ireland can only be restored to the current of european life, from which she has so long been purposely withheld by the act of europe. what napoleon perceived too late may yet be the purpose and achievement of a congress of nations. ireland, i submit, is necessary to europe, is essential to europe, to-day she is retained against europe, by a combination of elements hostile to europe and opposed to european influence in the world. her strategic importance is a factor of supreme weight to europe and is to-day used in the scales against europe. ireland is appropriated and used, not to the service of european interests but to the extension of anti-european interests. the _arbitium mundi_ claimed and most certainly exercised by england is maintained by the british fleet, and until that power is effectively challenged and held in check it is idle to talk of european influence outside of certain narrow continental limits. the power of the british fleet can never be permanently restrained until ireland is restored to europe. germany has of necessity become the champion of european interests as opposed to the world domination of england and english-speaking elements. she is to-day a dam, a great reservoir rapidly filling with human life that must some day find an outlet. england instead of wisely digging channels for the overflow has hardened her heart, like pharaoh, and thinks to prevent it or to so divert the stream that it shall be lost and drunk up in the thirsty sands of an ever expanding anglo-saxondom. german laws, german language, german civilization are to find no ground for replenishing, no soil to fertilize and make rich. i believe this to be not only the set policy of england, but to be based on the temperamental foundations of the english character itself, from which that people could not, even if they would, depart. the lists are set. the english mind, the english consciousness are such, that to oppose german influence in the world is to this people a necessity. they oppose by instinct, against argument, in the face of reason, they will do it blindly come what may and at all costs, and they will do it to the end. their reasoning, if reason exists in what is after all a matter of primal instinct, might find expression somewhat as follows: "german influence cannot but be hostile to british interests. the two peoples are too much alike. the qualities that have made england great they possess in a still greater degree. given a fair field and no favour they are bound to beat us. they will beat us out of every market in the world, and we shall be reduced ultimately to a position like that of france to-day. better fight while we are still die stronger. better hinder now ere it be too late. we have bottled up before and destroyed our adversaries by delay, by money, by alliances. to tolerate a german rivalry is to found a german empire and to destroy our own." some such obscure argument as this controls the englishman's reasoning when he faces the growing magnitude of the teutonic people. a bitter resentment, with fear at the bottom, a hurried clanging of bolt and rivet in the belt of a new warship and a muffled but most diligent hammering at the rivets of an ever building american alliance--the real dreadnought this, whose keel was laid sixteen years ago and whose slow, secret construction has cost the silent swallowing of many a cherished british boast. english liberalism might desire a different sort of reckoning with germany, but english liberalism is itself a product of the english temperament, and however it may sigh, by individuals, for a better understanding between the two peoples, in the mass, it is a part of the national purpose and a phase of the national mind and is driven relentlessly to the rivets and the hammering, the "dreadnoughts" in being and that mightier dreadnought yet to be, the anglo-saxon alliance which germany must fight if she is to get out. doubtless she has already a naval policy and the plans for a naval war, for the fight will be settled on the sea, but the fate will be determined on an island. the empire that has grown from an island and spread with the winds and the waves to the uttermost shores will fight and be fought for on the water and will be ended where it began, on an island. that island, i believe, will be ireland and not great britain. chapter iii the balance of power a conflict between england and germany exists already, a conflict of aims. england rich, prosperous, with all that she can possibly assimilate already in her hands, desires peace on present conditions of world power. these conditions are not merely that her actual possessions should remain intact, but that no other great power shall, by acquiring colonies and spreading its people and institutions into neighbouring regions, thereby possibly affect the fuller development of those pre-existing british states. for, with england equality is an offence and the power that arrives at a degree of success approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable sin. as curran put it in his defence of hamilton rowan in , "england is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is studious to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart; whether from any necessity of her policy or from her weakness, or from her pride, i will not presume to say." thus while england might even be the attacking party, and in all probability will be the attacking party, she will embark on a war with germany at an initial disadvantage. she will be on her defence. although, probably, the military aggressor from reasons of strategy, she will be acting in obedience to an economic policy of defence and not of attack. her chief concern will be not to advance and seize, always in war the more inspiring task, but to retain and hold. at best she could come out of the war with no new gain, with nothing added worth having to what she held on entering it. victory would mean for her only that she had secured a further spell of quiet in which to consolidate her strength and enjoy the good things already won. germany will fight with far other purpose and one that must inspire a far more vigorous effort; she will fight, not merely to keep what she already has, but to escape from an intolerable position of inferiority she knows to be unmerited and forced not by the moral or intellectual superiority of her adversary or due to her own short comings, but maintained by reason of that adversary's geographical position and early seizure of the various points of advantage. her effort will be not merely military, it will be an intellectual assertion, a fight in very truth for that larger freedom, that citizenship of the world england is studious to "engross and accumulate" for herself alone and to deny to all others. thus, while english attack at the best will be actuated by no loftier feeling than that of a man who, dwelling in a very comfortable house with an agreeable prospect resists an encroachment on his outlook from the building operations of his less well lodged neighbour, germany will be fighting not only to get out of doors into the open air and sunshine, but to build a loftier and larger dwelling, fit tenement for a numerous and growing offspring. whatever the structure germany seeks to erect england objects to the plan and hangs out her war sign "ancient lights." who can doubt that the greater patriotism and stronger purpose must inspire the man who fights for light, air, and freedom, the right to walk abroad, to learn, to teach, aye, and to inspire others, rather than him whose chief concern it is to see that no one but himself enjoys these opportunities. the means, moreover, that each combatant will bring to the conflict are, in the end, on the side of germany. much the same disproportion of resources exists as lay between rome and carthage. england relies on money. germany on men. and just as roman men beat carthaginian mercenaries, so must german manhood, in the end, triumph over british finance. just as carthage in the hours of final shock, placing her gold where romans put their gods, and never with a soul above her ships, fell before the people of united italy, so shall the mightier carthage of the north seas, in spite of trade, shipping, colonies, the power of the purse and the hired valour of the foreign (irish, indian, african), go down before the men of united germany. but if the military triumph of germany seems thus likely, the ultimate assurance, nay even the ultimate safety of german civilization can only be secured by a statemanship which shall not repeat the mistake of louis xiv and napoleon. the military defeat of england by germany is a wholly possible achievement of arms, _if the conflict be between these two alone_, but to realize the economic and political fruits of that victory, ireland must be detached from the british empire. to leave a defeated england still in the full possession of ireland would be, not to settle the question of german rights at sea or in world affairs, but merely to postpone the settlement to a second and possibly far greater encounter. it would be somewhat as if rome, after the first punic war had left sicily to carthage. but ireland is far more vital to england than sicily was to carthage, and is of far more account to the future of europe on the ocean than the possession of sicily was to the future of the mediterranean. if germany is to permanently profit from a victory over england, she must free the narrow seas, not only by the defeat of british fleets in being, but by ensuring that those seas shall not again be closed by british fleets yet to be. the german gateway to a free atlantic can only be kept open through a free ireland. for just as the english channel under the existing arrangement, whereby ireland lies hidden from the rest of europe, can be closed at will by england, so with ireland no longer tied to the girdle of england, that channel cannot be locked. the key to the freedom of european navigation lies at berehaven and not at dover. with berehaven won from english hands, england might close the channel in truth, but ireland could shut the atlantic. as richard dox put it in , quaintly but truly, in his dedication to king william iii, and queen mary of his "history of ireland from the earliest times." "but no cost can be too great where the prize is of such value, and whoever considers the situation, ports, plenty and other advantages of ireland will confess that it must be retained at what rate soever; because if it should come into an enemy's hands, england would find it impossible to _flourish_ and perhaps difficult to _subsist_ without it. to demonstrate this assertion it is enough to say that ireland lies in the line of trade and that all the english vessels that sail to the east, west, and south must, as it were, run the gauntlet between the harbours of brest and baltimore; and i might add that the irish wool being transported would soon ruin the english clothing manufacture. hence it is that all your majesty's predecessors have kept close to this fundamental maxim of retaining ireland inseparably united to the crown of england." the sole and exclusive appropriation of ireland and of all her resources has indeed formed, since the recorder of kinsale wrote, the mainstay and chief support of british greatness. the natural position of ireland lying "in the line of trade," was possibly its chief value, but that "irish wool" which was by no means to be allowed free access to world markets typifies much else that ireland has been relentlessly forced to contribute to her neighbour's growth and sole profit. i read but yesterday "few people realise that the trade of ireland with great britain is equal to that of our trade with india, is , , pounds greater than our trade with germany, and , , pounds greater than the whole of our trade with the united states." how completely england has laid hands on all irish resources is made clear from a recent publication that mr. chamberlain's "tariff commission" issued towards the end of . this document, entitled "the economic position of ireland and its relation to tariff reform," constitutes, in fact, a manifesto calling for the release of ireland from the exclusive grip of great britain. thus, for instance, in the section "external trade of ireland," we learn that ireland exported in , £ , , worth of irish produce. of this great britain took £ , , worth, while some £ , , went either to foreign countries, or to british colonies, over £ , , going to the united states. of these eleven million pounds worth of irish produce sent to distant countries, only £ , was shipped direct from irish ports. the remainder, more than £ , , , although the market it was seeking lay chiefly to the west, had to be shipped east into and to pay a heavy transit toll to that country for discharge, handling, agency, commission, and reloading on british vessels in british ports to steam back past the shores of ireland it had just left. while ireland, indeed, lies in the "line of trade," between all northern europe and the great world markets, she has been robbed of her trade and artificially deprived of the very position assigned to her by nature in the great tides of commercial intercourse. it is not only the geographical situation and the trade and wealth of ireland that england has laid hands on for her own aggrandizement, but she has also appropriated to her own ends the physical manhood of the island. just as the commerce has been forcibly annexed and diverted from its natural trend, so the youth of ireland has been fraudulently appropriated and diverted from the defence of their own land to the extension of the power and wealth of the realm that impoverished it at home. the physical qualities of the irish were no less valuable than "irish wool" to empire building, provided always they were not displayed in ireland. so long ago as we find a candid admission in the state papers that the irish were the better men in the field. "the next rebellion whenever it shall happen, doth threaten more danger to the state than any heretofore, when the cities and walled towns were always faithful; ( ) because they have the same bodies they ever had and therein they had and have advantage of us; ( ) from infancy they have been and are exercised in the use of arms; ( ) the realm by reason of the long peace was never so full of youths; ( ) that they are better soldiers than heretofore, their continental employment in wars abroad assures us, and they do conceive that their men are better than ours." this testimony to irish superiority, coming as it does from english official sources just three hundred years ago, would be convincing enough did it stand alone. but it is again and again reaffirmed by english commanders themselves as the reason for their failure in some particular enterprise. in all else they were superior to the irish; in arms, armaments, munitions, supplies of food and money, here the long purse, settled organization and greater commerce of england, gave her an overwhelming advantage. moreover the english lacked the moral restraints that imposed so severe a handicap on the irish in their resistance. they owned no scruple of conscience in committing any crime that served their purpose. beaten often in open fight by the hardier bodies, stouter arms and greater courage of the irishmen, they nevertheless won the game by recourse to means that no irishman, save he who had joined them for purposes of revenge or in pursuit of selfish personal aims, could possibly have adopted. the fight from the first was an unequal one. irish valour, chivalry, and personal strength were matched against wealth, treachery and cunning. the irish better bodies were overcome by the worse hearts. as curran put it in --"the triumph of england over ireland is the triumph of guilt over innocence." the earl of essex who came to ireland in with one of the largest forces of english troops that, up to then, had ever been dispatched into ireland ( , men), had ascribed his complete failure, in writing to the queen, to the physical superiority of the irish: "these rebels are more in number than your majesty's army and have (though i do unwillingly confess it), better bodies, and perfecter use of their arms, than those men who your majesty sends over." the queen, who followed the war in ireland with a swelling wrath on each defeat, and a growing fear that the spaniards would keep their promise to land aid to the irish princes, o'neill and o'donnell, issued "instructions" and a set of "ordinances" for the conduct of the war in ireland, which, while enjoining recourse to the usual methods outside the field of battle--(i.e. starvation, "politic courses," assassination of leaders; and the sowing of dissension by means of bribery and promises), required for the conflict, that her weaker soldiers should be protected against the onslaught of the unarmoured irishmen by head pieces of steel. she ordered "every soldier to be enforced to wear a murrion, because the enemy is encouraged by the advantage of arms to _come to the sword_ wherein he commonly prevaileth." one of the generals of the spanish king, philip iii, who came to ireland in the winter of with a handful of spanish troops ( men), to reinforce the small expedition of de aguila in kinsale, thus reported on the physical qualities of the irish in a document that still lies in salamanca in the archives of the old irish college. it was written by don pedro de zubiarr on the th of january, , on his return to the asturias. speaking of the prospect of the campaign, he wrote: "if we had brought arms for , men we could have had them, for they are very eager to carry on the war against the english. the irish are very strong and well shaped, accustomed to endure hunger and toil, and very courageous in fight." perhaps the most vivid testimony to the innate superiority of the irishman as a soldier is given in a typically irish challenge issued in the war of . the document has a lasting interest for it displays not only the "better body" of the irishman of that day, but something of his better heart as well, that still remains to us. one parsons, an english settler in ireland, had written to a friend to say that, among other things, the head of the colonel of an irish regiment then in the field against the english, would not be allowed to stick long on its shoulders. the letter was intercepted by the very regiment itself, and a captain in it, felim o'molloy, wrote back to parsons: "i will do this if you please: i will pick out sixty men and fight against one hundred of your choice men if you do but pitch your camp one mile out of your town, and then if you have the victory, you may threaten my colonel; otherwise, do not reckon your chickens before they are hatched." the anglo-saxon preferred "politic courses" to accepting the irish soldier's challenge, even where all the advantage was conceded by the irishman to his foe and all the risks, save that of treachery (a very necessary precaution in dealing with the english in ireland), cheerfully accepted by the celt. this advantage of the "better bodies" the irish retained beyond all question up to the famine. it was upon it alone that the wexford peasantry relied in , and with and by it alone that they again and again, armed with but pike and scythe swept disciplined regiments of english mercenaries in headlong rout from the field. this physical superiority of his countrymen was frequently referred to by o'connell as one of the forces he relied on. with the decay of all things irish that has followed the famine, these physical attributes have declined along with so much else that was typical of the nation and the man. it could not to-day be fearlessly affirmed that sixty irishmen were more than a match for one hundred englishmen; yet depleted as it is by the emigration of its strongest and healthiest children, by growing sickness and a changed and deteriorated diet the irish race still presents a type, superior physically, intellectually and morally to the english. it was on irish soldiers that the english chiefly relied in the boer war, and it is no exaggeration to say that could all the irishmen in the ranks of the british army have been withdrawn, a purely british force would have failed to end the war and the dutch would have remained masters of the field in south africa. it was the inglorious part of ireland to be linked with those "methods of barbarism" she herself knew only too well, in extinguishing the independence of a people who were attacked by the same enemy and sacrificed to the same greed that had destroyed her own freedom. unhappy, indeed, is it for mankind, as for her own fate and honour that ireland should be forced by dire stress of fortune to aid her imperial wrecker in wrecking the fortune and freedom of brave men elsewhere. that these physical qualities of irishmen, even with a population now only one tenth that of great britain are still of value to the empire, mr. churchill's speech on the home rule bill made frankly clear (february, ). we now learn that the first lord of the admiralty has decided to establish a new training squadron, "with a base at queenstown," where it is hoped to induce with the bribe of "self-government" the youth of cork and munster to again man the british fleet as they did in the days of nelson, and we are even told that the prospects of brisk recruiting are "politically favourable." carthage got her soldiers from spain, her seamen, her slingers from the balearic islands and the coasts of africa, her money from the trade of the world. rome beat her, but she did not leave a defeated carthage to still levy toll of men and mind on those external sources of supply. germany must fight, not merely to defeat the british fleet of to-day, but to neutralize the british fleet of to-morrow. leave ireland to great britain and that can never be. neutralize ireland and it is already accomplished. one of the conditions of peace, and _for this reason_ the most important condition of peace that a victorious germany must impose upon her defeated antagonist is that ireland shall be separated and erected into an independent european state under international guarantees. england, obviously would resist such conditions to the last, but then the last has already come before england would consent to any peace save on terms she dictated. a defeated england is a starved england. she would have to accept whatever terms germany imposed unless those terms provoked external intervention on behalf of the defeated power. the prize germany seeks to win from victory is not immediate territorial aggrandizement obtained from annexing british possessions, not a heavy money indemnity wrung from british finance and trade (although this she might have), but german freedom throughout the world on equal terms with britain. this is a prize worth fighting for, for once gained the rest follows as a matter of course. german civilization released from the restricted confines and unequal position in which britain had sought to pen it must, of itself win its way to the front, and of necessity acquire those favoured spots necessary to its wide development. "this is the meaning of his (the german's) will for power; safety from interference with his individual and national development. only one thing is left to the nations that do not want to be left behind in the peaceful rivalry of human progress--that is to become the equals of germany in untiring industry, in scientific thoroughness, in sense of duty, in patient persistence, in intelligent, voluntary submission to organization." (history of german civilization, by ernst richard, columbia university, new york.) once she had reduced great britain to an opposition based on _peaceful rivalry_ in human progress, germany would find the path of success hers to tread on more than equal terms, and many fields of expansion now closed would readily open to german enterprise without that people incurring and inflicting the loss and injury that an attempted invasion of the great self-governing dominions would so needlessly involve. most of the british self-governing colonies are to-day great states, well able to defend themselves from overseas attack. the defeat of the british navy would make scarcely at all easier the landing of german troops in, say, australia, south africa or new zealand. a war of conquest of those far-distant regions would be, for germany, an impossible and a stupidly impossible task. a defeated england could not cede any of these british possessions as a price of peace, for they are inhabited by free men who, however they might deplore a german occupation of london, could in no wise be transferred by any pact or treaty made by others, to other rule than that of themselves. therefore, to obtain those british dominions, germany would have to defeat not only england, but after that to begin a fresh war, or a series of fresh wars, at the ends of the earth, with exhausted resources and probably a crippled fleet. the thing does not bear inspection and may be dismissed from our calculation. the only territories that england could cede by her own act to a victorious power are such as, in themselves, are not suited to colonization by a white race. doubtless, germany would seek compensation for the expense of the war in requiring the transfer of some of these latter territories of the british crown to herself. there are points in tropical africa, in the east, islands in the ocean to-day flying the british flag that might, with profit to german trade and influence, be acquired by a victorious germany. but none of these things in itself, not all of them put together, would meet the requirements of the german case, or ensure to germany that future tranquil expansion and peaceful rivalry the war had been fought to secure. england would be weakened, and to some extent impoverished by a war ending with such results; but her great asset, her possession beyond price would still be hers--her geographical position. deprive her to-day, say of the gold coast, the niger, gibraltar, even of egypt, impose a heavy indemnity, and while germany would barely have recouped herself for the out-of-pocket losses of the war, england in fact would have lost nothing, and ten years hence the teuton would look out again upon the same prospect, a europe still dominated beyond the seas by the western islanders. the work would have to be done all over again. a second punic war would have to be fought with this disadvantage--that the atlantic sicily would be held and used still against the northern rome, by the atlantic carthage. a victorious germany, in addition to such terms as she may find it well to impose in her own immediate financial or territorial interests, must so draft her peace conditions as to preclude her great antagonist from ever again seriously imperilling the freedom of the seas. i know of no way save one to make sure the open seas. ireland, in the name of europe, and in the exercise of european right to free the seas from the over-lordship of one european island, must be resolutely withdrawn from british custody. a second berlin conference, an international congress must debate, and clearly would debate, with growing unanimity the german proposal to restore ireland to europe. the arguments in favour of that proposal would soon become so clear from the general european standpoint, that save england and her defeated allies, no power would oppose it. considerations of expediency no less than naval, mercantile, and moral claims would range themselves on the side of germany and a free ireland. for a free ireland, not owned and exploited by england, but appertaining to europe at large, its ports available in a sense they never can be while under british control for purposes of general navigation and overseas intercourse, would soon become of such first-rank importance in continental affairs as to leave men stupified by the thought that for five hundred years they had allowed one sole member of their community the exclusive use and selfish misappropriation of this, the most favoured of european islands. ireland would be freed, not because she deserved or asked for freedom, not because english rule has been a tyranny, a moral failure, a stupidity and sin against the light; not because germany cared for ireland, but because her withdrawal from english control appeared to be a very necessary step in international welfare and one very needful to the progress of german and european expansion. an ireland released from the jail in which england had confined her would soon become a populous state of possibly , , to , , people, a commercial asset of europe in the atlantic of the utmost general value, one holding an unique position between the old and new worlds, and possibly an intellectual and moral asset of no mean importance. this, and more, a sovereign ireland means to europe. above all it means security of transit, equalizing of opportunity, freedom of the seas--an assurance that the great waterways of the ocean should no longer be at the absolute mercy of one member of the european family, and that one the least interested in general european welfare. the stronger a free ireland grew the surer would be the guarantee that the rôle of england "consciously assumed for many years past, to be an absolute and wholly arbitrary judge of war and peace" had gone for ever, and that at last the "balance of power" was kept by fair weight and fair measure and not with loaded scales. chapter iv the enemy of peace i believe england to be the enemy of european peace, and that until her "mastery of the sea" is overmastered by europe, there can be no peace upon earth or goodwill among men. her claim to rule the seas, and the consequences, direct and indirect, that flow from its assertion are the chief factors of international discord that now threaten the peace of the world. in order to maintain that indefensible claim she is driven to aggression and intrigue in every quarter of the globe; to setting otherwise friendly peoples by the ears; to forming "alliances" and ententes, to dissolving friendships, the aim always being the old one, _divide et impera_. the fact that europe to-day is divided into armed camps is mainly due to english effort to retain that mastery of the sea. it is generally assumed, and the idea is propagated by english agencies, that europe owes her burden of armaments to the antagonism between france and germany, to the loss of alsace-lorraine by france, and the spirit and hope of a _revanche_ thereby engendered. but this antagonism has long ceased to be the chief factor that moulds european armaments. were it not for british policy, and the unhealthy hope it proffers france would ere this have resigned herself, as the two provinces have done, to the solution imposed by the war of . it is england and english ambition that beget the state of mind responsible for the enormous growth of armaments that now over-shadows continental civilization. humanity, hemmed in in central europe by a forest of bayonets and debarred all egress to the light of a larger world by a forbidding circle of dreadnoughts, is called to peace conferences and arbitration treaties by the very power whose fundamental maxim of rule ensures war as the normal outlook for every growing nation of the old world. if europe would not strangle herself with her own hands she must strangle the sea serpent whose coils enfold her shores. inspect the foundation of european armaments where we will, and we shall find that the master builder is he who fashioned the british empire. it is that empire, its claim to universal right of pre-emption to every zone and region washed by the waves and useful and necessary for the expansion of the white races, and its assertion of a right to control at will all the seas of all the world that drives the peoples of europe into armed camps. the policy of the boer war is being tried on a vaster scale against europe. just as england beat the boers by concentration camps and not by arms, by money and not by men, so she seeks to-day to erect an armourplate barrier around the one european people she fears to meet in the field, and to turn all central europe into a vast concentration camp. by use of the longest purse she has already carried this barrier well towards completion. one gap remains, and it is to make sure that this opening, too, shall be closed that she now directs all the force of her efforts. here the longest purse is of less avail, so england draws upon another armoury. she appeals to the longest tongue in history--the longest and something else. in order to make sure the encompassing of europe with a girdle of steel it is necessary to circle the united states with a girdle of lies. with america true to the great policy of her great founder, an america, "the friend of all powers but the ally of none," english designs against european civilization must in the end fail. those plans can succeed only by active american support, and to secure this is now the supreme task and aim of british stealth and skill. every tool of her diplomacy, polished and unpolished, from the trained envoy to the boy scout and the minor poet has been tried in turn. the pulpit, the bar, the press; the society hostess, the cabinet minister and the cabinet minister's wife, the ex-cabinet minister and the royal family itself, and last, but not least, even "irish nationality"--all have been pilgrims to that shrine; and each has been carefully primed, loaded, well aimed, and then turned full on the weak spots in the armour of republican simplicity. to the success of these resources of panic the falsification of history becomes essential and the vilification of the most peace-loving people of europe. the past relations of england with the united states are to be blotted out, and the american people who are by blood so largely germanic, are to be entrapped into an attitude of suspicion, hostility and resentment against the country and race from whom they have received nothing but good. germany is represented as the enemy, not to england's indefensible claim to own the seas, but to american ideals on the american continent. just as the teuton has become the "enemy of civilization" in the old world because he alone has power, strength of mind, and force of purpose to seriously dispute the british hegemony of the seas, so he is assiduously represented as the only threat to american hegemony of the new world. this, the key note of the attack on germany, is sounded from every corner of the british empire, wherever the imperial editor, resting on the labours of the lash he wields against the coloured toilers in mine and camp, directs his eyes from the bent forms of these indentured slaves of dividend to the erect and stalwart frames of the new goths who threaten the whole framework of imperial dividend from across the north sea. from the _times_ to the obscurest news-sheet of the remotest corner of the british dominions the word has gone forth. the monroe doctrine, palladium of the anglo-saxon world empire, is imperilled by german ambitions, and were it not for the british fleet, america would be lost to the americans. wherever englishmen are gathered to-day their journals, appealing possibly to only a handful of readers, assert that the function of the british fleet is to exclude the european states, with germany at their head, from south america, not because in itself that is a right and worthy end to pursue, but because that continent is earmarked for future exploitation and control by their "kinsmen" of the united states, and they need the support of those "kinsmen" in their battle against germany. i need quote but a single utterance from the mass of seditious libels of this character before me to show how widespread is the propaganda of falsehood and how sustained is the effort being made to poison the american mind against the only people in europe england genuinely fears, and therefore wholeheartedly hates. the _natal mercury_ for instance, a paper written for the little town of durban and appealing to a population of only some , whites, in a recent issue (march, ), devoted a leader to the approaching "peace centennial" of , to be held in commemoration of the signing of the treaty of ghent, which ended the second war between great britain and the american people in . "after all, blood is thicker than water," quotes the natal journal with satisfaction, and after pointing out some latter day indications of rapprochement between england and the united states, it goes on to proclaim the chief function of the british navy and the claim thereby established on the goodwill of america. "we make mention of them because such incidents are likely to repeat themselves more and more frequently in that competition for naval supremacy in europe which compels the united states to put her own fleets into working order and to join in the work that england has hitherto been obliged to perform _unaided_. "it is england that polices the seven seas, and america has reaped no small benefits from the _self-imposed task_, an aspect of the matter to which every thoughtful american is alive. there is a real and hearty recognition in the new world of the _silent barrier_ that great britain has set up to what might become something more than a dream of expansion into south america on the part of _one_ potent european state. it is, indeed, hardly too much to say that the maintenance of the monroe doctrine is at the present moment almost as fully guaranteed by england as it is by the country that enunciated the policy and is the chief gainer by it. it is a case in which a _silent understanding_ is of far greater value than a formal compact that 'would serve as a target for casual discontent on this side or that'." the article concludes by proclaiming "the precious permanence of an unseen bond" and the lofty and enduring worth of "good faith mutually acknowledged and the ultimate solidarity of mutual interests rightly perceived." "the ultimate solidarity" aimed at by those who direct these world-wide pronouncements is not one of mere sterile friendship between the american and the british peoples. american friendship with england is only worth having when it can be translated by world acts into enmity against germany. it might truly be said of the british empire to-day that where two or three are gathered together, there hatred of germany shall be in the midst of them. turn where he will, from the colonies to england, from england to her fleet, from the seas to the air, the englishman lives and moves and has his being in an atmosphere not of love but of hatred. and this too, a hatred, fear, and jealousy of a people who have never injured him, who have never warred upon him, and whose sole crime is that they are highly efficient rivals in the peaceful rivalry of commerce, navigation, and science. we are told, for instance, in one of the popular london magazines for january, , in an article upon the financial grievances of the british navy that were it not for germany there would be to-day another spithead. "across the north sea is a nation that some fifty years ago was so afraid of the british navy that it panicked itself into building an iron-clad fleet. "to-day, as the second naval power, its menace is too great for any up-to-date spithead mutiny to come off. but the pay question was so acute that it is possibly only the germans and their 'menace' that saved us from the trouble." but while the "patriotism" of the "lower-deck" may have been sufficiently stout to avert this peril, the patriotism of the "quarter-deck" is giving us a specimen of its quality that certainly could not be exhibited in any other country in the world. even as i write i read in the "british review" how admiral sir percy scott attacks admiral lord charles beresford, dubs him the "laughing-stock of the fleet," accuses him of publishing in his book _the betrayal_ a series of "deliberate falsehoods," and concludes by saying that the gallant admiral is "not a seaman." and it is a fleet commanded by such admirals as these that is to sweep the german navy from the seas! during the crimean war the allied british and french navies distinguished themselves by their signal failure to effect the reduction of such minor fortresses as sveaborg, helsingfors, and the fortified lighthouses upon the gulf of finland. their respective admirals fired their severest broadsides into each other, and the bombardment of the forts was silenced by the smart interchange of nautical civilities between the two flagships. napoleon iii, who sought an explanation of this failure of his fleet, was given a reply that i cannot refrain from recommending to the british admiralty to-day. "well, sire," replied the french diplomatist, who knew the circumstances, "both the admirals were old women, but ours was at least a lady." if british admirals cannot put to sea without incurring this risk, they might, at least, take the gunboat woman with them to prescribe the courtesies of naval debate. that england to-day loves america, no one who goes to the private opinions of englishmen, instead of to their public utterances, or the interested eulogies of their press, can for a moment believe. the old dislike is there, the old supercilious contempt for the "yankee" and all his ways. "god's englishman" no more loves an american citizen now than in when he seriously contemplated an invasion of the united states, and the raising of the negro-slave population against his "anglo-saxon kinsmen." to-day, when we hear so much of the anglo-saxon alliance it may be well to revert to that page of history. for it will show us that if a british premier to-day can speak as mr. asquith did on december th, , in his reference to the late american ambassador as "a great american and a kinsman," one "sprung from a common race, speaking our own language, sharing with us by birth as by inheritance not a few of our most cherished traditions and participating when he comes here by what i may describe as _his natural right in our domestic interests and celebrations_," then this new-found kinship takes its birth not in a sense of common race, indeed, but in a very common fear of germany. in the year , the british army was engaged in robbing the irish people of their harvest in order that the work of the famine should be complete and that the then too great population of ireland should be reduced within the limits "law and order" prescribed, either by starvation or flight to america. fleeing in hundreds and thousands from the rule of one who claimed to be their sovereign, expelled in a multitude exceeding the moors of spain, whom a spanish king shipped across the seas with equal pious intent, the fugitive irish nation found friendship, hope, and homes in the great celtic republic of the west. all that was denied to them in their own ancient land they found in a new ireland growing up across the atlantic. the hate of england pursued them here and those who dared to give help and shelter. the united states were opening wide their arms to receive the stream of irish fugitives and were saying very harsh things of england's infamous rule in ireland. this could not be brooked. england in those days had not invented the anglo-saxon theory of mankind, and a united germany had not then been born to vex the ineptitude of her statesmen or to profit from the shortcomings of her tradesmen. so the greatest ministers of queen victoria seriously contemplated war with america and naturally looked around for some one else to do the fighting. the duke of wellington hoped that france might be played on, just as in a later day a later minister seeks to play france in a similar rôle against a later adversary.[ ] [footnote : sir edward grey and the _entente cordiale_.] the mexicans, too, might be induced to invade the texan frontier. but a greater infamy than this was seriously planned. again it is an irishman who tells the story and shows us how dearly the english loved their trans-atlantic "kinsmen" when there was no german menace to threaten nearer home. writing from carlsruhe, on january th, , to his friend, alexander spencer, in dublin, charles lever said: "as to the war the duke[ ] says he could smash the yankees, and ought to do so while france in her present humour and mexico opens the road to invasion from the south--not to speak of the terrible threat that napier uttered, that with two regiments of infantry and a field battery he'd _raise the slave population in the united states_." [footnote : the duke of wellington: the report was brought to lever by the marquis of douro, the duke's heir.] the infamy of this suggestion cannot be surpassed. the brilliant soldier who conceived it was the chivalrous englishman who conquered scinde, one of the chief glories of the britannic hierarchy of soldier-saints. the government planning it was that of the late queen victoria with the duke of wellington's advice, and the people against whom the black-slave millions were to be loosed were the "kith and kin" of those meditating this atrocious form of massacre. truly, as an old irish proverb, old even in the days of henry viii. put it, "the pride of france, the _treason of england_ and the warre of ireland shall never have end." as a latter day witness of that treason, one who had suffered it from birth to the prison cell, a dead irishman speaks to us from the grave. michael davitt in a letter to morrison davidson on august , , thus summed up in final words what every irishman feels in his heart: "the idea of being ruled by englishmen is to me the chief agony of existence. they are a nation without faith, truth or conscience enveloped in a panoplied pharisaism and an incurable hypocrisy. their moral appetite is fed on falsehood. they profess christianity and believe only in mammon. they talk of liberty while ruling india and ireland against the principles of a constitution, professed as a political faith, but prostituted to the interests of class and landlord rule." have englishmen in less than two generations substituted love for the hate that napier, wellington, and the queen's ministers felt and expressed in for the people of the united states? is it love to-day for america or fear of someone else that impels to the "arbitration treaties" and the celebration of the "hundred years of peace?" the anglo-american "peace movement" was to be but the first stage in an "anglo-saxon alliance," intended to limit and restrict all further world changes, outside of certain prescribed continental limits, to these two peoples alone on the basis of a new "holy alliance," whose motto should be _beati possidentes_. since england and america, either in fact or by reservation enjoy almost all the desirable regions of the earth, why not bring about a universal agreement to keep everyone in his right place, to stay "just as we are," and to kindly refer all possible differences to an "international tribunal?" once again the british bible was thrown into the scale, and the unrighteousness of germany, who did not see her way to join in the psalm singing, was exposed in a spirit of bitter resignation and castigated with an appropriate selection of texts. the hague tribunal would be so much nicer than a war of armaments! with no reckless rivalries and military expenditure there could be no question of the future of mankind. an idyllic peace would settle down upon the nations, contentedly possessing each in its own share of the good things of life, and no questionable ambitions would be allowed to disturb the buying and selling of the smaller and weaker peoples. the sincerity of the wish for universal arbitration can be best shown by england, when she, or any of the powers to whom she appeals, will consent to submit the claim of one of the minor peoples she or they hold in subjection to the hague tribunal. let france submit madagascar and siam, or her latest victim, morocco, to the franchise of the court. let russia agree to poland or finland seeking the verdict of this bench of appeal. let england plead her case before the same high moral tribunal and allow ireland, egypt, or india to have the law of her. then, and not until then, the world of little states and beaten peoples may begin to believe that the peace crusade has some foundations in honour and honesty--but not till then. germany has had the straightforwardness and manliness to protest that she is still able to do her own shooting and that what she holds she will keep, by force if need be, and what she wants she will, in her own sure time, take, and by force too, if need be. of the two cults the latter is the simpler, sincerer, and certainly the less dishonest. irish-american linked with german-american keen-sighted hostility did the rest. the rivalry of mr. roosevelt and mr. taft aided, and the effort (for the time at any rate) has been wrecked, thereby plunging england into a further paroxysm of religious despondency and grave concern for german morals. this mood eventuated in lord haldane's "week end" trip to berlin. the voice was the voice of jacob, in spite of the hand of esau. mr. churchill at glasgow, showed the real hand and the mess of pottage so amiably offered at berlin bought no german birthright. the kreuz zeitung rightly summed up the situation by pointing out that "mr. churchill's testimony can now be advanced as showing that the will of england alone comes in question as the exponent of peace, and that england for many years past has consciously assumed the rôle of an absolute and perfectly arbitrary judge of war and peace. it seems to us all the more significant that mr. churchill proposes also in the future to control, with the help of the strong navies of the dominions, the trade and naval movements of all the powers on the face of the earth--that is to say, his aim is to secure a world monopoly for england." there has never been any other thought in the english mind. as i said in part i. of this paper, "british interests are first the control of all the seas of all the world in full military and commercial control. if this be not challenged peace is permitted; to dispute it seriously means war." germany is driven by necessity to dispute it seriously and to overcome it. she cannot get out to play her part in world life, _nay, she cannot hope to ultimately maintain herself at home_ until that battle has been fought and won. arrangements with england, detentes, understandings, call them what you will, are merely parleys before the fight. the assault must be delivered, the fortress carried, or else germany, and with her europe, must resign the mission of the white races and hand over the government and future of the world to one chosen people. europe reproduces herself yearly at the present time at the rate of about five million souls. some three-fifths of the number are to-day absorbed into the life of the continent, the balance go abroad and principally to north america, to swell the english-speaking world. germany controls about one-fifth of europe's natural annual increase, and realising that emigration to-day means only to lose her people and build up her antagonist's strength, she has for years now striven to keep her people within german limits, and hitherto with successful results far in excess of any achieved by other european states. but the limit must be reached, and that before many years are past. where is germany to find the suitable region, both on a scale and under conditions of climate, health and soil that a people of say , , hemmed in a territory little larger than france, will find commensurate to their needs? no european people is in such plight. russia has the immense and healthy world of siberia into which to overflow. france, far from needing outlets, increases not at all, and during showed an excess of close on , deaths over births. for france the day of greatness is past. a french empire, in any other sense than the roman one of commercial and military exploitation of occupied territories and subjugated peoples is gone forever. france has no blood to give except in war. french blood will not colonize even the mediterranean littoral. italy is faced with something of the same problem as germany, but to a lesser extent. her surplus population already finds a considerable outlet in argentina and south brazil, among peoples, institutions, and language largely approximating to those left behind. while italy has, indeed need of a world policy as well as germany, her ability to sustain a great part abroad cannot be compared to that of the teutonic people. her claim is not so urgent; her need not so insistent, her might inadequate. the honesty and integrity of the german mind, the strength of the german intellect, the skill of the german hand and brain, and justice and vigour of german law, the intensity of german culture, science, education and social development, these need a great and healthy field for their beneficial display, and the world needs these things more than it needs the british mastery of the seas. the world of european life needs to-day, as it needed in the days of a decadent roman empire, the coming of another goth, the coming of the teuton. the interposing island in the north sea alone intervenes. how to surmount that obstacle, how to win the freedom of the "seven seas" for europe must be the supreme issue for germany. if she falls she is doomed to sterility. the supreme test of german genius, of german daring, of german discipline and imagination lies there. where louis xiv., the directory, and napoleon failed, will the heirs of karl the great see clearly? and then, when that great hour has struck, will germany, will europe, produce the statesman soldier who shall see that the key to ocean freedom lies in that island beyond an island, whose very existence europe has forgotten? till that key is out from the pirate's girdle, germany may win a hundred "austerlitzes" on the vistula, the dnieper, the loire, but until she restores that key to europe, to paraphrase pitt, she may "roll up that map of the world; it will not be wanted these fifty years." chapter v the problem of the near west the foregoing reflections and the arguments drawn from them were penned before the outbreak of the war between turkey and the balkan allies. that war is still undecided as i write (march ), but whatever its precise outcome may be, it is clear that the doom of turkey as a great power is sealed, and that the complications of the near east will, in future, assume an entirely fresh aspect. hitherto, there was only the possibility that germany might find at least a commercial and financial outlet in the asiatic dominions of the sultan. there was even the possibility, had turkey held together, that england, to mitigate pressure elsewhere, would have conceded to an expanding and insistent germany, a friendly interest and control in asia minor. it is true that the greatest possible development, and under the most favoured conditions of german interests in that region, could not have met the needs or satisfied the ever increasing necessities of teutonic growth; but at least it would have offered a safety valve, and could have involved preoccupations likely to deflect the german vision, for a time, from the true path to greatness, the western highways of the sea. an occupation or colonisation of the near east by the germanic peoples could never have been a possible solution under any circumstances of the problem that faces german statemanship. as well talk of reviving the frank kingdom of jerusalem. the occupation by the fair-haired peoples of the baltic and north seas of the lands of turk and tartar, of syrian and jew, of armenian and mesopotamian, was never a practical suggestion or one to be seriously contemplated. "east is east and west is west," sings the poet of empire, and englishmen cannot complain if the greatest of western peoples, adopting the singer, should apply the dogma to themselves. germany, indeed, might have looked for a considerable measure of commercial dominance in the near east, possibly for a commercial protectorate such as france applies to tunis and algeria and hopes to apply to morocco, or such as england imposes on egypt, and this commercial predominance could have conferred considerable profits on rhenish industries and benefited saxon industrialism, but it could never have done more than this. a colonisation of the realms of bajazet and saladin by the fair-skinned peoples of the north, or the planting of teutonic institutions in the valley of damascus, even with the benevolent neutrality of england, is a far wider dream (and one surely no german statesman ever entertained) than a german challenge to the sea supremacy of england. the trend of civilized man in all great movements since modern civilization began, has been from east to west, not from west to east. the tide of the peoples moved by some mysterious impulse from the dawn of european expansion has been towards the setting sun. the few movements that have taken place in the contrary direction have but emphasized the universality of this rule, from the days of the overthrow of rome, if we seek no earlier date. the crusades furnished, doubtless, the classic example. the later contrary instance, that of russia towards siberia, scarcely, if at all affects the argument, for there the russian overthrow is filling up northern rather than eastern lands, and the movement involves to the russian emigrant no change of climate, soil, law, language or environment while that emigrant himself belongs, perhaps, as much to asia as to europe. but whatever value to german development the possible chances of expansion in the near east may have offered before the present balkan war, those chances to-day, as the result of that war, scarcely exist. it is probably the perception of this outcome of the victory of the slav states that has influenced and accelerated the characteristic change of english public opinion that has accompanied with shouts of derision the dying agonies of the turk. "in matters of mind," as a recent english writer says in the _saturday review_, "the national sporting instinct does not exist. the english public invariably backs the winner." and just as the english public invariably backs the winner, british policy invariably backs the anti-german, or supposedly anti-german side in all world issues. "what seems to have effected is a vast aggrandizement of the slavonic races in their secular struggle against the teutonic races. even a local and temporary triumph of austria over servia cannot conceal the fact that henceforth the way south-east to the black sea and the aegean sea is barred to the germans."[ ] [footnote : mr. frederick harrison in the _english review_, jan., .] that is the outstanding fact that british public opinion perceives with growing pleasure from the break up of turkey. no matter where the dispute or what the purpose of conflict may be, the supreme issue for england is "where is germany?" against that side the whole weight of great britain will, openly or covertly, be thrown. german expansion in the near east has gone by the board, and in its place the development of greek naval strength in the mediterranean, to take its stand by the triple entente, comes to be jauntily considered, while the solid wedge of a slav empire or federation, commanding in the near future , , of armed men is agreeably seen to be driven across south-eastern europe between austro-german efforts and the fallow lands of asia minor. these latter can safely be left in turkish hands yet a while longer, until the day comes for their partition into "spheres of influence," just as persia and parts of china are to-day being apportioned between russia and england. this happy consummation, moreover, has fallen from heaven, and turkey is being cut up for the further extension of british interests clearly by the act of god. the victory of the balkan states becomes another triumph for the british bible; it is the victory of righteousness over wrong-doing. the true virtue of the balkan "christians" lies in the possibility of their being moulded into an anti-german factor of great weight in the european conflict, clearly impending, and in their offering a fresh obstacle, it is hoped, to german world policy. let us first inspect the moral argument on the lips of these professors. we are assured, by it, that the claim of the balkan allies to expel turkey from europe rests upon a just and historic basis. briefly stated it is that the turk has held his european provinces by a right of conquest only. what the sword took, die sword may take away. when the sword was struck from the ottoman's grasp his right to anything it had given him fell too. thus adrianople, a city he has held for over five hundred years, must be given up to a new conqueror who never owned it in the past and who certainly has far less moral claim to be there to-day than the descendants of selim's soldiers. but the moral argument brings strange revenges. if turkey has no right to adrianople, to thrace--"right of sword to be shattered by the sword"--what right has england to ireland, to dublin, to cork? she holds ireland by exactly the same title as that by which turkey has hitherto held macedonia, thrace, salonika--a right of invasion, of seizure, of demoralization. if turkey's rights, nearly six hundred years old, can be shattered in a day by one successful campaign, and if the powers of europe can insist, with justice, that this successful sword shall outweigh the occupation of centuries, then, indeed, have the powers, led by england, furnished a precedent in the near east which the victor in the next great struggle should not be slow to apply to the near west, when a captive ireland shall be rescued from the hands of a conqueror whose tide is no better, indeed somewhat worse than that of turkey to macedonia. and when the day of defeat shall strike for the turkey of the near west, then shall an assembled europe remember the arguments of - and a freed ireland shall be justified on the very grounds england to-day has been the first to advance against a defeated turkey. "but the turk is an asiatic," say the english bashaws: to which indeed, europe might aptly reply, "and are the english european or non-european?" the moral argument, and the "asiatic argument" are strange texts for the desecrater of christian ireland to appeal to against that continent which she would fain hem in with malayan and indian battleships, and canadian and australasian dreadnoughts. not the moral argument, but the anti-german argument, furnishes the real ground for the changed british attitude in the present war. the moral failure of turkey, her inability to govern her christian peoples is only the pretext: but just as the moral argument brings its strange revenges and shows an ireland that has suffered all that macedonia has suffered, and this at the hands of christians, and not of moslems, so the triumph of the balkan allies, far from benefiting britain, must, in the end, react to her detriment. the present apparent injury to german interests by the closing of south-eastern europe, and the road to asia minor, will inevitably force germany to still more resolutely face the problem of opening the western seaways. to think otherwise is to believe that germany will accept a quite impossible position tamely and without a struggle. hemmed in by russia on the east and the new southern slav states on the south-east, with a vengeful france being incited on her western frontier to fresh dreams of conquest, germany sees england preparing still mightier armaments to hold and close the seaways of the world. the canadian naval vote, the malayan "gift" of a battleship come as fresh rivets in the chain forged for the perpetual binding of the seas, or it might more truly be said, for the perpetual binding of the hands of die german people. we read in a recent london periodical how these latest naval developments portend the coming of the day when "the imperial navy shall keep the peace of the seas as a policeman does the peace of the streets. the time is coming when a naval war (except by england), will be as relentlessly suppressed as piracy on the high seas." (_review of reviews_, december, .) the naïve arrogance of this utterance is characteristically english. it is, after all, but the journalistic echo of the churchill glasgow speech, and the fullest justification of the criticism of the kreuz zeitung already quoted. it does not stand alone; it could be paralleled in the columns of any english paper--liberal as much as conservative--every day in the week. nothing is clearer than that no englishman can think of other nations save in terms of permanent inferiority. thus, for instance, in a november ( ) issue of the _daily news_ we find a representative englishman (sir r. edgecumbe), addressing that liberal journal in words that no one but an englishman would dream of giving public utterance to. sir r. edgecumbe deprecated a statement that had gone round to the effect that the malayan battleship was not a free gift of the toiling tamils, japanese, chinese, and other rubber workers who make up, with a few malays, the population of that peninsula, but was really the fruit of an arbitrary tax imposed upon these humble, but indifferent asiatics by their english administration. far from being indifferent, sir r. edgecumbe asserted these poor workers nourished a reverence "bordering on veneration" for the englishman. "this is shown in a curious way by their refusing to call any european 'a white man' save the englishman alone. the german trader, the italian and frenchman all are, in their speech coloured men." after this appreciation of themselves the english cannot object to the present writer's view that they are non-europeans. thus while the eastern question is being settled while i write, by the expulsion of the turk from europe, england, who leads the cry in the name of europe, is preparing the exclusion of europe from all world affairs that can be dominated by sea power. lands and peoples held for centuries by turkey by a right not less moral than that by which england has held ireland, are being forcibly restored to europe. so be it. with settlement of the eastern question by this act of restitution europe must inevitably gain the clarity of vision to deal with the western question by a similar act of restoration. the western macedonia must go the way of its eastern fellow. like those of the orient, the problems of the occident for europe are twofold--a near western and a far western question. ireland, keeper of the seas, constitutes for europe the near western question. the freedom of those seas and their opening to all european effort alike on equal terms constitutes the far western question. but in both cases the antagonist of europe, the non-european power is the same. the challenge of europe must be to england, and the champion of europe must be and can be only germany. no other european people has the power, the strength of mind, of purpose and of arm to accomplish the great act of deliverance. europe too long blinded to her own vital interests while disunited, must now, under the guidance of a united germany, resolutely face the problem of freeing the seas. _that war of the seas is inevitable_. it may be fought on a continent; it may be waged in the air--it must be settled on the seas and it must mean either the freeing of those seas or the permanent exclusion of europeans from the affairs of the world. it means for europe the future, the very existence of european civilization as opposed to the anglo-saxon world domination. in that war, germany will stand not alone as the champion of europe, she will fight for the freedom of the world. as an irishman i have no fear of the result to ireland of a german triumph. i pray for it; for with the coming of that day the "irish question" so dear to british politicians, becomes a european, a world question. with the humbling of great britain and the destruction of her sea ownership, european civilization assumes a new stature, and ireland, oldest and yet youngest of the european peoples, shall enter into free partnership with the civilization, culture, and prosperity that that act of liberation shall bring to mankind. chapter vi the duty of christendom it is only the truth that wounds. an irishman to-day in dealing with englishmen is forced, if he speak truly, to wound. that is why so many irishmen do not speak the truth. the irishman, whether he be a peasant, a farm labourer, however low in the scale of anglicization he may have sunk, is still in imagination, if not always in manner, a gentleman. the englishman is a gentleman by chance, by force of circumstances, by luck of birth, or some rare opportunity of early fellowship. the irishman is a gentleman by instinct and shrinks from wounding the feelings of another man and particularly of the man who has wounded him. he scorns to take it out of him that way. that is why the task of misgoverning him has been so easy and has come so naturally to the englishman. one of the chief grievances of the irishman in the middle ages was that the man who robbed him was such a boor. insult was added to injury in that the oppressor was no knight in shining armour, but a very churl of men; to the courteous and cultured irishman a "bodach sassenach," a man of low blood, of low cunning, caring only for the things of the body, with no veneration for the things of the spirit--with, in fine, no music in his soul. the things that the irishman loved he could not conceive of. without tradition or history himself he could not comprehend the passionate attachment of the irishman to both, and he proceeded to wipe both out, so far as in him lay, from off the map of ireland and from out the irishman's consciousness. having, as he believed, with some difficulty accomplished his task, he stands to-day amazed at the result. the irishman has still a grievance--nay more, ireland talks of "wrongs." but has she not got him? what more can she want except his purse? and, that too, she is now taking. in the indulgence of an agreeable self-conceit which supplies for him the want of imagination he sees ireland to-day as a species of "sturdy beggar," half mendicant, half pickpocket--making off with the proceeds of his hard day's work. the past slips from him as a dream. has he not for years now, well, for thirty years certainly, a generation, a life time, done all in his power to meet the demands of this incessant country that more in sorrow than in anger he will grant you, was misgoverned in the past. that was its misfortune, never his fault. this is a steadily recurring phase of the fixed hallucination in his blood. ireland never _is_, but only always has been cursed by english rule. he himself, the englishman of the day, is always a simple, bluff, good-hearted fellow. his father if you like, his grandfather very probably, misgoverned ireland, but never he himself. why, just look at him now, his hand never out of his pocket relieving the shrill cries of irish distress. there she stands, a poverty-stricken virago at his door, shaking her bony fist at him, celtic porter in her eye, the most fearful apparition in history, his charwoman, shaming him before the neighbours and demanding payment for long past spring cleanings that he, good soul, has forgotten all about or is quite certain were settled at the time. yes, there she stands, the irish charwoman, the old broom in her hand and preparing for one last sweep that shall make the house sweet and fit for her own children. and john bull, honest, sturdy john bull, believing the house to be his, thinks that the only thing between him and the woman is the matter of wages; that all she wants is an extra shilling. ireland wants but one thing in the world. she wants her house to herself, and the stranger out of her house. while he is, in his heart, perfectly aware of this, john bull (for the reasons given by richard cox), is quite determined that nothing shall get him out of the house. "separation is unthinkable," say english ministers. the task of ireland is to-day what it always has been--to get the stranger out of the house. it is no shame to ireland or her sons, that up to this they have failed in each attempt. those attempts are pillars of fire in her history, beacons of light in the desert of sin, where the irish israel still wanders in search of the promised land. few of the peoples in europe who to-day make up the concert of powers, have, unaided, expelled the invader who held them down, and none has been in the situation of ireland. as mr. gladstone wrote in , "can anyone say we should have treated ireland as we have done had she lain not between us and the ocean, but between us and europe?" in introducing the scheme of mild home rule termed the councils bill in , mr. birrell prefaced it with the remark that "separation was unthinkable--save in the event of some great world cataclysm." world cataclysms up to this have not reached ireland--england intervened too well. she has maintained her hold by sea power. the lonely andromeda saw afar off the rescuing perseus, a nude figure on the coast of spain or france, but long ere his flight reached her rock-bound feet she beheld him fall, bruised and mangled, and devoured by the watching sea monster. had italy been placed as ireland is, cut off from all external succour save across a sea held by a relentless jailor, would she have been to-day a free people, ally of austria on terms of high equality? the blood shed by the founders of modern italy would all have been shed in vain--that blood that sanctified the sword of garibaldi--had it not been for the selfish policy of louis napoleon and the invading armies of france. italy, no more than ireland, could have shaken herself free had it not been for aid from abroad. the late queen victoria saw clearly the parallel, and as hereditary custodian of ireland, her majesty protested against the effort then being made to release italy from an austrian prison, when she herself was so hard put to it to keep ireland in an english jail. writing to her prime minister on july th, , her majesty said:-- "the queen must tell lord john (russell) what she has repeatedly told lord palmerston, but without apparent effect, that the establishment of an entente cordiale with the french republic, for the purpose of driving the austrians out of their dominions in italy would be a disgrace to this country. that the french would attach the greatest importance to it and gain the greatest advantage from it, there can be no doubt of. but how will england appear before the world at the moment she is struggling for her supremacy in ireland?..." and on oct. th following her majesty wrote to her uncle, the first king of the belgians (who owed his new minted crown to the belgian people depriving the dutch sovereign of his "lawful possessions") in the following memorable words: "really it is quite immoral, with ireland quivering in our grasp, and ready to throw off her allegiance at any moment, for us to force austria to give up her lawful possessions. what shall we say if canada, malta, etc., begin to trouble us? it hurts me terribly." (page , queen victoria's letters, published by order of his majesty, king edward vii.) it hurt ireland much more terribly, that failure to throw off the hand that held her "quivering in our grasp," so soon to stretch her "a corpse upon the dissecting table." ireland has failed to win her freedom, not so much because she has failed to shed her blood, but because her situation in the world is just that unique situation i have sought to depict. belonging to europe, she has not been of europe; and england with a persistency that would be admirable were it not so criminal in intention and effect, has bent all her efforts, all her vigour, an unswerving policy, and a pitiless sword to extend the limits of exclusion. to approach ireland at all since the first english sovereign laid hands upon it was "quite immoral." when frederick of hohenstaufen (so long ago as that!) sent his secretary (an irishman) to ireland we read that henry iii of england declared "it hurt him terribly," and ordered all the goings out and comings in of the returned irish-german statesman to be closely watched. the dire offence of hugh o'neill to elizabeth was far less his rebellion than his "practises" with spain. at every cessation of arms during the nine years war he waged with england, she sought to obtain from him an abjuration of "foreign aid," chiefly "that of the spaniard." "nothing will become the traitor (o'neill) more than his public confession of any spanish practices, and his abjuration of any manner of harkening or combining with any foreigners." could o'neill be brought to publicly repudiate help from abroad it would have, the queen thought, the effect that "in spain... the hopes of such attempts might be extinguished." as long as the sea was open to spain there was grave danger. if spaniard and irishman came close together o'neill's offence was indeed "fit to be made vulgar"--all men would see the strength of combination, the weakness of isolation. "send me all the news you receive from spain for tyrone doth fill all these parts with strange lies, although some part be true, that there came some munition." it was because o'neill was a statesman and knew the imperative need to ireland of keeping in touch with europe that for elizabeth he became "the chief traitor of ireland--a reprobate from god, reserved for the sword." spain was to elizabethan englishmen what germany is to-day. "i would venture to say one word here to my irish fellow countrymen of all political persuasions. if they imagine they can stand politically or economically while britain falls they are woefully mistaken. the british fleet is their one shield. it if be broken ireland will go down. they may well throw themselves heartily into the common defence, for no sword can transfix england without the point reaching behind her." (sir arthur conan doyle, in the _fortnightly review_, feb., , "great britain and the next war.") the voice is a very old one, and the bogey has done duty for a long time in ireland. when, to-day, it is from germany that freedom may be feared, ireland is warned against the german. when, three hundred years ago the beacon of hope shone on the coast of spain, it was the spaniards who were the bad people of history. fray mattheo de oviedo, who had been sent to ireland as archbishop, wrote to king philip iii from o'neill's stronghold, dungannon, on june , . we might be listening to the voice of the _fortnightly review_ of yesterday. "the english are making great efforts to bring about a peace, offering excellent terms, and for this purpose the viceroy sent messengers twice to o'neill, saying among other things, that your majesty is making peace with the queen, and that his condition will be hopeless. at other times he says that no greater misfortune could happen to the country than to bring spaniards into it, because they are haughty and vicious and they would destroy and ruin the country." the irish princes were no fools. "to all this they reply most honourably that they will hold out as long as they have one soldier or there remains a cow to eat." hugh o'neill saw clearly that all compromise between ireland and england was futile, and that the way of escape was by complete separation and lay only through europe. he again and again begged the spanish king to sever ireland and erect it into an allied state. he offered the crown of ireland to a spanish prince, just as three centuries earlier another and a great o'neill offered the crown of ireland to edward bruce in . the coming of the bruce saved gaelic ireland for three centuries. had philip of spain sent his son as king to ireland, her fate had been settled then instead of remaining three centuries later to still confront european statesmanship with an unsolved problem. in many letters addressed by the irish leaders to philip ii and philip iii we find the constantly recurring note of warning that to leave england in possession of ireland meant the downfall of spain. the irish princes knew that in fighting england they were in truth fighting the battle of european civilization. writing to philip ii from lifford, on may th, , o'neill and o'donnell drew the king's attention to the cause of ireland as the cause of europe, and in the name of ireland offered the crown to a spanish prince. "but inasmuch as we have felt to our great and indescribably harm the evil doings and crimes of those whom the queen of england is in the habit of sending amongst us, we beg and beseech your majesty to send someone well known to you and perfectly fit to be the king of this island, for his own welfare, ours, and that of the christian state (christendom)." they asked for a prince "who will not be unwilling to rule over and live amongst us and to direct and guide our nation, well and wisely." they pointed out how "he will obtain much advantage and glory by so doing," and finally they begged "would that your majesty would appoint the archduke of austria, now governor of flanders, a famous man and worthy of all praise, than whom none would be more acceptable." (the original is in latin and in the archives of simancas.) no more statesmanlike appeal was ever made from ireland; and had the archduke of austria assumed the crown of ireland in , "now or never" would indeed have become "now and forever." had philip ii carried out his often repeated promises of sending aid to that country the fate of his own kingdom must have been a very different one. "i wish it were possible for me, by word of mouth, to show the importance of this undertaking and the great service that would be rendered thereby to god and his church, and _the great advantage it would be to the service of your majesty and the peace of your states to attack the enemy here_." so wrote in to philip ii, the archbishop of dublin, already quoted, mattheo de oviedo. this prelate had been specially sent to ireland "to see and understand the state of the country misrepresented by english emissaries at foreign courts." the wrath of elizabeth against o'neill was largely due to his keeping in touch with the continent, whereby the lies of her agents abroad were turned to her own ridicule. to essex, her viceroy, she wrote: "tyrone hath blazed in foreign parts the defeat of regiments, the death of captains, and loss of men of quality in every quarter." o'neill not only for years beat her generals in the field, her beat herself and her councillors at their own game. to essex, in an ecstacy of rage at the loss of the last great army sent, she wrote (september th, ): "to trust this traitor upon oath is to trust the devil upon his religion. only this we are sure (for we see it in effect), that you have prospered so ill for us by your warfare, as we cannot but be very jealous lest we should be as well overtaken by the treaty." (essex wished to bring o'neill in by a treaty which, while ostensibly conceding the terms of the irish prince was to allow the queen time to carry out her purpose.) the irish princes knew elizabeth and her ministers, as well as she read essex. "believe no news from ireland of any agreement in this country," they had written to philip ii in , "great offers have been made by the queen of england, but we will not break our word and promise to your." in a letter written a year earlier (oct. , ), replying to the special envoy sent by the king, they said: "since the former envoys left us we have used every means in our power, as we promised we should do, to gain time and procrastination from one day to another. but how could we impose on so clever an enemy so skilled in every kind of cunning and cheating if we did not use much dissimulation, and especially if we did not pretend we were anxious for peace? we will keep firm and unshaken the promises which we made to your majesty with our last breath; if we do not we shall incur at once the wrath of god and the contempt of men." how faithfully they kept those promises and how the spanish king failed in his, their fate and the bitter ruin of their country shows. that men fighting for ireland had to meet elizabeth and her statesmen with something of her own cunning is made very clear to anyone reading the state papers in ireland. essex, in one of his "answers" wrote: "i advise her majesty to allow me, at my return to dublin, to conclude this treaty, yielding some of their grants in the present; and when her majesty has made secret preparations to enable me to prosecute, i will find quarrels enough to break and give them a deadly blow." the irish, however, failed in this contest. they were not sufficiently good liars, and lacked the higher flights of villainy necessary to sustain the encounter. the essential english way in tudor days, and much later, for administering a deadly blow to an irish patriot was "assassination." poison frequently took the place of the knife, and was often administered wrapped in a leaf of the british bible. a certain atkinson, knowing the religious nature of cecil, the queen's prime minister, the founder of a long line of statesmen, foremost as champions of church and book, suggested the getting rid of o'neill by some "poisoned hosts." this proposal to use the blessed sacrament as a veritable last supper for the last great irish chief remains on record, was endorsed by cecil. another briton, named annyas, was charged to poison "the most dangerous and open rebel in munster," florence maccarthy more, the great maccarthy. elizabeth's prime minister piously endorsed the deed--"though his soul never had the thought to consent to the poisoning of a dog, much less a christian ." to carew, the president of munster, cecil wrote enjoining the assassination of the young earl of desmond, then "in the keeping of carew": "whatever you do to abridge him out of providence shall never be imputed to you for a fault, but exceedingly commended by the queen." after this, we are not surprised to learn that in her instructions to mountjoy, the successor of essex, the queen recommended "to his special care to preserve the true exercise of religion among her loving subjects." as o'neill was still in the field with a large army, she prudently pointed out, however, that the time "did not permit that he should intermeddle by any severity or violence in matters of religion until her power was better established there to countenance his action." that the character of their adversary was faithfully appreciated by contemporary irish opinion stands plain in a letter written by james fitzthomas, nephew of the great earl gerald of desmond, to philip ii. "the government of the english is such as pharaoh himself never used the like; for they content not themselves with all temporal prosperity, but by cruelty desire our blood and perpetual destruction to blot out the whole remembrance of our posterity--for that nero, in his time, was far inferior to that queen in cruelty." the irish chiefs well sustained their part in meeting this combination of power and perfidy, and merited, on the highest grounds of policy the help so often promised by the king of spain. they showed him not only by their valour on the field but by their sagacious council how great a part was reserved for ireland in the affairs of europe if he would but profit from it and do his part. in this the spanish king failed. philip ii had died in , too immersed in religious trials to see that the centre of his griefs was pivoted on the possession of ireland by the female nero. with his son and successor communication was maintained and in a letter of philip iii to o'neill, dated from madrid, dec. th, , we read: "noble and well beloved i have already written a joint letter to you and your relative o'donnell, in which i replied to a letter of both of you. by this, which i now write to you personally i wish to let you know my good will towards you, and i mean to prove it, not only by word, but by deed." that promise was not fulfilled, or so inadequately fulfilled that the help, when it came, was insufficient to meet the needs of the case. history tells us what the sad consequences were to the cause of civilisation in ireland, from the failure of the spanish king to realize the greatness of his responsibilities. but the evil struck deeper than to ireland alone. europe lost more than her historians have yet realised from the weakness of purpose that let ireland go down transfixed by the sword of elizabeth. had the fate of europe been then controlled by a hohenzollern, instead of by a spanish hapsburg, how different might have been the future of the world! although europe had forgotten ireland, ireland had never forgotten europe. natural outpost and sentinel of that continent in the west for three-hundred years now gagged and bound, since the flight to rome of her last native princes, she stands to-day as in the days of philip iii, if an outcast from european civilization non the less rejecting the insular tradition of england, as she has rejected her insular church. and now once more in her career she turns to the greatest of european sovereigns, to win his eyes to the oldest, and certainly the most faithful of european peoples. ireland already has given and owes much to germany. in the dark ages intercourse between the celtic people of the west and the rhinelands and bavaria was close and long sustained. irish monasteries flourished in the heart of germany, and german architecture gave its note possibly to some of the fairest cathedral churches in ireland. clonfert and cashel are, perhaps amongst the most conspicuous examples of the influence of that old-time intercourse with germany. to-day, when little of her past remains to venerate, her ancient language on what seemed its bed of death owes much of its present day revival to german scholarship and culture. probably the foremost gaelic scholar of the day is the occupant of the chair of celtic at berlin university, and ireland recognises with a gratitude she is not easily able to express, all that her ancient literature owes to the genius and loving intellect of dr. kuno meyer. the name of ireland may be known on the bourses or in the chancelleries of europe; it is not without interest, even fame, in the centres of german academical culture. but that the german state may also be interested in the political fate of ireland is believed by the present writer. maurice fitzgerald, the outlawed claimant to the earldom of desmond, wrote to philip ii, from lisbon on september th, : "we have thought it right to implore your majesty to send the aid you will think fit and with it to send us (the irish refugees in the peninsula) to defend and uphold the same undertaking; for we hope, with god's help your majesty will be victorious and conquer and hold as your own the kingdom of ireland.--we trust in god that your majesty and the council will weigh well the advantages that will ensue to christendom from this enterprise--since the opportunity is so good and the cause so just and weighty, and the undertaking so easily completed." the history of human freedom is written in letters of blood. it is the law of god. no people who clutch to safety, who shun death are worthy of freedom. the dead who die for ireland are the only live men in a free ireland. the rest are cattle. freedom is kept alive in man's blood only by shedding of that blood. it was not an act of a foreign parliament they were seeking, those splendid "scorners of death," the lads and young men of mayo, who awaited with a fearless joy the advance of the english army fresh from the defeat of humbert in . then, if ever, irishmen might have run from a victorious and pitiless enemy who, having captured the french general and murdered in cold blood the seven hundred killala peasants who were with his colours, were now come to killala itself to wreak vengeance on the last stronghold of irish rebellion. the ill-led and half armed peasants, the last irishmen in ireland to stand the pitched fight for their country's freedom, went to meet the army of england, as the protestant bishop, who saw them, says:--"running upon death with as little appearance of reflection or concern as if they were hastening to a show." the late queen victoria, in one of her letters to her uncle, the king of the belgians, wrote thus of the abortive rising of fifty years later in : "there are ample means of crushing the rebellion in ireland, and i think it is very likely to go off without any contest, which people (and i think rightly) rather regret. the irish should receive _a good lesson or they will begin again_." (page , vol. ii, queen victoria's letters.) her majesty was profoundly right. ireland needed that lesson in , as she needs it still more to-day. had irishmen died in as they did in ireland would be to-day fifty years nearer to freedom. it is because a century has passed since europe saw ireland willing to die that to-day europe has forgotten that she lives. as i began this essay with a remark of charles lever on germany so shall end it here with a remark of lever on his own country, ireland. in a letter to a friend in dublin, he thus put the epitaph of europe on the grave of a generation who believed that "no human cause was worth the shedding one drop of human blood." "as to ireland all foreign sympathy is over owing to the late cowardice and poltroonery of the patriots. _even italians can fight_" (letter of c. lever from florence, august th, ). it is only the truth that wounds. it is that reproach that has cursed ireland for a century. sedition, the natural garment for an irishman to wear, has been for a hundred years a bloodless sedition. it is this fiery shirt of nessus that has driven our strong men mad. how to shed our blood with honour, how to give our lives for ireland--that has been, that is the problem of irish nationality. chapter vii the freedom of the seas it would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle between great britain and germany. that is a task that belongs to the war department of the two states. i have assigned myself merely to point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what i believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict, and how one of these, ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor, has been overlooked by practically every predecessor of germany in the effort to make good at sea. the spaniards in elizabeth's reign, the french of louis xiv and of the directory took some steps, it is true, to challenge england's control of ireland, but instead of concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were content to dissipate it upon isolated expeditions and never once to push home the assault on the one point that was obviously the key to the enemy's whole position. at any period during that last three centuries, with ireland gone, england was, if not actually at the mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own shores. but while england knew the value to herself of ireland, she appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition lay on her right side hidden from the eyes of europe. "will anyone assert," said gladstone, "that we would have dared to treat ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the ocean, but between us and the continent?" and while the bulk of england, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from ireland interposed between her victim and europe, her continental adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease psychologists term the collective illusion. all the world saw that which in fact did not exist. the greatness of england as they beheld it, imposing, powerful, and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base they believed they saw, but on the object, sacked, impoverished, and bled, they never saw. and so it is to-day. the british empire is the great illusion. resembling in much the holy roman empire it is not british, it is not an empire, and assuredly it is not holy. it lives on the life-blood and sufferings of some, on the suffrance and mutual jealousy of others, and on the fixed illusion of all. rather is it a great mendicity institute. england now, instead of "robbing from pole to pole," as john mitchel once defined her activities, goes begging from pole to pole that all and every one shall give her a helping hand to keep the plunder. chins, goorkhas, sikhs, malays, irish, chinese, south african dutch, australasians, maoris, canadians, japanese, and finally "uncle sam"--these are the main components that when skilfully mixed from london, furnish the colouring material for the world-wide canvas. if we take away india, egypt and the other coloured races the white population that remains is greatly inferior to the population of germany, and instead of being a compact, indivisible whole, consists of a number of widely scattered and separated communities, each with separate and absorbing problems of its own, and more than one of them british neither in race, speech, nor affection. moreover if we turn to the coloured races we find that the great mass of the subjects of this empire have less rights within it than they possess outside its boundaries, and occupy there a lower status than that accorded to most foreigners. the people of india far out number all other citizens of the british empire put together, and yet we find the british indians resident in canada, to take but one instance, petitioning the imperial government in for as favourable terms of entry into that british possession as the japanese enjoyed. they pointed out that a japanese could enter canada on showing that he held from six pounds to ten pounds, but that no british indian could land unless he had forty pounds and had come direct from india,--a physical impossibility, since no direct communication exists. but they went further, for they showed that their "citizenship" of the british empire entailed penalties that no foreign state anywhere imposed upon them. "we appeal," they said, "and most forcibly bring to your notice that no such discriminating laws are existing against us in foreign countries like the united states of america, germany, japan, and africa, to whom we do not owe any allegiance whatsoever." so that outside its white or european races it is clear the empire has no general or equal citizenship, and that, far from being one, it is more divided racially against itself than are even opposing asiatic and european nations which have the good fortune not to be united in a common, imperial bond. the total white population of this incongruous mass in consisted of some , , human beings made up of various national and racial strains, as against , , of white men in the german empire the vast majority of them of german blood. and while the latter form a disciplined, self-contained, and self-supporting and self-defending whole, the former are swelled by irish, french-canadians, and dutch south africans who, according to sir r. edgcumbe, must be reckoned as "coloured." it is one thing to paint the map red, but you must be sure that your colours are fast and that the stock of paints wont run out. england, apart from her own perplexities is now faced with this prospect. great britain can no longer count on ireland, that most prolific source of supply of her army, navy, and industrial efforts during the last century, while she is faced with a declining birth-rate, due largely, be it noted, to the diminished influx of the irish, a more prolific and virile race. while her internal powers of reproduction are failing, her ability to keep those already born is diminishing still more rapidly. emigration threatens to remove the surplus of births over deaths. as long as it was only the population of ireland that fell ( , , in to , , in ), great britain was not merely untroubled but actually rejoiced at a decrease in numbers that made the irish more manageable, and yet just sufficiently starvable to supply her with a goodly surplus for army, navy, and industrial expansion in great britain. now that the irish are gone with a vengeance it is being perceived that they did not take their vengeance with them and that the very industrial expansion they built up from their starving bodies and naked limbs contains within itself the seeds of a great retribution. "since free trade has ruined our agriculture, our army has become composed of starving slum dwellers who, according to the german notion are better at shouting than at fighting. german generals have pointed out that in the south african war our regular and auxiliary troops often raised the white flag and surrendered, without necessity, sometimes to a few boers, and they may do the same to a german invading force. free trade which "benefits the consumer" and the capitalist has, unfortunately, through the destruction of our agriculture and through forcing practically the whole population of great britain into the towns, destroyed the manhood of the nation." (modern germany page , by j. ellis barker, ). an army of slum dwellers is a poor base on which to build the structure of a perpetual world dominion. while the navy shows an imposing output of new battleships and cruisers for , the record, we are told, of all warship construction in the world, it takes blood as well as iron to cement empires. battleships may become so much floating scrap iron (like the russian fleet at tsushima), if the men behind the guns lack the right stamina and education. we learn, too, that it is not only the slum dwellers who are failing, but that to meet the shortage of officers a large number of transfers from the merchant marine to the royal navy are being sanctioned. to this must be added the call of the great dominions for men and officers to man their local fleets. as the vital resources of england become more and more inadequate to meet the menace of german naval and moral strength, she turns her eyes to ireland, and we learn from the london _daily telegraph_ that mr. churchill's scheme of recruiting at queenstown may furnish "matter for congratulation, as irish boys make excellent bluejackets happy of disposition, amenable to discipline, and extremely quick and handy." as i can recall an article in this same journal, written during the course of the boer war, in which ireland was likened to a "serpent whose head must be crushed beneath the heel," the _daily telegraph's_ praise to-day of the irish disposition should leave irish boys profoundly unmoved--and still ashore. there is yet another aspect of the growing stream of british emigration. "death removes the feeble, emigration removes the strong. canada, new zealand, australia, and south africa, have no use for the sick and palsied, or of those incapable of work through age or youth. they want the workers and they get them. those who have left the united kingdom during are not the scum of our islands, but the very pick. and they leave behind, for our politicians to grapple with, a greater proportion of females, of children and of disabled than ever before." (_london magazine_!) the excess of females over males, already so noteworthy a feature of england's decay, becomes each year more accentuated and doubtless accounts for the strenuous efforts now being made to entrap irish boys into the british army and navy. if we compare the figures of germany and great britain, and then contrast them with those of ireland, we shall see, at a glance, how low england is sinking, and how vitally necessary it is for her to redress the balance of her own excess of "militants" over males by kidnapping irish youths into her emasculated services and by fomenting french and russian enmities against the fruitful german people. germany , males, , , ; females, , , ; total, , , . excess of females, , . great britain, : england and wales--males, , , ; females, , , ; total, , , . excess of females, , , . scotland--males, , , ; females, , , ; total, , , . excess of females, , . total for great britain, , , . excess of females, , , . thus on a population much less than two thirds that of germany great britain has almost twice as many females in excess over males as germany has, and this disproportion of sexes tends yearly to increase. we read in every fresh return of emigration that it is men and not women who are leaving england and scotland. that irish emigration, appalling as its ravages have been since , is still maintained on a naturally healthier basis the sex returns for make clear. the figures for ireland at the census were as follows: ireland--males, , , ; females, , , ; total, , , . excess of females, , . ireland, it is seen, can still spare , or , males for the british armed forces and be in no unhealthier sex plight than scotland or england is in. it is to get this surplus of stout irish brawn and muscle that mr. churchill and the british war office are now touting in ireland. i take the following government advertisement from the cork _evening echo_ (of march, ), in illustration: "notice--any person that brings a recruit for the regular or special reserve branches of the army to the recruiting officer at victoria barracks, cork, will be paid the money reward allowed for each recruit which ranges from / to /- each." from whatever point of view we survey it we shall find that england's empire at bottom rests upon ireland to make good british deficiencies. the dominions are far off, and while they may give battleships they take men. ireland is close at hand--she gives all and takes nothing. men, mind, food and money--all these she has offered through the centuries, and it is upon these and the unrestricted drain of these four things from that rich mine of human fertility and wealth that the british empire has been founded and maintained. to secure to-day the goodwill and active co-operation of the irish race abroad as well as in ireland, and through that goodwill to secure the alliance and support of the united states has become the guiding purpose of british statesmanship. the home rule bill of the present liberal government is merely the petty party expression of what all english statesmen recognize as a national need. were the present liberal government thrown out to-morrow their unionist successors would hasten to bind ireland (and america) to them by a measure that, if necessary, would go much further. every unionist knows this. ireland is always the key to the situation. i will quote two pronouncements, one english and one american, to show that home rule has now become an imperial necessity for england. speaking in the house of lords on the home rule bill, earl grey, the late governor-general of canada, said on january th, : "in the interests of the empire i feel very strongly that it is imperative that the irish question should be settled on lines which will satisfy the sentiment of the over-sea democracies, both in our self-governing colonies and in the united states. everyone, i think will agree that it is most important and in the highest interests of the empire that there should be the friendliest feelings of generous affection and goodwill, not only between the self-governing dominions and the motherland, but also between america and england.... i need not elaborate this point. we are all agreed upon it. a heavy shadow at present exists, and it arises from our treatment of ireland.... if this be so is it not our duty to remove the obstacle that prevents that relationship with america from being that which we all desire?" the american utterance came from one equally representative of american imperial interests. it is that of mr. roosevelt, published in the _irish world_ of new york, feb. th, . "i feel that the enactment into law of this measure ... bids fair to establish goodwill among the english-speaking peoples. this has been prevented more than by any other one thing by this unhappy feud that has raged for centuries, and the settlement of which, i most earnestly hope, and believe, will be a powerful contribution to the peace of the world, based on international justice and goodwill. i earnestly feel that the measure is as much in the interests of great britain as of ireland." did we judge of ireland only by many of the public utterances made in her name, then, indeed might we despair of a people who having suffered so much and so valiantly resisted for so many centuries were now to be won to their oppressor's side, by, perhaps, the most barefaced act of bribery ever attempted by a government against a people. "injured nations cannot so entirely forgive their enemies without losing something of their virility, and it grates upon me to hear leader after leader of the parliamentary party declaring without shame that home rule when it is won for ireland is to be used for a new weapon of offence in england's hands against the freedom of the world elsewhere." did the irish parliamentary party indeed represent ireland in this, mr. wilfred blunt's noble protest in his recent work, _the land war in ireland_, would stand for the contemptuous impeachment, not of a political party but of a nation. mr. redmond in his latest speech shows how truly mr. blunt has depicted his party's aim; but to the credit of ireland it is to be recorded that mr. redmond had to choose not ireland, but england for its delivery. speaking at st. patrick's day dinner in london on march th, , mr. redmond, to a non-irish audience, thus hailed the future part his country is to play under the restoration of what he describes as a "national parliament." "we will, under home rule, devote our attention to education, reform of the poor law, and questions of that kind which are purely domestic, which are, if you like, hum-drum irish questions, and the only way in which we will attempt to interfere in any imperial question will be by our representatives on the floor of the imperial parliament in westminster doing everything in our power to increase the strength and the glory of what will then be our empire at long last; and by sending in support of the empire the strong arms and brave hearts of irish soldiers and irish sailors, to maintain the traditions of irish valour in every part of the world. that is our ambition." were this indeed the ambition of ireland, did this represent the true feeling of irishmen towards england, and the empire of england, then home rule, on such terms, would be a curse and a crime. thierry, the french historian, is a truer exponent of the passionate aspirations of the irish heart than anyone who to-day would seek to represent ireland as willing to sell her soul no less than the strong arms and brave hearts of her sons in an unholy cause. "... for notwithstanding the mixture of races, the intercommunion of every kind brought about by the course of centuries, hatred of the english government still subsists as a native passion in the mass of the irish nation. ever since the hour of invasion this race of men has invariably desired that which their conquerors did not desire, detested that which they liked, and liked that which they detested ... this indomitable persistency, this faculty of preserving through centuries of misery the remembrance of lost liberty, and of never despairing of a cause always defeated, always fatal to those who dared to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and noblest example ever given by any nation." (_histoire de la conquete de l'angleterre par les normands_, paris edition, . london, .) the french writer here saw deeper and spoke truer than many who seek to-day not to reveal the irish heart, whose deep purpose they have forgotten, but barter its life-blood for a concession that could be won to-morrow by half that blood if shed at home, thus offered without warrant "as a new weapon of offence to england's hands against the freedom of the world elsewhere." the irishman, who in the belief that home rule has come or that any measure of home rule the london parliament will offer can be a substitute for his country's freedom, joins the british army or navy is a voluntary traitor to his country. almost everything that ireland produces, or consumes, must all go out or come solely through england and on payment of a transit and shipping tax to english trade. the london press has lately waxed indignant over servia denied by austria a port on the adriatic, and we have been told a servia without a port is a servia held in "economic slavery," and that her independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. but what of ireland? with not one, but forty ports, the finest in all western europe, they lie idle and empty. with over , miles of seaboard, facing the west and holding the seaway between europe and america, ireland, in the grip of england, has been reduced to an economic slavery that has no parallel in civilization. and it is to this island, to this people that the appeal is now made that we should distrust the germans and aid our enslavers. better far, were that the only outcome, the fate of alsace-lorraine (who got their home rule parliament years ago) than the "friendship" of england. we have survived the open hate, the prolonged enslavement, the secular robbery of england and now the england smiles and offers us with one hand home rule to take it away with the other, are we going to forget the experience of our forefathers? a connacht proverb of the middle ages should come back to us--"three things for a man to avoid; the heels of a horse, the horns of a bull; and the smile of an englishman." that ireland must be involved in any war that great britain undertakes goes without saying; but that we should willingly throw ourselves into the fray on the wrong side to avert a british defeat, is the counsel of traitors offered to fools. we must see to it that what thierry wrote of our fathers is not shamefully belied by their sons. our "indomitable persistency" has up to this excelled and subdued the unvarying will applied to one unvarying purpose of those who, by dint of that quality, have elsewhere subjugated the universe. we who have preserved through centuries of misery, the remembrance of lost liberty, are not now going to merge our unconquered souls in the base body of our oppressor. one of the few liberal statesmen england has produced, certainly the only liberal politician she has ever produced, the late mr. gladstone, compared the union between great britain and ireland to "the union between the mangled corpse of hector and the headlong chariot of achilles." ( .) but, while i cannot admit that england is an achilles, save, perhaps, that she may be wounded like him in the heel, i will not admit, i will not own that ireland, however mangled, however "the plowers have ploughed upon her back and made long furrows," is in truth dead, is indeed a corpse. no; there is a juster analogy, and one given us by the only englishman who was in every clime, and in every circumstance a liberal; one who died fighting in the cause of liberty, even as in life he sang it. byron denounced the union between england and ireland as "the union of the shark with its prey." chapter viii ireland, germany and the next war in the february, , _fortnightly review_, sir arthur conan doyle at the end of an article, "great britain and the next war," thus appeals to ireland to recognize that her interests are one with those of great britain in the eventual defeat of the latter: "i would venture to say one word here to my irish fellow-countrymen of all political persuasions. if they imagine that they can stand politically or economically while britain falls they are woefully mistaken. the british fleet is their one shield. if it be broken ireland will go down. they may well throw themselves heartily into the common defence, for no sword can transfix england without the point reaching ireland behind her...." i propose to briefly show that ireland, far from sharing the calamities that must necessarily fall on great britain from defeat by a great power, might conceivably thereby emerge into a position of much prosperity. i will agree with sir a. conan doyle up to this--that the defeat of great britain by germany must be the cause of a momentous change to ireland: but i differ from him in believing that that change must necessarily be disastrous to ireland. on the contrary, i believe that the defeat of great britain by germany might conceivably (save in one possible condition) result in great gain to ireland. the conclusion that ireland must suffer all the disasters and eventual losses defeat would entail on great britain is based on what may be termed the fundamental maxim that has governed british dealings with ireland throughout at least three centuries. that maxim may be given in the phrase, "separation is unthinkable." englishmen have come to invincibly believe that no matter what they may do or what may betide them, ireland must inseparably be theirs, linked to them as surely as wales or scotland, and forming an eternal and integral part of a whole whose fate is indissolubly in their hands. while great britain, they admit, might well live apart (and happily) from an ireland safely "sunk under the sea" they have never conceived of an ireland, still afloat, that could possibly exist, apart from great britain. sometimes, as a sort of bogey, they hold out to ireland the fate that would be hers if, england defeated, somebody else should "take" her. for it is a necessary corollary to the fundamental maxim already stated, that ireland, if not owned by england, must necessarily be "owned" by someone else than her own inhabitants. the british view of the fate of ireland in the event of british defeat may be stated as twofold. either ireland would remain after the war as she is to-day, tied to great britain, or she _might_ be (this is not very seriously entertained) annexed by the victor. no other solution, i think, has ever been suggested. let us first discuss no. i. this, the ordinary man in the street view, is that as ireland would be as much a part and belonging to great britain after a war as before it, whatever the termination of that war might be, she could not fail to share the losses defeat must bring to a common realm. the partnership being indissoluble, if the credit of the house were damaged and its properties depreciated, all members of the firm must suffer. in this view, an ireland weaker, poorer, and less recuperative than great britain, would stand to lose even more from a british defeat than the predominant partner itself. let us at once admit that this view is correct. if on the condition of a great war ireland were still to remain, as she is to-day, an integral portion of a defeated united kingdom, it is plain she would suffer, and might be made to suffer possibly more even than fell to the share of great britain. but that is not the only ending defeat might bring to the two islands. we must proceed then to discuss no. , the alternative fate reserved for ireland in the unlikely event of a great british overthrow. this is, that if the existing partnership were to be forcibly dissolved, by external shock, it would mean for ireland "out of the frying pan into the fire." the idea here is that i have earlier designated as the "bogey man" idea. germany, or the other victor in the great conflict, would proceed to "take" ireland. an ireland administered, say, by prussians would soon bitterly regret the milder manners of the anglo-saxon and pine for the good old days of "doles" from westminster. i know many irishmen who admit that as between england and germany they would prefer to remain in the hands of the former--on the principle that it is better to keep the devil you know than fall into the hands of a new devil. german rule, you are asked to believe, would be so bad, so stern, that under it ireland, however much she might have suffered from england in the past, would soon yearn to be restored to the arms of her sorrowing sister. assuming, for the sake of argument, that germany "annexed" ireland, is it at all clear that she would (or even could) injure ireland more than great britain has done? to what purpose and with what end in view? "innate brutality"--the englishman replied--"the prussian always ill-treats those he lays hands on--witness the poor poles." without entering into the polish language question, or the polish agrarian question, it is permissible for an irishman to reply that nothing by prussia in those respects has at all equalled english handling of the irish language or england land dealings in ireland. the polish language still lives in prussian poland and much more vigorously than the irish language survives in ireland. but it is not necessary to obscure the issue by reference to the prussian polish problem. an ireland annexed to the german empire (supposing this to be internationally possible) as one of the fruits of a german victory over great britain would clearly be administered as a common possession of the german people, and not as a prussian province. the analogy, if one can be set up in conditions so dissimilar, would lie not between prussia and her polish provinces, but between the german empire and alsace-lorraine. what, then, would be the paramount object of germany in her administration of an overseas reichsland of such extraordinary geographical importance to her future as ireland would be? clearly not to impoverish and depress that new-won possession but to enhance its exceeding strategic importance by vigorous and wise administration, so as to make it the main counterpoise to any possible recovery of british maritime supremacy, so largely due as this was in the past to great britain's own possession of this island. a prosperous and flourishing ireland, recognizing that her own interests lie with those of the new administration, would assuredly be the first and chief aim of german statesmanship. the very geographical situation of ireland would alone ensure wise and able administration by her new rulers had germany no other and special interest in advancing irish well-being; for to rule from hamburg and berlin a remote island and a discontented people, with a highly discontented and separated britain intervening, by methods of exploitation and centralization, would be a task beyond the capacity of german statecraft. german effort, then, would be plainly directed to creating an ireland satisfied with the change, and fully determined to maintain it. and it might be remembered that germany is possibly better equipped, intellectually and educationally, for the task of developing ireland than even th century england. she has already faced a remarkable problem, and largely solved it in her forty years' administration of alsace-lorraine. there is a province torn by force from the bleeding side of france and alien in sentiment to her new masters to a degree that ireland could not be to any changes of authority imposed upon her from without, has, within a short lifetime, doubled in prosperity and greatly increased her population, despite the open arms and insistent call of france, and despite a rule denounced from the first as hateful. however hateful, the prussian has proved himself an able administrator and an honest and most capable instructor. in his strong hands strasburg has expanded from being an ill-kept, pent-in french garrison town to a great and beautiful city. already a local parliament gives to the population a sense of autonomy, while the palace and constant presence of an imperial prince affirms the fact that german imperialism, far from engrossing and centralizing all the activities and powers of the empire in berlin, recognizes that german nationality is large enough and great enough to admit of many capitals, many individualities, and many separate state growths within the sure compass of one great organism. that an ireland severed by force of arms from the british empire and annexed to the german empire would be ill-governed by her new masters is inconceivable. on the contrary, the ablest brains in germany, scientific, commercial, and financial, no less than military and strategic, would be devoted to the great task of making sure the conquest not only of an island but of the intelligence of a not unintelligent people, and by wisely developing so priceless a possession to reconcile its inhabitants through growing prosperity and an excellent administration, to so great a change in their political environment. can it be said that england, even in her most lucid intervals, has brought to the government of ireland her best efforts, her most capable men, or her highest purpose? the answer may be given by li hung chang, whose diary we have so lately read. recording his interview with mr. gladstone, the chinese statesman says: "he spoke about ... ireland; and i was certain that he hoped to see that unhappy country governed better before he died. 'they have given their best to england,' he said, 'and in return have been given only england's worst.'" it is certain that germany, once in possession of ireland, would assuredly not give to that country only germany's worst. in a score of ways ireland would stand to gain from the change of direction, of purpose, of intention, and, i will add, of inspiration and capacity in her newly-imposed rulers. whether she liked them or not, at the outset, would be beside the question. in this they would differ but little from those she had so long and wearily had measure of, and if they brought to their new task a new spirit and a new intellectual equipment irishmen would not be slow to realize that if they themselves were never to rule their own country, they had, at least, found in their new masters something more than emigration agents. moreover, to germany there would be no "irish question," no "haggard and haunting problem" to palsy her brain and miscredit her hand with its old tags and jibes and sordid impulses to deny the obvious. to germany there would be only an english question. to prevent that from ever again imperilling her world future would be the first purpose of german overseas statesmanship. and it is clear that a wise and capable irish administration, designed to build up and strengthen from within and not to belittle and exploit from without, would be the sure and certain purpose of a victorious germany. i have now outlined the two possible dispositions of ireland that up to this british opinion admits as conceivable in die improbable event of a british defeat by germany. only these two contingencies are ever admitted. first that ireland, sharing the common disaster, must endure with her defeated partner all the evils that a great overthrow must inflict upon the united kingdom. second, that ireland, if great britain should be completely defeated, might conceivably be "taken" or annexed by the victor and held as a conquered territory, and in this guise would bitterly regret the days of her union with great britain. i have sought to show, in answer to the latter argument, that were annexation by the victor indeed to follow a british defeat ireland might very conceivably find the changed circumstances greatly to her advantage. but there is a third contingency i have nowhere seen discussed or hinted at, and yet it is at least as likely as no. , and far more probable than no. --for i do not think that the annexation of ireland by a european power is internationally possible, however decisive might be the overthrow of england. it is admitted (and it is upon this hypothesis that the discussion is proceeding) that great britain might be defeated by germany, and that the british fleet might be broken and an enemy's sword might transfix england. such an overthrow would be of enormous import to europe and to the whole world. the trident would have changed hands, for the defeat of england could only be brought about by the destruction of her sea supremacy. unless help came from without, a blockaded britain would be more at the mercy of the victor than france was after sedan and paris. it would lie with the victor to see that the conditions of peace he imposed were such as, while ensuring to him the objects for which he had fought, would be the least likely conditions to provoke external intervention or a combination of alarmed world interests. now, putting aside lesser consideration, the chief end germany would have in a war with england would be to ensure her own free future on the seas. for with that assured and guaranteed by a victory over england, all else that she seeks must in the end be hers. to annex resisting british colonies would be in itself an impossible task--physically a much more impossible task than to annex ireland. to annex ireland would be, as a military measure, once command of the seas was gained, a comparatively easy task. no practical resistance to one german army corps even could be offered by any force ireland contains, or could of herself, put into the field. no arsenal or means of manufacturing arms exists. the population has been disarmed for a century, and by bitter experience has been driven to regard the use of arms as a criminal offence. patriotism has been treated as felony. volunteers and territorials are not for ireland. to expect that a disarmed and demoralized population who have been sedulously batoned into a state of physical and moral dejection, should develop military virtues in face of a disciplined army is to attribute to irishmen the very qualities their critics unite in denying them. "the irishman fights well everywhere except in ireland," has passed into a commonplace: and since every effort of government has been directed to ensuring the abiding application of the sneer, englishmen would find, in the end, the emasculating success of their rule completely justified in the physical submission of ireland to the new force that held her down. with great britain cut off and the irish sea held by german squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective resistance to a german occupation of dublin and a military administration of the island. to convert that into permanent administration could not be opposed from within, and with great britain down and severed from ireland by a victorious german navy, it is obvious that opposition to the permanent retention of ireland by the victor must come from without, and it is for this international reason that i think a german annexation of any part of a defeated united kingdom need not be seriously considered. such a complete change in the geography of europe as a german-owned ireland could not but provoke universal alarm and a widespread combination to forbid its realization. the bogey that ireland, if not john bull's other island, must necessarily be somebody else's other island will not really bear inspection at close quarters. germany would have to attain her end, the permanent disabling of the maritime supremacy of great britain, by another and less provocative measure. it is here and in just these circumstances that the third contingency, and one no englishman i venture to think, has ever dreamed of, would be born on the field of battle and baptized a germanic godchild with european diplomacy as sponsor. germany, for her own imperial ends and in pursuit of a great world policy, might successfully accomplish what louis xiv and napoleon only contemplated. an ireland, already severed by a sea held by german warships, and temporarily occupied by a german army, might well be permanently and irrevocably severed from great britain, and with common assent erected into a neutralized, independent european state under international guarantees. an independent ireland would, of itself, be no threat or hurt to any european interest. on the contrary, to make of ireland an atlantic holland, a maritime belgium, would be an act of restoration to europe of this the most naturally favoured of european islands that a peace congress should, in the end, be glad to ratify at the instance of a victorious germany. that germany should propose this form of dissolution of the united kingdom in any interests but her own, or for the _beaux yeux_ of ireland i do not for a moment assert. her main object would be the opening of the seas and their permanent freeing from that overwhelming control great britain has exercised since the destruction of the french navy, largely based, as all naval strategists must perceive on the unchallenged possession of ireland. that ireland is primarily a european island inhabited by a european people who are not english, and who have for centuries appealed to europe and the world to aid them in ceasing to be politically controlled by england, is historic fact. and since the translation of this historic fact into practice european politics would undoubtedly effect the main object of the victorious power, it is evident that, great britain once defeated, germany would carry the irish question to a european solution in harmony with her maritime interests, and could count on the support of the great bulk of european opinion to support the settlement those interests imposed. and if politically and commercially an independent and neutral irish state commended itself to europe, on moral and intellectual grounds the claim could be put still higher. nothing advanced on behalf of england could meet the case for a free ireland as stated by germany. germany would attain her ends as the champion of national liberty and could destroy england's naval supremacy for all time by an act of irreproachable morality. the united states, however distasteful from one point of view the defeat of england might be, could do nothing to oppose a european decision that could dearly win an instant support from influential circles--irish and german--within her own borders. in any case the monroe doctrine cuts both ways, and unless at the outset the united states could be drawn into an anglo-teutonic conflict, it is clear that the decision of a european congress to create a new european state out of a very old european people could not furnish ground for american interference. i need not further labour the question. if englishmen will but awaken from the dream that ireland "belongs" to them and not to the irish people, and that that great and fertile island, inhabited by a brave, a chivalrous and an intellectual race (qualities they have alas! done their utmost to expel from the island) is a piece of real estate they own and can dispose of as they will, they cannot fail to perceive that the irish question cannot much longer be mishandled with impunity, and that far from being, as they now think it, merely a party question--and not even a "domestic question" or one the colonies have a voice in--it may in a brief epoch become a european question. with the approaching disappearance of the near eastern question (which england is hastening to the detriment of turkey) a more and more pent-in central europe may discover that there is a near western question, and that ireland--a free ireland--restored to europe is the key to unlock the western ocean and open the seaways of the world. again it is mr. gladstone who comes to remind englishmen that ireland, after all, is a european island, and that europe has some distant standing in the issue. "i would beseech englishmen to consider how they would behave to ireland, if instead of having , , of people, she had , , ; or if instead of being placed between us and the ocean she were placed between us and the continent." (notes and queries on the irish demand, february, .) while the geographical positions of the islands to each other and to europe have not changed, and cannot change, the political relation of one to the other, and so the political and economical relation of both to europe, to the world and to the carrying trade of the world and the naval policies of the powers may be gravely altered by agencies beyond the control of great britain. the changes wrought in the speed and capacity of steam shipping, the growth and visible trend of german naval power, and the increasing possibilities of aerial navigation, all unite to emphasize the historian niebuhr's warning, and to indicate for ireland a possible future of restored communion with europe, and less and less the continued wrong of that artificial exclusion in which british policy has sought to maintain her--"an island beyond an island." chapter ix the elsewhere empire every man born in ireland holds a "hereditary brief" for the opponents of english sway, wherever they may be. the tribunal of history in his own land is closed to him; he must appeal to another court; he must seek the ear of those who make history elsewhere. the irishman is denied the right of having a history, as he is denied the right of having a country. he must recover both. for him there is no past any more than a future. and if he seeks the record of his race in the only schools or books open to him he will find that hope has been shut out of the school and fame taken out of the story. the late john richard green, one of the greatest of english historians, was attracted to ireland by a noble sympathy for the fallen which he shared with very few of his fellow-countrymen. we are told that he sympathized with the spirit of irish nationality. "a state," he would say, "is accidental; it can be made or unmade; but a nation is something real which can be neither made nor destroyed." he had once planned a history of ireland, "but abandoned the idea because the continuous record of misery and misgovernment was too painful to contemplate." all pleasure lies in contrast. the history of ireland offers no contrast; it is a tale of unmitigated wrong. it is too full of graves and the ghosts are not laid yet. as well write the history of a churchyard. forty years before john richard green thus explained why he had abandoned the plan of the graveyard, victor hugo lashed the front of england with this very thong. "ireland turned into a cemetery; poland transported to siberia; all italy a galleys--there is where we stand in this month of november, !" the history of ireland remains to be written, because the purpose of ireland remains yet to be achieved. the widow of john richard green has laid the foundations of that temple of hope in which the youth of ireland must enter and be sworn to the task that yet remains for irishmen to accomplish. and so in closing the days of i bring, with a message of hope, these scattered thoughts upon the british empire and its approaching dissolution to lay before the youth of ireland. i say approaching dissolution advisedly, for the signs are there to be read. "home rule" will not save it. the attempt now being made to bribe ireland and the greater ireland beyond the seas, to the side of the elsewhere empire by what has been aptly termed a "ticket-of-leave" bill, will not suffice. the issue lies in stronger hands. even could the two irelands be won by the dole now offered, of a subordinate parliament in dublin, its hands tied so that it must be impotent for any national effort, "a parliament" as mr. herbert samuel says, "for the local affairs of irishmen," there are other and more powerful agencies that no measure of conciliation within the empire can permanently win to that system of world exploitation centred in london. "i would let the irish have home rule," said recently mr. winston churchill, "for their own idiotic affairs." but the last word came from lord morley, the "father of home rule." "give it them," he said, in friendly, private counsel, "give it them; let them have the full savour of their own dunghill civilization." but the last word of all will come, not from lord morley, or "home rule," but from the land and the myriad peoples whose ancient civilization, lord morley, like every preceding viceroy, has striven to bury under the dunghill of british supremacy in india, and to hide the very outlines of the ancient body of the set designs of a new purpose. the capital of british india is to be the "new delhi," planned in whitehall, but paid for in india--the apotheosis of dung. the new india will make short work of "the new delhi." "an unplumbed, salt, estranging sea" of moral and spiritual separation sets between the imperial conception as nourished in britain and the growing hope of the great millions of mankind who make up the greatest realm of her empire. ireland _might_ be bought or bribed, at any rate in this generation, to forfeit her national ideals and barter the aspiration that six centuries of contact with england have failed to kill; but the , , of indian mankind can never be, or bought, or bribed in the end. even if ireland forgot the deathless words of grattan, delivered in the subordinate parliament of , those words will find a response in the hearts of men who never heard of grattan. for the voice of the irish patriot was, in truth, a world voice--a summons to every audience wherever men gather in quest of freedom. the prophesy grattan uttered in the name of ireland assuredly will be fulfilled, and that in the life time of many of us, in that greater ireland england holds in the eastern seas by the very same tide of raid, conquest and spoliation that has given her our own land. substitute india for ireland and the grattan of becomes the indian patriot of to-day. "i will never be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in ireland has a link of the british chain clanking in his rags; he may be naked, he shall not be in irons; and i do see the time is at hand; the spirit has gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men should apostasize, yet the cause will live; and though the public speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of holy men, will not die with the prophet, but survive him." were ireland to accept the bribe now offered she would indeed justify the reproach of wilfred blunt; but she would become some thing else than a "weapon of offence in england's hands against the freedom of the world elsewhere;" she would share, and rightly share the fate of the parasite growth that, having gripped her trunk so tightly, has by that aid reached the sunlight. the british empire is no northern oak tree. it is a creeping, climbing plant that has fastened on the limbs of others and grown great from a sap not its own. if we seek an analogy for it in the vegetable and not in the animal world we must go to the forests of the tropics and not to the northland woodlands. in the great swamps at the mouth of the amazon the naturalist bates describes a monstrous liana, the "sipo matador" or murdering creeper, that far more fitly than the oak tree of the north typifies john bull and the place he has won in the sunlight by the once strong limbs of ireland. speaking of the forests round para, bates says:--"in these tropical forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its fellows, struggling upwards towards light and air--branch and leaf and stem--regardless of its neighbours. parasitic plants are seen fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless indifference as instruments for their own advancement. live and let live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. there is one kind of parasitic tree very common near para which exhibits this feature in a very prominent manner. it is called the "sipo matador," or murderer liana. it belongs to the fig order, and has been described and figured by von martius as the atlas to spix and martius' travels. i observed many specimens. _the base of its stem would be unable to bear the weight of the upper growth_; it is obliged therefore to support itself on a tree of _another species_. in this it is not essentially different from other climbing trees and plants, but the way the matador sets about it is peculiar and produces certainly a disagreeable impression. it springs up close to the tree on which it intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading itself like a plastic mould over one side of the trunk of its supporter. it then puts forth, from each side, an armlike branch, which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap were flowing and hardening as it went. this adheres closely to the trunk of the victim, and the two arms meet at the opposite side and blend together. these arms are put forth at somewhat regular intervals in mounting upwards, and the victim, when its strangler is full grown, becomes tightly clasped by a number of inflexible rings. these rings gradually grow larger as the murderer flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage to the sky mingled with that of its neighbour, and in course of time they kill it, by stopping the flow of its sap. the strange spectacle now remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own growth. its ends have been served--it has flowered and fruited, reproduced and disseminated its kind; and _now when the dead trunk moulders away its own end approaches; its support is gone and itself also falls_." the analogy is almost the most perfect in literature, and if we would not see it made perfect in history we must get rid of the parasite grip before we are quite strangled. if we would not share the coming darkness we must shake off the murderer's hold, before murderer and victim fall together. that fall is close at hand. a brave hand may yet cut the "sipo matador," and the slayer be slain before he has quite stifled his victim. if that hand be not a european one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, and supple from the tropic calm! the birds of the forest are on the wing. regions caesar never knew, including hibernia, have come under the eagles, nay the vultures, of imperial britain. but the lion's maw is full. at length the overgorged beast of prey, with all the diseases in his veins that over-eating brings, finds that his claws are not so sharp as they were, that his belly is much heavier when he tries to leap and that it is now chiefly by his voice he still scares his enemies. the empire of england dates from tudor times. henry viii was the first john bull. when the conquered irish and the wealth derived from their rich country england set out to lay low every free people that had a country worth invading and who, by reasons of their non-imperial instinct were not prepared to meet her on equal terms. india she overran by the same methods as had given her ireland. wholesale plunder, treachery and deceit met at her council board under a succession of governors and viceroys, whose policy was that of captain kidd, and whose ante-room of state led every native prince to the slippery plank. the thing became the most colossal success upon earth. no people were found able to withstand such a combination. how could peoples still nursed in the belief of some diviner will ruling men's minds resist such an attack? for one brief space napoleon reared his head; and had he cast his vision to. ireland instead of to egypt he would have found out the secret of the pirate's stronghold. but the fates willed otherwise; the time was not yet. he sailed for alexandria, lured by a dream, instead of for cork; and the older imperialists beat the new imperialists and secured a fresh century of unprecedented triumph. the pyramids looked down on waterloo; but the headlands of bantry bay concealed the mastery, and the mystery, of the seas. with was born the era of charles peace, no less than of john bull--on sundays and saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. truly, as john mitchel said on his convict hulk: "on english felony the sun never sets." may it set in . from napoleon's downfall to the battle of colenso, the empire founded by henry viii has swelled to monstrous size. innumerable free peoples have bit the dust and died with plaintive cries to heaven. the wealth of london has increased a thousand fold, and the giant hotels and caravanserais have grown, at the millionaire's touch, to rival the palaces of the caesars. "all's well with god's world"--and poet and plagiarist, courtier and courtesan, kipling and cant--these now dally by the banks of the thames and dine off the peoples of the earth, just as once the degenerate populace of imperial rome fed upon the peoples of the pyramids. but the thing is near the end. the "secret of empire" is no longer the sole possession of england. other peoples are learning to think imperially. the goths and the visigoths of modern civilisation are upon the horizon. action must soon follow thought. london, like rome, will have strange guests. they will not pay their hotel bills. their day is not yet but it is at hand. "home rule" assemblies and indian "legislative councils" may prolong the darkness; but the dawn is in die sky. and in the downfall of the tudor empire, both ireland and india shall escape from the destruction and join again the free civilizations of the earth. the birds of the forest are on the wing. it is an empire in these straights that turns to america, through ireland, to save it. and the price it offers is--war with germany. france may serve for a time, but france like germany, is in europe, and in the end it is all europe and not only germany england assails. permanent confinement of the white races, as distinct from the anglo-saxon variety, can only be achieved by the active support and close alliance of the american people. these people are to-day, unhappily republicans and free men, and have no ill-will for germany and a positive distaste for imperialism. it is not really in their blood. that blood is mainly irish and german, the blood of men not distinguished in the past for successful piracy and addicted rather to the ways of peace. the wars that germany has waged have been wars of defence, or wars to accomplish the unity of her people. irish wars have been only against one enemy, and ending always in material disaster they have conferred always a moral gain. their memory uplifts the irish heart; for no nation, no people, can reproach ireland with having wronged them. she has injured no man. and now, to-day, it is the great free race of this common origin of peace-loving peoples, filling another continent, that is being appealed to by every agency of crafty diplomacy, in every garb but that of truth, to aid the enemy of both and the arch-disturber of the old world. the jailer of ireland seeks irish-american support to keep ireland in prison; the intriguer against germany would win german-american good-will against its parent stock. there can be no peace for mankind, no limit to the intrigues set on foot to assure great britain "the mastery of the seas." if "america" will but see things aright, as a good "anglo-saxon" people should, she will take her place beside, nay, even a little in front of john bull in the plunder of the earth. were the "anglo-saxon alliance" ever consummated it would be the biggest crime in human history. that alliance is meant by the chief party seeking it to be a perpetual threat to the peoples of europe, nay, to the whole of mankind outside the allied ranks. and instead of bringing peace it must assuredly bring the most distracting and disastrous conflict that has ever stained the world with blood. john bull has now become the great variety artist, one in truth whose infinite variety detention cannot stale any more than customs officers can arrest the artist's baggage. at one moment the "shirt king," being prosecuted for the sale of cheap cottons as "irish linen" in london; the next he lands the "bloater king" in new york, offering small fish as something very like a whale. and the offer in both cases is made in the tongue of shakespeare. the tongue has infinite uses; from china it sounds the "call for prayer," and lo, the book of dividends opens at the right text. were bull ever caught in the act, and put from the trade of international opium-dosing to that of picking oakum and the treadmill we should hear him exclaim, as he went out of sight, "behold me weaving the threads of democratic destiny as i climb the golden stair." the rôles are endless! in ireland, the conversion of irishmen into cattle; in england, the conversion of irish cattle into men; in india and egypt the suppression of the native press; in america the subsidising of the non-native press; the tongue of shakespeare has infinite uses. he only poached deer--it would poach dreadnoughts. the emanations of thames sewage are all over the world, and the sewers are running still. the penalty for the pollution of the thames is a high one; but the prize for the pollution of the mississippi is still higher; the fountains of the deep, the mastery of the great waters, these are the things john bull seeks on the shore of the "father of waters." the sunset of the fading empire would turn those waters into blood. the british empire was not founded in peace; how, then can it be kept by peace, or ensured by peace-treaties? it was born of pillage and blood-shed, and has been maintained by both; and it cannot now be secured by a common language any more than a common bible. the lands called the british empire belong to many races, and it is only by the sword and not by the book of peace or any pact of peace that those races can be kept from the ownership of their own countries. the "anglo-saxon alliance" means a compact to ensure slavery and beget war. the people who fought the greatest war in modern history to release slaves are not likely to begin the greatest war in all history to beget slaves. let the truth be known in america that england wants to turn the great republic of free men into die imperial ally of the great empire of bought men, and that day die "anglo-saxon alliance" gives place to the declaration of independence. the true alliance to aim at for all who love peace is the friendly union of germany, america and ireland. these are the true united states of the world. ireland, the link between europe and america, must be freed by both. denied to-day free intercourse with either, she yet forms in the great designs of providence the natural bond to bring the old world and the new together. may lay the foundation of this--the true hundred years of peace! ulster's stand for union by ronald mcneill with frontispiece london john murray, albemarle street, w. dedicated to the memory of the unionist party preface the term "ulster," except when the context proves the contrary, is used in this book not in the geographical, but the political meaning of the word, which is quite as well understood. the aim of the book is to present an account of what i have occasionally in its pages referred to as "the ulster movement." the phrase is perhaps somewhat paradoxical when applied to a political ideal which was the maintenance of the _status quo_; but, on the other hand, the steps taken during a period of years to organise an effective opposition to interference with the established constitution in ireland did involve a movement, and it is with these measures, rather than with the policy behind them, that the book is concerned. indeed, except for a brief introductory outline of the historical background of the ulster standpoint, i have taken for granted, or only referred incidentally to the reasons for the unconquerable hostility of the ulster protestants to the idea of allowing the government of ireland, and especially of themselves, to pass into the control of a parliament in dublin. those reasons were many and substantial, based upon considerations both of a practical and a sentimental nature; but i have not attempted an exposition of them, having limited myself to a narrative of the events to which they gave rise. having been myself, during the most important part of the period reviewed, a member of the standing committee of the ulster unionist council, and closely associated with the leaders of the movement, i have had personal knowledge of practically everything i have had to record. i have not, however, trusted to unaided memory for any statement of fact. it is not, of course, a matter where anything that could be called research was required; but, in addition to the _parliamentary reports_, the _annual register_, and similar easily accessible books of reference, there was a considerable mass of private papers bearing on the subject, for the use of some of which i am indebted to friends. i was permitted to consult the minute-books of the ulster unionist council and its standing committee, and also verbatim reports made for the council of unpublished speeches delivered at private meetings of those bodies. a large collection of miscellaneous documents accumulated by the late lord londonderry was kindly lent to me by the present marquis; and i also have to thank lord carson of duncairn for the use of letters and other papers in his possession. colonel f.h. crawford, c.b.e., was good enough to place at my disposal a very detailed account written by himself of the voyage of the _fanny_, and the log kept by captain agnew. my friend mr. thomas moles, m.p., took full shorthand notes of the proceedings of the irish convention and the principal speeches made in it, and he kindly allowed me to use his transcript. and i should not like to pass over without acknowledgment the help given me on several occasions by miss omash, of the union defence league, in tracing references. r. mcn. february . contents chapter i. introduction: the ulster standpoint ii. the electorate and home rule iii. organisation and leadership iv. the parliament act: craigavon v. the craigavon policy and the u.f.v. vi. mr. churchill in belfast vii. "what answer from the north?" viii. the exclusion of ulster ix. the eve of the covenant x. the solemn league and covenant xi. passing the bill xii. was resistance justifiable? xiii. provisional government and propaganda xiv. lord loreburn's letter xv. preparations and proposals xvi. the curragh incident xvii. arming the u.v.f. xviii. a voyage of adventure xix. on the brink of civil war xx. ulster in the war xxi. negotiations for settlement xxii. the irish convention xxiii. nationalists and conscription xxiv. the ulster parliament appendix a. nationalist letter to president wilson b. unionist letter to president wilson index ulster's stand for union chapter i introduction: the ulster standpoint like all other movements in human affairs, the opposition of the northern protestants of ireland to the agitation of their nationalist fellow-countrymen for home rule can only be properly understood by those who take some pains to get at the true motives, and to appreciate the spirit, of those who engaged in it. and as it is nowhere more true than in ireland that the events of to-day are the outcome of events that occurred longer ago than yesterday, and that the motives of to-day have consequently their roots buried somewhat deeply in the past, it is no easy task for the outside observer to gain the insight requisite for understanding fairly the conduct of the persons concerned. it was mr. asquith who very truly said that the irish question, of which one of the principal factors is the opposition of ulster to home rule, "springs from sources that are historic, economic, social, racial, and religious." it would be a hopeless undertaking to attempt here to probe to the bottom an origin so complex; but, whether the sympathies of the reader be for or against the standpoint of the irish loyalists, the actual events which make up what may be called the ulster movement would be wholly unintelligible without some introductory retrospect. indeed, to those who set out to judge irish political conditions without troubling themselves about anything more ancient than their own memory can recall, the most fundamental factor of all--the line of cleavage between ulster and the rest of the island--- is more than unintelligible. in the eyes of many it presents itself as an example of perversity, of "cussedness" on the part of men who insist on magnifying mere differences of opinion, which would be easily composed by reasonable people, into obstacles to co-operation which have no reality behind them. writers and speakers on the nationalist side deride the idea of "two nations" in ireland, calling in evidence many obvious identities of interest, of sentiment, or of temperament between the inhabitants of the north and of the south. the ulsterman no more denies these identities than the greek, the bulgar, and the serb would deny that there are features common to all dwellers in the balkan peninsula; but he is more deeply conscious of the difference than of the likeness between himself and the man from munster or connaught. his reply to those who denounced the irish government act of on the ground that it set up a "partition of ireland," is that the act did not "set up," but only recognised, the partition which history made long ago, and which wrecked all attempts to solve the problem of irish government that neglected to take it into account. if there be any force in renan's saying that the root of nationality is "the will to live together," the nationalist cry of "ireland a nation" harmonises ill with the actual conditions of ireland north and south of the boyne. this dividing gulf between the two populations in ireland is the result of the same causes as the political dissension that springs from it, as described by mr. asquith in words quoted above. the tendencies of social and racial origin operate for the most part subconsciously--though not perhaps less powerfully on that account; those connected with economic considerations, with religious creeds, and with events in political history enter directly and consciously into the formation of convictions which in turn become the motives for actions. in the mind of the average ulster unionist the particular point of contrast between himself and the nationalist of which he is more forcibly conscious than of any other, and in which all other distinguishing traits are merged, is that he is loyal to the british crown and the british flag, whereas the other man is loyal to neither. religious intolerance, so far as the protestants are concerned, of which so much is heard, is in actual fact mainly traceable to the same sentiment. it is unfortunately true that the lines of political and of religious division coincide; but religious dissensions seldom flare up except at times of political excitement; and, while it is undeniable that the temper of the creeds more resembles what prevailed in england in the seventeenth than in the twentieth century, yet when overt hostility breaks out it is because the creed is taken--and usually taken rightly--as _prima facie_ evidence of political opinion--political opinion meaning "loyalty" or "disloyalty," as the case may be. the label of "loyalist" is that which the ulsterman cherishes above all others. it means something definite to him; its special significance is reinforced by the consciousness of its wearers that they are a minority; it sustains the feeling that the division between parties is something deeper and more fundamental than anything that in england is called difference of opinion. this feeling accounts for much that sometimes perplexes even the sympathetic english observer, and moves the hostile partisan to scornful criticism. the ordinary protestant farmer or artisan of ulster is by nature as far as possible removed from the being who is derisively nicknamed the "noisy patriot" or the "flag-wagging jingo." if the national anthem has become a "party tune" in ireland, it is not because the loyalist sings it, but because the dis-loyalist shuns it; and its avoidance at gatherings both political and social where nationalists predominate, naturally makes those who value loyalty the more punctilious in its use. if there is a profuse display of the union jack, it is because it is in ulster not merely "bunting" for decorative purposes as in england, but the symbol of a cherished faith. there may, perhaps, be some persons, unfamiliar with the ulster cast of mind, who find it hard to reconcile this profession of passionate loyalty with the methods embarked upon in by the ulster people. it is a question upon which there will be something to be said when the narrative reaches the events of that date. here it need only be stated that, in the eyes of ulstermen at all events, constitutional orthodoxy is quite a different thing from loyalty, and that true allegiance to the sovereign is by them sharply differentiated from passive obedience to an act of parliament. the sincerity with which this loyalist creed is held by practically the entire protestant population of ulster cannot be questioned by anyone who knows the people, however much he may criticise it on other grounds. and equally sincere is the conviction held by the same people that disloyalty is, and always has been, the essential characteristic of nationalism. the conviction is founded on close personal contact continued through many generations with the adherents of that political party, and the tradition thus formed draws more support from authentic history than many englishmen are willing to believe. consequently, when the general election of revealed that the whole of nationalist ireland had gone over with foot, horse, and artillery, with bag and baggage, from the camp of so-called constitutional home rule, to the sinn feiners who made no pretence that their aim was anything short of complete independent sovereignty for ireland, no surprise was felt in ulster. it was there realised that nothing had happened beyond the throwing off of the mask which had been used as a matter of political tactics to disguise what had always been the real underlying aim, if not of the parliamentary leaders, at all events of the great mass of nationalist opinion throughout the three southern provinces. the whole population had not with one consent changed their views in the course of a night; they had merely rallied to support the first leaders whom they had found prepared to proclaim the true objective. curiously enough, this truth was realised by an english politician who was in other respects conspicuously deficient in insight regarding ireland. the easter insurrection of in dublin was only rendered possible by the negligence or the incompetence of the chief secretary; but, in giving evidence before the commission appointed to inquire into it, mr. birrell said: "the spirit of what to-day is called sinn feinism is mainly composed of the old hatred and distrust of the british connection ... always there as the background of irish politics and character"; and, after recalling that cardinal newman had observed the same state of feeling in dublin more than half a century before, mr. birrell added quite truly that "this dislike, hatred, disloyalty (so unintelligible to many englishmen) is hard to define but easy to discern, though incapable of exact measurement from year to year." this disloyal spirit, which struck newman, and which mr. birrell found easy to discern, was of course always familiar to ulstermen as characteristic of "the south and west," and was their justification for the badge of "loyalist," their assumption of which english liberals, knowing nothing of ireland, held to be an unjust slur on the irish majority. if this belief in the inherent disloyalty of nationalist ireland to the british empire did any injustice to individual nationalist politicians, they had nobody but themselves to blame for it. their pronouncements in america, as well as at home, were scrutinised in ulster with a care that englishmen seldom took the trouble to give them. nor must it be forgotten that, up to the date when mr. gladstone made home rule a plank in an english party's programme--which, whatever else it did, could not alter the facts of the case--the same conviction, held in ulster so tenaciously, had prevailed almost universally in great britain also; and had been proclaimed by no one so vehemently as by mr. gladstone himself, whose famous declarations that the nationalists of that day were "steeped to the lips in treason," and were "marching through rapine to the dismemberment of the empire," were not so quickly forgotten in ulster as in england, nor so easily passed over as either meaningless or untrue as soon as they became inconvenient for a political party to remember. english supporters of home rule, when reminded of such utterances, dismissed with a shrug the "unedifying pastime of unearthing buried speeches"; and showed equal determination to see nothing in speeches delivered by nationalist leaders in america inconsistent with the purely constitutional demand for "extended self-government." ulster never would consent to bandage her own eyes in similar fashion, or to plug her ears with wool. the "two voices" of nationalist leaders, from mr. parnell to mr. dillon, were equally audible to her; and, of the two, she was certain that the true aim of nationalist policy was expressed by the one whose tone was disloyal to the british empire. look-out was kept for any change in the direction of moderation, for any real indication that those who professed to be "constitutional nationalists" were any less determined than "the physical force party" to reach the goal described by parnell in the famous sentence, "none of us will be ... satisfied until we have destroyed the last link which keeps ireland bound to england." no such indication was ever discernible. on the contrary, parnell's phrase became a refrain to be heard in many later pronouncements of his successors, and the policy he thus described was again and again propounded in after-years on innumerable nationalist platforms, in speeches constantly quoted to prove, as was the contention of ulster from the first, that home rule as understood by english liberals was no more than an instalment of the real demand of nationalists, who, if they once obtained the "comparative freedom" of an irish legislature--to quote the words used by mr. devlin at a later date--would then, with that leverage, "operate by whatever means they should think best to achieve the great and desirable end" of complete independence of great britain. this was an end that could not by any juggling be reconciled with the ulsterman's notion of "loyalty." moreover, whatever knowledge he possessed of his country's history--and he knows a good deal more, man for man, than the englishman--confirmed his deep distrust of those whom, following the example of john bright, he always bluntly described as "the rebel party." he knew something of the rebellions in ireland in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and was under no illusion as to the design for which arms had been taken up in the past. he knew that that design had not changed with the passing of generations, although gentler methods of accomplishing it might sometimes find favour. indeed, one nationalist leader himself took pains, at a comparatively recent date, to remove any excuse there may ever have been for doubt on this point. mr. john redmond was an orator who selected his words with care, and his appeals to historical analogies were not made haphazard. when he declared (in a speech in ) that, "in its essence, the national movement to-day is the same as it was in the days of hugh o'neill, of owen roe, of emmet, or of wolfe tone," those names, which would have had but a shadowy significance for a popular audience in england, carried very definite meaning to the ears of irishmen, whether nationalist or unionist. mr. gladstone, in the fervour of his conversion to home rule, was fond of allusions to the work of molyneux and swift, flood and grattan; but these were men whose irish patriotism never betrayed them into disloyalty to the british crown or hostility to the british connection. they were reformers, not rebels. but it was not with the political ideals of such men that mr. redmond claimed his own to be identical, nor even with that of o'connell, the apostle of repeal of the union, but with the aims of men who, animated solely by hatred of england, sought to establish the complete independence of ireland by force of arms, and in some cases by calling in (like roger casement in our own day) the aid of england's foreign enemies. in the face of appeals like this to the historic imagination of an impressionable people, it is not surprising that by neither mr. redmond's followers nor by his opponents was much account taken of his own personal disapproval of extremes both of means and ends. his opponents in ulster simply accepted such utterances as confirmation of what they had known all along from other sources to be the actual facts, namely, that the home rule agitation was "in its essence" a separatist movement; that its adherents were, as mr. redmond himself said on another occasion, "as much rebels as their fathers were in "; and that the men of ulster were, together with some scattered sympathisers in the other provinces, the depositaries of the "loyal" tradition. the latter could boast of a pedigree as long as that of the rebels. if mr. redmond's followers were to trace their political ancestry, as he told them, to the great earl of tyrone who essayed to overthrow england with the help of the spaniard and the pope, the ulster protestants could claim descent from the men of the plantation, through generation after generation of loyalists who had kept the british flag flying in ireland in times of stress and danger, when mr. redmond's historical heroes were making england's difficulty ireland's opportunity. there have been, and are, many individual nationalists, no doubt, especially among the more educated and thoughtful, to whom it would be unjust to impute bad faith when they professed that their political aspirations for ireland were really limited to obtaining local control of local affairs, and who resented being called "separatists," since their desire was not for separation from great britain but for the "union of hearts," which they believed would grow out of extended self-government. but the answer of irish unionists, especially in ulster, has always been that, whatever such "moderate," or "constitutional" nationalists might dream, it would be found in practice, if the experiment were made, that no halting-place could be found between legislative union and complete separation. moreover, the same view was held by men as far as possible removed from the standpoint of the ulster protestant. cardinal manning, for example, although an intimate personal friend of gladstone, in a letter to leo xiii, wrote: "as for myself, holy father, allow me to say that i consider a parliament in dublin and a separation to be equivalent to the same thing. ireland is not a colony like canada, but it is an integral and vital part of one country."[ ] it is improbable that identical lines of reasoning led the roman catholic cardinal and the belfast orangeman and presbyterian to this identical conclusion; but a position reached by convergent paths from such distant points of departure is defensible presumably on grounds more solid than prejudice or passion. it is unnecessary here to examine those grounds at length, for the present purpose is not to argue the ulster case, but to let the reader know what was, as a matter of fact, the ulster point of view, whether that point of view was well or ill founded. but, while the opinion that a dublin parliament meant separation was shared by many who had little else in common with the ulster protestants, the latter stood alone in the intensity of their conviction that "home rule meant rome rule." it has already been mentioned that it is the "disloyalty" attributed rightly or wrongly to the roman catholics as a body that has been, in recent times at all events, the mainspring of protestant distrust. but sectarian feeling, everywhere common between rival creeds, is, of course, by no means absent. englishmen find it hard to understand what seems to them the bigoted and senseless animosity of the rival faiths in ireland. this is due to the astonishing shortness of their memory in regard to their own history, and their very limited outlook on the world outside their own island. if, without looking further back in their history, they reflected that the "no popery" feeling in england in mid-victorian days was scarcely less intense than it is in ulster to-day; or if they realised the extent to which gambetta's "le cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi" continues still to influence public life in france, they might be less ready to censure the irish protestant's dislike of priestly interference in affairs outside the domain of faith and morals. it is indeed remarkable that nonconformists, especially in wales, who within living memory have displayed their own horror of the much milder form of sacerdotalism to be found in the anglican church, have no sympathy apparently with the presbyterian and the methodist in ulster when the latter kick against the encompassing pressure of the roman catholic priesthood, not in educational matters alone, but in all the petty activities of every-day life. whenever this aspect of the home rule controversy was emphasised englishmen asked what sort of persecution irish protestants had to fear from a parliament in dublin, and appeared to think all such fear illusory unless evidence could be adduced that the holy office was to be set up at maynooth, equipped with faggot and thumb-screw. of persecution of that sort there never has been, of course, any apprehension in modern times. individual catholics and protestants live side by side in ireland with fully as much amity as elsewhere, but whereas the catholic instinctively, and by upbringing, looks to the parish priest as his director in all affairs of life, the protestant dislikes and resists clerical influence as strongly as does the nonconformist in england and wales--and with much better reason. for the latter has never known clericalism as it exists in a roman catholic country where the church is wholly unrestrained by the civil power. he has resented what he regards as anglican arrogance in regard to educational management or the use of burying-grounds, but he has never experienced a much more aggressive clerical temper exercised in all the incidents of daily life--in the market, the political meeting, the disposition of property, the amusements of the people, the polling booth, the farm, and the home. this involves no condemnation of the irish priest as an individual or as a minister of his church. he is kind-hearted, charitable, and conscientious; and, except that it does not encourage self-reliance and enterprise, his influence with his own people is no more open to criticism than that of any other body of religious ministers. but the roman catholic church has always made a larger claim than any other on the obedience of its adherents, and it has always enforced that obedience whenever it has had the power by methods which, in protestant opinion, are extremely objectionable. in theory the claim may be limited to affairs concerned with faith and morals; but the definition of such affairs is a very elastic one. cardinal logue not many years ago said: "when political action trenches upon faith or morals or affects religion, the vicar of christ, as the supreme teacher and guardian of faith and morals, and as the custodian of the immunities of religion, has, by divine right, authority to interfere and to enforce his decisions." how far this principle is in practice carried beyond the limits so denned was proved in the famous meath election petition in , in which the judge who tried it, himself a devout catholic, declared: "the church became converted for the time being into a vast political agency, a great moral machine moving with resistless influence, united action, and a single will. every priest who was examined was a canvasser; the canvas was everywhere--on the altar, in the vestry, on the roads, in the houses." and while an election was in progress in county tyrone in a parish priest announced that any catholic who should vote for the unionist candidate "would be held responsible at the day of judgment." a still more notorious example of clericalism in secular affairs, within the recollection of englishmen, was the veto on the military service act proclaimed from the altars of the catholic churches, which, during the great war, defeated the application to ireland of the compulsory service which england, scotland, and wales accepted as the only alternative to national defeat and humiliation. but these were only conspicuous examples of what the irish protestant sees around him every day of his life. the promulgation in of the vatican decree, _nec temere_, a papal reassertion of the canonical invalidity of mixed marriages, followed as it was by notorious cases of the victimisation of protestant women by the application of its principles, did not encourage the protestants to welcome the prospect of a catholic parliament that would have control of the marriage law; nor did they any more readily welcome the prospect of national education on purely ecclesiastical lines. another vatican decree that was equally alarming to protestants was that entitled _motu proprio_, by which any catholic layman was _ipso facto_ excommunicated who should have the temerity to bring a priest into a civil court either as defendant or witness. medievalism like this was felt by ulster protestants to be irreconcilable with modern ideas of democratic freedom, and to indicate a temper that boded ill for any regime which would be subject to its inspiration. these were matters, it is true,--and there were perhaps some others of a similar nature--on which it is possible to conceive more or less satisfactory legislative safeguards being provided; but as regards the indefinable but innumerable minutiae in which the prevailing ecclesiastical standpoint creates an atmosphere in which daily life has to be carried on, no safeguards could be devised, and it was the realisation of this truth in the light of their own experience that made the ulstermen continually close their ears to allurements of that sort. the roman church is quite consistent, and from its own point of view praiseworthy, in its assertion of its right, and its duty, to control the lives and thoughts of men; but this assertion has produced a clash with the non-ecclesiastical mind in almost every country, where catholicism is the dominant religious faith. but in ireland, unlike continental countries, there is no catholic lay opinion--or almost none--able to make its voice heard against clerical dictation, and consequently the protestants felt convinced, with good reason, that any legislature in ireland must take its tone from this pervading mental and moral atmosphere, and that all its proceedings would necessarily be tainted by it. prior to the political complexion of ulster was in the main liberal. the presbyterians, who formed the majority of the protestant population, collateral descendants of the men who emigrated in the eighteenth century and formed the backbone of washington's army, and direct descendants of those who joined the united irishmen in , were of a pronounced liberal type, and their frequently strong disapproval of orangeism made any united political action an improbable occurrence. but the crisis brought about by gladstone's declaration in favour of home rule instantly swept all sections of loyalists into a single camp. there was practically not a liberal left who did not become unionist, and, although a separate organisation of liberal unionists was maintained, the co-operation with conservatives was so whole-hearted and complete as almost to amount to fusion from the outset. the immediate cessation of class friction was still more remarkable. for more than a decade the perennial quarrel between landlord and tenant had been increasing in intensity, and the recent land legislation had disposed the latter to look upon gladstone as a deliverer. their gratitude was wiped out the moment he hoisted the green flag, while the labourers enfranchised by the act of eagerly enrolled themselves as the bitterest enemies of his new irish policy. the unanimity of the country-side was matched in the towns, and especially in belfast, where, with the single exception of a definitely catholic quarter, employer and artisan were as whole-heartedly united as were landlord and tenant in passionate resentment at what they regarded as the betrayal by england's foremost statesman of england's only friends in ireland. the defeat of the home rule bill of brought relief from the immediate strain of anxiety. but it was at once realised that the encouragement and support given to irish disloyalty for the first time by one of the great political parties in great britain was a step that could never be recalled. henceforth the vigilance required to prevent being taken unawares, and the untiring organisation necessary for making effective defence against an attack which, although it had signally failed at the first onslaught, was certain to be renewed, welded all the previously diverse social and political elements in ulster into a single compact mass, tempered to the maximum power of resistance. there was room for no other thought in the minds of men who felt as if living in a beleaguered citadel, whose flag they were bound in honour to keep flying to the last. the "loyalist" tradition acquired fresh meaning and strength, and its historical setting took a more conscious hold on the public mind of ulster, as men studied afresh the story of the relief of derry or the horrors of . visits of encouragement from the leaders of unionism across the channel, men like lord salisbury, mr. balfour, mr. chamberlain, lord randolph churchill, fortified the resolution of a populace that came more and more to regard themselves as a bulwark of the empire, on whom destiny, while conferring on them the honour of upholding the flag, had imposed the duty of putting into actual practice the familiar motto of the orange lodges--"no surrender." from a psychology so bred and nourished sprang a political temper which, as it hardened with the passing years, appeared to english home rulers to be "stiff-necked," "bigoted," and "intractable." it certainly was a state of mind very different from those shifting gusts of transient impression which in england go by the name of public opinion; and, if these epithets in the mouths of opponents be taken as no more than synonyms for "uncompromising," they were not undeserved. at a memorable meeting at the albert hall in london on the nd of april, , dr. alexander, bishop of derry, poet, orator, and divine, declared in an eloquent passage that was felt to be the exact expression of ulster conviction, that the people of ulster, when exhorted to show confidence in their southern fellow-countrymen, "could no more be confiding about its liberty than a pure woman can be confiding about her honour." here was the irreconcilable division. the nationalist talked of centuries of "oppression," and demanded the dissolution of the union in the name of liberty. the ulsterman, while far from denying the misgovernment of former times, knew that it was the fruit of false ideas which had passed away, and that the ireland in which he lived enjoyed as much liberty as any land on earth; and he feared the loss of the true liberty he had gained if put back under a regime of nationalist and utramontane domination. and so for more than thirty years the people of ulster for whom bishop alexander spoke made good his words. if in the end compromise was forced upon them it was not because their standpoint had changed, and it was only in circumstances which involved no dishonour, and which preserved them from what they chiefly dreaded, subjection to a dublin parliament inspired by clericalism and disloyalty to the empire. the development which brought about the change from ulster's resolute stand for unimpaired union with great britain to her reluctant acceptance of a separate local constitution for the predominantly protestant portion of the province, presents a deeply interesting illustration of the truth of a pregnant dictum of maine's on the working of democratic institutions. "democracies," he says, "are quite paralysed by the plea of nationality. there is no more effective way of attacking them than by admitting the right of the majority to govern, but denying that the majority so entitled is the particular majority which claims the right."[ ] this is precisely what occurred in regard to ulster's relation to great britain and to the rest of ireland respectively. the will of the majority must prevail, certainly. but what majority? unionists maintained that only the majority in the united kingdom could decide, and that it had never in fact decided in favour of repealing the act of union; lord rosebery at one time held that a majority in great britain alone, as the "predominant partner," must first give its consent; irish nationalists argued that the majority in ireland, as a distinct unit, was the only one that should count. ulster, whilst agreeing with the general unionist position, contended ultimately that her own majority was as well entitled to be heard in regard to her own fate as the majority in ireland as a whole. to the nationalist claim that ireland was a nation she replied that it was either two nations or none, and that if one of the two had a right to "self-determination," the other had it equally. thus the axiom of democracy that government is by the majority was, as maine said, "paralysed by the plea of nationality," since the contending parties appealed to the same principle without having any common ground as to how it should be applied to the case in dispute. if the union with great britain was to be abrogated, which pitt had only established when "a full measure of home rule" had produced a bloody insurrection and irish collusion with england's external enemies, ulster could at all events in the last resort take her stand on abraham lincoln's famous proposition which created west virginia: "a minority of a large community who make certain claims for self-government cannot, in logic or in substance, refuse the same claims to a much larger proportionate minority among themselves." the loyalists of ulster were successful in holding this second line, when the first was no longer tenable; but they only retired from the first line--the maintenance of the legislative union--after a long and obstinate defence which it is the purpose of the following pages to relate. footnotes: [ ] _henry edward manning_, by shane leslie, p. . [ ] sir s.h. maine, _popular government_, p. . chapter ii the electorate and home rule we profess to be a democratic country in which the "will of the people" is the ultimate authority in determining questions of policy, and the liberal party has been accustomed to regard itself as the most zealous guardian of democratic principles. yet there is this curious paradox in relation to the problem which more than any other taxed british statesmanship during the thirty-five years immediately following the enfranchisement of the rural democracy in , that the solution propounded by the liberal party, and inscribed by that party on the statute-book in , was more than once emphatically rejected, and has never been explicitly accepted by the electorate. no policy ever submitted to the country was more decisively condemned at the polls than mr. gladstone's home rule proposals in the general election of . the issue then for the first time submitted to the people was isolated from all others with a completeness scarcely ever practicable--a circumstance which rendered the "mandate" to parliament to maintain the legislative union exceptionally free from ambiguity. the party which had brought forward the defeated proposal, although led by a statesman of unrivalled popularity, authority, and power, was shattered in the attempt to carry it, and lost the support of numbers of its most conspicuous adherents, including chamberlain, hartington, goschen, and john bright, besides a multitude of its rank and file, who entered into political partnership with their former opponents in order to withstand the new departure of their old chief. the years that followed were a period of preparation by both sides for the next battle. the improvement in the state of ireland, largely the result of legislation carried by lord salisbury's government, especially that which promoted land purchase, encouraged the confidence felt by unionists that the british voter would remain staunch to the union. the downfall of parnell in , followed by the break-up of his party, and by his death in the following year, seemed to make the danger of home rule still more remote. the only disquieting factor was the personality of mr. gladstone, which, the older he grew, exercised a more and more incalculable influence on the public mind. and there can be no doubt that it was this personal influence that made him, in spite of his policy, and not because of it, prime minister for the fourth time in . in great britain the electors in that year pronounced against home rule again by a considerable majority, and it was only by coalition with the eighty-three irish nationalist members that gladstone and his party were able to scrape up a majority of forty in support of his second home rule bill. whether there was any ground for gladstone's belief that but for the o'shea divorce he would have had a three-figure majority in is of little consequence, but the fall of his own majority in midlothian from , to below , which caused him "intense chagrin,"[ ] does not lend it support. lord morley says gladstone was blamed by some of his friends for accepting office "depending on a majority not large enough to coerce the house of lords"[ ]; but a more valid ground of censure was that he was willing to break up the constitution of the united kingdom, although a majority of british electors had just refused to sanction such a thing being done. that gladstone's colleagues realised full well the true state of public opinion on the subject, if he himself did not, was shown by their conduct when the home rule bill, after being carried through the house of commons by diminutive majorities, was rejected on second reading by the peers. even their great leader's entreaty could not persuade them to consent to an appeal to the people[ ]; and when they were tripped up over the cordite vote in , after gladstone had disappeared from public life, none of them probably were surprised at the overwhelming vote by which the constituencies endorsed the action of the house of lords, and pronounced for the second time in ten years against granting home rule to ireland. if anything except the personal ascendancy of gladstone contributed to his small coalition majority in it was no doubt the confidence of the electors that the house of lords could be relied upon to prevent the passage of a home rule bill. it is worth noting that nearly twenty years later lord crewe acknowledged that the home rule bill of could not have stood the test of a general election or of a referendum.[ ] during the ten years of unionist government from to the question of home rule slipped into the background. other issues, such as those raised by the south african war and mr. chamberlain's tariff policy, engrossed the public mind. english home rulers showed a disposition to hide away, if not to repudiate altogether, the legacy they had inherited from gladstone. lord rosebery acknowledged the necessity to convert "the predominant partner," a mission which every passing year made appear a more hopeless undertaking. at by-elections home rule was scarcely mentioned. in the eyes of average englishmen the question was dead and buried, and most people were heartily thankful to hear no more about it. mr. t.m. healy's caustic wit remarked that "home rule was put into cold storage."[ ] then came the great overthrow of the unionists in . home rule, except by its absence from liberal election addresses, contributed nothing at all to that resounding liberal victory. the battle of "terminological inexactitudes" rang with cries of chinese "slavery," tariff reform, church schools, labour dispute bills, and so forth; but on ireland silence reigned on the platforms of the victors. the event was to give the successors of mr. gladstone a house of commons in complete subjection to them. for the first time since they had a majority independent of the nationalists, a majority, if ever there was one, "large enough to coerce the house of lords," as they would have done in , according to lord morley, if they had had the power. but to do that would involve the danger of having again to appeal to the country, which even at this high tide of liberal triumph they could not face with home rule as an election cry. so, with the tame acquiescence of mr. redmond and his followers, they spent four years of unparalleled power without laying a finger on irish government, a course which was rendered easy for them by the fact that, on their own admission, they had found ireland in a more peaceful, prosperous, and contented condition than it had enjoyed for several generations. occasionally, indeed, as was necessary to prevent a rupture with the nationalists, some perfunctory mention of home rule as a _desideratum_ of the future was made on ministerial platforms--by mr. churchill, for example, at manchester in may . but by that date even the contest over tariff reform--which had raged without intermission for six years, and by rending the unionist party had grievously damaged it as an effective instrument of opposition--had become merged in the more immediately exciting battle of the budget, provoked by mr. lloyd george's financial proposals for the current year, and by the possibility that they might be rejected by the house of lords. this the house of lords did, on the th of november, , and the prime minister at once announced that he would appeal to the country without delay. such a turn of events was a wonderful windfall for the irish nationalists, beyond what the most sanguine of them can ever have hoped for. the rejection of a money bill by the house of lords raised a democratic blizzard, the full force of which was directed against the constitutional power of veto possessed by the hereditary chamber in relation not merely to money bills, but to general legislation. for a long time the liberal party had been threatening that part of the constitution without much effect. sixteen years had passed since mr. gladstone in his last speech in the house of commons declared that issue must be joined with the peers; but the emphatic endorsement by the constituencies in of the lords' action which he had denounced, followed by ten years of unionist government, damped down the ardour of attack so effectually that, during the four years in which the liberals enjoyed unchallengeable power, from to , they did nothing to carry out gladstone's parting injunction. had they done so at any time when home rule was a living issue in the country an attack on the lords would in all probability have proved disastrous to themselves. for there was not a particle of evidence that the electors of great britain had changed their minds on this subject, and there were great numbers of voters in the country--those voters, unattached to party, who constitute "the swing of the pendulum," and decide the issue at general elections--who felt free to vote liberal in because they believed home rule was practically dead, and if revived would be again given its _quietus_, as in , by the house of lords. but the defeat of the budget in november immediately opened a line of attack wholly unconnected with ireland, and over the most favourable ground that could have been selected for the assault. nothing could have been more skilful than the tactics employed by the liberal leaders. concentrating on the constitutional question raised by the alleged encroachment of the lords on the exclusive privilege of the commons to grant supply, they tried to excite a hurricane of popular fury by calling on the electorate to decide between "peers and people." the rejected finance bill was dubbed "the people's budget." a "budget league" was formed to expatiate through the constituencies on the democratic character of its provisions, and on the personal and class selfishness of the peers in throwing it out. as little as possible was said about ireland, and probably not one voter in ten thousand who went to the poll in january ever gave a thought to the subject, or dreamed that he was taking part in reversing the popular verdict of and . afterwards, when it was complained that an election so conducted had provided no "mandate" for home rule, it was found that in the course of a long speech delivered by mr. asquith at the albert hall on the th of december there was a sentence in which the prime minister had declared that "the irish problem could only be solved by a policy which, while explicitly safeguarding the supreme authority of the imperial parliament, would set up self-government in ireland in regard to irish affairs." the rest of the speech dealt with tariff reform and with the constitutional question of the house of lords, on which the public mind was focused throughout the election. in the unprecedented deluge of oratory that flooded the country in the month preceding the elections the prime minister's sentence on ireland at the albert hall passed almost unnoticed in english and scottish constituencies, or was quickly lost sight of, like a coin in a cornstack, under sheaves of rhetoric about the dear loaf and the intolerable arrogance of hereditary legislators. here and there a unionist candidate did his best to warn a constituency that every liberal vote was a vote for home rule. he was invariably met with an impatient retort that he was attempting to raise a bogey to divert attention from the iniquity of the lords and the tariff reformers. home rule, he was told, was dead and buried. on the th of january, , when the elections were over in the boroughs, mr. asquith claimed that "the great industrial centres had mainly declared for free trade," and the impartial chronicler of the _annual register_ stated that "the liberals had fought on free trade and the constitutional issue." the twice-repeated decision of the country against home rule for ireland was therefore in no sense reversed by the general election of january . but from the very beginning of the agitation over the budget and the action of the house of lords in relation to it, in the summer of , the gravity of the situation so created was fully appreciated by both political parties in ireland itself. only the most languid interest was there taken in the questions which stirred the constituencies across the channel. neither nationalist nor unionist cared anything whatever for free trade; neither of them shed a tear over the rejected budget. indeed, mr. lloyd george's new taxes were so unpopular in ireland that mr. redmond was violently attacked by mr. william o'brien and mr. healy for his neglect of obvious irish interests in supporting the government. mr. redmond, for his part, made no pretence that his support was given because he approved of the proposals for which he and his followers gave their votes in every division. the clauses of the finance bill were trifles in his eyes that did not matter. his gaze was steadily fixed on the house of peers, which he saw before him as a huntsman views a fox with bedraggled brush, reduced to a trot a field or two ahead of the hounds. that house was, as he described it, "the last obstacle to home rule," and he was determined to do all he could to remove the obstacle. lord rosebery said at glasgow in september that he believed ministers wanted the house of lords to reject the budget. whether they did or not, there can be no doubt that mr. redmond did, for he knew that, in that event, the whole strength of the liberal party would be directed to the task of beating down the "last obstacle," and that then it would be possible to carry home rule without the british constituencies being consulted. it was with this end in view that he took his party into the lobby in support of a budget that was detested in ireland, and threw the whole weight of his influence in british constituencies on to the liberal side in the elections of january . but, notwithstanding the torrent of class prejudice and democratic passion that was stirred up by six weeks of liberal oratory, the result of the elections was a serious loss of strength to the government. the commanding liberal majority of over all parties in the house of commons disappeared, and mr. asquith and his cabinet were once more dependent on a coalition of labour members and nationalists. the liberals by themselves had a majority of two only over the unionists, who had won over one hundred seats, so that the nationalists were easily in a position to enforce their leader's threat to make mr. asquith "toe the line." when the parliament elected in january assembled disputes arose between the government and the nationalists as to whether priority was to be given to passing the budget rejected in the previous session, or to the parliament bill which was to deprive the house of lords of its constitutional power to reject legislation passed by the commons; and mr. redmond expressed his displeasure that "guarantees" had not yet been obtained from the king, or, in plain language, that a promise had not been extorted from the sovereign that he would be prepared to create a sufficient number of peers to secure the acceptance of the parliament bill by the upper house. the whole situation was suddenly changed by the death of king edward in may . consideration for the new and inexperienced sovereign led to the temporary abandonment of coercion of the crown, and resort was had to a conference of party leaders, with a view to settlement of the dispute by agreement. but no agreement was arrived at, and the conference broke up on the th of november. parliament was again dissolved in december, "on the assumption," as lord crewe stated, "that the house of lords would reject the parliament bill." during the agitation of this troubled autumn preceding the general election, the question of home rule was not quite so successfully concealed from view as in the previous year. the liberals, indeed, maintained the same tactical reserve on the subject, alike in their writings and their speeches. the liberal press of the period may be searched in vain for any clear indication that the electors were about to be asked to decide once more this momentous constitutional question. such mention of it as was occasionally to be found in ministerial speeches seemed designed to convey the idea that, while the door leading to home rule was still formally open, there was no immediate prospect of its being brought into use. the prime minister in particular did everything in his power to direct the attention of the country to the same issues as in the preceding january, among which ireland had had no place. in presenting the government's case at hull on the th of november, he reminded the country that in the january elections the veto of the peers was "the dominant issue"; in the intervening months the government, he said, had brought forward proposals for dealing with the veto, and had given the lords an opportunity to make proposals of their own; a defeat of the liberals in the coming elections would bring in "protection disguised as tariff reform"; but he (mr. asquith) preferred to concentrate his criticism on lord lansdowne's "crude and complex scheme" for second chamber reform; he made a passing mention of "self-government for ireland" as a policy that would have the sympathy of the dominions, but added that "the immediate task was to secure fair play for liberal legislation and popular government." and in his election address mr. asquith declared that "the appeal to the country was almost narrowed to a single issue, and on its determination hung the whole future of democratic government." this zeal for "popular," or "democratic" government was, however, not inconsistent apparently with a determination to avoid at all hazards consulting the will of the people, before doing what the people had hitherto always refused to sanction. the suggestion had been made earlier in the autumn that a referendum, or "poll of the people" might be taken on the question of home rule. the very idea filled the liberals with dismay. speaking at edinburgh on the nd of december, mr. lloyd george, the chancellor of the exchequer, made the curiously naive admission, for a "democratic" politician, that the referendum would amount to "a prohibitive tariff against liberalism." a few days earlier at reading (november th) his chief sought to turn the edge of this disconcerting proposal by asking whether the unionists, if returned to power, would allow tariff reform to be settled by the same mode of appeal to the country; and when mr. balfour promptly accepted the challenge by promising that he would do so mr. asquith retreated under cover of the excuse that no bargain had been intended. while the liberal leaders were thus doing all they could to hold down the lid of the home rule jack-in-the-box, the unionists were warning the country that as soon as mr. asquith secured a majority his thumb would release the spring. speakers from ulster carried the warning into many constituencies, but it was noticed that they were constantly met with the same retort as in january--that home rule was a "bogey," or a "red herring" dragged across the trail of tariff reform and the peers' veto; and it is a significant indication of the straits to which the government afterwards felt themselves driven to find justification for dealing with so fundamental a question as the repeal of the union without the explicit approval of the electorate, that they devised the strange doctrine that speeches by their opponents provided them with a mandate for a policy about which they had themselves kept silence, even although those speeches had been disbelieved and derided on the very ground that it would be impossible for ministers to bring forward a policy they had not laid before the country during the election. the extent to which this ministerial reserve was carried was shown by a question put to mr. asquith in his own constituency in east fife on the th of december. scottish "hecklers" are intelligent and well informed on current politics, and no one who knows them can imagine one of them asking the prime minister whether he intended to introduce a home rule bill if home rule had been proclaimed as one of the chief items in the policy of the government. mr. asquith gave an affirmative reply; but the elections were by this time half over, and in the following week mr. balfour laid stress on the fact that five hundred contests had been decided before any minister had mentioned home rule. even after giving this memorable answer in east fife mr. asquith, speaking at bury st. edmunds on the th of december, declared that "the sole issue at that moment was the supremacy of the people," and he added, in deprecation of all the talk about ireland, that "it was sought to confuse this issue by catechising ministers on the details of the next home rule bill." even if this had been, as it was not, a true description of the attempts that had been made to extract a frank declaration from the government as to their intentions in regard to this vitally important matter--far more important to hundreds of thousands of people than any question of tariff, or of limiting the functions of the second chamber --it was surely a curious doctrine to be propounded by a statesman zealous to preserve "popular government "! there had been two home rule bills in the past, differing one from the other in not a few important respects; discussion had shown that many even of those who supported the principle of home rule objected strongly to this or that proposal for embodying it in legislation language had been used by mr. asquith himself, as well as by some of his principal colleagues, which implied that any future home rule bill would be part of a general scheme of "devolution," or federation, or "home rule all round"--a solution of the question favoured by many who hotly opposed separate treatment for ireland yet here was the responsible minister, in the middle of a general election, complaining that the issue was being "confused" by presumptuous persons who wanted to know what sort of home rule, if any, he had in contemplation in the event of obtaining a majority sufficient to keep him in power. under such circumstances it would have been a straining of constitutional principles, and a flagrant violation of the canons of that "democratic government" of which mr asquith had constituted himself the champion, to pass a home rule bill by means of a majority so obtained, even if the majority had been one that pointed to a sweeping turnover of public opinion to the side of the government the elections of december , in point of fact, gave no such indication. the government gained nothing whatever by the appeal to the country. liberals and unionists came back in almost precisely the same strength as in the previous parliament. they balanced each other within a couple of votes in the new house of commons, and the ministry could not have remained twenty-four hours in office except in coalition with labour and the irish nationalists. the parliament so elected and so constituted was destined not merely to destroy the effective power of the house of lords, and to place on the statute-book a measure setting up an irish parliament in dublin, but to be an assembly longer in duration and more memorable in achievement than any in english history since the long parliament. during the eight years of its reign the great war was fought and won; the "rebel party" in ireland once more, as in the napoleonic wars, broke into armed insurrection in league with the enemies of england; and before it was dissolved the political parties in great britain, heartily supported by the loyalists of ulster, composed the party differences which had raged with such passion over home rule and other domestic issues, and joined forces in patriotic resistance to the foreign enemy. but before this transformation took place nearly four years of agitation and contest had to run their course. in the first session of the parliament, by a violent use of the royal prerogative, the parliament bill became law, the peers accepting the measure under duress of the threat that some four or five hundred peerages would, if necessary, be created to form a majority to carry it. it was then no longer possible for the upper house to force an appeal to the country on home rule, as it had done in . all that was necessary was for a bill to be carried in three successive sessions through the house of commons, to become law. "the last obstacle to home rule," as mr. redmond called it, had been removed. the liberal government had taken a hint from the procedure of the careful burglar, who poisons the dog before breaking into the house. the significance of the manner in which the irish question had been kept out of view of the electorate by the government and their supporters was not lost upon the people of ulster. in january , within a month of the elections, a meeting of the ulster unionist council was held at which a comprehensive resolution dealing with the situation that had arisen was adopted, and published as a manifesto. one of its clauses was: "the council has observed with much surprise the singular reticence as regards home rule maintained by a large number of radical candidates in england and scotland during the recent elections, and especially by the prime minister himself, who barely referred to the subject till almost the close of his own contest. in view of the consequent fact that home rule was not at the late appeal to the country placed as a clear issue before the electors, it is the judgment of the council that the country has given no mandate for home rule, and that any attempt in such circumstances to force through parliament a measure enacting it would be for his majesty's ministers a grave, if not criminal, breach of constitutional duty." the great importance, in relation to the policy subsequently pursued by ulster, of the historical fact here made clear--namely, that the "will of the people" constitutionally expressed in parliamentary elections has never declared itself in favour of granting home rule to ireland, lies, first, in the justification it afforded to the preparations for active resistance to a measure so enacted; and, secondly, in the influence it had in procuring for ulster not merely the sympathy but the open support of the whole unionist party in great britain. lord londonderry, one of ulster's most trusted leaders, who afterwards gave the whole weight of his support to the policy of forcible resistance, admitted in the house of lords in , in the debates on the parliament bill, that the verdict of the country, if appealed to, would have to be accepted. the leader of the unionist party, mr. bonar law, made it clear in february , as he had more than once stated before, that the support he and his party were pledging themselves to give to ulster in the struggle then approaching a climax, was entirely due to the fact that the electorate had never sanctioned the policy of the government against which ulster's resistance was threatened. the chance of success in that resistance "depended," he said, "upon the sympathy of the british people, and an election would undoubtedly make a great difference in that respect"; he denied that mr. asquith had a "right to pass any form of home rule without a mandate from the people of this country, which he has never received"; and he categorically announced that "if you get the decision of the people we shall obey it." and if, as then appeared likely, the unconstitutional conduct of the government should lead to bloodshed in ireland, the responsibility, said mr. bonar law, would be theirs, "because you preferred to face civil war rather than face the people."[ ] footnotes: [ ] morley's _life of gladstone_, in, . [ ] ibid., . [ ] ibid., . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] see _letters to isabel_, by lord shaw of dunfermline, p. . [ ] _parliamentary debates_ ( th series), vol. i viii, pp. - . chapter iii organisation and leadership from the day when gladstone first made home rule for ireland the leading issue in british politics, the loyalists of ulster--who, as already explained, included practically all the protestant population of the province both conservative and liberal, besides a small number of catholics who had no separatist sympathies--set to work to organise themselves for effective opposition to the new policy. in the hour of their dismay over gladstone's surrender lord randolph churchill, hurrying from london to encourage and inspirit them, told them in the ulster hall on the nd of february, , that "the loyalists in ulster should wait and watch--organise and prepare."[ ] they followed his advice. propaganda among themselves was indeed unnecessary, for no one required conversion except those who were known to be inconvertible. the chief work to be done was to send speakers to british constituencies; and in the decade from to ulster speakers, many of whom were ministers of the different protestant churches, were in request on english and scottish platforms. a number of organisations were formed for this purpose, some of which, like the irish unionist alliance, represented unionist opinion throughout ireland, and not in ulster alone. others were exclusively concerned with the northern province, where from the first the opposition was naturally more concentrated than elsewhere. in the early days, the ulster loyalist and patriotic union, organised by lord ranfurly and mr. w.r. young, carried on an active and sustained campaign in great britain, and the unionist clubs initiated by lord templetown provided a useful organisation in the smaller country towns, which still exists as an effective force. the loyal orange institution, founded at the end of the eighteenth century to commemorate, and to keep alive the principles of, the whig revolution of , had fallen into not unmerited disrepute prior to . few men of education or standing belonged to it, and the lodge meetings and anniversary celebrations had become little better than occasions for conviviality wholly inconsistent with the irreproachable formularies of the order. but its system of local lodges, affiliated to a grand lodge in each county, supplied the ready-made framework of an effective organisation. immediately after the introduction of gladstone's first bill in it received an immense accession of strength. large numbers of country gentlemen, clergymen of all protestant denominations, business and professional men, farmers, and the better class of artisans in belfast and other towns, joined the local lodges, the management of which passed into capable hands; the character of the society was thereby completely and rapidly transformed, and, instead of being a somewhat disreputable and obsolete survival, it became a highly respectable as well as an exceedingly powerful political organisation, the whole weight of whose influence has been on the side of the union. a rallying cry was given to the ulster loyalists in the famous phrase contained in a letter from lord randolph churchill to a correspondent in may : "ulster will fight, and ulster will be right." from this time forward the idea that resort to physical resistance would be preferable to submission to a parliament in dublin controlled by the "rebel party" took hold of the popular mind in ulster, although after the elections of there was no serious apprehension that the necessity would arise, until the return to power of mr. gladstone at the head of a small majority in brought about a fresh crisis. the work of organisation was then undertaken with greater energy and thoroughness than before. it was now that lord templetown founded the unionist clubs, which spread in an affiliated network through ulster, and proved so valuable that, after falling into neglect during the ten years of conservative government, they were revived at the special request of the ulster unionist council in december . nothing, however, did so much to stimulate organisation and concentration of effort as the great convention held in belfast on the th of june , representing on a democratic basis all the constituencies in ulster. numerous preliminary meetings were arranged for the purpose of electing the delegates; and of these the special correspondent of _the times_ wrote: "nothing has struck me more in the present movement than the perfect order and regularity with which the preliminary meetings for the election of delegates has been conducted. from city and town and village come reports of crowded and enthusiastic gatherings, all animated by an equal ardour, all marked by the same spirit of quiet determination. there has been no 'tall talk,' no over-statement; the speeches have been dignified, sensible, and practical. one of the most marked features in the meetings has been the appearance of men who have never before taken part in public life, who have never till now stood on a public platform. now for the first time they have broken with the tranquil traditions of a lifetime, and have come forward to take their share and their responsibility in the grave danger which threatens their country."[ ] there being no building large enough to hold the delegates, numbering nearly twelve thousand, every one of whom was a registered voter appointed by the polling districts to attend the convention, a pavilion, the largest ever used for a political meeting in the kingdom, was specially constructed close to the botanical gardens in belfast. it covered , square feet, and, owing to the enthusiasm of the workmen employed on the building, it was erected (at a cost of over £ , ) within three weeks. it provided seating accommodation for , people, but the number who actually gained admittance to the convention was nearly , , while outside an assemblage, estimated by the correspondent of _the times_ at , , was also addressed by the principal speakers. the commencement of the proceedings with prayer, conducted by the primate of all ireland and the moderator of the presbyterian church, set a precedent which was extensively followed in later years throughout ulster, marking the spirit of seriousness which struck numerous observers as characteristic of the ulster movement. the speakers were men representative of all the varied interests of the province--- religious, agricultural, commercial, and industrial--and among them were two men, mr. thomas sinclair and mr. thomas andrews, who had been life-long liberals, but who from this time forward were distinguished and trusted leaders of unionist opinion in ulster. it was mr. andrews who touched a chord that vibrated through the vast audience, making them leap to their feet, cheering for several minutes. "as a last resource," he cried, "we will be prepared to defend ourselves." but the climax of this memorable assembly was reached when the chairman, the duke of abercorn, with upraised arm, and calling on the audience solemnly to repeat the words one by one after him, gave out what became for the future the motto and watchword of ulster loyalty: "we will not have home rule." it was felt that this simple negation constituted a solemn vow taken by the delegates, both for themselves and for those they represented--an act of self-dedication to which every loyal man and woman in ulster was committed, and from which there could be no turning back. the principal resolution, adopted unanimously by the convention, formulated the grounds on which the people of the province based their hostility to the separatist policy of home rule; and as frequent reference was made to it in after-years as an authoritative definition of ulster policy, it may be worth while to recall its terms: "that this convention, consisting of , delegates representing the unionists of every creed, class, and party throughout ulster, appointed at public meetings held in every electoral division of the province, hereby solemnly resolves and declares: 'that we express the devoted loyalty of ulster unionists to the crown and constitution of the united kingdom; that we avow our fixed resolve to retain unchanged our present position as an integral portion of the united kingdom, and protest in the most unequivocal manner against the passage of any measure that would rob us of our inheritance in the imperial parliament, under the protection of which our capital has been invested and our homes and rights safeguarded; that we record our determination to have nothing to do with a parliament certain to be controlled by men responsible for the crime and outrages of the land league, the dishonesty of the plan of campaign, and the cruelties of boycotting, many of whom have shown themselves the ready instruments of clerical domination; that we declare to the people of great britain our conviction that the attempt to set up such a parliament in ireland will inevitably result in disorder, violence, and bloodshed, such as have not been experienced in this century, and announce our resolve to take no part in the election or proceedings of such a parliament, the authority of which, should it ever be constituted, we shall be forced to repudiate; that we protest against this great question, which involves our lives, property, and civil rights, being treated as a mere side-issue in the impending electoral struggle; that we appeal to those of our fellow countrymen who have hitherto been in favour of a separate parliament to abandon a demand which hopelessly divides irishmen, and to unite with us under the imperial legislature in developing the resources and furthering the best interests of our common country.'" there can be no doubt that the ulster convention of , and the numerous less imposing demonstrations which followed on both sides of the channel and took their tone from it, of which the most notable was the great meeting at the albert hall in london on the nd of april, , had much effect in impressing and instructing public opinion, and thus preparing the way for the smashing defeat of the liberal home rule party in the general election of . after that event vigilance again relaxed during the ten years of unionist predominance which followed. but the organisation was kept intact, and its democratic method of appointing delegates in every polling district provided a permanent electoral machinery for the unionist party in the constituencies, as well as the framework for the ulster unionist council, which was brought into existence in , largely through the efforts of mr. william moore, m.p. for north armagh. this council, with its executive standing committee, was thenceforward the acknowledged authority for determining all questions of unionist policy in ulster. its first meeting was held on the rd of march, , under the presidency of colonel james mccalmont, m.p. for east antrim. the first ten members of the standing committee were nominated by colonel saunderson, m.p., as chairman of the ulster parliamentary party. they were, in addition to the chairman himself, the duke of abercorn, the marquis of londonderry, the earl of erne, the earl of ranfurly, colonel james mccalmont, m.p., the hon. r.t. o'neill, m.p., mr. g. wolff, m.p., mr. j.b. lonsdale, m.p., and mr. william moore, k.c., m.p. these nominations were confirmed by a ballot of the members of the council, and twenty other members were elected forthwith to form the standing committee. this first executive committee of the organisation which for the next fifteen years directed the policy of ulster unionism included several names that were from this time forward among the most prominent in the movement. there were the two eminent liberals, mr. thomas sinclair and mr. thomas andrews, and mr. john young, all three of whom were members of the irish privy council; colonel r.h. wallace, c.b., mr. w.h.h. lyons, and sir james stronge, leaders of the orangemen; colonel sharman-crawford, mr. e.m. archdale, mr. w.j. allen, mr. r.h. reade, and sir william ewart. among several "unionist candidates for ulster constituencies" who were at the same meeting co-opted to the council, we find the names of captain james craig and mr. denis henry, k.c. the duke of abercorn accepted the position of president of the council, and mr. e.m. archdale was elected chairman of the standing committee. mr. t.h. gibson was appointed secretary. in october the latter resigned his post owing to failing health, and, on the motion of mr. william moore, m.p., mr. richard dawson bates, a solicitor practising in belfast, was "temporarily" appointed to fill the vacancy. this temporary appointment was never formally made permanent, but no question in regard to the secretaryship was ever raised, for mr. bates performed the duties year after year to the complete satisfaction of everyone connected with the organisation, and in a manner that earned the gratitude of all ulster unionists. the funds at the disposal of the council in only enabled a salary of £ a year to be paid to the secretary--a salary that was purely nominal in the case of a professional gentleman of mr. bates's standing; but the spirit in which he took up his duties was seen two years later, when it was found that out of this salary he had himself been paying for clerical assistance; and then, of course, this matter was properly adjusted, which the improved financial position of the council happily rendered possible. the declared purpose of the ulster unionist council was to form a union of all local unionist associations in ulster; to keep the latter in constant touch with their parliamentary representatives; and "to be the medium of expressing ulster unionist opinion as current events may from time to time require." it consisted at first of not more than members, of whom represented local associations, and represented the orange lodges, the remaining being made up of ulster members of both houses of parliament and of certain "distinguished residents in or natives of ulster" to be co-opted by the council. as time went on the council was considerably enlarged, and its representative character improved. in the elected membership was raised to , and included representatives of local associations, orange lodges, unionist clubs, and the derry apprentice boys. in representatives of the women's associations were added, and the total elected membership was increased to . the delegates elected by the various constituent bodies were in the fullest sense representative men; they were drawn from all classes of the population; and, by the regularity with which they attended meetings of the council whenever business of any importance was to be transacted, they made it the most effective political organisation in the united kingdom. a campaign of public meetings in england and scotland conducted jointly by the ulster unionist council and the irish unionist alliance in led to a scheme of co-operation between the two bodies, the one representing unionists in the north and the other those in the southern provinces, which worked smoothly and effectively. a joint committee of the unionist associations of ireland was therefore formed in the same year, the organisations represented on it being the two already named and the ulster loyalist anti-repeal union. the latter, which in earlier years had done excellent spade-work under the fostering zeal of lord ranfurly and mr. william robert young, was before amalgamated with the unionist council, so that all rivalry and overlapping was thenceforward eliminated from the organisation of unionism in ulster. the council in the north and the irish unionist alliance in dublin worked in complete harmony both with each other and with the union defence league in london, whose operations were carried on under the direction of its founder, mr. walter long. the women of ulster were scarcely less active than the men in the matter of organisation. although, of course, as yet unenfranchised, they took as a rule a keener interest in political matters--meaning thereby the one absorbing question of the union--than their sex in other parts of the united kingdom. when critical times for the union arrived there was, therefore, no apathy to be overcome by the protestant women in ulster. early in the "ulster women's unionist council" was formed under the presidency of the duchess of abercorn, and very quickly became a most effective organisation side by side with that of the men. the leading spirit was the marchioness of londonderry, but that it was no aristocratic affair of titled ladies may be inferred from the fact that within twelve months of its formation between forty and fifty thousand members were enrolled. a branch in mr. devlin's constituency of west belfast, which over four thousand women joined in its first month of existence, of whom over per cent, were mill-workers and shop-girls in the district, held a very effective demonstration on the th of january, , at which mr. thomas sinclair, the most universally respected of belfast's business men, made one of his many telling speeches which familiarised the people with the commercial and financial aspects of home rule, as it would be felt in ulster. the central women's council followed this up with a more imposing gathering in the ulster hall on the th, which adopted with intense enthusiasm the declaration: "we will stand by our husbands, our brothers, and our sons, in whatever steps they may be forced to take in defending our liberties against the tyranny of home rule." thus before the end of men and women alike were firmly organised in ulster for the support of their loyalist principles. but the most effective organisation is impotent without leadership. among the declared "objects" of the ulster unionist council was that of acting "as a connecting link between ulster unionists and their parliamentary representatives." in the house of commons the ulster unionist members, although they recognised colonel edward saunderson, m.p., as their leader until his death in , did not during his lifetime, or for some years afterwards, constitute a separate party or group. when colonel saunderson died the right hon. walter long, who had held the office of chief secretary in the last year of the unionist administration, and who had been elected for south dublin in , became leader of the irish unionists--with whom those representing ulster constituencies were included. but in the elections of january mr. long was returned for a london seat, and it therefore became necessary for irish unionists to select another leader. by this time the home rule question had, as the people of ulster perceived, become once more a matter of vital urgency, although, as explained in the preceding chapter, the electors of great britain were too engrossed by other matters to give it a thought, and the liberal ministers were doing everything in their power to keep it in the background. the ulster members of the house of commons realised, therefore, the grave importance of finding a leader of the calibre necessary for dealing on equal terms with such orators and parliamentarians as mr. asquith and mr. john redmond. they did not deceive themselves into thinking that such a leader was to be found among their own number. they could produce several capable speakers, and men of judgment and good sense; but something more was needed for the critical times they saw ahead. after careful consideration, they took a step which in the event proved to be of momentous importance, and of extreme good fortune, for the enterprise that the immediate future had in store for them. mr. j.b. lonsdale, member for mid armagh, hon. secretary of the irish unionist parliamentary party, was deputed to request sir edward carson, k.c., to accept the leadership of the irish unionist party in the house of commons. several days elapsed before they received an answer; but when it came it was, happily for ulster, an acceptance. it is easy to understand sir edward carson's hesitation before consenting to assume the leadership. after carrying all before him in the irish courts, where he had been law officer of the crown, he had migrated to london, where he had been solicitor-general during the last six years of the unionist administration, and by had attained a position of supremacy at the english bar, with the certain prospect of the highest legal advancement, and with an extremely lucrative practice, which his family circumstances made it no light matter for him to sacrifice, but which he knew it would be impossible for him to retain in conjunction with the political duties he was now urged to undertake. although only in his fifty-seventh year, he was never one of those who feel younger than their age; nor did he minimise in his own mind the disability caused by his too frequent physical ailments, which inclined him to shrink from embarking upon fresh work the extent and nature of which could not be exactly foreseen. as to ambition, there are few men who ever were less moved by it, but he could not leave altogether out of consideration his firm conviction--which ultimately proved to have been ill-founded--that acceptance of the ulster leadership would cut him off from all promotion, whether political or legal.[ ] moreover, although for the moment it was the leadership of a parliamentary group to which he was formally invited, it was obvious that much more was really involved; the people in ulster itself needed guidance in the crisis that was visibly approaching. ever since lord randolph churchill, with the concurrence of lord salisbury, first inspired them in with the spirit of resistance in the last resort to being placed under a dublin parliament, and assured them of british sympathy and support if driven to that extremity, the determination of ulster in this respect was known to all who had any familiarity with the temper of her people. any man who undertook to lead them at such a juncture as had been reached in must make that determination the starting-point of his policy. it was a task that would require not only statesmanship, but political courage of a high order. lord randolph churchill, in his famous ulster hall speech, had said that "no portentous change such as the repeal of the union, no change so gigantic, could be accomplished by the mere passing of a law; the history of the united states will teach us a different lesson." ulster always took her stand on the american precedent, though the exemplar was lincoln rather than washington. but although the scale of operations was, of course, infinitely smaller, the ulster leader would, if it came to the worst, be confronted by certain difficulties from which abraham lincoln was free. he might have to follow the example of the latter in forcibly resisting secession, but his legal position would be very different. he might be called upon to resist technically legal authority, whereas lincoln had it at his back. to guide and control a headstrong people, smarting under a sense of betrayal, when entering on a movement pregnant with these issues, and at the same time to stand up against a powerful government on the floor of the house of commons, was an enterprise upon which any far-seeing man might well hesitate to embark. pondering over the invitation conveyed to him in his chambers in the temple, carson may, therefore, well have asked himself what inducement there was for him to accept it. he was not an ulsterman. as a southerner he was not familiar with the psychology of the northern irish; the sectarian narrowness popularly attributed to them outside their province was wholly alien to his character; he was as far removed by nature from a fire-eater as it was possible for man to be; he was not fond of unnecessary exertion; he preferred the law to politics, and disliked addressing political assemblies. in parliament he represented, not a popular constituency, but the university of dublin. but, on the other hand, he was to the innermost core of his nature an irish loyalist. his youthful political sympathies had, indeed, been with the liberal party, but he instantly severed his connection with it when gladstone joined hands with parnell. he had made his name at the irish bar as crown prosecutor in the troubled period of mr. balfour's chief secretaryship, and this experience had bred in him a hearty detestation of the whining sentimentality, the tawdry and exaggerated rhetoric, and the manufactured discontent that found vent in nationalist politics. a sincere lover of ireland, he had too much sound sense to credit the notion that either the freedom or the prosperity of the country would be increased by loosening the tie with great britain. although he as yet knew little of ulster, he admired her resolute stand for the union, her passionate loyalty to the crown; he watched with disgust the way in which her defences were being sapped by the liberal party in england; and the thought that such a people were perhaps on the eve of being driven into subjection to the men whose character he had had so much opportunity to gauge in the days of the land league filled him with indignation. if, therefore, he could be of service in helping to avert so great a wrong sir edward carson came to the conclusion that it would be shirking a call of duty were he to decline the leadership that had been offered him. realising to the full all that it meant for himself--inevitable sacrifice of income, of ease, of chances of promotion, a burden of responsibility, a probability of danger--he gave his consent; and the day he gave it--the st of february, --should be marked for all time as a red-letter day in the ulster calendar. footnotes: [ ] _lord randolph churchill_, by the right hon. w.s. churchill, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _the times_, june th, . [ ] he expressed this conviction to the author in . chapter iv the parliament act: craigavon a good many months were to elapse before the unionist rank and file in ulster were brought into close personal touch with the new leader of the irish unionist parliamentary party. the work to be done in lay chiefly in london, where the constitutional struggle arising out of the rejection of the "people's budget" was raging. but shortly before the general election of december a demonstration was held in the ulster hall in belfast, in the hope of opening the eyes of the english and scottish electors to the danger of home rule. mr. walter long was the principal speaker, and sir edward carson, in supporting the resolution, ended his speech by quoting lord randolph churchill's famous jingling phrase, "ulster will fight, and ulster will be right." on the st of january, , when the elections were over, he went over from london to preside at an important meeting of the ulster unionist council. the annual report of the standing committee, in welcoming his succession to mr. long in the leadership, spoke of his requiring no introduction to ulstermen; and it is true that he had occasionally spoken at meetings in belfast, and that his recent speech in the ulster hall had made an excellent impression. but he was not yet a really familiar figure even in belfast, while outside the city he was practically unknown, except of course by repute. that a man of his sagacity would quickly make his weight felt was never in doubt; but few at that time can have anticipated the extent to which a stranger--with an accent proclaiming an origin south of the boyne--was in a short time to captivate the hearts, and become literally the idolised leader, of the ulster democracy. for the latter are a people who certainly do not wear their hearts on their sleeves for daws to peck at. in the eyes of the more volatile southern celts they seem a "dour" people. they are naturally reserved, laconic of speech, without "gush," far from lavish in compliment, slow to commit themselves or to give their confidence without good and proved reason. opportunity for the populace to get into closer touch with the leader did not, however, come till the autumn. he was unable to attend the orange celebration on the th of july, when the anniversary, which preceded by less than a month the "removal of the last obstacle to home rule" by the passing of the parliament act, was kept with more than the usual fervour, and the speeches proved that the gravity of the situation was fully appreciated. the marquis of londonderry, addressing an immense concourse of belfast lodges, stated that it was the first time an ex-viceroy had been present at an orange gathering, but that he had deliberately created the precedent owing to his sense of the danger threatening the loyalist cause. it was the first of innumerable similar actions by which lord londonderry identified himself whole-heartedly with the popular movement, throwing aside all the conventional restraints of rank and wealth, and thereby endearing himself to every man and woman in protestant ulster. there was no more familiar figure in the streets of belfast. barefooted street urchins, catching sight of him on the steps of the ulster club, would gather round and, with free-and-easy familiarity, shout "three cheers for londonderry." he knew everybody and was everybody's friend. there was no aristocratic hauteur or aloofness about his genial personality. he was in the habit of entertaining the whole unionist council, some five hundred strong, at luncheon or dinner as the occasion required, when important meetings of the delegates took place. distinguished political visitors from england could always be invited over without thought for their entertainment, since a welcome at mount stewart was never wanting. his financial support of the political movement was equally open-handed. but, helpful as were his hospitality and his subscriptions, it was the countenance and support of a man who had held high cabinet office, and especially the great position of viceroy of ireland, that made lord londonderry's full participation an asset of incalculable value to the cause he espoused. moreover, while he was always ready to cross the channel, even if for a few hours only, when wanted for any conference or public meeting, never pleading his innumerable social and political engagements in london or the north of england as an excuse for absence, his natural modesty of character made it easy for him to act under the leadership of another. indeed, he underrated his own abilities; but there are probably not many men of his prominence and antecedents who, if similarly placed, would have been able to give, without a trace of _amour-propre,_ to a leader who had in former years been his own official subordinate, the consistently loyal backing that lord londonderry gave to sir edward carson. but, although there never was the slightest friction between the two men, a difference of opinion between them on an important point showed itself within a few months of carson's acceptance of the leadership. in july the excitement over the parliament bill reached its climax. when the government announced that the king had given his assent to the creation of whatever number of peerages might be required for carrying the measure through the upper house, the party known as "die hards" were for rejecting it and taking the consequences; while against this policy were ranged lord lansdowne, lord curzon, and other unionist leaders, who advocated the acceptance of the bill under protest. on the th of july carson told lansdowne that in his judgment "the disgrace and ignominy of surrender on the question far outweighed any temporary advantage" to be gained by the two years' delay of home rule which the parliament bill would secure.[ ] lord londonderry, on the other hand, supported the view taken by lord lansdowne, and he voted with the majority who carried the bill on the th of august. this step temporarily clouded his popularity in ulster, but not many weeks passed before he completely regained the confidence and affection of the people, and the difference of opinion never in the smallest degree interrupted the harmony of his relations with sir edward carson. the true position of affairs in relation to home rule had not yet been grasped by the british public. as explained in a former chapter, it had not been in any real sense an issue in the two general elections of the previous year, and throughout the spring and summer of popular interest in england and scotland was still wholly occupied with the fight between "peers and people" and the impending blow to the power of the second chamber; and the coronation festivities also helped to divert attention from the political consequences to which the authors of the parliament bill intended it to lead. the first real awakening was brought about by an immense demonstration held at craigavon, on the outskirts of belfast, on the rd of september. the main purpose of this historic gathering was to bring the populace of ulster face to face with their new leader, and to give him an opportunity of making a definite pronouncement of a policy for ulster, in view of the entirely novel situation resulting from the passing of the parliament act. for that act made it possible for the first time for the liberal home rule party to repeal the act of union without an appeal to the country. it enacted that any bill which in three successive sessions was passed without substantial alteration through the house of commons might be presented for the royal assent without the consent of the lords; and an amendment to exclude a home rule bill from its operation had been successfully resisted by the government. it also reduced the maximum legal duration of a parliament from seven to five years; but the existing parliament was still in its first session, and there was therefore ample time, under the provisions of the new constitution, to pass a home rule bill before the next general election, as the coalition of parties in favour of home rule constituted a substantial majority in the house of commons. the question, therefore, which the ulster people had now to decide was no longer simply how they could bring about the rejection of a home rule bill by propaganda in the british constituencies, as they had hitherto done with unfailing success, although that object was still kept in view, but what course they should adopt if a home rule act should be placed on the statute-book without those constituencies being consulted. was the day at last approaching when lord randolph churchill's exhortation must be obeyed? or were they to be compelled, because the cabinet had coerced the sovereign and tricked the people by straining the royal prerogative in a manner described by mr. balfour as "a gross violation of constitutional liberty," to submit with resignation to the government of their country by the "rebel party "--the party controlled by clerical influence, and boasting of the identity of its aims with those of wolfe tone and robert emmet? this was the real problem in the minds of those who flocked to craigavon on saturday, the rd of september, , to hear what proposals sir edward carson had to lay before his followers. craigavon was the residence of captain james craig, member of parliament for east down. it is a spacious country house standing on a hill above the road leading from belfast to holywood, with a fine view of belfast lough and the distant antrim coast beyond the estuary. the lawn in front of the house, sloping steeply to the shore road, forms a sort of natural amphitheatre offering ideal conditions for out-of-door oratory to an unlimited audience. at the meeting on the rd of september the platform was erected near the crest of the hill, enabling the vast audience to spread out fan-wise over the lower levels, where even the most distant had the speakers clearly in view, even if many of them, owing to the size of the gathering, were unable to hear the spoken word. it was on this occasion that captain craig, by the care with which every minute detail of the arrangements was thought out and provided for, first gave evidence of his remarkable gift for organisation that was to prove so invaluable to the ulster cause in the next few years. the greater part of the audience arrived in procession, which, starting from the centre of the city of belfast, took over two hours to pass a given point, at the quick march in fours. all the belfast orange lodges, and representative detachments from the county grand lodges, together with lord templetown's unionist clubs, and other organisations, including the women's association, took part in the procession. but immense numbers of people attended the meeting independently; it was calculated that not less than a hundred thousand were present during the delivery of sir edward carson's speech, and although there must have been very many of them who could hear nothing, the complete silence maintained by all was a remarkable proof--or so it appeared to men experienced in out-door political demonstrations--of the earnestness of spirit that prevailed. to some it may appear still more remarkable that, with such a concourse of people within a couple of miles of belfast, not a single policeman was present, and that none was required; no disturbance of any sort occurred during the day, nor was a single case of drunkenness observed. it had been intended that the duke of abercorn, whose inspiring exhortation as chairman of the ulster convention in had never been forgotten, should preside over the meeting; but, as he was prevented by a family bereavement from being present, his place was taken by the earl of erne, grand master of the orange order. the scene, when he rose to open the proceedings, was indescribable in its impressiveness. some members of the eighty club happened to be in ireland at the time, for the purpose of "seeing for themselves" in the familiar fashion of such political tourists; but they did not think it worth while to witness what ulster was doing at craigavon. if they had, they could have made a report to their political leaders which, had it been truthful, might have averted some irreparable blunders; for they could hardly have looked upon that sea of eager faces, or have observed the enthusiasm that possessed such a host of earnest and resolute men, without revising the opinion, which they had accepted from mr. redmond, that there was "no ulster question." the meeting took the form of according a welcome to sir edward carson as the new leader of irish loyalism, and of ulster in particular. but before he rose to speak a significant note had already been sounded. lord erne struck it when he quoted words which were to become very familiar in ulster--the letter from gustavus hamilton, governor of enniskillen in , to "divers of the nobility and gentry in the north-east part of ulster," in which he declared: "we stand upon our guard, and do resolve by the blessing of god to meet our danger rather than to await it." and the veteran liberal, mr. thomas andrews, in moving the resolution of welcome to the leader, expressed the universal sentiment of the multitude when he exclaimed, "we will never, never bow the knee to the disloyal factions led by mr. john redmond. we will never submit to be governed by rebels who acknowledge no law but the laws of the land league and illegal societies." a great number of addresses from representative organisations were then presented to sir edward carson, in many of which the determination to resist the jurisdiction of a dublin parliament was plainly declared. but such declarations, although they undoubtedly expressed the mind of the people, were after all in quite general terms. for a quarter of a century innumerable variations on the theme "ulster will fight, and ulster will be right," had been fiddled on ulster platforms, so that there was some excuse for the belief of those who were wholly ignorant of north irish character that these utterances were no more than the commonplaces of ulster rhetoric. the time had only now come, however, when their reality could be put to the test. carson's speech at craigavon crystallised them into practical politics. sir edward carson's public speaking has always been entirely free from rhetorical artifice. he seldom made use of metaphor or imagery, or elaborate periods, or variety of gesture. his language was extremely simple and straightforward; but his mobile expression--so variable that his enemies saw in it a suggestion of mephistopheles, and his friends a resemblance to dante--his measured diction, and his skilful use of a deep-toned voice, gave a remarkable impressiveness to all he said--even, indeed, to utterances which, if spoken by another, would sometimes have sounded commonplace or obvious. sarcasm he could use with effect, and a telling point was often made by an epigrammatic phrase which delighted his hearers. and, more than all else, his meaning was never in doubt. in lucidity of statement he excelled many much greater orators, and was surpassed by none; and these qualities, added to his unmistakable sincerity and candour, made him one of the most persuasive of speakers on the platform, as he was also, of course, in the law courts. the moment he began to speak at craigavon the immense multitude who had come to welcome him felt instinctively the grip of his power. the contrast to all the previous scene--the cheering, the enthusiasm, the marching, the singing, the waving of handkerchiefs and flags--was deeply impressive, when, after a hushed pause of some length, he called attention without preface to the realities of the situation in a few simple sentences of slow and almost solemn utterance: "i know full well what the resolution you have just passed means; i know what all these addresses mean; i know the responsibility you are putting upon me to-day. in your presence i cheerfully accept it, grave as it is, and i now enter into a compact with you, and every one of you, and with the help of god you and i joined together--giving you the best i can, and you giving me all your strength behind me--we will yet defeat the most nefarious conspiracy that has ever been hatched against a free people. but i know full well that this resolution has a still wider meaning. it shows me that you realise the gravity of the situation that is before us, and it shows me that you are here to express your determination to see this fight out to a finish." he went on to expose the hollowness of the allegation, then current in liberal circles, that ulster's repugnance to home rule was less uncompromising than it formerly had been. on the contrary, he believed that "there never was a moment at which men were more resolved than at the present, with all the force and strength that god has given them, to maintain the british connection and their rights as citizens of the united kingdom." apart from principle or sentiment, that was an attitude, he maintained, dictated by practical good sense. he showed how ireland had been "advancing in prosperity in an unparalleled measure," for which he could quote the authority of mr. redmond himself, although the nationalist leader had omitted to notice that this advance had taken place under the legislative union, and, as carson contended, in consequence of it. he laid special emphasis on the point, never forgotten, that the danger in which they stood was due to the hoodwinking of the british constituencies by mr. asquith's ministry. "make no mistake; we are going to fight with men who are prepared to play with loaded dice. they are prepared to destroy their own constitution, so that they may pass home rule, and they are prepared to destroy the very elements of constitutional government by withdrawing the question from the electorate, who on two previous occasions refused to be a party to it." he ridiculed the "paper safeguards" which liberal ministers tried to persuade them would amply protect ulster protestants under a dublin parliament, giving a vivid picture of the plight they would be in under a nationalist administration, which, he declared, meant "a tyranny to which we never can and never will submit"; and then, in a pregnant passage, he summarised the ulster case: "our demand is a very simple one. we ask for no privileges, but we are determined that no one shall have privileges over us. we ask for no special rights, but we claim the same rights from the same government as every other part of the united kingdom. we ask for nothing more; we will take nothing less. it is our inalienable right as citizens of the british empire, and heaven help the men who try to take it from us." it was all no doubt a mere restatement--though an admirably lucid and forcible restatement--of doctrine with which his hearers had long been familiar. the great question still awaited an answer--how was effect to be given to this resolve, now that there was no longer hope of salvation through the sympathy and support of public opinion in great britain? this was what the eager listeners at craigavon hoped in hushed expectancy to hear from their new leader. he did not disappoint them: "mr. asquith, the prime minister, says that we are not to be allowed to put our case before the british electorate. very well. by that determination he drives you in the ultimate result to rely upon your own strength, and we must follow all that out to its logical conclusion.... that involves something more than that we do not accept home rule. we must be prepared, in the event of a home rule bill passing, with such measures as will carry on for ourselves the government of those districts of which we have control. we must be prepared--and time is precious in these things--the morning home rule passes, ourselves to become responsible for the government of the protestant province of ulster. we ask your leave at the meeting of the ulster unionist council, to be held on monday, there to discuss the matter, and to set to work, to take care that at no time and at no intervening interval shall we lack a government in ulster, which shall be a government either by the imperial parliament, or by ourselves." here, then, was the first authoritative declaration of a definite policy to be pursued by ulster in the circumstances then existing or foreseen, and it was a policy that was followed with undeviating consistency under carson's leadership for the next nine years. to be left under the government of the imperial parliament was the alternative to be preferred, and was asserted to be an inalienable right; but, if all their efforts to that end should be defeated, then "a government by ourselves" was the only change that could be tolerated. rather than submit to the jurisdiction of a nationalist legislature and administration, they would themselves set up a government "_in those districts of which they had control_." it was because, when the first of these alternatives had to be sorrowfully abandoned, the second was offered in the government of ireland act of that ulster did not actively oppose the passing of that statute. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . chapter v the craigavon policy and the u.f.v. no time was lost in giving practical shape to the policy outlined at craigavon, and in taking steps to give effect to it. on the th of september a meeting of four hundred delegates representing the ulster unionist council, the county grand orange lodges, and the unionist clubs, was held in belfast, and, after lengthy discussion in private, when the only differences of opinion were as to the most effective methods of proceeding, two resolutions were unanimously adopted and published. it is noteworthy that, at this early stage in the movement, out of nearly four hundred popularly elected delegates, numbers of whom were men holding responsible positions or engaged in commercial business, not one raised an objection to the policy itself, although its grave possibilities were thoroughly appreciated by all present. both lord londonderry, who presided, and sir edward carson left no room for doubt in that respect; the developments they might be called upon to face were thoroughly searched and explained, and the fullest opportunity to draw back was offered to any present who might shrink from going on. the first resolution registered a "call upon our leaders to take any steps they may consider necessary to resist the establishment of home rule in ireland, solemnly pledging ourselves that under no conditions shall we acknowledge any such government"; and it gave an assurance that those whom the delegates represented would give the leaders "their unwavering support in any danger they may be called upon to face." the second decided that "the time has now come when we consider it our imperative duty to make arrangements for the provisional government of ulster," and for that purpose it went on to appoint a commission of five leading local men, namely, captain james craig, m.p., colonel sharman crawford, m.p., the right hon. thomas sinclair, colonel r.h. wallace, c.b., and mr. edward sclater, secretary of the unionist clubs, whose duties were _(a)_ "to keep sir edward carson in constant and close touch with the feeling of unionist ulster," and _(b)_ "to take immediate steps, in consultation with sir edward carson, to frame and submit a constitution for a provisional government of ulster, having due regard to the interests of the loyalists in other parts of ireland: the powers and duration of such provisional government to come into operation on the day of the passage of any home rule bill, to remain in force until ulster shall again resume unimpaired her citizenship in the united kingdom." at the luncheon given by lord londonderry after this business conference, carson took occasion to refer to a particularly contemptible slander to which currency had been given some days previously by sir john benn, one of the eighty club strolling seekers after truth. it was perhaps hardly worth while to notice a statement so silly as that the ulster leader had been ready a few weeks previously to betray ulster in order to save the house of lords, but carson did not yet realise the degree to which he had already won the confidence of his followers; moreover, the incident proved useful as an opportunity of emphasising the uninterrupted mutual confidence between lord londonderry and himself, in spite of their divergence of opinion over the parliament bill. it also gave those present a glimpse of their leader's power of shrivelling meanness with a few caustic drops of scorn. the proceedings at craigavon and at the conference naturally created a sensation on both sides of the channel. they brought the question of ireland once more, for the first time since , into the forefront of british politics. the house of commons might spend the autumn ploughing its way through the intricacies of the national insurance bill, but everyone knew that the last and bitterest battle against home rule was now approaching. and, now that the parliament act was safely on the statute-book, ministers had no further interest in concealment. during the elections, from which alone they could procure authority for legislation of so fundamental a character, mr. asquith, as we have seen, regarded any inquiry as to his intentions as "confusing the issue." but now that he had the constituencies in his pocket for five years and nothing further was to be feared from that quarter, his cards were placed on the table. on the rd of october mr. winston churchill told his followers at dundee that the government would introduce a home rule bill next session "and press it forward with all their strength," and he added the characteristic injunction that "they must not take sir edward carson too seriously." but that advice did not prevent mr. herbert samuel, another member of the cabinet, from putting in an appearance in belfast four days later, where he threw himself into a ludicrously unequal combat with carson, exerting himself to calm the fears of business men as to the effect of home rule on their prosperity; while, in the same week, carson himself, at a great unionist demonstration in dublin, described the growth of irish prosperity in the last twenty years as "almost a fairy tale," which would be cut short by home rule. on the th of the same month mr. birrell, the chief secretary for ireland, in a speech at ilfracombe, gave some scraps of meagre information in regard to the provisions that would be included in the coming home rule bill; and on the st mr. redmond announced that the drafting of the bill was almost completed, and that the measure would be "satisfactory to nationalists both in principle and detail."[ ] so the autumn of wore through--ministers doling out snippets of information; members of parliament and the press urging them to give more. the people of ulster, on the other hand, were not worrying over details. they did not require to be told that the principle would be "satisfactory to nationalists," for they knew that the government had to "toe the line"; nor were they in doubt that what was satisfactory to nationalists must be unsatisfactory to themselves. what they were thinking about was not what the bill would or would not contain, but the preparations they were making to resist its operation. a day or two after craigavon the leader spoke at a great meeting in portrush, after receiving, at every important station he passed _en route_ from belfast, enthusiastic addresses expressing confidence in himself and approval of the craigavon declaration; and in this speech he considerably amplified what he had said at craigavon. after explaining how the whole outlook had been changed by the parliament act, which cut them off from appeal to the sympathies of englishmen, he pointed out to his hearers the only course now open to them, namely, that resolved upon at craigavon. "some people," he continued, "say that i am preaching disorder. no, in the course i am advising i am preaching order, because i believe that, unless we are in a position ourselves to take over the government of those places we are able to control, the people of ulster, if let loose without that organisation, and without that organised determination, might in a foolish moment find themselves in a condition of antagonism and grips with their foes which i believe even the present government would lament. and therefore i say that the course we recommend--and it has been solemnly adopted by your four hundred representatives, after mature discussion in which every man understood what it was he was voting about--is the only course that i know of that is possible under the circumstances of this province which is consistent with the maintenance of law and order and the prevention of bloodshed." superficially, these words may appear boldly paradoxical; but in fact they were prophetic, for the closest observers of the events of the next three years, familiar with irish character and conditions, were in no doubt whatever that it was the disciplined organisation of the ulster unionists alone that prevented the outbreak of serious disorders in the north. there was, on the contrary, a diminution even of ordinary crime, accompanied by a marked improvement in the general demeanour, and especially in the sobriety, of the people. the speaker then touched upon a question which naturally arose out of the craigavon policy of resistance to home rule. he had been asked, he said, whether ulster proposed to fight against the forces of the crown. he had already contrasted their own methods with those of the nationalists, saying that ulstermen would never descend to action "from behind hedges or by maiming cattle, or by boycotting of individuals"; he now added that they were "not going to fight the army and the navy ... god forbid that any loyal irishman should ever shoot or think of shooting the british soldier or sailor. but, believe me, any government will ponder long before it dares to shoot a loyal ulster protestant, devoted to his country and loyal to his king." in newspaper reports of public meetings, sayings of pith and moment are often attributed to "a voice" from the audience. on this occasion, when sir edward carson referred to the army and the navy, "a voice" cried "they are on our side." it was the truth, as subsequent events were to show. it would indeed have been strange had it been otherwise. men wearing his majesty's uniform, who had been quartered at one time in belfast or carrickfergus and at another in cork or limerick, could be under no illusion as to where that uniform was held in respect and where it was scorned. the certainty that the reality of their own loyalty was understood by the men who served the king was a sustaining thought to ulstermen through these years of trial. this portrush speech cleared the air. it made known the _modus operandi_, as craigavon had made known the policy. henceforward ulster unionists had a definite idea of what was before them, and they had already unbounded confidence both in the sagacity and in the courage of the man who had become their leader. the craigavon meeting led, almost by accident as it were, to a development the importance of which was hardly foreseen at the time. among the processionists who passed through captain craig's grounds there was a contingent of orangemen from county tyrone who attracted general attention by their smart appearance and the orderly precision of their marching. on inquiry it was learnt that these men had of their own accord been learning military drill. the spirit of emulation naturally suggested to others to follow the example of the tyrone lodges. it was soon followed, not by orangemen alone, but by members of the unionist clubs, very many of whom belonged to no orange lodge. within a few months drilling--of an elementary kind, it is true--had become popular in many parts of the country. colonel r.h. wallace, c.b., who had served with distinction in the south african war, where he commanded the th royal irish rifles, was a prominent member of the orange institution, in which he was in grand master of the belfast lodges, and grand secretary of the provincial grand orange lodge of ulster; and, being a man of marked ability and widespread popularity, his influence was powerful and extensive. he was a devoted adherent of carson, and there was no keener spirit among the ulster loyalist leaders. colonel wallace was among the first to perceive the importance of this military drilling that was taking place throughout ulster, and through his leading position in the orange institution his encouragement did much to extend the practice. having been a lawyer by profession before south africa called him to serve his country in arms, wallace was careful to ascertain how the law stood with regard to the drilling that was going on. he consulted mr. james campbell (afterwards lord chancellor of ireland), who advised that any two justices of the peace had power to authorise drill and other military exercises within the area of their jurisdiction on certain conditions. the terms of the application made by colonel wallace himself to two belfast magistrates show what the conditions were, and, under the circumstances of the time, are not without a flavour of humour. the request stated that wallace and another officer of the belfast grand lodge were-- "authorised on behalf of the members thereof to apply for lawful authority to them to hold meetings of the members of the said lodge and the lodges under its jurisdiction for the purpose of training and drilling themselves and of being trained and drilled to the use of arms, and for the purpose of practising military exercises, movements, and evolutions. and we are authorised, on their behalf, to give their assurance that they desire this authority as faithful subjects of his majesty the king, and their undertaking that such authority is sought and will be used by them only to make them more efficient citizens for the purpose of maintaining the constitution of the united kingdom as now established and protecting their rights and liberties thereunder." the _bona fides_ of an application couched in these terms, which followed well-established precedent, could not be questioned by any loyal subject of his majesty. the purpose for which the licence was requested was stated with literal exactness and without subterfuge. there was nothing seditious or revolutionary in it, and the desire of men to make themselves more efficient citizens for maintaining the established government of their country, and their rights and liberties under it, was surely not merely innocent of offence, but praiseworthy. such, at all events, was the view taken by numbers of strictly conscientious holders of the commission of the peace throughout ulster, with the result that the ulster volunteer force sprang into existence within a few months without the smallest violation of the law. originating in the orange lodges and the unionist clubs, it soon enrolled large numbers of men outside both those organisations. men with military experience interested themselves in training the volunteers in their districts; the local bodies were before long drawn into a single coherent organisation on a territorial basis, which soon gave rise to an _esprit de corps_ leading to friendly rivalry in efficiency between the local battalions. this ulster volunteer force had as yet no arms in their hands, but, as the first act of the liberal government on coming into power in had been to drop the "coercion" act which prohibited the importation of firearms into ireland, there was no reason why, in the course of time, the u.v.f. should not be fully armed with as complete an avoidance of illegality as that with which in the meantime they were acquiring some knowledge of military duties. but for the present they had to be content with wooden "dummy" rifles with which to learn their drill, an expedient which, as will be seen later on, excited the derisive mirth of the english radical press. the application to the belfast justices for leave to drill the orange lodges was dated the th of january, . for some months both before and after that date the formation of new battalions proceeded rapidly, so that by the summer of the force was of considerable strength and decent efficiency; but already in the autumn of it soon became apparent that the existence of such a force would give a backing to the craigavon policy which nothing else could provide. at craigavon the leader of the movement had foreshadowed the possibility of having to take charge of the government of those districts which the loyalists could control. the u.v.f. made such control a practical proposition, and the consciousness of this throughout ulster gave a solid reality to the movement which it must otherwise have lacked. the special commission of five set to work immediately after the craigavon meeting to carry out the task entrusted to them by the council. but, as more than two years must elapse before the home rule bill could become law under the parliament act, there was no immediate urgency in making arrangements for setting up the provisional government resolved upon by the council on the th of september, , and the outside public heard nothing about what was being done in the matter for many months to come. meantime the ulster loyalists watched with something akin to dismay the dissensions in the unionist party in england over the question of tariff reform, which made impossible a united front against the revived attack on the union, and woefully weakened the effective force of the opposition both in parliament and the country. public opinion was diverted from the one thing that really mattered--had englishmen been able to realise it--from an imperial standpoint, no less than from the standpoint of irish loyalists. on the th of november, , mainly in consequence of these dissensions, mr. balfour resigned the leadership of the unionist party. this event was regarded in ulster as a calamity. mr. balfour was the ablest and most zealous living defender of the union, and the great services he had rendered to the country during his memorable chief secretaryship were not forgotten. ulstermen, in whose eyes the tariff question was of very subordinate importance, feared that no one could be found to take command of the unionist forces comparable with the achilles who, as they supposed, was now retiring to his tent. what happened in regard to the vacant leadership is well known--how mr. walter long and mr. austen chamberlain, after presenting themselves for a day or two as rival candidates, patriotically agreed to stand aside and give united support to mr. bonar law in order to avoid a division in the ranks of the party. it is less generally known that mr. bonar law, before consenting to his name being proposed, wrote and asked sir edward carson if he would accept the leadership, and that it was only when he received an emphatic reply in the negative that he assumed the responsibility himself. if this had been known at the time in ulster there can be little doubt that consternation would have been caused by the refusal of their own leader to place himself at the head of the whole unionist party. it is quite certain that sir edward carson would have been acceptable to the party meeting at the carlton club, for he was then much better known to the party both in the house of commons and in the country than was mr. bonar law, whose great qualities as parliamentarian and statesman had not yet been revealed; but it is not less certain that, if his first thought was to be of service to ulster, carson acted wisely in maintaining a position of independence, in which all his powers could continue to be concentrated on a single aim of statecraft. at all events, the new leader of the unionist party was not long in proving that the ulster cause had suffered no set-back by the change, and his constant and courageous backing of the ulster leader won him the unstinted admiration and affection of every irish loyalist. mr. balfour also soon showed that he was no sulking achilles; his loyalty to the unionist cause was undimmed; he never for a moment acted, as a meaner man might, as if his successor were a supplanter; and within the next few months he many times rose from beside mr. bonar law in the house of commons to deliver some of the best speeches he ever made on the question of irish government, full of cogent and crushing criticism of the home rule proposals of mr. asquith. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . chapter vi mr. churchill in belfast at the women's meeting at the ulster hall on the th of january, ,[ ] lord londonderry took occasion to recall once more to the memory of his audience the celebrated speech delivered by lord randolph churchill in the same building twenty-six years before. that clarion was, indeed, in no danger of being forgotten; but there happened at that particular moment to be a very special reason for ulstermen to remember it, and the incident which was present in londonderry's mind--a resolution passed by the standing committee of the ulster unionist council two days earlier--proved to be so distinct a turning-point in the history of ulster's stand for the union that it claims more than a passing mention. "diligence and vigilance should be your watchword, so that the blow, if it is coming, may not come upon you as a thief in the night, and may not find you unready and taken by surprise." such had been lord randolph's warning. it was now learnt, with feelings in which disgust and indignation were equally mingled, that lord randolph's son was bent on coming to belfast, not indeed as a thief in the night, but with challenging audacity, to give his countenance, encouragement, and support to the adherents of disloyalty whom lord randolph had told ulster to resist to the death. and not only was he coming to belfast; he was coming to the ulster hall--to the very building which his father's oration had, as it were, consecrated to the unionist cause, and which had come to be regarded as almost a loyalist shrine. it is no doubt difficult for those who are unfamiliar with the psychology of the north of ireland to understand the anger which this projected visit of mr. winston churchill aroused in belfast. his change of political allegiance from the party which his father had so brilliantly served and led, to the party which his father had so pitilessly chastised, was of course displeasing to conservatives everywhere. politicians who leave their friends to join their opponents are never popular with those they abandon, and mr. winston churchill was certainly no exception. but such desertions, after the first burst of wrath has evaporated, are generally accepted with a philosophic shrug in what journalists call "political circles" in london, where plenty of precedents for lapses from party virtue can be quoted. in the provinces, even in england, resentment dies down less easily, and forgiveness is of slow growth; but in ulster, where a political creed is held with a religious fervour, or, as a hostile critic might put it, with an intolerance unknown in england, and where the dividing line between "loyalty" and "disloyalty" is regarded almost as a matter of faith, the man who passes from the one to the other arouses the same bitterness of anger and contempt which soldiers feel for a deserter in face of the enemy. to such sentiments there was added, in the case of mr. winston churchill, a shocked feeling that his appearance in the ulster hall as an emissary of home rule would be an act not only of political apostasy but of filial impiety. the prevailing sentiment in belfast at the time was expressed somewhat brutally, perhaps, in the local press--"he is coming to dance on his father's coffin." it was an outrage on their feelings which the people of belfast could not and would not tolerate. if mr. churchill was determined to flaunt the green flag let him find a more suitable site than the very citadel in which they had been exhorted by his father to keep the union jack flying to the last. if anything could have added to the anger excited by this announcement it would have been the fact that the cabinet minister was to be accompanied on the platform of the ulster hall by mr. redmond and mr. devlin, and that lord pirrie was to be his chairman. there was no more unpopular citizen of belfast than lord pirrie; and the reason was neatly explained to english readers by the special correspondent of _the times_. "lord pirrie," he wrote, "deserted unionism about the time the liberals acceded to power, and soon afterwards was made a peer; whether _propter hoc_ or only _post hoc_ i am quite unable to say, though no ulster unionist has any doubts on the subject."[ ] but that was not quite the whole reason. that lord pirrie was an example of apostasy "just for a riband to stick in his coat," was the general belief; but it was also resented that a man who had amassed, not "a handful of silver," but an enormous fortune, through a trade created by an eminent unionist firm, and under conditions brought about in belfast by the union with great britain, should have kicked away the ladder by which he had climbed from obscurity to wealth and rank. an additional cause of offence, moreover, was that he was at that time trying to persuade credulous people in england that there was in ulster a party of liberals and protestant home rulers, of which he posed as leader, although everyone on the spot knew that the "party" would not fill a tramcar. of this party the same correspondent of _the times_ very truly said: "nearly every prominent man in it has received an office or a decoration--and the fact that, with all the power of patronage in their hands for the last six years, the government had been able to make so small an inroad into the solid square of ulster unionism is a remarkable testimony to the strength of the sentiment which gives it cohesion." but a score of individuals in possession of an office equipped with stamped stationery, and with a titled chairman of fabulous wealth, have no difficulty in deluding strangers at a distance into the belief that they are an influential and representative body of men. it was in furtherance of the scheme for creating this false impression across the channel that lord pirrie and his so-called "ulster liberal association" invited mr. winston churchill and the two nationalist leaders to speak in the ulster hall on the th of february, , and that the announcement of the fixture was made in the press some three weeks earlier. the unionist leaders were not long left in ignorance of the public excitement which this news created in the city. a specially summoned meeting of the standing committee, with londonderry in the chair, was held on the th of january to consider what action, if any, should be taken; but it was no simple matter they had to decide, especially in the absence of their leader, sir edward carson, who was kept in england by great unionist meetings which he was addressing in lancashire. the reasons, on the one hand, for doing nothing were obvious enough. no one, of course, suggested the possibility of preventing mr. churchill coming to belfast; but could even the ulster hall itself, the loyalist sanctuary, be preserved from the threatened desecration? it was the property of the corporation, and the unionist political organisation had no exclusive title to its use. the meeting could only be frustrated by force in some form, or by a combination of force and stratagem. the standing committee, all men of solid sense and judgment, several of whom were privy councillors, were very fully alive to the objections to any resort to force in such a matter. they valued freedom of speech as highly as any englishman, and they realised the odium that interference with it might bring both on themselves and their cause; and the last thing they desired at the present crisis was to alienate public sympathy in great britain. the force of such considerations was felt strongly by several members, indeed by all, of the committee, and not least by lord londonderry himself, whose counsel naturally carried great weight. but, on the other hand, the danger of a passive attitude was also fully recognised. it was perfectly well understood that one of the chief desires of the liberal government and its followers at this time was to make the world believe that ulster's opposition to home rule had declined in strength in recent years; that there really was a considerable body of protestant opinion in agreement with lord pirrie, and prepared to support home rule on "liberal," if not on avowedly "nationalist" principles, and that the policy for which carson, londonderry, and the unionist council stood was a gigantic piece of bluff which only required to be exposed to disappear in general derision. from this point of view the churchill meeting could only be regarded as a deliberate challenge and provocation to ulster. it seemed probable that the first lord of the admiralty had been selected for the mission in preference to any other minister precisely because he was lord randolph's son. all this bluster about "fight and be right" was traceable, so liberal ministers doubtless reasoned, to that unhappy speech of "winston's father"; let winston go over to the same place and explain his father away. if he obtained a hearing in the ulster hall in the company of redmond, devlin, and pirrie the legend of ulster as an impregnable loyalist stronghold would be wiped out, and randolph's rant could be made to appear a foolish joke in comparison with the more mature and discriminating wisdom of winston. it cannot, of course, be definitely asserted that the situation was thus weighed deliberately by the cabinet, or by mr. churchill himself. but, if it was not, they must have been deficient in foresight; for there can be no doubt, as several writers in the press perceived, that the transaction would so have presented itself to the mind of the public; the psychological result would inure to the benefit of the home rulers. but there was also another consideration which could not be ignored by the standing committee--namely, the attitude of that important individual, the "man in the street." among the innumerable misrepresentations levelled at the ulster movement none was more common than that it was confined to a handful of lords, landlords, and wealthy employers of labour; and, as a corollary, that all the trouble was caused by the perversity of a few individuals, of whom the most guilty was sir edward carson. the truth was very different. even at the zenith of his influence and popularity sir edward himself would have been instantly disowned by the ulster democracy if he had given away anything fundamental to the unionist cause. more than to anything else he owed his power to his pledge, never violated, that he would never commit his followers to any irretraceable step without the consent of the council, in which they were fully represented on a democratic basis. at the particular crisis now reached popular feeling could not be safely disregarded, and it was clearly understood by the standing committee that public excitement over the coming visit of mr. churchill was only being kept within bounds by the belief of the public that their leaders would not "let them down." all these considerations were most carefully balanced at the meeting on the th of january, and there were prolonged deliberations before the decision was arrived at that some action must be taken to prevent the churchill meeting being held in the ulster hall, but that no obstacle could, of course, be made to his speaking in any other building in belfast. the further question as to what this action should be was under discussion when colonel r.h. wallace, c.b., grand master of the belfast orangemen, and a man of great influence with all classes in the city as well as in the neighbouring counties, entered the room and told the committee that people outside were expecting the unionist council to devise means for stopping the ulster hall meeting; that they were quite resolved to take matters into their own hands if the council remained passive; and that, in his judgment, the result in that event would probably be very serious disorder and bloodshed, and the loss of all control over the unionist rank and file by their leaders. this information arrived too late to influence the decision on the main question, but it confirmed its wisdom and set at rest the doubts which some of the committee had at first entertained. it was reported at the time that there had been a dissenting minority consisting of lord londonderry, mr. sinclair, and mr. john young, the last-mentioned being a privy councillor, a trusted leader of the presbyterians, and a man of moderate views whose great influence throughout the north-eastern counties was due to his high character and the soundness of his judgment. there was, however, no truth in this report, which londonderry publicly contradicted; but it is probable that the concurrence of the men mentioned, and perhaps of others, was owing to their well-founded conviction that the course decided upon, however high-handed it might appear to onlookers at a distance, was in reality the only means of averting much more deplorable consequences. on the following day, january th, an immense sensation was created by the publication of the resolution which had been unanimously adopted on the motion of captain james craig, m.p. it was: "that the standing committee of the ulster unionist council observes with astonishment the deliberate challenge thrown down by mr. winston churchill, mr. john redmond, mr. joseph devlin, and lord pirrie in announcing their intention to hold a home rule meeting in the centre of the loyal city of belfast, and resolves to take steps to prevent its being held." there was an immediate outpouring of vituperation by the ministerial press in england, as had been anticipated by the standing committee. special correspondents trooped over to belfast, whence they filled their papers with telegrams, articles, and interviews, ringing the changes on the audacity of this unwarranted interference with freedom of speech, and speculating as to the manner in which the threat, was likely to be carried out. scribes of "open letters" had a fine opportunity to display their gift of insolent invective. cartoonists and caricaturists had a time of rare enjoyment, and let their pencils run riot. writers in the liberal press for the most part assumed that mr. churchill would bid defiance to the ulster unionist council; others urged him to do so and to fulfil his engagement; some, with more prudence, suggested that he might be extricated from the difficulty without loss of dignity if the chief secretary would prohibit the meeting, as likely to produce a breach of peace, and it was pointed out that dublin castle would certainly forbid a meeting in tipperary organised by the ulster unionist council, with sir edward carson as principal speaker. however, on the th of january mr. churchill addressed a letter, dated from the admiralty, to lord londonderry at mount stewart, in which he said he was prepared to give up the idea of speaking in the ulster hall, and would arrange for his meeting to be held elsewhere in the city, as "it was not a point of any importance to him where he spoke in belfast." he did not explain why, if that were the case, he had ever made a plan that so obviously constituted a direct premeditated challenge to ulster. lord londonderry, in his reply, said that the ulster unionist council had no intention of interfering with any meeting mr. churchill might arrange "outside the districts which passionately resent your action," but that, "having regard to the intense state of feeling" which had been aroused, the council could accept no responsibility for anything that might occur during the visit. mr. churchill's prudent change of plan relieved the extreme tension of the situation, and there was much speculation as to what influence had produced a result so satisfactory to the ulster unionist council. the truth seems to be that the council's resolution had impaled the government on the horns of a very awkward dilemma, completely turning the tables on ministers, whose design had been to compel the belfast unionists either to adopt, on the one hand, an attitude of apparent intolerance which would put them in the wrong in the eyes of the british public, or, on the other, to submit to the flagrant misrepresentation of their whole position which would be the outcome of a nationalist meeting in the ulster hall presided over by the president of the illusory "ulster liberal association," and with lord randolph churchill's son as the protagonist of home rule. the threat to stop the meeting forced the government to consider how the first lord of the admiralty and his friends were to be protected and enabled to fulfil their programme. the irish executive, according to the dublin correspondent of _the times_, objected to the employment of troops for this purpose; because-- "if the belfast unionists decided to resist the soldiers, bloodshed and disorder on a large scale must have ensued. if, on the other hand, they yielded to the _force majeure_ of british bayonets, and mr. churchill was enabled to speak in the ulster hall, they would still have carried their point; they would have proved to the english people that home rule could only be thrust upon ulster by an overwhelming employment of military force. the executive preferred to depend on the services of a large police force. and this meant that mr. churchill could not speak in the ulster hall; for the belfast democracy, though it might yield to soldiers, would certainly offer a fierce resistance to the police. it seemed, therefore, that the government's only safe and prudent course was to prevent mr. churchill from trying to speak in that hall."[ ] the government, in fact, had been completely out-manoeuvred. they had given the ulster unionist council an opportunity to show its own constituents and the outside world that, where the occasion demanded action, it could act with decision; and they had failed utterly to drive a wedge between ulster and the unionist party in england and in the south of ireland, as they hoped to do by goading belfast into illegality. on the other hand, they had aroused some misgiving in the ranks of their own supporters. a political observer in london reported that the incident had-- "caused a feeling of considerable apprehension in radical circles. the pretence that ulster does not mean to fight is now almost abandoned even by the most fanatical home rulers."[ ] unionist journals in great britain, almost without exception, applauded the conduct of the council, and proved by their comments that they understood its motive, and sympathised with the feelings of ulster. _the saturday review_ expressed the general view when it wrote: "with the indignation of the loyal ulstermen at this proposal we are in complete sympathy. where there is a question of home rule, the ulster hall is sacred ground, and to the ulster mind and, indeed, to the mind of any calm outsider, there is something both impudent and impious in the proposal that this temple of unionism should be profaned by the son of a man who assisted at its consecration."[ ] the southern unionists of ireland thoroughly appreciated the difficulty that had confronted their friends in the north, and approved the way it had been met. this was natural enough, since, as the dublin correspondent of _the times_ pointed out-- "they understand ulster's position better than it can be understood in england. they realise that the provocation has been extreme. there has been a deliberate conspiracy to persuade the english people, first, that ulster is weakening in its opposition to home rule; and, next, that its declared refusal to accept home rule in any form is mere bluff. it became necessary for ulster to defeat this conspiracy, and the ulster council's resolution has defeated it."[ ] a few days later a still more valuable token of sympathy and support from across the channel gave fresh encouragement to ulster. on the th of january mr. bonar law made his first public speech as leader of the unionist party, when he addressed an audience of ten thousand people in the albert hall in london. in the course of a masterly analysis of the dangers inseparable from home rule, he once more drew attention to "the dishonesty with which the government hid home rule before the election, and now propose to carry it after the election"; but the passage which gave the greatest satisfaction in ulster was that in which, speaking for the whole unionist party--which meant at least half, and probably more than half, the british nation--mr. bonar law, in reference to the recent occurrence in belfast, said: "we hear a great deal about the intolerance of ulster. it is easy to be tolerant for other people. we who represent the unionist party in england and scotland have supported, and we mean to support to the end, the loyal minority. we support them not because we are intolerant, but because their claims are just." meanwhile, mr. churchill's friends were seeking a building in belfast where the baffled minister could hold his meeting on the th of february, and in the course of the search the director of the belfast opera-house was offered a knighthood as well as a large sum of money for the use of his theatre,[ ] a fact that possibly explains the statement made by the london correspondent of _the freeman's journal_ on the th of january, that the government's chief whip and patronage secretary was busying himself with the arrangement.[ ] captain frederick guest, m.p., one of the junior whips, arrived in belfast on the th to give assistance on the spot; but no suitable hall with an auspicious _genius loci_ could apparently be found, for eventually a marquee was imported from scotland and erected on the celtic football ground, in the nationalist quarter of the city. the question of maintaining order on the day of the meeting was at the same time engaging the attention both of the government in dublin and the unionist council in belfast. the former decided to strengthen the garrison of belfast by five battalions of infantry and two squadrons of cavalry, while at the old town hall anxious consultations were held as to the best means of securing that the soldiers should have nothing to do. the unionist leaders had not yet gained the full influence they were able to exercise later, nor were their followers as disciplined as they afterwards became. the orange lodges were the only section of the population in any sense under discipline; and this section was a much smaller proportion of the unionist rank and file than english liberals supposed, who were in the habit of speaking as if "orangemen" were a correct cognomen of the whole protestant population of ulster. it was, however, only through the lodges and the unionist clubs that the standing committee could hope to exert influence in keeping the peace. that committee, accordingly, passed a resolution on the th of february, moved by colonel wallace, the most influential of the belfast orangemen, which "strongly urged all unionists," in view of the ulster hall victory, "to abstain from any interference with the meeting at the celtic football ground, and to do everything in their power to avoid any action that might lead to any disturbance." the resolution was circulated to all the orange lodges and unionist clubs in belfast and the neighbouring districts--for it was expected that some , or , people might come into the city from outside on the day of the meeting--with urgent injunctions to the officers to bring it to the notice of all members; it was also extensively placarded on all the hoardings of belfast. of even greater importance perhaps, in the interests of peace, was the decision that carson and londonderry should themselves remain in belfast on the th. this, as _the times_ correspondent in belfast had the insight to observe, was "the strongest guarantee of order" that could be given, and there is no doubt that their appearance, together with captain craig, m.p., and lord templetown, on the balcony of the ulster club had a calming effect on the excited crowd that surged round mr. churchill's hotel, and served as a reminder throughout the day of the advice which these leaders had issued to their adherents. the first lord of the admiralty was accompanied to belfast by mrs. churchill, his secretary, and two liberal members of parliament, mr. fiennes and mr. hamar greenwood--for the last-mentioned of whom fate was reserving a more intimate connection with irish trouble than could be got from a fleeting flirtation with disloyalty in west belfast. they were greeted at larne by a large crowd vociferously cheering carson, and singing the national anthem. a still larger concourse of people, though it could not be more hostile, awaited mr. churchill at the midland station in belfast and along the route to the grand central hotel. when he started from the hotel early in the afternoon for the football field the crowd in royal avenue was densely packed and actively demonstrating its unfavourable opinion of the distinguished visitor; on whom, however, none desired or attempted to inflict any physical injury, although the involuntary swaying of so great a mass of men was in danger for a moment of overturning the motor-car in which he and his wife were seated. the way to the meeting took the minister from the unionist to the nationalist district and afforded him a practical demonstration of the gulf between the "two nations" which he and his colleagues were bent upon treating as one. the moment he crossed the boundary, the booing and groaning of one area was succeeded by enthusiastic cheers in the other; grotesque effigies of redmond and of himself in one street were replaced by equally unflattering effigies of londonderry and carson in the next; in royal avenue both men and women looked like tearing him in pieces, in falls road they thronged so close to shake his hand that "mr. hamar greenwood found it necessary" (so the _times_ correspondent reported) "to stand on the footboard outside the car and relieve the pressure." it was expected that mr. churchill would return to his hotel after the meeting, and there had been no shrinkage in the crowd in the interval, nor any change in its sentiments. the police decided that it would be wiser for him to depart by another route. he was therefore taken by back streets to the midland terminus, and without waiting for the ordinary train by which he had arranged to travel, was as hastily as possible despatched to larne by a special train before it was generally known that royal avenue and york street were to see him no more. mr. churchill tells us in his brilliant biography of his father that when lord randolph arrived at larne in "he was welcomed like a king." his own arrival at the same port was anything but regal, and his departure more resembled that of the "thief in the night," of whom lord randolph had bidden ulster beware. so this memorable pilgrimage ended. of the speech itself which mr. churchill delivered to some thousands of nationalists, many of whom were brought by special train from dublin, it is unnecessary here to say more than that sir edward carson described it a few days later as a "speech full of eloquent platitudes," and that it certainly did little to satisfy the demand for information about the home rule bill which was to be produced in the coming session of parliament. the undoubted importance which this visit of mr. churchill to belfast and its attendant circumstances had in the development of the ulster movement is the justification for treating it in what may appear to be disproportionate detail. from it dates the first clear realisation even by hostile critics in england, and probably by ministers themselves, that the policy of ulster as laid down at craigavon could not be dismissed with a sneer, although it is true that there were many home rulers who never openly abandoned the pretence that it could. not less important was the effect in ulster itself. the unionist council had proved itself in earnest; it could, and was prepared to, do more than organise imposing political demonstrations; and so the rank and file gained confidence in leaders who could act as well as make speeches, and who had shown themselves in an emergency to be in thorough accord with popular sentiment; the belief grew that the men who met in the old town hall would know how to handle any crisis that might arise, would not timidly shrink from acting as occasion might require, and were quite able to hold their own with the government in tactical manoeuvres. this confidence improved discipline. the lodges and the clubs and the general body of shipyard and other workers had less temptation to take matters into their own hands; they were content to wait for instructions from headquarters now that they could trust their leaders to give the necessary instructions at the proper time. the net result, therefore, of an expedition which was designed to expose the hollowness and the weakness of the ulster case was to augment the prestige of the ulster leaders and the self-confidence of the ulster people, and to make both leaders and followers understand better than before the strength of the position in which they were entrenched. footnotes: [ ] see _ante_, p. . [ ] _the times_, january th, . [ ] _the times_, january th, . [ ] _the standard_, january th, . [ ] _the saturday review_, january th, . [ ] _the times_, january th, . [ ] see interview with mr. f.w. warden in _the standard_, february th, . [ ] see dublin correspondent's telegram in _the times_, january th, . chapter vii "what answer from the north?" public curiosity as to the proposals that the coming home rule bill might contain was not set at rest by mr. churchill's oration in belfast. the constitution-mongers were hard at work with suggestions. attempts were made to conciliate hesitating opinion by representing irish home rule as a step in the direction of a general federal system for the united kingdom, and by tracing an analogy with the constitutions already granted to the self-governing dominions. closely connected with the federal idea was the question of finance. there was lively speculation as to what measure of control over taxation the bill would confer on the irish parliament, and especially whether it would be given the power to impose duties of customs and excise. home rulers themselves were sharply divided on the question. at a conference held at the london school of economics on the th of january, , professor t.m. kettle, mr. erskine childers, and mr. thomas lough, m.p., declared themselves in favour of irish fiscal autonomy, while lord macdonnell opposed the idea as irreconcilable with the fiscal policy of great britain.[ ] the latter opinion was very forcibly maintained a few weeks later by a member of the government with some reputation as an economist. speaking to a branch of the united irish league in london, mr. j.m. robertson, parliamentary secretary to the board of trade, summarily rejected fiscal autonomy for ireland, which, he said, "really meant a claim for separation." "to give fiscal autonomy," he added, "would mean disintegration of the united kingdom. fiscal autonomy for ireland put an end altogether to all talk of federal home rule, and he could see no hope for a home rule bill if it included fiscal autonomy."[ ] although the secretary to the board of trade was probably not in the confidence of the cabinet, many people took mr. robertson's speech as an indication of the limits of financial control that the bill would give to ireland. on the same day that it was delivered the dublin correspondent of _the times_ reported that the demand of the nationalists for control of customs and excise was rapidly growing, and that any bill which withheld it, even if it could scrape through a national convention, "would never survive the two succeeding years of agitation and criticism"; and he agreed with mr. robertson that if, on the other hand, fiscal autonomy should be conceded, it would destroy all prospect of a settlement on federal lines, and would "establish virtual separation between ireland and great britain." he predicted that "ulster, of course, would resist to the bitter end."[ ] ulster, in point of fact, took but a secondary interest in the question. her people were indeed opposed to anything that would enlarge the separation from england, or emphasise it, and, as they realised, like the secretary to the board of trade, that fiscal autonomy would have this effect, they opposed fiscal autonomy; but they cared little about the thing in itself one way or the other. nor did they greatly concern themselves whether home rule proceeded on federal lines or any other lines; nor whether some apt analogy could or could not be found between ireland and the dominions of the crown thousands of miles oversea. having made up their minds that no dublin parliament should exercise jurisdiction over themselves, they did not worry themselves much about the powers with which such a parliament might be endowed. it is noteworthy, however, in view of the importance which the question afterwards attained, that so early as january sir edward carson, speaking in manchester, maintained that without fiscal autonomy home rule was impossible,[ ] and that some months later mr. bonar law, in a speech at glasgow on the st of may, said that if the unionist party were in a position where they had to concede home rule to ireland they would include fiscal autonomy in the grant.[ ] these leaders, who, unlike the liberal ministers, had some knowledge of the irish temperament, realised from the first the absurdity of mr. asquith's attempt to satisfy the demands of "the rebel party" by offering something very different from what that party demanded. the ulster leader and the leader of the unionist party knew as well as anybody that fiscal autonomy meant "virtual separation between ireland and great britain," but they also knew that separation was the ultimate aim of nationalist policy, and that there could be no finality in the liberal compromise; and they no doubt agreed with the forcible language used by mr. balfour in the previous autumn, when he said that "the rotten hybrid system of a parliament with municipal duties and a national feeling seemed to be the dream of political idiots." the ferment of speculation as to the government's intentions continued during the early weeks of the parliamentary session, which opened on the th of february, but all inquiries by members of the house of commons were met by variations on the theme "wait and see." unionists, however, realised that it was not in parliament, but outside, that the only effective work could be done, in the hope of forcing a dissolution of parliament before the bill could become law. a vigorous campaign was conducted throughout the country, especially in lancashire, and arrangements were made for a monster demonstration in belfast, which should serve both as a counter-blast to the churchill fiasco, and for enabling english and scottish unionists to test for themselves the temper of the ulster resistance. in the belief that the home rule bill would be introduced before easter, it was decided to hold this meeting in the recess, as mr. bonar law had promised to speak, and a number of english members of parliament wished to be present. at the last moment the government announced that the bill would not be presented till the th of april, after parliament reassembled, and its provisions were therefore still unknown when the demonstration took place on the th in the show ground of the royal agricultural society at balmoral, a suburb of belfast. feeling ran high as the date of the double event approached, and the indignant sense of wrong that prevailed in ulster was finely voiced in a poem, entitled "ulster ," written by mr. kipling for the occasion which appeared in _the morning post_ on the day of the balmoral demonstration, of which the first and last stanzas were: "the dark eleventh hour draws on, and sees us sold to every evil power we fought against of old. rebellion, rapine, hate, oppression, wrong, and greed are loosed to rule our fate, by england's act and deed. "believe, we dare not boast, believe, we do not fear-- we stand to pay the cost in all that men hold dear. what answer from the north? one law, one land, one throne. if england drive us forth we shall not fall alone!" the preparations for the unionist leader's coming visit to belfast had excited the keenest interest throughout england and scotland. coinciding as it did with the introduction of the government's bill, it was recognised to be the formal countersigning by the whole unionist party of great britain of ulster's proclamation of her determination to resist her forcible degradation in constitutional status. the same note of mingled reproach and defiance which sounded in kipling's verses was heard in the grave warning addressed by _the times_ to the country in a leading article on the morning of the meeting: "nobody of common judgment and common knowledge of political movements can honestly doubt the exceptional gravity of the occasion, and least of all can any such doubt be felt by any who know the men of ulster. to make light of the deep-rooted convictions which fill the minds of those who will listen to mr. bonar law to-day is a shallow and an idle affectation, or a token of levity and of ignorance. enlightened liberalism may smile at the beliefs and the passions of the ulster protestants, but it was those same beliefs and passions, in the forefathers of the men who will gather in belfast to-day, which saved ireland for the british crown, and freed the cause of civil and religious liberty in these islands from its last dangerous foes.... it is useless to argue that they are mistaken. they have reasons, never answered yet, for believing that they are not mistaken.... their temper is an ultimate fact which british statesmen and british citizens have to face. these men cannot be persuaded to submit to home rule. are englishmen and scotchmen prepared to fasten it upon them by military force? that is the real ulster question." other great english newspapers wrote in similar strain, and the support thus given was of the greatest possible encouragement to the ulster people, who were thereby assured that their standpoint was not misunderstood and that the justice of their "loyalist" claims was appreciated across the channel. among the numberless popular demonstrations which marked the history of ulster's stand against home rule, four stand out pre-eminent in the impressiveness of their size and character. those who attended the ulster convention of were persuaded that no political meeting could ever be more inspiring; but many of them lived to acknowledge that it was far surpassed at craigavon in . the craigavon meeting, though in some respects as important as any of the series, was, from a spectacular point of view, much less imposing than the assemblage which listened to mr. bonar law at balmoral on easter tuesday, ; and the latter occasion, though never surpassed in splendour and magnitude by any single gathering, was in significance but a prelude to the magnificent climax reached in the following september on the day when the covenant was signed throughout ulster. the balmoral demonstration had, however, one distinctive feature. at it the unionist party of great britain met and grasped the hand of ulster loyalism. it gave the leader and a large number of his followers an opportunity to judge for themselves the strength and sincerity of ulster, and at the same time it served to show the ulstermen the weight of british opinion ready to back them. mr. bonar law was accompanied to belfast by no less than seventy members of parliament, representing english, scottish, and welsh constituencies, not a few of whom had already attained, or afterwards rose to, political distinction. among them were mr. walter long, lord hugh cecil, sir robert finlay, lord charles beresford, lord castlereagh, mr. amery, mr. j.d. baird, sir arthur griffith-boscawen, mr. ian malcolm, lord claud hamilton, mr. j.g. butcher, mr. ernest pollock, mr. george cave, mr. felix cassel, mr. ormsby-gore, mr. scott dickson, mr. w. peel, captain gilmour, mr. george lloyd, mr. j.w. hills, mr. george lane-fox, mr. stuart-wortley, mr. j.f.p. rawlinson, mr. h.j. mackinder, and mr. herbert nield. the reception of the unionist leader at larne on easter monday was wonderful, even to those who knew what a larne welcome to loyalist leaders could be, and who recalled the scenes there during the historic visits of lord randolph churchill, lord salisbury, and mr. balfour. "if this is how you treat your friends," said mr. bonar law simply, in reply to one of the innumerable addresses presented to him, "i am glad i am not an enemy." before reaching belfast he had ample opportunity at every stopping-place of his train to note the fervour of the populace. "are all these people landlords?" he asked (in humorous allusion to the liberal legend that ulster unionism was manufactured by a few aristocratic landowners), as he saw every platform thronged with enthusiastic crowds of men and women, the majority of whom were evidently of the poorer classes. in belfast the concourse of people was so dense in the streets that the motor-car in which mr. bonar law and sir edward carson sat side by side found it difficult to make its way to the reform club, the headquarters of what had once been ulster liberalism, where an address was presented in which it was stated that the conduct of the government "will justify loyal ulster in resorting to the most extreme measures in resisting home rule." in his reply mr. bonar law gave them "on behalf of the unionist party this message--though the brunt of the battle will be yours, there will not be wanting help from 'across the channel.'" at comber, where a stop was made on the way to mount stewart, he asked himself how radical scotsmen would like to be treated as the government were treating protestant ulster. "i know scotland well," he replied to his own question, "and i believe that, rather than submit to such fate, the scottish people would face a second bannockburn or a second flodden." these few quotations from the first utterances of mr. bonar law on his arrival are sufficient to show how complete was the understanding between him and the ulster people even before the great demonstration of the following day. he had, as _the times_ correspondent noted, "already found favour with the belfast crowd. all the way from larne by train to belfast and through belfast by motor-car to newtownards and mount stewart, his progress was a triumph." the remarks of the same experienced observer on the eve of the balmoral meeting are worth recording, especially as his anticipations were amply fulfilled. "to-morrow's demonstration," he telegraphed from belfast, "both in numbers and enthusiasm, promises to be the most remarkable ever seen in ireland. if expectations are realised the assemblage of men will be twice as numerous as the whole white population of the witwatersrand, whose grievances led to the south african war, and they will represent a community greater in numbers than the white population of south africa as a whole. unless all the signs are misleading, it will be the demonstration of a community in the deadliest earnest. by the protestant community of ulster, home rule is regarded as a menace to their faith, to their material well-being and prosperity, and to their freedom and national traditions, and thus all the most potent motives which in history have stirred men to their greatest efforts are here in operation." no written description, unless by the pen of some gifted imaginative writer, could convey any true impression of the scenes that were witnessed the following day in the show ground at balmoral and the roads leading to it from the heart of the city. the photographs published at the time give some idea of the apparently unbounded ocean of earnest, upturned faces, closely packed round the several platforms, and stretching away far into a dim and distant background; but even they could not record the impressive stillness of the vast multitude, its orderliness, which required the presence of not a single policeman, its spirit of almost religious solemnity which struck every observant onlooker. no profusion of superlative adjectives can avail to reproduce such scenes, any more than words, no matter how skilfully chosen, can convey the tone of a violin in the hands of a master. even the mere number of those who took part in the demonstration cannot be guessed with any real accuracy. there was a procession of men, whose fine physique and military smartness were noticed by visitors from england, which was reported to have taken three hours to pass a given point marching in fours, and was estimated to be not less than , strong, while those who went independently to the ground or crowded the route were reckoned to be at least as many more. the correspondent of _the times_ declared that "it was hardly by hyperbole that sir edward carson claimed that it was one of the largest assemblies in the history of the world." but the moral effect of such gatherings is not to be gauged by numbers alone. the demeanour of the people, which no organisation or stage management could influence, impressed the english journalists and members of parliament even more than the gigantic scale of the demonstration. there was not a trace of the picnic spirit. there was no drunkenness, no noisy buffoonery, no unseemly behaviour. the ulster habit of combining politics and prayer--which was not departed from at balmoral, where the proceedings were opened by the primate of all ireland and the moderator of the presbyterian church--was jeered at by people who never witnessed an ulster loyalist meeting; but the editor of _the observer_, himself a roman catholic, remarked with more insight that "the protestant mind does not use prayer simply as part of a parade;" and _the times_ correspondent, who has already been more than once quoted, was struck by the fervour with which at balmoral "the whole of the vast gathering joined in singing the th psalm," and he added the very just comment that "it is the custom in ulster to mark in this solemn manner the serious nature of the issue when the union is the question, as something different from a question of mere party politics." the spectacular aspect of the demonstration was admirably managed. a saluting point was so arranged that the procession, on entering the enclosure, could divide into two columns, one passing each side of a small pavilion where mr. bonar law, sir edward carson, lord londonderry, and mr. walter long stood to take the salute before proceeding to the stand which held the principal platform for the delivery of the speeches. in the centre of the ground was a signalling-tower with a flagstaff feet high, on which a union jack measuring feet by and said to be the largest ever woven, was broken at the moment when the resolution against home rule was put to the meeting. mr. bonar law, visibly moved by the scene before him, made a speech that profoundly affected his audience, although it was characteristically free from rhetorical display. a recent incident in dublin, where the sight of the british flag flying within view of a nationalist meeting had been denounced as "an intolerable insult," supplied him, when he compared it with the spectacle presented by the meeting, with an apt illustration of the contrast between "the two nations" in ireland--the loyal and the disloyal. he told the ulstermen that he had come to them as the leader of the unionist party to give them the assurance that "that party regard your cause, not as yours alone, nor as ours alone, but as the cause of the empire"; the meeting, which he had expected to be a great gathering but which far exceeded his expectation, proved that ulster's hostility to home rule, far from having slackened, as enemies had alleged, had increased and solidified with the passing years; they were men "animated by a unity of purpose, by a fixity of resolution which nothing can shake and which must prove irresistible," to whom he would apply cromwell's words to his ironsides: "you are men who know what you are fighting for, and love what you know." then, after an analysis of the practical evils that home rule would engender and the benefits which legislative union secured, he again emphasised the lack of mandate for the government policy. his hearers, he said, "knew the shameful story": how the radicals had twice failed to obtain the sanction of the british people for home rule, "and now for the third time they were trying to carry it not only without the sanction, but against the will, of the british people." the peroration which followed made an irresistible appeal to a people always mindful of the glories of the relief of derry. mr. bonar law warned them that the ministerial majority in the house of commons, "now cemented by £ a year," could not be broken up, but would have their own way. he therefore said to them: "with all solemnity--you must trust in yourselves. once again you hold the pass--the pass for the empire. you are a besieged city. the timid have left you; your lundys have betrayed you; but you have closed your gates. the government have erected by their parliament act a boom against you to shut you off from the help of the british people. you will burst that boom. that help will come, and when the crisis is over men will say to you in words not unlike those used by pitt--you have saved yourselves by your exertions and you will save the empire by your example." the overwhelming ovation with which sir edward carson was received upon taking the president's chair at the chief platform, in the absence through illness of the duke of abercorn, proved that he had already won the confidence and the affection of the ulster people to a degree that seemed to leave little room for growth, although every subsequent appearance he made among them in the years that lay ahead seemed to add intensity to their demonstrations of personal devotion. the most dramatic moment at balmoral--if for once the word so hackneyed and misused by journalists may be given its true signification--the most dramatic moment was when the ulster leader and the leader of the whole unionist party each grasped the other's hand in view of the assembled multitude, as though formally ratifying a compact made thus publicly on the eve of battle. it was the consummation of the purpose of this assembly of the unionist hosts on ulster soil, and gave assurance of unity of aim and undivided command in the coming struggle. of the other speeches delivered, many of them of a high quality, especially, perhaps, those of lord hugh cecil, sir robert finlay, and mr. scott dickson, it is enough to say that they all conveyed the same message of encouragement to ulster, the same promise of undeviating support. one detail, however, deserves mention, because it shows the direction in which men's thoughts were then moving. mr. walter long, whose great services to the cause of the union procured him a welcome second in warmth to that of no other leader, after thanking londonderry and carson "for the great lead they have given us in recent difficult weeks "--an allusion to the churchill incident that was not lost on the audience--added with a blunt directness characteristic of the speaker: "if they are going to put lord londonderry and sir edward carson into the dock, they will have to find one large enough to hold the whole unionist party." the balmoral demonstration was recognised on all sides as one of the chief landmarks in the ulster movement. the craigavon policy was not only reaffirmed with greater emphasis than before by the people of ulster themselves, but it received the deliberate endorsement of the unionist party in england and scotland. moreover, as mr. long's speech explicitly promised, and mr. bonar law's speech unmistakably implied, british support was not to be dependent on ulster's opposition to home rule being kept within strictly legal limits. indeed, it had become increasingly evident that opposition so limited must be impotent, since, as mr. bonar law pointed out, ministers and their majority in the house of commons were in mr. redmond's pocket, and had no choice but to "toe the line," while the "boom" which they had erected by the parliament act cut off ulster from access to the british constituencies, unless that boom could be burst as the boom across the foyle was broken by the _mountjoy_ in . the unionist leader had warned the ulstermen that in these circumstances they must expect nothing from parliament, but must trust in themselves. they did not mistake his meaning, and they were quite ready to take his advice. coming, as it did, two days before the introduction of the government's bill, the balmoral demonstration profoundly influenced opinion in the country. the average englishman, when his political party is in a minority, damns the government, shrugs his shoulders, and goes on his way, not rejoicing indeed, but with apathetic resignation till the pendulum swings again. he now awoke to the fact that the ulstermen meant business. he realised that a political crisis of the first magnitude was visible on the horizon. the vague talk about "civil war" began to look as if it might have something in it, and it was evident that the provisions of the forthcoming bill, about which there had been so much eager anticipation, would be of quite secondary importance since neither the cabinet nor the house of commons would have the last word. supporters of the government in the press could think of nothing better to do in these circumstances than to pour out abuse, occasionally varied by ridicule, on the unionist leaders, of which sir edward carson came in for the most generous portion. he was by turns everything that was bad, dangerous, and absurd, from mephistopheles to a madman. "f.c.g." summarised the balmoral meeting pictorially in a _westminster gazette_ cartoon as a costermonger's donkey-cart in which carson, londonderry, and bonar law, refreshed by "orangeade," took "an easter jaunt in ulster," and other caricaturists used their pencils with less humour and more malice with the same object of belittling the demonstration with ridicule. but ridicule is not so potent a weapon in england or in ulster as it is said to be in france. it did nothing to weaken the ulster cause; it even strengthened it in some ways. it was about this time that hostile writers began to refer to "king carson," and to represent him as exercising regal sway over his "subjects" in ulster. those "subjects" were delighted; they took it as a compliment to their leader's position and power, and did not in the least resent the role assigned to themselves. on the other hand, they did resent very hotly the vulgar insolence often levelled at their "sir edward." he himself was always quite indifferent to it, sometimes even amused by it. on one occasion, when something particularly outrageous had appeared with reference to him in some radical paper, he delighted a public meeting by solemnly reading the passage, and when the angry cries of "shame, shame" had subsided, saying with a smile: "this sort of thing is only the manure that fertilises my reputation with you who know me." and that was true. if home rulers, whether in ireland or in great britain, ever seriously thought of conciliating ulster, as mr. redmond professed to desire, they never made a greater mistake than in saying and writing insulting things about carson. it only endeared him more and more to his followers, and it intensified the bitterness of their feeling against the nationalists and all their works. an almost equally short-sighted error on the part of hostile critics was the idea that the attitude of ulster as exhibited at craigavon and balmoral should be represented as mere bluster and bluff, to which the only proper reply was contempt. there never was anything further removed from the truth, as anyone ought to have known who had the smallest acquaintance with irish history or with the character of the race that had supplied the backbone of washington's army; but, if there had been at any time an element of bluff in their attitude, their contemptuous critics took the surest means of converting it into grim earnestness of purpose. mr. redmond himself was ill-advised enough to set an example in this respect. in an article published by _reynold's newspaper_ in january he had scoffed at the "stupid, hollow, and unpatriotic bellowings" of the loyalists in belfast. some few opponents had enough sense to take a different line in their comments on balmoral. one article in particular which appeared in _the star_ on the day of the demonstration attracted much attention for this reason. "we have never yielded," it said, "to the temptation to deride or to belittle the resistance of ulster to home rule.... the subjugation of protestant ulster by force is one of those things that do not happen in our politics.... it is, we know, a popular delusion that ulster is a braggart whose words are empty bluff. we are convinced that ulster means what she says, and that she will make good every one of her warnings." _the star_ went on to implore liberals not to be driven "into an attitude of bitter hostility to the ulster protestants," with whom it declared they had much in common. after balmoral there was certainly more disposition than before on the part of liberal home rulers to acknowledge the sincerity of ulster and the gravity of the position created by her opposition, and this disposition showed itself in the debates on the bill; but, speaking generally, the warning of _the star_ was disregarded by its political adherents, and its neglect contributed not a little to the embitterment of the controversy. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] _the times_, february rd, . [ ] ibid. [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] ibid., p. . chapter viii the exclusion of ulster within forty-eight hours of the balmoral meeting the prime minister moved for leave to introduce the third home rule bill in the house of commons. carson immediately stated the ulster case in a powerful speech which left no room for doubt that, while every clause in the bill would be contested, it was the setting up of an executive administration responsible to a parliament in dublin--that is to say, the central principle of the measure--that would be most strenuously opposed. there is no occasion here to explain in detail the proposals contained in mr. asquith's home rule bill. they form part of the general history of the period, and are accessible to all who care to examine them. our concern is with the endeavour of ulster to prevent, if possible, the passage of the bill to the statute-book, and, if that should prove impracticable, to prevent its enforcement "in those districts of which they had control." but one or two points that were made in the course of the debates which occupied parliament for the rest of the year claim a moment's notice in their bearing on the subject in hand. mr. bonar law lost no time in fully redeeming the promises he made at balmoral. challenged to repeat in parliament the charges he had made against the government in ulster, he not only repeated them with emphasis, but by closely-knit reasoning justified them with chapter and verse. as to balmoral, "it really was not like a political demonstration; it was the expression of the soul of a people." he declared that "the gulf between the two peoples in ireland was really far wider than the gulf between ireland and great britain." he then dealt specifically with the threatened resistance of ulster. "these people in ulster," he said, "are under no illusion. they know they cannot fight the british army. the people of ulster know that, if the soldiers receive orders to shoot, it will be their duty to obey. they will have no ill-will against them for obeying. but they are ready, in what they believe to be the cause of justice and liberty, to lay down their lives. how are you going to overcome that resistance? do honourable members believe that any prime minister could give orders to shoot down men whose only crime is that they refuse to be driven out of our community and be deprived of the privilege of british citizenship? the thing is impossible. all your talk about details, the union of hearts and the rest of it, is a sham. this is a reality. it is a rock, and on that rock this bill will inevitably make shipwreck." the unionist leader then made a searching exposure of the traffic and bargaining between the cabinet and the nationalists by which the support of the latter had been bought for a budget which they hated, the price paid being the premier's improper advice to the crown, leading to the mutilation of the constitution; the acknowledgment in the preamble to the parliament act that an immediate reform of the second chamber was a "debt of honour"; the omission to redeem that debt, which had provided a new proverb--"lying as a preamble"; and, finally, the determination to carry home rule after deliberately keeping it out of sight during the elections. the prime minister's "debt of honour must wait until he has paid his debt of shame"; and the latter debt was being paid by the proposals they were then debating. if those proposals had been submitted to the electors, "there would be a difference," said mr. bonar law, "between the unionists in england and the unionists in ireland. now there is none. we can imagine nothing which the unionists in ireland can do which will not be justified against a trick of this kind." dissatisfaction with the financial clauses of the bill was expressed at once by the general council of county councils in ireland, a purely nationalist body; but on the rd of april a nationalist convention in dublin, under the influence of mr. redmond's oratory, accepted the whole of the government's proposals with enthusiasm. the first and second readings of the bill were duly carried by the normal government majority of about a hundred liberal, labour, and irish nationalist votes, and the committee stage opened on the th of june. on that day an amendment was down for debate which required the most careful consideration by the representatives of ulster, since their attitude now might have an important bearing on their future policy, and a false step at this stage might easily prove embarrassing later on. the author of this amendment was mr. agar-robartes, a cornish liberal member, whose proposal was to exclude the four counties of antrim, derry, down, and armagh from the jurisdiction of the proposed irish parliament, a gratifying proof that craigavon and balmoral were bearing fruit. a conference of ulster members and peers, and some english members closely identified with irish affairs, of whom mr. walter long was one, met at londonderry house before the sitting of the house on the th of june to decide what course to take on this proposal. it was not surprising to find that there were sharp differences of opinion among those present, for there were obvious objections to supporting the amendment and equally obvious objections to voting against it. the opposition of ulster for more than a quarter of a century had been directed against home rule for any part of ireland and in any shape or form. no suggestion had ever been made by any of her spokesmen that the protestant north, or any part of it, should be dealt with separately from the rest of the island, although carson and others had pointed out that all the arguments in support of home rule were equally valid for treating ulster as a unit. there were both economic and administrative difficulties in such a scheme which were sufficiently obvious, though by no means insuperable; but what weighed far more heavily in the minds of the ulster members was the anticipation that their acceptance of the proposal would probably be represented by enemies as a desertion of all the irish loyalists outside the four counties named in the amendment, with whom there was in every part of ulster the most powerful sentiment of solidarity. the idea of taking any action apart from these friends and associates, and of adopting a policy that might seem to imply the abandonment of their opposition to the main principle of the bill, was one that could not be entertained except under the most compelling necessity. but, had not that necessity now arisen? the ulster members had to keep in view the ultimate policy to which they were already committed. that policy, as laid down at craigavon, was to take over, in the event of the home rule bill being carried, the government "of those districts which they could control" in trust for the imperial parliament, and to resist by force if necessary the establishment of the dublin jurisdiction over those districts. the policy of resistance was always recognised as being strictly limited in area; no one ever supposed that ulster could forcibly resist home rule being set up in the south and west. the likelihood of failure to bring about a dissolution before the bill became law had to be faced, and if no general election took place there would be no alternative to resistance. if, then, it were decided to vote against an amendment offering salvation to the four most loyalist counties, what would be their position if ultimately driven to take up arms? except as to a matter of detail concerning the precise area proposed to be excluded from the bill, would they not be told that they were fighting for what they might have had by legislation, and what they had deliberately refused to accept? and if they so acted, could they expect not to forfeit the support of the great and growing volume of public opinion which now sympathised with ulster? they could not, of course, secure themselves against malicious misrepresentation of their motives, but the ulster members sincerely believed, and many in the south shared the opinion, that if it came to the worst they could be of more use to the southern unionists outside a dublin parliament than as members of it, where they would be an impotent minority. moreover, it was perfectly understood that ulster was resolved in any case not to enter a legislature in college green, and there would, therefore, be no more "desertion" of unionists outside the excluded area if the exclusion were effected by an amendment to the bill, than if it were the result of what mr. bonar law had called "trusting to themselves." the considerations thus briefly summarised were thoroughly discussed in all their bearings at the conference at londonderry house. it was one of many occasions when sir edward carson's colleagues had an opportunity of perceiving how his penetrating intellect explored the intricate windings of a complicated political problem, weighing all the alternatives of procedure with a clear insight into the appearance that any line of conduct would present to other and perhaps hostile minds, calculating like a chess-master move and counter-move far ahead of the present, and, while adhering undeviatingly to principle, using the judgment of a consummate strategist to decide upon the action to be taken at any given moment. he had an astonishing faculty of discarding everything that was unessential and fastening on the thing that really mattered in any situation. his strength in counsel lay in the rare combination of these qualities of the trained lawyer with the gift of intuition, which women claim as their distinguishing characteristic; and it often extorted from nationalists the melancholy admission that if carson had been on their side their cause would have triumphed long ago. his advice now was that the agar-robartes amendment should be supported; and, although some of those present required a good deal of persuasion, it was ultimately decided unanimously that this course should be followed. the wisdom of the decision was never afterwards questioned, and, indeed, was abundantly confirmed by subsequent events. mr. agar-robartes moved his amendment the same afternoon, summarising his argument in the dictum, denied by mr. william redmond, that "orange bitters will not mix with irish whisky." the debate, which lasted three days, was the most important that took place in committee on the bill, for in the course of it the whole ulster question was exhaustively discussed. sir edward grey and mr. churchill had thrown out hints in the second reading debate that the government might do something to meet the ulster case. the prime minister was now pressed to say what these hints meant. had the government any policy in regard to ulster? had they considered how they could deal with the threatened resistance? mr. bonar law told the government that they must know that, if they employed troops to coerce the ulster loyalists, ministers who gave the order "would run a greater risk of being lynched in london than the loyalists of ulster would run of being shot in belfast." every argument in favour of home rule was, he said, equally cogent against subjecting ulster to home rule contrary to her own desire. if the south of ireland objected to being governed from westminster, the north of ireland quite as strongly objected to being ruled from dublin. if england, as was alleged, was incapable of governing ireland according to irish ideas, the nationalists were fully as incapable of governing the northern counties according to ulster ideas. if ireland, with only one-fifteenth of the population of the united kingdom, had a right to choose its own form of government, by what equity could the same right be denied to ulster, with one-fourth of the population of ireland? as had been anticipated at londonderry house, mr. asquith and some of his followers did their best to drive a wedge between the ulstermen and the southern unionists, by contending that the former, in supporting the amendment, were deserting their friends. mr. balfour declared in answer to this that "nothing could relieve unionists in the rest of ireland except the defeat of the measure as a whole"; and a crushing reply was given by mr. j.h. campbell and mr. walter guinness, both of whom were unionists from the south of ireland. mr. guinness frankly acknowledged that "it was the duty of ulster members to take this opportunity of trying to secure for their constituents freedom from this iniquitous measure. it would be merely a dog-in-the-manger policy for those who lived outside ulster to grudge relief to their co-religionists merely because they could not share it. such self-denial on ulster's part would in no way help them (the southerners) and it would only injure their compatriots in the north." sir edward carson, in supporting the amendment, insisted that "ulster was not asking for anything" except to be left within the imperial constitution; she "had not demanded any separate parliament." he accepted the "basic principle" of the amendment, but would not be content with the four counties which alone it proposed to exclude from the bill. he only accepted it, however, on two assumptions--first, that the bill was to become law; and, second, that it was to be, as mr. asquith had assured them, part of a federal system for the united kingdom. if the first steps were being taken to construct a federal system, there was no precedent for coercing ulster to form part of a federal unit which she refused to join. he had been solicitor-general when the act establishing the commonwealth of australia was being discussed, and it never would have passed, he declared, "if every single clause had not been agreed to by every single one of the communities concerned." ministers were always basing their irish policy on dominion analogies, but could anyone, carson asked, imagine the imperial government sending troops to compel the transvaal or new south wales to come into a federal system against their will? the arguments in favour of the amendment were also stated with uncompromising force by mr. william moore, mr. charles craig, and his brother captain james craig, the last-mentioned taking up a challenge thrown down by mr. birrell in a maladroit speech which had expressed doubt as to the reality of the danger to be apprehended in ulster. captain craig said they would immediately take steps in ulster to convince the chief secretary of their sincerity. lord hugh cecil, in an outspoken speech, greatly to the taste of english unionists, "had no hesitation in saying that ulster would be perfectly right in resisting, and he hoped she would be successful." in the division on mr. agar-robartes's amendment the government majority fell to sixty-nine, both the "tellers" being usual supporters of the ministry. mr. f.e. smith, in a vigorous speech to the belfast orangemen on the th of july, declared that "on the part of the government the discussion (on mr. agar-robartes's amendment) was a trap. ... the government hoped that ulster would decline the amendment in order that the coalition might protest to the constituencies: 'we offered ulster exclusion and ulster refused exclusion--where is the grievance of ulster? where her justification for armed revolt?'" the snare was avoided; but the debate was a landmark in the movement, for it was then that the spokesmen of ulster for the first time publicly accepted the idea of separate treatment for themselves as a possible alternative policy to the integral maintenance of the union. the government, for their part, made no response to the demand of bonar law and carson that they should declare their intentions for dealing with resistance in ulster. it was clearly more than ever necessary for the ulstermen to "trust in themselves." the debates on the bill occupied parliament till the end of the year, and beyond it, and great blocks of clauses were carried under the guillotine closure without a word of discussion, although they were packed with constitutional points, many of which were of the highest moment. over in ulster, at the same time, those preparations were industriously carried forward which captain craig told the house of commons would be necessary to cure the scepticism of the chief secretary. in england and scotland, also, unionists did their utmost to make public opinion realise the gravity of the crisis towards which the country was drifting under the wait-and-see ministry. never before, probably, had so many great political meetings been held in any year as were held in every part of the country in . with the exception of those that took place in ireland, the most striking was a monster gathering at blenheim on the th of july, which was attended by delegates from every unionist association in the united kingdom. a notable defeat of the government in a by-election at crewe, news of which reached the meeting while the audience of some fifteen thousand people was assembling, was an encouraging sign of the trend of opinion in the country, and added confidence to the note of defiance that sounded in the speeches of mr. bonar law, mr. f.e. smith, and sir edward carson. the unionist leader repeated, with added emphasis, what he had already said in the house of commons, that he could imagine no length of resistance to which ulster might go in which he and the overwhelming majority of the british people would not be ready to give support. he again said that resistance would be justified only because the people had not been consulted, and the government's policy was "part of a corrupt parliamentary bargain." he refused to acknowledge the right of the government "to carry such a revolution by such means," and as they appeared to be resolved to do so, mr. bonar law and the party he led "would use any means to deprive them of the power they had usurped, and to compel them to face the people they had deceived." mr. f.e. smith expressed the same thought in a more epigrammatic antithesis: "we have come to a clear issue between the party which says 'we will judge for the democracy,' and the party which says 'the democracy shall judge you.'" the tremendous enthusiasm evoked by mr. bonar law's pledge of support to ulster, and by sir edward carson's announcement that they in ulster "would shortly challenge the government to interfere with them if they dared, and would with equanimity await the result," was a sufficient proof, if proof were needed, that the intention of the ulstermen to offer forcible resistance to home rule had the whole-hearted sympathy and approval of the entire unionist party in great britain, whose representatives from every corner of the country were assembled at blenheim. liberals hoped and believed that this promise of support for the "rebellious" attitude of ulster would alienate british opinion from the unionist party. the supporters of the government in the press daily proclaimed that it was doing so. when parliament adjourned for the summer recess, at the beginning of what journalists call "the silly season," mr. churchill published two letters to a constituent in scotland which were intended to be a crushing indictment both of ulster and of her sympathisers in great britain. the ulster menace was in his eyes nothing but "melodramatic stuff," and he sneeringly suggested that the unionist leaders would be "unspeakably shocked and frightened" if anything came of their "foolish and wicked words." the letter was lengthy, and contained some telling phrases such as mr. churchill has always been skilful in coining; but the "turgid homily--a mixture of sophistry, insult, and menace," as _the times_ not unfairly described it, was less effective than the terse and simple rejoinder in which mr. bonar law pointed out that mr. churchill's onslaught wounded his father's memory more deeply than it touched his living opponents, since lord randolph's "incitement" of ulster was at a time when ulster could not be cast out from the union without the consent of the british electors. mr. churchill's epistles to scottish liberals started a correspondence which reverberated through the press for weeks, breaking the monotony of the holiday season; but they entirely failed in their purpose, which was to break the sympathy for ulster in england and scotland. in march the unionists had won a seat at a by-election in south manchester; the victory at crewe in july, which so cheered the gathering at blenheim, was followed by still more striking victories in north-west manchester in august, and in midlothian--gladstone's old constituency--in september; and perhaps a not less significant indication of the trend of opinion so far as the unionist party was concerned, was given by the local unionist association at rochdale, which promptly repudiated its selected candidate who had ventured to protest against the blenheim speech of the unionist leader. in an analysis of electoral statistics published by _the times_ on the th of august it was shown that, in thirty-eight contests since the general election in december , the unionists had gained an advantage of more than , votes over liberals. and shortly afterwards, at a dinner in london to three newly elected unionists, mr. bonar law pointed out that the results of by-elections, if realised in the same proportion all over the country, would have given a substantial unionist majority in the house of commons. the ulster people had, therefore, much to encourage them at a time when they were preparing the most significant forward step in the movement, and the most solemn pronouncement of their unfaltering resolution never to submit to the dublin parliament--the signing of the ulster covenant. their policy of resistance, first propounded at craigavon, reiterated at balmoral, endorsed by british sympathisers at blenheim, and specifically defended in parliament both by unionist leaders like mr. bonar law and mr. long and by prominent members of the unionist rank and file like lord hugh cecil, had won the approval and support of great popular constituencies in lancashire and in scotland, and had alienated no section of unionist opinion or of the unionist press. it was in no merely satirical spirit that carson wrote in august that he was grateful to mr. churchill "for having twice within a few weeks done something to focus public opinion on the stern realities of the situation in ulster."[ ] for that was the actual result of the "turgid homily." it proved of real service to the ulster cause by bringing to light the complete solidarity of unionist opinion in its support. that meant, in the light of the electoral returns, that certainly more than half the nation sympathised with the measures that were being taken in ulster, and that ulster could well afford to smile at the mockery which english home rulers deemed a sufficient weapon to demolish the "wooden guns" and the "military play-acting of king carson's army." footnotes: [ ] see _the times_, august th, . chapter ix the eve of the covenant there was one liberal statesman, formerly the favourite lieutenant of gladstone and the closest political ally of asquith, who was under no illusion as to the character of the men with whom asquith was now provoking a conflict. speaking in edinburgh on the st of november, , that is, shortly after the craigavon meeting, lord rosebery told his scottish audience that "he loved highlanders and he loved lowlanders, but when he came to the branch of their race which had been grafted on to the ulster stem he took off his hat with reverence and awe. they were without exception the toughest, the most dominant, the most irresistible race that existed in the universe."[ ] the kinship of this tough people with the lowlanders of scotland, in character as in blood, was never more signally demonstrated than when they decided, in one of the most intense crises of their history, to emulate the example of their scottish forefathers in binding themselves together by a solemn league and covenant to resist what they deemed to be a tyrannical encroachment on their liberties and rights. the most impressive moment at the balmoral meeting at easter was when the vast assemblage, with uncovered heads, raised their hands and repeated after sir edward carson words abjuring home rule. the incident suggested to some of the local unionist leaders that the spirit of enthusiastic solidarity and determination thus manifested should not be allowed to evaporate, and the people so animated to disperse to the four corners of ulster without any bond of mutual obligation. the idea of an oath of fidelity to the cause and to each other was mooted, and appeared to be favoured by many. the leader was consulted. he gave deep, anxious, and prolonged consideration to the proposal, calculating all the consequences which, in various possible eventualities, might follow its adoption. he was not only profoundly conscious of the moral responsibility which he personally, and his colleagues, would be undertaking by the contemplated measure; he realised the numerous practical difficulties there might be in honouring the bond, and he would have nothing to do with a device which, under the guise of a solemn covenant, would be nothing more than a verbal manifesto. if the people were to be invited to sign anything of the sort, it must be a reality, and he, as leader, must first see his way to make it a reality, whatever might happen. for, although carson never shrank from responsibility, he never assumed it with levity, or without full consideration of all that it might involve. many a time, especially before he had fully tested for himself the temper of the ulster people, he expressed to his intimates his wonder whether the bulk of his followers sufficiently appreciated the seriousness of the course they had set out upon. sometimes in private he seemed to be hypersensitive as to whether in any particular he was misleading those who trusted him; he was scrupulously anxious that they should not be carried away by unreflecting enthusiasm, or by personal devotion to himself. about the only criticism of his leadership that was ever made directly to himself by one of the rank and file in ulster was that it erred on the side of patience and caution; and this criticism elicited the sharpest reproof he was ever heard to administer to any of his followers.[ ] his expressions of regard, almost amounting to affection, for the men and women who thronged round him for a touch of his hand wherever he appeared in the streets might have been ignorantly set down as the arts of a demagogue had they ever been spoken in public, but were capable of no such misconstruction when reserved, as they invariably were, for the ears of his closest associates. the truth is that no popular leader was ever less of a demagogue than sir edward carson. he had no "arts" at all--unless indeed complete simplicity is the highest of all "arts" in one whom great masses of men implicitly trust. he never sought to gain or augment the confidence of his followers by concealing facts, minimising difficulties, or overcolouring expectations. it is not surprising, then, that the decision to invite the ulster people to bind themselves together by some form of written bond or oath was one which carson did not come to hastily. while the matter was still only being talked about by a few intimate friends, and had not been in any way formally proposed, captain james craig happened to be occupying himself one day at the constitutional club in london with pencil and paper, making experimental drafts that might do for the proposed purpose, when he was joined by mr. b.w.d. montgomery, secretary of the ulster club in belfast, who asked what he was doing. "trying to draft an oath for our people at home," replied craig, "and it's no easy matter to get at what will suit." "you couldn't do better," said montgomery, "than take the old scotch covenant. it is a fine old document, full of grand phrases, and thoroughly characteristic of the ulster tone of mind at this day." thereupon the two men went to the library, where, with the help of the club librarian, they found a history of scotland containing the full text of the celebrated bond of the covenanters (first drawn up, by a curious coincidence of names, by john craig, in ), a verbatim copy of which was made from the book. the first idea was to adapt this famous manifesto of militant protestantism by making only such abbreviations and alterations as would render it suitable for the purpose in view. but when it was ultimately decided to go forward with the proposal, and the task of preparing the document was entrusted to the special commission,[ ] it was at once realised that, however strongly the fine old jacobean language and the historical associations of the solemn league and covenant might appeal to the imagination of a few, it was far too involved and long-winded, no matter how drastically revised, to serve as an actual working agreement between men of to-day, or as a rallying-point for a modern democratic community. what was needed was something quite short and easily intelligible, setting forth in as few words as possible a purpose which the least learned could grasp at a glance, and which all who so desired could sign with full comprehension of what they were doing. mr. thomas sinclair, one of the special commission, was himself a draughtsman of exceptional skill, and in a matter of this kind his advice was always invaluable, and it was under his hand that the ulster covenant, after frequent amendment, took what was, with one important exception, its final shape. the last revision cut down the draft by more than one-half; but the portion discarded from the covenant itself, in the interest of brevity, was retained as a resolution of the ulster unionist council which accompanied the covenant and served as a sort of declaratory preamble to it[ ]. the exception referred to was an amendment made to meet an objection raised by prominent representatives of the presbyterian church. the special commission, realising that the proposed covenant ought not to be promulgated without the consent and approval of the protestant churches, submitted the agreed draft to the authorities of the church of ireland and of the presbyterian, methodist, and congregational churches. the moderator, and other leaders of the presbyterians, including mr. (afterwards sir alexander) mcdowell, a man endowed with much of the wisdom of the serpent, while supporting without demur the policy of the covenant, took exception to its terms in a single particular. they pointed out that the obligation to be accepted by the signatories would be, as the text then stood, of unlimited duration. they objected to undertaking such a responsibility without the possibility of modifying it to meet the changes which time and circumstance might bring about; and they insisted that, before they could advise their congregations to contract so solemn an engagement, the text of the covenant must be amended by the introduction of words limiting its validity to the crisis which then confronted them. this was accordingly done. words were introduced which declared the pledge to be binding "throughout this our time of threatened calamity," and its purpose to be the defeat of "the present conspiracy." the language was as precise, and was as carefully chosen, as the language of a legal deed; but in an unhappy crisis which arose in , in circumstances which no one in the world could have foreseen in , there were some in ulster who were not only tempted to strain the interpretation which the covenant as a whole could legitimately bear, but who failed to appreciate the significance of the amendments that had been made in its text at the instance of the presbyterian church.[ ] when these amendments had been incorporated in the covenant by the special commission, a meeting of the standing committee was convened at craigavon on the th of september to adopt it for recommendation to the council. the committee, standing in a group outside the door leading from the arcade at craigavon to the tennis-lawn, listened while sir edward carson read the covenant aloud from a stone step which now bears an inscription recording the event. those present showed by their demeanour that they realised the historic character of the transaction in which they were taking part, and the weight of responsibility they were about to assume. but no voice expressed dissent or hesitation. the covenant was adopted unanimously and without amendment. its terms were as follows: "ulster's solemn league and covenant "being convinced in our consciences that home rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of ulster as well as of the whole of ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship, and perilous to the unity of the empire, we, whose names are underwritten, men of ulster, loyal subjects of his gracious majesty king george v, humbly relying on the god whom our fathers in days of stress and trial confidently trusted, do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the united kingdom, and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a home rule parliament in ireland. and in the event of such a parliament being forced upon us we further solemnly and mutually pledge ourselves to refuse to recognise its authority. in sure confidence that god will defend the right we hereto subscribe our names. and further, we individually declare that we have not already signed this covenant. god save the king." on monday, the rd of september, the ulster unionist council, the body representing the whole loyalist community on an elective and thoroughly democratic basis, held its annual meeting in the ulster hall, the chief business being the ratification of the covenant prior to its being presented for general signature throughout the province on ulster day. upwards of five hundred delegates attended the meeting, and unanimously approved the terms of the document recommended for their acceptance by their standing committee. they then adopted, on the motion of lord londonderry, the resolution which, as already mentioned, had originally formed part of the draft of the covenant itself. this resolution, as well as the covenant, was the subject of extensive comment in the english and scottish press. some opponents of ulster directed against it the flippant ridicule which appeared to be their only weapon against a movement the gravity of which was admitted by ministers of the crown; but, on the whole, the british press acknowledged the important enunciation of political principle which it contained. it placed on record that: "inasmuch as we, the duly elected delegates and members of the ulster unionist council, representing all parts of ulster, are firmly persuaded that by no law can the right to govern those whom we represent be bartered away without their consent; that although the present government, the services and sacrifices of our race having been forgotten, may drive us forth from a constitution which we have ever loyally upheld, they may not deliver us bound into the hands of our enemies; and that it is incompetent for any authority, party, or people to appoint as our rulers a government dominated by men disloyal to the empire and to whom our faith and traditions are hateful; and inasmuch as we reverently believe that, as in times past it was given our fathers to save themselves from a like calamity, so now it may be ordered that our deliverance shall be by our own hands, to which end it is needful that we be knit together as one man, each strengthening the other, and none holding back or counting the cost--therefore we, loyalists of ulster, ratify and confirm the steps so far taken by the special commission this day submitted and explained to us, and we reappoint the commission to carry on its work on our behalf as in the past. "we enter into the solemn covenant appended hereto, and, knowing the greatness of the issues depending on our faithfulness, we promise each to the others that, to the uttermost of the strength and means given us, and not regarding any selfish or private interest, our substance or our lives, we will make good the said covenant; and we now bind ourselves in the steadfast determination that, whatever may befall, no such domination shall be thrust upon us, and in the hope that by the blessing of god our union with great britain, upon which are fixed our affections and trust, may yet be maintained, and that for ourselves and for our children, for this province and for the whole of ireland, peace, prosperity, and civil and religious liberty may be secured under the parliament of the united kingdom and of the king whose faithful subjects we are and will continue all our days." it had been known for some weeks that it was the intention of the ulster loyalists to dedicate the th of september as "ulster day," by holding special religious services, after which they were to "pledge themselves to a solemn covenant," the terms of which were not yet published or, indeed, finally settled. this announcement, which appeared in the press on the th of august, was hailed in england as an effective reply to the recent "turgid homily" of mr. churchill, but there was really no connection between them in the intentions of ulstermen, who had been too much occupied with their own affairs to pay much attention to the attack upon them in the dundee letters. the ulster day celebration was to be preceded by a series of demonstrations in many of the chief centres of ulster, at which the purpose of the covenant was to be explained to the people by the leader and his colleagues, and a number of english peers and members of parliament arranged to show their sympathy with the policy embodied in the covenant by taking part in the meetings. it would not be true to say that the enthusiasm displayed at this great series of meetings in september eclipsed all that had gone before, for it would not be possible for human beings greatly to exceed in that emotion what had been seen at craigavon and balmoral; but they exhibited an equally grave sense of responsibility, and they proved that the same exaltation of mind, the same determined spirit, that had been displayed by loyalists collected in the populous capital of their province, equally animated the country towns and rural districts. the campaign opened at enniskillen on the th of september, where the leader was escorted by two squadrons of mounted and well-equipped yeomen from the station to portora gate, at which point , members of unionist clubs drawn from the surrounding agricultural districts marched past him in military order. during the following nine days demonstrations were held at lisburn, derry, coleraine, ballymena, dromore, portadown, crumlin, newtownards, and ballyroney, culminating with a meeting in the ulster hall--loyalist headquarters--on the eve of the signing of the covenant on ulster day. at six of these meetings, including, of course, the last, sir edward carson was the principal speaker, while all the ulster unionist members of parliament took part in their several constituencies. lord londonderry was naturally prominent among the speakers, and presided as usual, when the duke of abercorn was prevented by illness from being present, in the ulster hall. mr. f.e. smith, who had closely identified himself with the ulster movement, delighting with his fresh and vigorous eloquence the meetings at balmoral and blenheim, as well as the orange lodges whom he had addressed on the th of july, crossed the channel to lend a helping hand, and spoke at five meetings on the tour. others who took part--in addition to local men like mr. thomas sinclair and mr. john young, whose high character always made their appearance on political platforms of value to the cause they supported--were lord charles beresford, lord salisbury, mr. james campbell, lord hugh cecil, lord willoughby de broke, and mr. harold smith; while the marquis of hamilton and lord castlereagh, by the part which they took in the programme, showed their desire to carry on the traditions which identified the two leading ulster families with loyalist principles. a single resolution, identical in the simplicity of its terms, was carried without a dissenting voice at every one of these meetings: "we hereby reaffirm the resolve of the great ulster convention of : 'we will not have home rule.'" these words became so familiar that the laconic phrase "we won't have it," was on everybody's lips as the alpha and omega of ulster's attitude, and was sometimes heard with unexpected abruptness in no very precise context. a ticket-collector, when clipping the tickets of the party who were starting from belfast in a saloon for enniskillen, made no remark and no sign of recognition till he reached carson, when he said almost in a whisper and without a glimmer of a smile, as he took a clip out of the leader's ticket: "tell the station-master at clones, sir edward, that we won't have it." he doubtless knew that the political views of that misguided official were of the wrong colour. a conversation overheard in the crowd at enniskillen before the speaking began was a curious example of the habit so characteristic of ulster--and indeed of other parts of ireland also--of thinking of "old, unhappy, far-off things, and battles long ago" as if they had occurred last week, and were a factor to be taken into account in the conduct of to-day. the demonstration was in the open air, and the sunshine was gleaming on the grass of a hill close at hand. "it 'ud be a quare thing," said a peasant to his neighbour in the crowd, "if the rebels would come out and hould a meetin' agin us on yon hill." "what matter if they would," was the reply, "wouldn't we let on that we won't have it? an' if that wouldn't do them, isn't there hundreds o' king james's men at the bottom o' the lough, an' there's plenty o' room yet." it was not spoken in jest, but in grim conviction that the issue of was the issue of , and that another newtown butler might have to be fought. this series of meetings in preparation for the covenant brought carson much more closely in touch with the loyalists in outlying districts than he had been hitherto, and when it was over their wild devotion to him personally equalled what it was in belfast itself. the appeal made to the hearts of men as quick as any living to detect and resent humbug or boastfulness, by the simplicity, uncompromising directness, and courage of his character was irresistible. he never spoke better than during this tour of the province. the special correspondent of _the times_, who sent to his paper vivid descriptive articles on each meeting, said in his account of the meeting at coleraine that "sir edward carson was vigorous, fresh, and picturesque. his command over the feelings of his ulster audiences is unquestionable, and never a phrase passes his lips which does not tell." and when the proceedings of the meeting were over, the same observer "was at the station to witness the 'send-off' of the leaders, and for ten minutes before the train for belfast came in the tumult of the cheers, the thanks, and the farewells never faltered for an instant."[ ] two days later another english commentator declared that "the ulster campaign has been conducted up to the present with a combination of wisdom, ability, and restraint which has delighted all the unionists of the province, and exasperated their radical and nationalist enemies. from its opening at enniskillen not a speech has been delivered unworthy of a great movement in defence of civil and religious liberty."[ ] it was characteristic of sir edward carson that neither at these meetings nor at any time did he use his unmatched power of persuasion to induce his followers to come forward and sign the covenant. on the contrary, he rather warned them only to do so after mature reflection and with full comprehension of the responsibility which signature would entail. he told the unionist council a few days before the memorable th of september: "how often have i thought over this covenant--how many hours have i spent, before it was published that we would have one, in counting the cost that may result! how many times have i thought of what it may mean to all that we care about up here! does any man believe that i lightly took this matter in hand without considering with my colleagues all that it may mean either in the distant or the not too distant future? no, it is the gravest matter in all the grave matters in the various offices i have held that i have ever had to consider." and he went on to advise the delegates, "responsible men from every district in ulster, that it is your duty, when you go back to your various districts, to warn your people who trust you that, in entering into this solemn obligation, they are entering into a matter which, whatever may happen in the future, is the most serious matter that has ever confronted them in the course of their lives."[ ] a political campaign such as that of september could not be a success, however spontaneous the enthusiasm of the people, however effective the oratory, unless the arrangements were based on good organisation. it was by general consent a triumph of organisation, the credit for which was very largely due to mr. richard dawson bates, the secretary of the ulster unionist council. sir edward carson himself very wisely paid little attention to detail; happily there was no need for him to do so, for he had beside him in captain james craig and mr. bates two men with real genius for organisation, and indefatigable in relieving "the chief" of all unnecessary work and worry. mr. bates had all the threads of a complex network of organisation in his hands; he kept in close touch with leading unionists in every district; he always knew what was going on in out-of-the-way corners, and where to turn for the right man for any particular piece of work. anyone whose duty it has been to manage even a single political demonstration on a large scale knows what numerous details have to be carefully foreseen and provided for. in ulster a succession of both outdoor and indoor demonstrations, seldom if ever equalled in this country in magnitude and complexity of arrangement, besides an amazing quantity of other miscellaneous work inseparable from the conduct of a political movement in which crisis followed crisis with bewildering rapidity, were managed year after year from mr. bates's office in the old town hall with a quiet, unostentatious efficiency which only those could appreciate who saw the machine at work and knew the master mechanic behind it. of this efficiency the september demonstrations in were a conspicuous illustration. nor did the loyalist women of ulster lag an inch behind the men either in organisation or in zeal for the unionist cause, and their keenness at every town visited in this september tour was exuberantly displayed. women had not yet been enfranchised, of course, and the ulster women had shown but little interest in the suffragette agitation which was raging at this time in england; but they had organised themselves in defence of the union very effectively on parallel lines to the men, and if the latter had needed any stimulus to their enthusiasm they would certainly have got it from their mothers, sisters, and wives. the marchioness of londonderry threw herself whole-heartedly into the movement. having always ably seconded her husband's many political and social activities, she made no exception in regard to his devotion to ulster. lord londonderry, she was fond of saying, was an ulsterman born and bred, and she was an ulsterwoman "by adoption and grace." her energy was inexhaustible, and her enthusiasm contagious; she used her influence and her wonderful social gifts unsparingly in the unionist cause. a meeting of the ulster women's unionist council, of which the dowager marchioness of dufferin and ava, widow of the great diplomat, was president, was held on the th of september, the day before the demonstration at enniskillen, when a resolution proposed by lady londonderry declaring the determination of ulster women to stand by their men in the policy to be embodied in the covenant, was carried with immense enthusiasm and without dissent. no women were so vehement in their support of the loyalist cause as the factory workers, who were very numerous in belfast. indeed, their zeal, and their manner of displaying it, seemed sometimes to illustrate a well-known line of kipling's, considered by some to be anything but complimentary to the female sex. anyhow, there was no divergence of opinion or sympathy between the two sexes in ulster on the question of union or home rule; and the women who everywhere attended the meetings in large numbers were no idle sightseers--though they were certainly hero-worshippers of the ulster leader--but a genuine political force to be taken into account. it was during the september campaign that the "wooden guns" and "dummy rifles" appeared, which excited so much derision in the english radical press, whose editors little dreamed that the day was not far distant when mr. asquith's government would be glad enough to borrow those same dummy rifles for training the new levies of kitchener's army to fight the germans. so far as the ulstermen were concerned the ridicule of their quasi-military display and equipment never had any sting in it. they were conscious of the strength given to their cause by the discipline and military organisation of the volunteers, even if the weapons with which they drilled should never be replaced by the real thing; and many of them had an instinctive belief that their leaders would see to it that they were effectively armed all in good time. and so with grim earnestness they recruited the various battalions of volunteers, gave up their evenings to drilling, provided cyclist corps, signalling corps, ambulances and nurses; they were proud to receive their leader with guards of honour at the station, and bodyguards while he drove through their town or district to the meetings where he spoke. few of them probably ever so much as heard of the gibes of _the irish news_, _the daily news_, or _the westminster gazette_ at the "royal progresses" of "king carson"; but they would have been in no way upset by them if they had, for they were far too much in earnest themselves to pay heed to the cheap sneers of others. at each one of the september meetings there was a military setting to the business of the day. at enniskillen carson was conducted by a cavalry escort to the ground where he was to address the people; at coleraine, portadown, and other places volunteers lined the route and marched in column to and from the meeting. they were, it is true, but "half-baked" levies, with more zeal than knowledge of military duties. but competent critics--and there were many such amongst the visitors--praised their bearing and physique and the creditable measure of discipline they had already acquired. and it must be remembered that in september the ulster volunteer force was still in its infancy. in the following two years its improvement in efficiency was very marked; and within three years of the time when its battalions paraded before sir edward carson, with dummy rifles, and marched before him to his meetings in lisburn, newtownards, enniskillen, and belfast on the eve of the covenant, those same men had gloriously fought against the flower of the prussian army, and many of them had fallen in the battle of the somme. the final meeting in the ulster hall on friday the th of september was an impressive climax to the tour. many english journalists and other visitors were present, and some of them admitted that, in spite of all they had heard of what an ulster hall meeting was like, they were astonished by the soul-stirring fervour they witnessed, and especially by the wonderful spectacle presented at the overflow meeting in the street outside, which was packed as far as the eye could reach in either direction with upturned faces, eager to catch the words addressed to them from a platform erected for the speakers outside an upper window of the building.[ ] messages of sympathy and approval at this supreme moment were read from mr. bonar law and lord lansdowne, mr. long, mr. balfour, and mr. austen chamberlain. then, after brief speeches by four local belfast men, one of whom was a representative of labour, and while the audience were waiting eagerly for the speech of their leader, there occurred what _the times_ next day described as "two entirely delightful, and, as far as the crowd was concerned, two entirely unexpected episodes." the first was the presentation to sir edward carson of a faded yellow silk banner by colonel wallace, grand master of the belfast orangemen, who explained that it was the identical banner that had been carried before king william iii at the battle of the boyne, and was now lent by its owner, a lineal descendant of the original standard-bearer, to be carried before carson to the signing of the covenant; the second was the presentation to the leader of a silver key, symbolic of ulster as "the key of the situation," and a silver pen wherewith to sign the covenant on the morrow, by captain james craig. "the two incidents," continued the correspondent of _the times_, "were followed by the audience with breathless excitement, and made a remarkably effective prelude to sir edward carson's speech. premeditated, no doubt, that incident of the banner--yet entirely graceful, entirely fitting to the spirit of the occasion--a plan carried through with the sense of ceremony which ulstermen seem to have always at their command in moments of emotion." and if ever there was a "moment of emotion" for the loyalists of ulster--those descendants of the plantation men who had been deliberately sent to ireland with a commission from the first sovereign of a united britain to uphold british interests, british honour, and the reformed faith across the narrow sea--loyalists who were conscious that throughout the generations they had honestly striven to be faithful to their mission--if ever in their long and stormy history they experienced a "moment of emotion," it was assuredly on this evening before the signing of their covenant. the speeches delivered by their leader and others were merely a vent for that emotion. there was nothing that could be said about their cause that they did not know already; but all felt that the heart of the matter was touched--the whole situation, so far as they were concerned, summed up in a single sentence of carson's speech: "we will take deliberately a step forward, not in defiance but in defence; and the covenant which we will most willingly sign to-morrow will be a great step forward, in no spirit of aggression, in no spirit of ascendancy, but with a full knowledge that, if necessary, you and i--you trusting me, and i trusting you--will follow out everything that this covenant means to the very end, whatever the consequences." every man and woman who heard these words was filled with an exalted sense of the solemnity of the occasion. the mental atmosphere was not that of a political meeting, but of a religious service--and, in fact, the proceedings had been opened by prayer, as had become the invariable custom on such occasions in ulster. it was felt to be a time of individual preparation for the _sacramentum_ of the following day, which protestant ulster had set apart as a day of self-dedication to a cause for which they were willing to make any sacrifice. footnotes: [ ] _the scotsman_, november nd, . [ ] see sir b. carson's speech in _belfast newsletter_, september th, . [ ] see _ante_, p. . [ ] see p. . [ ] see p. . [ ] _the times_, september rd, . [ ] _the daily telegraph_, september th, . [ ] _belfast newsletter_, september th, . [ ] the article which appeared on the following sunday in _the observer_, showed how profoundly a distinguished london editor and writer had been moved by what he saw in belfast. chapter x the solemn league and covenant ulster day, saturday the th of september, , was kept as a day of religious observance by the northern loyalists. so far as the protestants of all denominations were concerned, ulster was a province at prayer on that memorable saturday morning. in belfast, not only the services which had more or less of an official character--those held in the cathedral, in the ulster hall, in the assembly hall--but those held in nearly all the places of worship in the city, were crowded with reverent worshippers. it was the same throughout the country towns and rural districts--there was hardly a village or hamlet where the parish church and the presbyterian and methodist meeting-houses were not attended by congregations of unwonted numbers and fervour. not that there was any of the religious excitement such as accompanies revivalist meetings; it was simply that a population, naturally religious-minded, turned instinctively to divine worship as the fitting expression of common emotion at a moment of critical gravity in their history. "one noteworthy feature," commented upon by one of the english newspaper correspondents in a despatch telegraphed during the day, "is the silence of the great shipyards. in these vast industrial establishments on both sides of the river, , men were at work yesterday performing their task at the highest possible pressure, for the order-books of both firms are full of orders. now there is not the sound of a hammer; all is as silent as the grave. the splendid craftsmen who build the largest ships in the world have donned their sunday clothes, and, with unionist buttons on the lapels of their coats, or orange sashes on their shoulders, are about to engage on what to them is an even more important task." he also noticed that although the streets were crowded there was no excitement, for "the average ulsterman performs his religious and political duties with calm sobriety. he has no time to-day for mirth or merriment, for every minute is devoted to proving that he is still the same man--devoted to the empire, to the king, and constitution."[ ] there is at all times in ulster far less sectarian enmity between the episcopal and other reformed churches than in england; on ulster day the complete harmony and co-operation between them was a marked feature of the observances. at the cathedral in belfast the preacher was the bishop of down,[ ] while a presbyterian minister representing the moderator of the general assembly, and the president of the methodist college took part in the conduct of the service. at the ulster hall the same unity was evidenced by a similar co-operation between clergy of the three denominations, and also at the assembly hall (a presbyterian place of worship), where dr. montgomery, the moderator, was assisted by a clergyman of the church of ireland representing the bishop. the service in the ulster hall was attended by sir edward carson, the lord mayor of belfast (mr. mcmordie, m.p.), most of the distinguished visitors from england, and by those ulster members whose constituencies were in or near the city; those representing country seats went thither to attend local services and to sign the covenant with their own constituents. one small but significant detail in the day's proceedings was much noticed as a striking indication of the instinctive realisation by the crowd of the exceptional character of the occasion. bedford street, where the ulster hall is, was densely packed with spectators, but when the leader arrived, instead of the hurricane of cheers that invariably greeted his appearance in the streets, there was nothing but a general uncovering of heads and respectful silence. it is true that the people abundantly compensated themselves for this moment of self-restraint later on, until in the evening one wondered how human throats could survive so many hours of continuous strain; but the contrast only made the more remarkable that almost startling silence before the religious service began. the "sense of ceremony" which _the times_ correspondent on another occasion had declared to be characteristic of ulstermen "in moments of emotion," was certainly displayed conspicuously on ulster day. ceremony at large public functions is naturally cast in a military mould--marching men, bands of music, display of flags, guards of honour, and so forth--and although on this occasion there was, it is true, more than mere decorative significance in the military frame to the picture, it was an admirably designed and effective spectacle. it is but a few hundred yards from the ulster hall to the city hall, where the signing of the covenant was to take place. when the religious service ended, about noon, sir edward carson and his colleagues proceeded from one hall to the other on foot. the boyne standard, which had been presented to the leader the previous evening, was borne before him to the city hall. he was escorted by a guard consisting of a hundred men from the orange lodges of belfast and a like number representing the unionist clubs of the city. these clubs had also provided a force of , men, whose duty, admirably performed throughout the day, was to protect the gardens and statuary surrounding the city hall from injury by the crowd, and to keep a clear way to the hall for the endless stream of men entering to sign the covenant. the city hall in belfast is a building of which ulster is justly proud. it is, indeed, one of the few modern public buildings in the british islands in which the most exacting critic of architecture finds nothing to condemn. standing in the central site of the city with ample garden space in front, its noble proportions and beautiful façade and dome fill the view from the broad thoroughfare of donegal place. the main entrance hall, leading to a fine marble stairway, is circular in shape, surrounded by a marble colonnade carrying the dome, to which the hall is open through the full height of the building. it was in this central space beneath the dome that a round table covered with the union jack was placed for the signing of the covenant by the ulster leaders and the most prominent of their supporters. to those englishmen who have never been able to grasp the ulster point of view, and who have, therefore, persisted in regarding the ulster movement as a phase of party politics in the ordinary sense, it must appear strange and even improper that the city hall, the official quarters of the corporation, should have been put to the use for which it was lent on ulster day, . the vast majority of the citizens, whose property it was, thought it could be used for no better purpose than to witness their signatures to a deed securing to them their birthright in the british empire. at the entrance to the city hall sir edward carson was received by the lord mayor and members of the corporation wearing their robes of office, and by the harbour commissioners, the water board, and the poor law guardians, by whom he was accompanied into the hall. the text of ulster's solemn league and covenant had been printed on sheets with places for ten signatures on each; the first sheet lay on the table for edward carson to sign. no man but a dullard without a spark of imagination could have witnessed the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which he would have found it difficult to describe. the sunshine, sending a beam through the stained glass of the great window on the stairway, threw warm tints of colour on the marbles of the columns and the tesselated floor of the hall, sparkled on the lord mayor's chain, lent a rich glow to the scarlet gowns of the city fathers, and lit up the red and the blue and the white of the imperial flag which draped the table and which was the symbol of so much that they revered to those who stood looking on. they were grouped in a semicircle behind the leader as he stepped forward to sign his name--men of substance, leaders in the commercial life of a great industrial city, elderly men many of them, lovers of peace and order; men of mark who had served the crown, like londonderry and campbell and beresford; doctors of divinity, guides and teachers of religion, like the bishop and the moderator of the general assembly; privy councillors; members of the imperial parliament; barristers and solicitors, shopkeepers and merchants,--there they all stood, silent witnesses of what all felt to be one of the deeds that make history, assembled to set their hands, each in his turn, to an instrument which, for good or evil, would influence the destiny of their race; while behind them through the open door could be seen a vast forest of human heads, endless as far as eye could reach, every one of whom was in eager accord with the work in hand, and whose blended voices, while they waited to perform their own part in the great transaction, were carried to the ears of those in the hall like the inarticulate noise of moving waters. when carson had signed the covenant he handed the silver pen to londonderry, and the latter's name was followed in order by the signatures of the moderator of the general assembly, the lord bishop of down, connor, and dromore (afterwards primate of all ireland), the dean of belfast (afterwards bishop of down), the general secretary of the presbyterian church, the president of the methodist conference, the ex-chairman of the congregational union, viscount castlereagh, and mr. james chambers, m.p. for south belfast; and the rest of the company, including the right hon. thomas sinclair and the veteran sir william ewart, as well as the members of the corporation and other public authorities and boards, having attached their signatures to other sheets, the general public waiting outside were then admitted. the arrangements for signature by the general public had fully taxed the organising ability of the specially appointed ulster day committee, and their three hon. secretaries, mr. dawson bates, mr. mccammon, and mr. frank hall. they made provision for signatures to be received in many hundreds of localities throughout ulster, but it was impossible to estimate closely the numbers that would require accommodation at the city hall. lines of desks, giving a total desk-space of more than a third of a mile, were placed along both sides of the corridors on the upper and lower floors of the building, which enabled persons to sign the covenant simultaneously. it all worked wonderfully smoothly, largely because every individual in the multitude outside was anxious to help in maintaining orderly procedure, and behaved with the greatest patience and willingness to follow directions. the people were admitted to the hall in batches of or at a time, and as there was no confusion there was no waste of time. all through the afternoon and up to p.m., when the hall was closed, there was an unceasing flow of men eager to become covenanters. immense numbers who belonged to the orange lodges, unionist clubs, or other organised bodies, marched to the hall in procession, and those whose route lay through royal avenue had an opportunity, of which they took the fullest advantage, of cheering carson, who watched the memorable scene from the balcony of the reform club, the quondam headquarters of ulster liberalism. prominent and influential men in the country districts refrained from coming to belfast, preferring to sign the covenant with their neighbours in their own localities. the duke of abercorn, who had been prevented by failing health from taking an active part in the movement of late, and whose life unhappily was drawing to a close, signed the covenant at barons court; his son, the marquis of hamilton, m.p. for derry, attached his signature in the maiden city together with the bishop; another prelate, the bishop of clogher, signed at enniskillen with the grand master of the orangemen, lord erne; at armagh, the primate of all ireland, the dean, and sir john lonsdale, m.p. (afterwards lord armaghdale), headed the list of signatures; the provost of trinity college signed in dublin; and at ballymena the veteran presbyterian privy councillor, mr. john young, and his son mr. william robert young, hon. secretary of the ulster unionist council, and for thirty years one of the most zealous and active workers for the loyalist cause, were the first to sign. but a more notable covenanter than any of these local leaders was lord macnaghten, one of the most illustrious of english judges, whose great position as lord of appeal did not deter him from wholly identifying himself with his native ulster, by accepting the full responsibility of the signatories of the covenant. ulstermen living in other parts of ireland, and in great britain, were not forgotten. arrangements were made enabling such to sign the covenant in dublin, london, edinburgh, glasgow, manchester, liverpool, bristol, and york. two curious details may be added, which no reader who is alive to the picturesqueness of historical associations will deem too trivial to be worth recording. in edinburgh a number of ulstermen signed the covenant in the old greyfriars' churchyard on the "covenanters' stone," the well-known memorial of the scottish covenant of the seventeenth century; and the other incident was that, among some twenty men who signed the covenant in belfast with their own blood, major crawford was able to claim that he was following a family tradition, inasmuch as a lineal ancestor had in the same grim fashion emphasised his adherence to the solemn league and covenant in . the most careful precautions were taken to ensure that all who signed were properly entitled to do so, by requiring evidence to be furnished of their ulster birth or domicile, and references able to corroborate it. the declaration in the covenant itself that the person signing had not already done so was in order to make sure that none of the signatures should be duplicates. when the lists were closed--they were kept open for some days after ulster day--they were very carefully scrutinised by a competent staff at the old town hall, and it is certain that the numbers as eventually published included no duplicate signature and none that was not genuine. precisely the same care was taken in the case of the declaration by which, in words similar to the covenant but without its pledge for definite action, the women of ulster associated themselves with the men "in their uncompromising opposition to the home rule bill now before parliament." it was not until the nd of november that the scrutiny and verification of the signatures was completed, and the actual numbers published. they were as follows: in ulster itself , men had registered themselves as covenanters, and , women had signed the declaration; in the rest of ireland and in great britain , men and , women had signed. thus, a grand total of , ulster men and women gave their adherence to the policy of which the ulster covenant was the solemn pledge. to every one of these was given a copy of the document printed on parchment, to be retained as a memento, and in thousands of cottages throughout ulster the framed covenant hangs to-day in an honoured place, and is the householder's most treasured possession. although the main business of the day was over, so far as carson and the other leaders were concerned, when they had signed the covenant in the city hall at noon, every hour, and every minute in the hour, until they took their departure in the liverpool packet in the evening, was full of incident and excitement. the multitude in the streets leading to the city hall was so densely packed that they had great difficulty in making their way to the reform club, where they were to be entertained at lunch. and, as every man and woman in the crowd was desperately anxious the moment they saw him to get near enough to carson to shake him by the hand, the pressure of the swaying mass of humanity was a positive danger. happily the behaviour of the people was as exemplary as it was tumultuously enthusiastic. _the times_ special correspondent thus summed up his impressions of the scene: "belfast did all that a city could do for such an occasion. i do not well see how its behaviour could have been more impressive. the tirelessness of the crowd--it was that perhaps which struck me most; and, secondly, the good conduct of the crowd. belfast had one of the lowest of its saturday records for drunkenness and disorderliness yesterday. i was in the reform club between one and three o'clock. again and again i went out on the balcony and watched the streets. i saw the procession of thousands upon thousands come down royal avenue. but this was not the only line of march, for all belfast was now converging upon the city hall, the arrangements in which must have been elaborate. it was a procession a description of which would have been familiar to the belfast public, but the like of which is only seen in ulster." the tribute here paid to the conduct of the belfast crowd was well merited. but in this respect the day of the covenant was not so exceptional as it would have been before the beginning of the ulster movement. before that period neither belfast nor any part of ulster could have been truthfully described as remarkable for its sobriety. but by the universal testimony of those qualified to judge in such matters--police, clergy of all denominations, and workers for social welfare--the political movement had a sobering and steadying influence on the people, which became more and more noticeable as the movement developed, and especially as the volunteers grew in numbers and discipline. the "man in the street" gained a sense of responsibility from the feeling that he formed one of a great company whom it was his wish not to discredit, and he found occupation for mind and body which diminished the temptations of idle hours. from the reform club carson, londonderry, beresford, and f.e. smith went to the ulster club, just across the street, where they dined as the guests of lord mayor mcmordie before leaving for liverpool; and it was outside that dingy building that the enthusiasm of the people reached a climax. none who witnessed it can ever forget the scene, which the english newspaper correspondents required all their superlatives to describe for london readers next day. those superlatives need not be served up again here. one or two bald facts will perhaps give to anyone possessing any faculty of visualisation as clear an idea as they could get from any number of dithyrambic pages. the distance from the ulster club to the quay where the liverpool steamer is berthed is ordinarily less than a ten minutes' walk. the wagonette in which the ulster leader and his friends were drawn by human muscles took three minutes short of an hour to traverse it. it was estimated that into that short space of street some , to , people had managed to jam themselves. movement was almost out of the question, yet everyone within reach tried to press near enough to grasp hands with the occupants of the carriage. when at last the shed was reached the people could not bear to let carson disappear through the gates. _the times_ correspondent heard them shout, "don't leave us," "you mustn't leave us," and, he added, "it was seriously meant; it was only when someone pointed out that sir edward carson had work to do in england for ulster, that the crowd finally gave way and made an opening for their hero."[ ] there had been speeches from the balcony of the reform club in the afternoon; speeches from the window of the ulster club in the evening; speeches outside the dock gates; speeches from the deck of the steamer before departure; speeches by carson, by londonderry, by f.e. smith, by lord charles beresford--and the purport of one and all of them could be summed up in the familiar phrase, "we won't have it." but this simple theme, elaborated through all the modulations of varied oratory, was one of which the belfast populace was no more capable of becoming weary than is the music lover of tiring of a recurrent _leitmotif_ in a wagner opera. at last the ship moved off, and speech was no longer possible. it was replaced by song, "rule britannia"; then, as the space to the shore widened, "auld lang syne"; and finally, when the figures lining the quay were growing invisible in the darkness, those on board heard thousands of loyalists fervently singing "god save the king." footnotes: [ ] _the standard_, september th, . [ ] dr. d'arcy, now ( ) primate of all ireland. [ ] _the times_, september th, . chapter xi passing the bill no part of great britain displayed a more constant and whole-hearted sympathy with the attitude of ulster than the city of liverpool. there was much in common between belfast and the great commercial port on the mersey. both were the home of a robust protestantism, which perhaps was reinforced by the presence in both of a quarter where irish nationalists predominated. just as west belfast gave a seat in parliament to the most forceful of the younger nationalist generation, mr. devlin, the scotland division of liverpool had for a generation been represented by mr. t.p. o'connor, one of the veteran leaders of the parnellite period. in each case the whole of the rest of the city was uncompromisingly conservative, and among the members for liverpool at the time was mr. f.e. smith, unquestionably the most brilliant of the rising generation of conservatives, who had already conspicuously identified himself with the ulster movement, and was a close friend as well as a political adherent of carson. among local leaders of opinion in liverpool alderman salvidge exercised a wide and powerful influence on the unionist side. it was in accordance with the fitness of things, therefore, that liverpool should have wished to associate itself in no doubtful manner with the men who had just subscribed to the covenant on the other side of the channel. having left belfast amid the wonderful scenes described in the last chapter, carson, londonderry, f.e. smith, beresford, and the rest of the distinguished visitors awoke next morning--if the rollers of the irish sea permitted sleep--in the oily waters of the mersey, to find at the landing-stage a crowd that in dimensions and demeanour seemed to be a duplicate of the one they had left outside the dock gates at belfast. except that the point round which everything had centred in belfast, the signing of the covenant, was of course missing in liverpool, the unionists of liverpool were not to be outdone by the ulstermen themselves in their demonstration of loyalty to the union. the packet that carried the group of leaders across the channel happened to be, appropriately enough, the r.m.s. _patriotic_. as she steamed slowly up the river towards prince's landing-stage in the chilly atmosphere of early morning it was at once evident that more than the members of the deputation who had arranged to present addresses to carson were out to welcome him to liverpool, and when the workers who thronged the river bank started singing "o god, our help in ages past," the sound was strangely familiar in ears fresh from ulster. an address from the unionist working men of liverpool and district, presented by alderman salvidge, thanked carson for his "magnificent efforts to preserve the integrity of the empire," and assured him that they, "unionist workers of the port which is connected with belfast in so many ways, stand by ulster in this great struggle." scenes of intense enthusiasm in the streets culminated in a monster demonstration in shiel park, at which it was estimated that close on , people were present. in all the speeches delivered and the resolutions adopted during this memorable liverpool visit the same note was sounded, of full approval of the covenanters and of determination to support them whatever might befall. the events of the last three months, and especially the signing of the covenant, had concentrated on ulster the attention of the whole united kingdom, not to speak of america and the british oversea dominions. this was not of unmixed advantage to the cause for which ulster was making so determined a stand. there was a tendency more and more to regard the opposition to irish home rule as an ulster question, and nothing else. the unionist protagonists of the earlier, the gladstonian, period of the struggle, men like salisbury, randolph churchill, devonshire, chamberlain, and goschen, had treated it mainly as an imperial question, which it certainly was. in their eyes the irish loyalists, of whom the ulstermen were the most important merely because they happened to be geographically concentrated, were valuable allies in a contest vital to the safety and prosperity of the british empire; but, although the particular interests of these loyalists were recognised as possessing a powerful claim on british sympathy and support, this was a consideration quite secondary in comparison with the larger aspects of imperial policy raised by the demand for home rule. it was an unfortunate result of the prominence into which ulster was forced after the introduction of mr. asquith's measure that these larger aspects gradually dropped away, and the defence of the union came to be identified almost completely in england and scotland with support of the ulster loyalists. it was to this aspect of the case that mr. kipling gave prominence in the poem published on the day of the balmoral meeting,[ ] although no one was less prone than he to magnify a "side-show" in imperial policy; and it was the same note that again was sounded on the eve of the covenant by another distinguished english poet. the general feeling of bewilderment and indignation that the only part of ireland which had consistently upheld the british connection should now be not only thrown over by the british government but denounced for its obstinate refusal to co-operate in a separatist movement, was finely expressed in mr. william watson's challenging poem, "ulster's reward," which appeared in _the times_ a few days before the signing of the covenant in belfast: "what is the wage the faithful earn? what is a recompense fair and meet? trample their fealty under your feet-- that, is a fitting and just return. flout them, buffet them, over them ride, fling them aside! "ulster is ours to mock and spurn, ours to spit upon, ours to deride. and let it be known and blazoned wide that this is the wage the faithful earn: did she uphold us when others defied? then fling her aside. "where on the earth was the like of it done in the gaze of the sun? she had pleaded and prayed to be counted still as one of our household through good and ill, and with scorn they replied; jeered at her loyalty, trod on her pride, spurned her, repulsed her, great-hearted ulster; flung her aside." appreciating to the full the sympathy and support which their cause received from leading men of letters in england, it was not the fault of the ulstermen themselves that the larger imperial aspects of the question thus dropped into the background. they continually strove to make englishmen realise that far more was involved than loyal support of england's only friends in ireland; they quoted such pronouncements as admiral mahan's that "it is impossible for a military man, or a statesman with appreciation of military conditions, to look at a map and not perceive that if the ambition of the irish separatists were realised, it would be even more threatening to the national life of britain than the secession of the south was to that of the american republic.... an independent parliament could not safely be trusted even to avowed friends"; and they showed over and over again, quoting chapter and verse from nationalist utterances, and appealing to acknowledged facts in recent and contemporary history, that it was not to "avowed friends," but to avowed enemies, that mr. asquith was prepared to concede an independent parliament. but those were the days before the rude awakening from the dream that the world was to repose for ever in the soft wrappings of universal peace. questions of national defence bored englishmen. the judgment of the greatest strategical authority of the age weighed less than one of lord haldane's verbose platitudes, and the urgent warnings of lord roberts less than the impudent snub administered to him by an under-secretary. speakers on public platforms found that sympathy with ulster carried a more potent appeal to their audience than any other they could make on the irish question, and they naturally therefore concentrated attention upon it. liberals, excited alternately to fury and to ridicule by the proceedings in belfast, heaped denunciation on carson and the covenant, thereby impelling their opponents to vehement defence of both; and the result of all this was that before the end of the sun of imperial policy which had drawn the homage of earlier defenders of the union was almost totally eclipsed by the moon of ulster. when parliament reassembled for the autumn session in october the prime minister immediately moved a "guillotine" resolution for allotting time for the remaining stages of the home rule bill, and, in resisting this motion, mr. bonar law made one of the most convincing of his many convincing speeches against the whole policy of the bill. it stands for all time as the complete demonstration of a proposition which he argued over and over again--that home rule had never been submitted to the british electorate, and that that fact alone was full justification for ulster's resolve to resist it. it was impossible for any democratic minister to refute the contention that even if the principle of the government's policy had been as frankly submitted to the electorate as it had in fact been carefully withheld, it would still remain true that the intensity of the ulster opposition was itself a new factor in the situation upon which the people were entitled to be consulted. there was a limit, said mr. bonar law, to the obligation to submit to legally constituted authority, and that limit was reached "in a free country when a body of men, whether they call themselves a cabinet or not, propose to make a great change like this for which they have never received the sanction of the people." it was, however, thoroughly understood by every member of the house of commons that argument, no matter how irrefutable, had no effect on the situation, which was governed by the simple fact that the life of the ministry depended on the good-will of the nationalist section of the coalition, which rigorously demanded the passage of the bill in the current session, and feared nothing so much as the judgment of the english people upon it. consequently, under the guillotine, great blocks of the bill, containing the most far-reaching constitutional issues, and matters vital to the political and economic structure of the centre of the british empire, were passed through the house of commons by the ringing of the division bells without a word of discussion, exactly as they had come from the pen of the official draftsman, and destined under the exigencies of the parliament act procedure to be forced through the legislature in the same raw condition in the two following sessions. this last-mentioned fact suggested a consideration which weighed heavily on the minds of the ulster leaders as the year drew to a close, and with it the debates on the bill in committee. had the time come when they ought to put forward in parliament an alternative policy to the absolute rejection of the bill? they had not yet completely abandoned hope that ministers, however reluctantly, might still find it impossible to stave off an appeal to the country; but the opposite hypothesis was the more probable. if the bill became law in its present form they would have to fall back on the policy disclosed at craigavon and embodied in the covenant. but, although it is true that they had supported mr. agar-robartes's amendment to exclude certain ulster counties from the jurisdiction to be set up in dublin, the ulster representatives were reluctant to make proposals of their own which might be misrepresented as a desire to compromise their hostility to the principle of home rule. under the parliament act procedure, however, they realised that no material change would be allowed to be made in the bill after it first left the house of commons, although two years would have to elapse before it could reach the statute-book; if they were to propound any alternative to "no home rule" it was, therefore, a case of now or never. having regard to the extreme gravity of the course to be followed in ulster in the event of the measure passing into law, it was decided that the most honest and straightforward thing to do was to put forward at the juncture now reached a policy for dealing with ulster separately from the rest of ireland. but in fulfilment of the promise, from which he never deviated, to take no important step without first consulting his supporters in ulster, carson went over to attend a meeting of the standing committee in belfast on the th of december, where he explained fully the reasons why this policy was recommended by himself and all his parliamentary colleagues. it was not accepted by the standing committee without considerable discussion, but in the end the decision was unanimous, and the resolution adopting it laid it down that "in taking this course the standing committee firmly believes the interests of unionists in the three other provinces of ireland will be best conserved." in order to emphasise that the course resolved upon implied no compromise of their opposition to the bill as a whole, sir edward carson wrote a letter to the prime minister during the christmas recess, which was published in the press, and which made this point clear; and he pressed it home in the house of commons on the st of january, , when he moved to exclude "the province of ulster" from the operation of the bill in a speech of wonderfully persuasive eloquence which deeply impressed the house, and which was truly described by mr. asquith as "very powerful and moving," and by mr. redmond as "serious and solemn." carson's proposal was altogether different from what was subsequently enacted in . it was consistent with the uninterrupted demand of ulster to be let alone, it asked for no special privilege, except the privilege, which was also claimed as an inalienable right, to remain a part of the united kingdom with full representation at westminster and nowhere else; it required the creation of no fresh subordinate constitution raising the difficult question as to the precise area which its jurisdiction could effectively administer. carson's amendment was, of course, rejected by the government's invariably docile majority, and on the th of january the home rule bill passed the third reading in the house of commons, without the smallest concession having been made to the ulster opposition, or the slightest indication as to how the government intended to meet the opposition of a different character which was being organised in the north of ireland. when the bill went to the upper house at the end of january the whole subject was threshed out in a series of exceedingly able speeches; but the impotence of the second chamber under the parliament act gave an air of pathetic unreality to the proceedings, which was neatly epitomised by lord londonderry in the sentence: "the position is, that while the house of commons can vote but not speak, the lords can speak but not vote." nevertheless, such speeches as those of the archbishop of york, earl grey, the duke of devonshire, and lord londonderry, were not without effect on opinion outside. earl grey, an admitted authority on federal constitutions, urged that if, as the government were continually assuring the country, home rule was the first step in the federalisation of the united kingdom, there was every reason why ulster should be a distinct unit in the federal system. the archbishop dealt more fully with the ulster question. admitting that he had formerly believed "that this attitude of ulster was something of a scarecrow made up out of old and outworn prejudices," he had now to acknowledge that the men of ulster were "of all men the least likely to be 'drugged with the wine of words,' and were men who of all other men mean and do what they say." behind all the glowing eloquence of mr. asquith and mr. redmond, he discerned "this figure of ulster, grim, determined, menacing, which no eloquence can exorcise and no live statesmanship can ignore." if the result of this legislation should be actual bloodshed, then, on whomsoever might rest the responsibility for it, it would mean the shattering of all the hopes of a united and contented ireland which it was the aim of the bill to create. if ulster made good her threat of forcible resistance there was, said the archbishop, one condition, and one condition only, on which her coercion could be justified, and that was that the government "should have received from the people of this country an authority clear and explicit" to carry it out. but among the numerous striking passages in the debate which occupied the peers for four days, none was more telling than lord curzon's picturesque description of how ulster was to be treated. "you are compelling ulster," he said, "to divorce her present husband, to whom she is not unfaithful, and you compel her to marry someone else whom she cordially dislikes, with whom she does not want to live; and you do it because she happens to be rich, and because her new partner has a large and ravenous offspring to provide for. you are asking rather too much of human nature." that the home rule bill would be rejected on second reading by the lords was a foregone conclusion, and it was so rejected by a majority of on the st of january, . the bill then entered into its period of gestation under the parliament act. the session did not come to an end until the th of march, and the new session began three days afterwards. it is unnecessary to follow the fortunes of the bill in parliament in , for the process was purely mechanical, in order to satisfy the requirements of the parliament act. the preparations for dealing with the mischief it would work went forward with unflagging energy elsewhere. footnotes: [ ] see _ante_, p. . chapter xii was resistance justifiable? a story is told of queen victoria that in her youthful days, when studying constitutional history, she once asked lord melbourne whether under any circumstances citizens were justified in resisting legal authority; to which the old courtier replied: "when asked that question by a sovereign of the house of hanover i feel bound to answer in the affirmative." if one can imagine a similar question being asked of an ulsterman by mr. asquith, mr. lloyd george, or sir edward grey, in , the reply would surely have been that such a question asked by a statesman claiming to be a guardian of liberal principles and of the whig tradition could only be answered in the affirmative. this, at all events, was the view of the late duke of devonshire, who more than any other statesman of our time could claim to be a representative in his own person of the whig tradition handed down from .[ ] passive obedience has, indeed, been preached as a political dogma in the course of english history, but never by apostles of liberalism. forcible resistance to legally constituted authority, even when it involved repudiation of existing allegiance, has often, both in our own and in foreign countries, won the approval and sympathy of english liberals. a long line of illustrious names, from cromwell and lord halifax in england to kossuth and mazzini on the continent, might be quoted in support of such a proposition if anyone were likely to challenge it. when, then, liberals professed to be unutterably shocked by ulster's declared intention to resist home rule both actively and passively, they could not have based their attitude on the principle that under no circumstances could such resistance be morally justified. indeed, in the case in question, there were circumstances that would have made the condemnation of ulster by the english liberal party not a little hypocritical if referred to any general ethical principle. for that party had itself been for a generation in the closest political alliance with irishmen whose leader had boasted that they were as much rebels as their fathers were in , and whose power in ireland had been built up by long-sustained and systematic defiance of the law. yet the same politicians who had excused, if they had not applauded, the "plan of campaign," and the organised boycotting and cattle-driving which had for years characterised the agitation for home rule, were unspeakably shocked when ulster formed a disciplined volunteer force which never committed an outrage, and prepared to set up a provisional government rather than be ruled by an assembly of cattle-drivers in dublin. moreover, many of mr. asquith's supporters, and one at least of his most distinguished colleagues in the cabinet of , had themselves organised resistance to an education act which they disliked but had been unable to defeat in parliament. nevertheless, it must, of course, be freely admitted that the question as to what conditions justify resistance to the legal authority in the state--or rebellion, if the more blunt expression be preferred--is an exceedingly difficult one to answer. it would sound cynical to say, though carlyle hardly shrinks from maintaining, that success, and success alone, redeems rebellion from wickedness and folly. yet it would be difficult to explain on any other principle why posterity has applauded the parliamentarians of and the whigs of , while condemning monmouth and charles edward; or why mr. gladstone sympathised with jefferson davis when he looked like winning and withdrew that sympathy when he had lost. but if success is not the test, what is? is it the aim of the men who resist? the aim that appears honourable and heroic to one onlooker appears quite the opposite to another, and so the test resolves itself into a matter of personal partisanship. that is probably as near as one can get to a solution of the question. those who happen to agree with the purpose for which a rebellion takes place think the rebels in the right; those who disagree think them in the wrong. as mr. winston churchill succinctly puts it when commenting on the strictures passed on his father for "inciting" ulster to resist home rule, "constitutional authorities will measure their censures according to their political opinions." he reminds us, moreover, that when lord randolph was denounced as a "rebel in the skin of a tory," the latter "was able to cite the authority of lord althorp, sir robert peel, mr. morley, and the prime minister (gladstone) himself, in support of the contention that circumstances might justify morally, if not technically, violent resistance and even civil war."[ ] to this distinguished catalogue of authorities an ulster apologist might have added the name of the chief secretary for ireland in mr. asquith's own cabinet, who admitted in that "if the religion of the protestants were oppressed or their property despoiled they would be right to fight[ ];" which meant that mr. birrell did not condemn fighting in itself, provided he were allowed to decide when the occasion for it had arisen. greater authorities than mr. birrell held that the ulster case for resistance was a good and valid one as it stood. no english statesman of the last half-century has deservedly enjoyed a higher reputation for political probity, combined with sound common sense, than the eighth duke of devonshire. as long ago as , when this same issue had already been raised in circumstances much less favourable to ulster than after the passing of the parliament act in , the duke of devonshire said: "the people of ulster believe, rightly or wrongly, that under a government responsible to an imperial parliament they possess at present the fullest security which they can possess of their personal freedom, their liberties, and their right to transact their own business in their own way. you have no right to offer them any inferior security to that; and if, after weighing the character of the government which it is sought to impose upon them, they resolve that they are no longer bound to obey a law which does not give them equal and just protection with their fellow subjects, who can say--how at all events can the descendants of those who resisted king james ii say, that they have not a right, if they think fit, to resist, if they think they have the power, the imposition of a government put upon them by force?"[ ] all the same, there never was a community on the face of the earth to whom "rebellion" in any real sense of the word was more hateful than to the people of ulster. they traditionally were the champions of "law and order" in ireland; they prided themselves above all things on their "loyalty" to their king and to the british flag. and they never entertained the idea that the movement which they started at craigavon in , and to which they solemnly pledged themselves by their covenant in the following year, was in the slightest degree a departure from their cherished "loyalty"--on the contrary, it was an emphatic assertion of it. they held firmly, as mr. bonar law and the whole unionist party in great britain held also, that mr. asquith and his government were forcing home rule upon them by unconstitutional methods. they did not believe that loyalty in the best sense--loyalty to the sovereign, to the empire, to the majesty of the law--required of them passive obedience to an act of parliament placed by such means on the statute-book, which they were convinced, moreover, was wholly repugnant to the great majority of the british people. this aspect of the matter was admirably and soberly presented by _the times_ in one of the many weighty articles in which that great journal gave undeviating support to the ulster cause. "a free community cannot justly, or even constitutionally, be deprived of its privileges or its position in the realm by any measure that is not stamped with the considered and unquestionable approval of the great body of electors of the united kingdom. any attempt so to deprive them is a fraud upon their fundamental rights, which they are justified in resisting, as an act of violence, by any means in their power. this is elementary doctrine, borne out by the whole course of english history."[ ] that the position was paradoxical calls for no denial; but the pith of the paradox lay in the fact that a movement denounced as "rebellious" by its political opponents was warmly supported not only by large masses, probably by the majority, of the people of this country, but by numbers of individuals of the highest character, occupying stations of great responsibility. whatever may be thought of men engaged in actual political conflict, whom some people appear to think capable of any wickedness, no one can seriously suggest that men like lord macnaghten, like the late and present primates of ireland, like the late provost of trinity, like many other sober thinkers who supported ulster, were men who would lightly lend themselves to "rebellion," or any other wild and irresponsible adventure. as _the times_ very truly observed in a leading article in : "we remember no precedent in our domestic history since the revolution of for a movement among citizens, law-abiding by temperament and habit, which resembles the present movement of the ulster protestants. it is no rabble who have undertaken it. it is the work of orderly, prosperous, and deeply religious men."[ ] nor did the paradox end there. if the ulster movement was "rebellious," its purpose was as paradoxical as its circumstances. it had in it no subversive element. in this respect it stands (so far as the writer's knowledge goes) without precedent, a solitary instance in the history of mankind. the world has witnessed rebellions without number, designed to bring about many different results--to emancipate a people from oppression, to upset an obnoxious form of government, to expel or to restore a rival dynasty, to transfer allegiance from one sovereign or one state to another. but has there ever been a "rebellion" the object of which was to maintain the _status quo_? yet that was the sole purpose of the ulstermen in all they did from to . that fact, which distinguished their movement from every rebellion or revolution in history, placed them on a far more solid ground of reasonable justification than the excuse offered by mr. churchill for their bellicose attitude in his father's day. although he is no doubt right in saying that "when men are sufficiently in earnest they will back their words with more than votes," it is a plea that would cover alike the conduct of halifax and the other whigs who resisted the legal authority of james ii, of the jacobites who fought for his grandson, and of the contrivers of many another bloody or bloodless revolution. but there was nothing revolutionary in the ulster movement. it was resistance to the transfer of a people's allegiance without their consent; to their forcible expulsion from a constitution with which they were content and their forcible inclusion in a constitution which they detested. this was the very antithesis of revolution. english radical writers and politicians might argue that no "transfer of allegiance" was contemplated; but ulstermen thought they knew better, and the later development of the irish question proved how right they were. even had they been proved wrong instead of right in their conviction that the true aim of irish nationalism (a term in which sinn fein is included) was essentially separatist, they knew better than englishmen how little reality there was in the theory that under the proposed home rule their allegiance would be unaffected and their political _status_ suffer no degradation. they claimed to occupy a position similar to that of the north in the american civil war--with this difference, which, so far as it went, told in their favour, that whereas lincoln took up arms to resist secession, they were prepared to do so to resist expulsion, the purpose in both cases, however, being to preserve union. the practical view of the question, as it would appear in the eyes of ordinary men, was well expressed by lord curzon in the house of lords, when he said: "the people of this country will be very loth to condemn those whose only disloyalty it will be to have been excessive in their loyalty to the king. do not suppose that the people of this country will call those 'rebels' whose only form of rebellion is to insist on remaining under the imperial parliament."[ ] of course, men like sir edward carson, lord londonderry, mr. thomas sinclair, and other ulster leaders were too far-seeing not to realise that the course they were taking would expose them to the accusation of having set a bad example which others without the same grounds of justification might follow in very different circumstances. but this was a risk they had to shoulder, as have all who are not prepared to subscribe to the dogma of passive obedience without limit. they accepted it as the less of two evils. but there was something humorous in the pretence put forward in and afterwards that the violence to which the adherents of sinn fein had recourse was merely copying ulster. as if irish nationalism in its extreme form required precedent for insurrection! even the leader of "constitutional nationalism" himself had traced his political pedigree to convicted rebels like tone and emmet, and since the date of those heroes there had been at least two armed risings in ireland against the british crown and government. if the taunt flung at ulstermen had been that they had at last thrown overboard law and order and had stolen the nationalist policy of active resistance, there would at least have been superficial plausibility in it. but when it was suggested or implied that the ulster example was actually responsible in any degree whatever for violent outbreaks in the other provinces, a supercilious smile was the only possible retort from the lips of representatives of ulster. but what caused them some perplexity was the disposition manifested in certain quarters in england to look upon the two parties in ireland in regard to "rebellion" as "six of one and half a dozen of the other." it has always, unhappily, been characteristic of a certain type of englishman to see no difference between the friends and the enemies of his country, and, if he has a preference at all, to give it to the latter. apart from all other circumstances which in the eyes of ulstermen justified them up to the hilt in the policy they pursued, apart from everything that distinguished them historically and morally from irish "rebels," there was the patent and all-important fact that the motive of their opponents was hostility to england, whereas their own motive was friendliness and loyalty to england. in that respect they never wavered. if the course of events had ever led to the employment of british troops to crush the resistance of ulster to home rule, the extraordinary spectacle would have been presented to the wondering world of the king's soldiers shooting down men marching under the british flag and singing "god save the king." it was no doubt because this was very generally understood in england that the sympathies of large masses of law-loving people were never for a moment alienated from the men of ulster by all the striving of their enemies to brand them as rebels. constitutional authorities may, as mr. churchill says, "measure their censures according to their political opinions," but the generality of men, who are not constitutional authorities, whose political opinions, if they have any, are fluctuating, and who care little for "juridical niceties," will measure their censures according to their instinctive sympathies. and the sound instinct of englishmen forbade them to blame men who, if rebels in law, were their firm friends in fact, for taking exceptional and even illegal measures, when all others failed, to preserve the full unity which they regarded as the fruit of that friendship. footnotes: [ ] see _life of the eighth duke of devonshire,_ by bernard holland, ii, pp. - . [ ] _life of lord randolph churchill_, vol. ii, p. . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] bernard holland's _life of the eighth duke of devonshire_, ii, . [ ] _the times_, july th, . [ ] ibid., august nd, . [ ] _parliamentary debates_ (house of lords), july th, . chapter xiii provisional government and propaganda by the death of the duke of abercorn on the rd of january, , the ulster loyalists lost a leader who had for many years occupied a very special place in their affection and confidence. owing to failing health he had been unable to take an active part in the exciting events of the past two years, but the messages of encouragement and support which were read from him at craigavon, balmoral, and other meetings for organising resistance, were always received with an enthusiasm which showed, and was intended to show, that the great part he had played in former years, and especially his inspiring leadership as chairman of the ulster convention in , had never been forgotten. his death inflicted also, indirectly, another blow which at this particular moment was galling to loyalists out of all proportion to its intrinsic importance. the removal to the house of lords of the marquis of hamilton, the member for derry city, created a vacancy which was filled at the ensuing by-election by a liberal home ruler. to lose a seat anywhere in the north-eastern counties at such a critical time in the movement was bad enough, but the unfading halo of the historic siege rested on derry as on a sanctuary of protestantism and loyalty, so that the capture of the "maiden city" by the enemy wounded loyalist sentiment far more deeply than the loss of any other constituency. the two parties had been for some time very nearly evenly balanced there, and every electioneering art and device, including that of bringing to the poll voters who had long rested in the cemetery, was practised in derry with unfailing zeal and zest by party managers. for some time past trade, especially ship-building, had been in a state of depression in derry, with the result that a good many of the better class of artisans, who were uniformly unionist, had gone to belfast and elsewhere to find work, leaving the political fortunes of the city at the mercy of the casual labourer who drifted in from the wilds of donegal, and who at this election managed to place the home rule candidate in a majority of fifty-seven. it was a matter of course that the late duke's place as president of the ulster unionist council should be taken by lord londonderry, and it happened that the annual meeting at which he was formally elected was held on the same day that witnessed the rejection of the home rule bill by the house of lords. it was also at this annual meeting ( st january, ) that the special commission who had been charged to prepare a scheme for the provisional government, presented their draft report. the work had been done with great thoroughness and was adopted without substantial alteration by the council, but was not made public for several months. the council itself was, in the event of the provisional government being set up, to constitute a "central authority," and provision was made, with complete elaboration of detail, for carrying on all the necessary departments of administration by different committees and boards, whose respective functions were clearly defined. among those who consented to serve in these departmental committees, in addition to the recognised local leaders in the ulster movement, were dr. crozier, archbishop of armagh, the moderator of the general assembly of the presbyterian church in ireland, lord charles beresford, major-general montgomery, colonel thomas hickman, m.p., lord claud hamilton, m.p., sir robert kennedy, k.c.m.g., and sir charles macnaghten, k.c., son of lord macnaghten, the distinguished lord of appeal. ulster at this time gave a lead on the question of admitting women to political power, at a time when their claim to enfranchisement was being strenuously resisted in england, by including several women in the provisional government. a most carefully drawn scheme for a separate judiciary in ulster had been prepared with the assistance of some of the ablest lawyers in ireland. it was in three parts, dealing respectively with (a) the supreme court, (b) the land commission, and (c) county courts; it was drawn up as an ordinance, in the usual form of a parliamentary bill, and it is an indication of the spirit in which ulster was preparing to resist an act of parliament that the ordinance bore the introductory heading: "_it is hereby enacted by the central authority in the name of the king's most excellent majesty that_------" similarly, the form of "oath or declaration of adherence" to be taken by judges, magistrates, coroners, and other officers of the courts, set out in a schedule to the ordinance, was: "i ... of ... being about to serve in the courts of the provisional government as the central authority for his majesty the king, etc." it will be remembered that the original resolution by which the council decided to set up a provisional government limited its duration until ulster should "again resume unimpaired her citizenship in the united kingdom,"[ ] and at a later date it was explicitly stated that it was to act as trustee for the imperial parliament. all the forms prepared for use while it remained in being purported to be issued in the name of the king. and the resolution adopted by the unionist council immediately after constituting itself the central authority of the provisional government, in which the reasons for that policy were recorded, concluded with the statement that "we, for our part, in the course we have determined to pursue, are inspired not alone by regard to the true welfare of our own country, but by devotion to the interests of our world-wide empire and loyalty to our beloved king." if this was the language of rebels, it struck a note that can never before have been heard in a chorus of disaffection. the demonstrations against the government's policy which had been held during the last eighteen months, of which some account has been given, were so impressive that those which followed were inevitably less remarkable by comparison. they were, too, necessarily to a large extent, repetitions of what had gone before. there might be, and there were, plenty of variations on the old theme, but there was no new theme to introduce. propaganda to the extent possible with the resources at the disposal of the ulster unionist council was carried on in the british constituencies in , the cost being defrayed chiefly through generous subscriptions collected by the energy and influence of mr. walter long; but many were beginning to share the opinion of mr. charles craig, m.p., who scandalised the radicals by saying at antrim in march that, while it was incumbent on ulstermen to do their best to educate the electorate, "he believed that, as an argument, ten thousand pounds spent on rifles would be a thousand times stronger than the same amount spent on meetings, speeches, and pamphlets." on the th of march a letter appeared in the london newspapers announcing the formation of a "british league for the support of ulster and the union," with an office in london. it was signed by a hundred peers and unionist members of the house of commons. the manifesto emphasised the imperial aspect of the great struggle that was going on, asserting that it was "quite clear that the men of ulster are not fighting only for their own liberties. ulster will be the field on which the privileges of the whole nation will be lost or won." a small executive committee was appointed, with the duke of bedford as chairman, and within a few weeks large numbers of people in all parts of the country joined the new organisation. a conference attended by upwards of honorary agents from all parts of the country was held at londonderry house on the th of june, where the work of the league was discussed, and its future policy arranged. its operations were not ostentatious, but they were far from being negligible, especially in connection with later developments of the movement in the following year. this proof of british support was most encouraging to the people of ulster, and the dublin correspondent of _the times_ reported that it gave no less satisfaction to loyalists in other parts of ireland, among whom, as the position became more desperate every day, there was "not the least sign of giving way, of accepting the inevitable." every month that passed in uncertainty as to what fate was reserved for ulster, and especially every visit of the leader to belfast, endeared him more intensely to his followers, who had long since learnt to give him their unquestioning trust; and his bereavement by the death of his wife in april brought him the profound and affectionate sympathy of a warm-hearted people, which manifested itself in most moving fashion at a great meeting a month later on the th of may, when, at the opening of a new drill hall in the most industrial district of belfast, sir edward exclaimed, in response to a tumultuous reception, "heaven knows, my one affection left me is my love of ireland." he took occasion at the same meeting to impress upon his followers the spirit by which all their actions should be guided, and which always guided his own. with a significant reference to the purposes for which the new drill hall might be used, he added, "always remember--this is essential--always remember you have no quarrel with individuals. we welcome and we love every individual irishman, even though he may be opposed to us. our quarrel is with the government." when the feelings of masses of men are deeply stirred in political conflict such exhortations are never superfluous; and there never was a leader who could give them with better grace than sir edward carson, who himself combined to an extraordinary degree strength of conviction with entire freedom from bitterness towards individual opponents.[ ] in this same speech he showed that there was no slackening of determination to pursue to the end the policy of the covenant. there had been rumours that the government were making secret inquiries with a view to taking legal proceedings, and in allusion to them carson moved his audience to one of the most wonderful demonstrations of personal devotion that even he ever evoked, by saying: "if they want to test the legality of anything we are doing, let them not attack humble men--i am responsible for everything, and they know where to find me." the bill was running its course for the second time through parliament, a course that was now farcically perfunctory, and carson returned to london to repeat in the house of commons on the th of june his defiant acceptance of responsibility for the ulster preparations. he was back in belfast for the th of july celebrations, when , orangemen assembled at craigavon to hear another speech from their leader full of confident challenge, and to receive another message of encouragement from mr. bonar law, who assured them that "whatever steps they might feel compelled to take, whether they were constitutional, or whether in the long run they were unconstitutional, they had the whole of the unionist party under his leadership behind them." the leader of the unionist party had good reason to know that his message to ulster was endorsed by his followers. that had been demonstrated beyond all possibility of doubt during the preceding month. the ulster unionist members of the house of commons, with carson at their head, had during june made a tour of some of the principal towns of scotland and the north of england, receiving a resounding welcome wherever they went. the usual custom of political meetings, where one or two prominent speakers have the platform to themselves, was departed from; the whole parliamentary contingent kept together throughout the tour as a deputation from ulster to the constituencies visited, taking in turn the duty of supporting carson, who was everywhere the principal speaker. there were wonderful demonstrations at glasgow and edinburgh, both in the streets and the principal halls, proving, as was aptly said by _the yorkshire post_, that "the cry of the new covenanters is not unheeded by the descendants of the old"; and thence they went south, drawing great cheering crowds to welcome them and to present encouraging addresses at the railway stations at berwick, newcastle, darlington, and york, to leeds, where the two largest buildings in the city were packed to overflowing with yorkshiremen eager to see and hear the ulster leader, and to show their sympathy with the loyalist cause. similar scenes were witnessed at norwich and bristol, and the tour left no doubt in the minds of those who followed it, and who studied the comments of the press upon it, that not only was the whole unionist party in great britain solidly behind the ulstermen in their resolve to resist being subjected to a parliament in dublin, but that the general drift of opinion detached from party was increasingly on the same side. footnotes: [ ] see _ante_, p. . [ ] but he could be moved to stern indignation by the treachery of former friends, as he showed in december . chapter xiv lord loreburn's letter whatever might be the state of public opinion in england, it was realised that the government, if they chose, were in a position to disregard it; and in ulster the tension was becoming almost unbearable. the leaders were apprehensive lest outbreaks of violence should occur, which they knew would gravely prejudice the movement; and there is no doubt that it was only the discipline which the rank and file had now gained, and the extraordinary restraining influence which carson exercised, that prevented serious rioting in many places. incidents like the attack by nationalist roughs in belfast on a carriage conveying crippled children to a holiday outing on the st of may because it was decorated with union jacks might at any moment lead to trouble. there was some disorder in belfast in the early hours of the th of july; and an outbreak occurred in august in derry, always a storm centre, when a procession was attacked, and a protestant was shot while watching it from his own upper window. the incident started rioting, which continued for several days, and a battalion of troops had to be called in to restore order. meantime, throughout the summer, while the government were complacently carrying their bill through parliament for the second time, the press was packed with suggestions for averting the crisis which everybody except the cabinet recognised as impending. it began to be whispered in the clubs and lobbies that the king might exercise the prerogative of veto, and even men like lord st. aldwyn and the veteran earl of halsbury, both of them ex-cabinet ministers, encouraged the idea; but there was no widespread acceptance of the notion that even in so exceptional a case his majesty would reject the advice of his responsible ministers. but in a letter to _the times_ on the th of september, mr. george cave, k.c., m.p. (afterwards home secretary, and ultimately lord of appeal), suggested that the king might "exercise his undoubted right" to dissolve parliament before the beginning of the next session, in order to inform himself as to whether the policy of his ministers was endorsed by the people. but a much greater sensation was created a few days later by a letter which appeared in _the times_ on the th of the same month over the signature of lord loreburn. lord loreburn had been lord chancellor at the time the home rule bill was first introduced, but had retired from the government in june , being replaced on the woolsack by lord haldane. when the first draft of the home rule bill was under discussion in the cabinet in preparation for its introduction in the house of commons, two of the younger ministers, mr. lloyd george and mr. winston churchill, proposed that an attempt should be made to avert the stern opposition to be expected from ulster, by treating the northern province, or a portion of it, separately from the rest of ireland. this proposal was not acceptable to the cabinet as a whole, and its authors were roundly rated by lord loreburn for so unprincipled a lapse from orthodox gladstonian doctrine. what, therefore, must have been the astonishment of the heretics when they found their mentor, less than two years later, publicly reproving the government which he had left for having got into such a sad mess over the ulster difficulty! they might be forgiven some indignation at finding themselves reproved by lord loreburn for faulty statesmanship of which lord loreburn was the principal author. those, however, who had not the same ground for exasperation as mr. lloyd george and mr. churchill thought lord loreburn's letter very sound sense. he pointed out that if the bill were to become law in , as it stood in september , there would be, if not civil war, at any rate very serious rioting in the north of ireland, and when the riots had been quelled by the government the spirit that prompted them would remain. everybody concerned would suffer from fighting it out to a finish. the ex-chancellor felt bound to assume that "up to the last, ministers, who assuredly have not taken leave of their senses, would be willing to consider proposals for accommodation," and he therefore suggested that a conference should be held behind closed doors with a view to a settlement by consent. if lord loreburn had perceived at the time the draft bill was before the cabinet that it was not the ministers who proposed separate treatment for ulster who had "taken leave of their senses," but those, including himself, who had resisted that proposal, his wisdom would have been more timely; but it was better late than never, and his unexpected intervention had a decided influence on opinion in the country. the comment of _the times_ was very much to the point: "on the eve of a great political crisis, it may be of national disaster, a distinguished liberal statesman makes public confession of his belief that, as a permanent solution, the irish policy of the government is indefensible." this letter of the ex-lord chancellor gave rise to prolonged discussion in the press and on the platform. at durham, on the th of september, carson declared that he would welcome a conference if the question was how to provide a genuine expansion of self-government, but that, if ulster was to be not only expelled from the union but placed under a parliament in dublin, then "they were going to make home rule impossible by steady and persistent opposition." the government seemed unable to agree whether a conciliatory or a defiant attitude was their wiser policy, though it is true that the latter recommended itself mostly to the least prominent of its members, such as mr. j.m. robertson, secretary of the board of trade, who in a speech at newcastle on the th of september announced scornfully that ministers were not going to turn "king carson" into "saint carson" by prosecuting him, and that "the government would know how to deal with him."[ ] but more important ministers were beginning to perceive the unwisdom of this sort of bluster. lord morley, in the house of lords, denied that he had ever underrated the ulster difficulty, and said that for twenty-five years he had never thought that ulster was guilty of bluff. mr. churchill, at dundee, on the th of october, no longer talked as he had the previous year about "not taking sir edward carson too seriously," though he still appeared to be ignorant of the fact that there was in ulster anybody except orangemen. "the orange leaders," he said, "used violent language, but liberals should try to understand their position. their claim for special consideration, if put forward with sincerity, could not be ignored by a government depending on the existing house."[ ] the prime minister, less assured than his subordinate at the board of trade that "king carson" was negligible, also displayed a somewhat chastened spirit at ladybank on the th of october, when he acknowledged that it was "of supreme importance to the future well-being of ireland that the new system should not start with the apparent triumph of one section over another," and he invited a "free and frank exchange of views."[ ] sir edward grey held out another little twig of olive two days later at berwick. to these overtures, if they deserve the name, mr. bonar law replied in an address to a gathering of fifteen thousand people at wallsend on the th, in the presence of sir edward carson. having repeated the blenheim pledge, he praised the discipline and restraint shown by the ulster people and their leaders, but warned his hearers that the nation was drifting towards the tragedy of civil war, the responsibility for which would rest on the government. he expressed his readiness to respond to mr. asquith's invitation, but pointed out that there were only three alternatives open to the government. they must either ( ) go on as they were doing and provoke ulster to resist--that was madness; ( ) they could consult the electorate, whose decision would be accepted by the unionist party as a whole; or ( ) they could try to arrange a settlement which would at least avert civil war. there had been during the past six or eight months an unusual dearth of by-elections to test public opinion in regard to the irish policy of the government, and it must be borne in mind that the unionist party in great britain was still distracted by disputes over the tariff question, which in january had very nearly led to the retirement of mr. bonar law from the leadership. nevertheless, in may the unionists won two signal victories, one in cambridgeshire, and one in cheshire, where the altrincham division sent a staunch friend of ulster to parliament in the person of mr. george c. hamilton, who in his maiden speech declared that he had won the contest entirely on the ulster question. even more significant, perhaps, were two elections which were fought while the interchange of party strokes over the loreburn letter was in progress, and the results of both were declared on the th of november. at reading, where the unionists retained the seat, the liberal candidate was constrained by pressure of opinion in the constituency to promise support for a policy of "separate and generous treatment for ulster." at linlithgow, a liberal stronghold, where no such promise was forthcoming, the liberal majority, in spite of a large nationalist vote, was reduced by , votes as compared with the general election. there were signs that nonconformists, whose great leaders like spurgeon and dale had been hostile to home rule in gladstone's time, were again becoming uneasy about handing over the ulster presbyterians and methodists to the roman hierarchy. a memorial against home rule, signed by , people, which had been presented to the general assembly of the presbyterian church in june, had no doubt had some effect on nonconformist opinion in england, and it was just about the time when these elections took place that carson was described at a large gathering of nonconformists in london as "the best embodiment at this moment of the ancient spirit of nonconformity."[ ] meanwhile the people in ulster were steadily maturing their plans. the arrangements already mentioned for setting up a provisional government were confirmed and finally adopted by the unionist council in belfast on the th of september, and the council by resolution delegated its powers to the standing committee, while the commission of five was at the same time appointed to act as an executive. carson, in accepting the chairmanship of the central authority, used the striking phrase, which precisely epitomised the situation, that "ulster might be coerced into submission, but in that case would have to be governed as a conquered country." the nationalist retort that the rest of ireland was now being so treated, appeared forcible to those englishmen only who could see no difference between controlling a disaffected population and chastising a loyal one. at the same meeting of the ulster unionist council on the th of september a guarantee fund was established for providing means to compensate members of the u.v.f. for any loss or disability they might suffer as a result of their service, and the widows and dependents of any who might lose their lives. this was a matter that had caused carson anxiety for some time. he was extremely sensitive to the moral responsibility he would incur towards those who so eagerly followed his lead, in the event of their suffering loss of life or limb in the service of ulster. his proposal that a guarantee fund of a million sterling should be started, met with a ready response from the council, and from the wealthier classes in and about belfast. the form of "indemnity guarantee" provided for the payment to those entitled to benefit under it of sums not less than they would have been entitled to under the fatal accidents act, the employers' liability act, and the workman's compensation act, as the circumstances of the case might be. the list was headed by sir edward carson, lord londonderry, captain craig, sir john lonsdale, sir george clark, and lord dunleath, with a subscription of £ , each, and their example was followed by mr. kerr smiley, m.p., mr. r.m. liddell, mr. george preston, mr. henry musgrave, mr. c.e. allen, and mr. frank workman, who entered their names severally for the same amount. a quarter of a million sterling was guaranteed in the room before the council separated; by the end of a week it had grown to £ , ; and before the st of january, , the total amount of the indemnity guarantee fund was £ , , . it gave carson and the other leaders the greatest possible satisfaction that the response to this appeal was so prompt and adequate. not only was their anxiety relieved in regard to their responsibility to loyal followers of the rank and file who might become "casualties" in the movement, but they had been given a striking proof that the business community of belfast did not consider its pocket more sacred than its principles. moreover, if there had been doubt on that score in anyone's mind, it was set at rest by a memorable meeting for business men only held in belfast on the rd of november. between three and four thousand leaders of industry and commerce, the majority of whom had never hitherto taken any active share in political affairs, presided over by mr. g.h. ewart, president of the belfast chamber of commerce, gave an enthusiastic reception to carson, who told them that he had come more to consult them as to the commercial aspects of the great political controversy than to impress his own views on the gathering. it was said that the men in the hall represented a capital of not less than £ , , sterling,[ ] and there can be no doubt that, even if that were an exaggerated estimate, they were not of a class to whom revolution, rebellion, or political upheaval could offer an attractive prospect. nevertheless, the meeting passed with complete unanimity a resolution expressing confidence in carson and approval of everything he had done, including the formation of the ulster volunteer force, and declaring that they would refuse to pay "all taxes which they could control" to an irish parliament in dublin. this meeting was very satisfactory, for it proved that the "captains of industry" were entirely in accord with the working classes, whose support of the movement had never been in doubt. it showed that ulster was solid behind carson; and the unanimity was emphasised rather than disturbed by a little handful of cranks, calling themselves "protestant home rulers," who met on the th of october at the village of ballymoney "to protest against the lawless policy of carsonism." the principal stickler for propriety of conduct in public life on this occasion was sir roger casement. while the unity and steadfastness--which enemies called obstinacy--of the ulster people were being thus made manifest, the public in england were hearing a good deal about the growth of the ulster volunteer force in numbers and efficiency. as will be seen later, the anniversary of the covenant was celebrated with great military display at the very time when the newspapers across the channel were busy discussing lord loreburn's letter, and at a parade service in the ulster hall, canon harding, after pronouncing the benediction, called on the congregation to raise their right hands and pledge themselves thereby "to follow wherever sir edward carson shall lead us." the events of september --the setting up of the provisional government, the wonderful and instantaneous response to the appeal for an indemnity guarantee fund, the rapid formation of an effective volunteer army--were given the fullest publicity in the english press. every newspaper of importance had its special correspondent in belfast, whose telegrams filled columns every day, adorned with all the varieties of sensational headline type. the radicals were becoming restive. the idea that carson was "not to be taken too seriously," had apparently missed fire. it was the ministerial affectation of contempt that no one was taking seriously; in fact, to borrow an expression from current slang, the "king carson" stunt was a "wash-out." _the nation_ suggested that, instead of being laughed at, the ulster leader should be prosecuted, or, at any rate, removed from the privy council, and other liberal papers feverishly took up the suggestion, debating whether the indictment should be under the treason felony act of , the crimes act of , or the unlawful drilling act of . one of them, however, which succeeded in keeping its head, did not believe that a prosecution would succeed; and, as to the privy council, if carson's name were removed, what about londonderry and f.e. smith, walter long, and bonar law? in fact, "it would be difficult to know where to stop."[ ] it would have been. the privy council would have had to be reduced to a committee of radical politicians; and, if carson had been prosecuted, room would have had to be found in the dock, not only for the whole unionist party, but for the proprietors and editors of most of the leading journals. the government stopped short of that supreme folly; but their impotence was the measure of the prevailing sympathy with ulster. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] _liverpool daily post and mercury_, september nd, . chapter xv preparations and proposals we have seen in a former chapter how the ulster volunteer force originated. it was never formally established by the act of any recognised authority, but rather grew spontaneously from the zeal of the unionist clubs and the orange lodges to present an effective and formidable appearance at the demonstrations which marked the progress of the movement after the meeting at craigavon in . by the following summer it had attained considerable numbers and respectable efficiency, and was becoming organised, without violation of the law, on a territorial basis under local officers, many of whom had served in the army. early in the standing committee resolved that these units should be combined into a single force, to be called the ulster volunteer force, which was to be raised and limited to a strength of , men, all of whom should be men who had signed the covenant. when this organisation took place it became obvious that a serious defect was the want of a commander-in-chief of the whole force, to give it unity and cohesion. this defect was pressed on the attention of the leaders of the movement, who then began to look about for a suitable officer of rank and military experience to take command of the u.v.f. among english members of the house of commons there was no firmer friend of ulster than colonel thomas hickman, c.b., d.s.o., who has been mentioned as one of those who consented to serve in the provisional government. hickman had seen a lot of active service, having served with great distinction in egypt and the soudan under kitchener, and in the south african war. it was natural to take him into confidence in the search for a general; and, when he was approached, it was decided that he should consult lord roberts, whose warm sympathy with the ulster cause was well known to the leaders of the movement, and whose knowledge of army officers of high rank was, of course, unequalled. moreover, the illustrious field-marshal had dropped hints which led those concerned to conjecture that in the last resort he might not himself be unwilling to lend his matchless prestige and genius to the loyalist cause in ireland. the contingency which might bring about such an accession had not, however, yet arisen, and might never arise; in the meantime, lord roberts gave a ready ear to hickman's application, which, after some weeks of delay, he answered in the following letter, which was at once communicated to carson and those in his immediate confidence: "englemere, ascot, berks. "_ th june_, . "dear hickman, "i have been a long time finding a senior officer to help in the ulster business, but i think i have got one now. his name is lieut.-general sir george richardson, k.c.b., c/o messrs. henry s. king & co., pall mall, s.w. he is a retired indian officer, active and in good health. he is not an irishman, but has settled in ireland.... richardson will be in london for about a month, and is ready to meet you at any time. "i am sorry to read about the capture of rifles. "believe me, "yours sincerely, "roberts." the matter was quickly arranged, and within a few weeks sir george richardson had taken up his residence in belfast, and his duties as g.o.c. the ulster volunteer force. he was a distinguished soldier. he served under roberts in the afghan campaign of - ; he took part in the waziri expedition of , and the zhob valley field force operations of . he was in command of a flying column in the tirah expedition of - , and of a cavalry brigade in the china expeditionary force in , and had commanded a division at poona for three years before retiring in . he had been three times mentioned in despatches, besides receiving a brevet and many medals and clasps. he was at this time sixty-six years of age, but, like the great soldier who recommended him to ulster, he was an active little man both in body and mind, with no symptom of approaching old age. general richardson was not long in making himself popular, not only with the force under his command, but with all classes in ulster. there were unavoidable difficulties in handling troops whose officers had no statutory powers of discipline, who had inherited no military traditions, and who formed part of a population conspicuously independent in character. but sir george richardson was as full of tact as of good humour, and he soon found that the keenness of the officers and men, to whom dismissal from the u.v.f. would have been the severest of punishments, more than counterbalanced the difficulties referred to. when the new g.o.c. went to belfast in july, , he found his command between fifty and sixty thousand strong, with recruits joining every day. in september a number of parades were held in different localities, at which the general was accompanied by sir edward carson, mr. f.e. smith, captain james craig, and other members of parliament. the local battalions were in many cases commanded by retired or half-pay officers of the regular army. at all these inspections carson addressed the men, many of whom were now seeing their commander-in-chief for the first time, and pointed out that the u.v.f., being now under a single command, was no longer a mere collection of unrelated units, but an army. at an inspection at antrim on the st of september, he made a disclosure which startled the country not a little next day when it appeared in the headlines of english newspapers. "i tell the government," he said, "that we have pledges and promises from some of the greatest generals in the army, who have given their word that, when the time comes, if it is necessary, they will come over and help us to keep the old flag flying." these promises were entirely spontaneous and unsolicited. more than one of those who made them did fine service to the empire in the impending time of trial which none of them foresaw in . of the men inspected on that day, numbering about , , it was said by the special correspondent of _the yorkshire post_, who was present-- "as far as i could detect in a very careful observation, there were not half a dozen of them unqualified by physique or age to play a manly part. they reminded me more than anything else--except that but few of them were beyond the best fighting age--of the finest class of our national reserve. there was certainly nothing of the mock soldier about them. led by keen, smart-looking officers, they marched past in quarter column with fine, swinging steps, as if they had been in training for years. officers who have had the teaching of them tell me that the rapidity with which they have become efficient is greater than has ever come within their experience in training recruits for either the territorials or the regular service."[ ] the th of september, it will be remembered, was the day when the formation of the provisional government and the indemnity fund (with the subscription of a quarter of a million sterling in two hours) was made public; on saturday the th, the country parades of volunteers of the preceding weeks reached a climax in a grand review in belfast itself, when some , men were drawn up on the same ground where the balmoral meeting had been held eighteen months before. they were reviewed by sir george richardson, g.o.c., and it was on this occasion that mr. f.e. smith became famous as "galloper" to the general. the commanders of the four regiments on parade--one from each parliamentary division of the city--comprising fourteen battalions, were: colonel wallace, major f.h. crawford, major mccalmont, m.p., and captain the hon. a.c. chichester. more than , sympathetic spectators watched the arrival and the review of the troops. among these spectators were a large number of special military correspondents of english newspapers, whose impressions of this memorable event were studied in every part of the united kingdom on the following monday morning. that which appeared in a great lancashire journal may be quoted as a fair and dispassionate account of the scene: "it is quite certain that the review of volunteers at balmoral to-day will go down into history as one of the most extraordinary events in the annals of these islands. not since the marshalling of cromwell's puritan army have we had anything approaching a parallel; but, whereas the puritans took up arms against a king of whom they disapproved, the men of ulster strongly protest their loyalty to the british throne. the great crowd which lined the enclosure was eager, earnest, and sympathetic. it was not a boisterous crowd. on the contrary, beyond the demonstration following the call for cheers for the union there was comparatively little cheering. the crowd seemed burdened with a heavy sense of the importance of the occasion. the conduct of the gathering was serious to the point of positive solemnity. "the volunteers from their own ranks policed the grounds, not a solitary member of the royal irish constabulary being seen in the enclosure. the sun shone brilliantly as colonel wallace led the men of the north division into the enclosure. amidst subdued cheers he marched them across the field in fours, forming up in quarter column by the right, facing left. for an hour and a quarter the procession filed through the gates, the men taking up their positions with perfect movement and not the faintest suggestion of confusion. as the men from the west took up their position the crowd broke into a great cheer. they mustered only two battalions, but they had come from mr. devlin's constituency! "as a body the men were magnificent. the hardy sons of toil from shipyards and factories marched shoulder to shoulder with clergy and doctors, professional men and clerks. from the saluting base general richardson took command, and almost immediately sir edward carson took up his position on the platform, with lord londonderry and captain craig in attendance. then followed a scene that will live long in the memories of that vast concourse of people. with the men standing to 'attention,' the bands struck up the 'british grenadiers,' and the whole division advanced in review order, in perfect lines and unison. "the supreme moment had arrived. the men took off their hats, and the g.o.c. shouted, 'i call upon the men to give three cheers for the union, taking their time from me. hip, hip----' "well, people who were not there must imagine the rest. out of the deafening cheers came the strains of 'rule, britannia!' from the bands; the monster union jack was unfurled in the centre of the ground, and the mighty gathering stood bare-headed to 'god save the king.' it was solemn, impressive, thrilling."[ ] the following day, sunday, was "ulster day," the first anniversary of the signing of the covenant, and it was celebrated in belfast and many other places in ulster by holding special services in all places of worship, which had the effect of sustaining that spirit of high seriousness which struck all observers as remarkable in the behaviour of the people. this week, in which occurred the proclamation of the provisional government, the great review of the belfast volunteers, and the second celebration of ulster day, was a notable landmark in the movement. the press in england and scotland gave the widest publicity to every picturesque and impressive detail, and there can be little doubt that the idea of attempting to arrive at some agreed settlement, started by lord loreburn's letter to _the times_, was greatly stimulated by these fresh and convincing proofs of the grim determination of the ulster people. at all events, the autumn produced more than the usual plethora of political meetings addressed by "front bench" politicians on both sides, each answering each like an antiphonal choir; scraps of olive-branch were timidly held out, only to be snatched back next day in panic lest someone had blundered in saying too much; while day by day a clamorous liberal press, to whom ulster's loyalty to king and empire was an unforgivable offence, alternated between execration of ulster wickedness and affected ridicule of ulster bluff. but it was evident that genuine misgiving was beginning to be felt in responsible liberal quarters. a correspondent of _the manchester guardian_ on the th of november made a proposal for special treatment of ulster; on the st of december mr. massingham, in _the daily news_, urged that an effort should be made to conciliate the northern protestants; and on the th mr. asquith displayed a more conciliatory spirit than usual in a speech at manchester. a most active campaign of propaganda in england and scotland was also carried on during the autumn by ulster speakers, among whom women bore their full share. the ulster women's unionist association employed voluntary workers, who visited over constituencies in great britain, addressing important meetings. it was reckoned that not less than , electors heard the ulster case from the lips of earnest ulster women. on the th of december two royal proclamations were issued by the government, prohibiting the importation of arms and ammunition into ireland. but during the christmas holidays the impression gained ground that the government contemplated making concessions to ulster, and communications in private between the prime minister and sir edward carson did in fact take place at this time. the truth, however, was that the government were not their own masters, and, as mr. bonar law bluntly declared at bristol on the th of january, , they were compelled by the nationalists, on whom they depended for existence, to refuse any genuine concession. in the same speech mr. bonar law replied to the allegation that ulster was crying out before she was hurt, by saying that the american colonies had done the same thing--they had revolted on a question of principle while suffering was still distant, and for a cause that in itself was trivial in comparison with that of ulster.[ ] most of the leaders on both sides were speaking on various platforms in january. on the th carson, at an inspection of the east belfast u.v.f., said he had lately visited mr. joseph chamberlain, and that the dying statesman, clear-sighted and valiant as ever, had said to him at parting, "i would fight it out." in the same spirit mr. austen chamberlain, in a speech at skipton a fortnight later, ridiculed any concession that fell short of the exclusion of ulster from the irish parliament, and asserted that what the policy of the government amounted to was that england was to conquer a province and hold it down at the expense of her friends for the benefit of her enemies.[ ] public attention was, however, not allowed to concentrate wholly on ireland. the radicals, instigated by sir john brunner, president of the national liberal federation, were doing their best to prevent the strengthening of the navy, the time being opportune for parsimony in mr. lloyd george's opinion because our relations with germany were "far more friendly than for years past."[ ] the militant women suffragists were carrying on a lively campaign of arson and assault all over the country. labour unrest was in a condition of ferment. land agitation was exciting the "single-taxers" and other fanatics; and the tariff question had not ceased to be a cause of division in the unionist party. but, while these matters were sharing with the irish problem the attention of the press and the public, "conversations" were being held behind the scenes with a view to averting what everyone now agreed would be a dangerous crisis if ulster proved implacable. when parliament met on the th of february, , mr. asquith referred to these conversations; but while he congratulated everyone concerned on the fact that the press had been successfully kept in the dark for months regarding them, he had to admit that they had produced no result. but there were, he said, "schemes and suggestions of settlement in the air," among them the exclusion of ulster from the bill, a proposal on which he would not at that moment "pronounce, or attempt to pronounce, any final judgment", and he then announced that, as soon as the financial business of the year was disposed of, he would bring forward proposals for the purpose of arriving at an agreement "which will consult not only the interests but the susceptibilities of all concerned." this appeared to be a notable change of attitude on the part of the government; but it was received with not a little suspicion by the unionist leaders. whether or not the change was due, as mr. william moore bluntly asserted, to the formation of the ulster volunteer force, which had now reached its full strength of , men, the question of interest was whether the promised proposals would render that force unnecessary. mr. austen chamberlain asked why the government's proposals should be kept bottled up until a date suspiciously near all fools' day; and sir edward carson, in one of the most impressive speeches he ever made in parliament, which wrung from mr. lloyd george the acknowledgment that it had "entranced the house," joined chamberlain in demanding that the country should not be kept in anxious suspense. the only proper way of making the proposals known was, he said, by embodying them at once in a bill to amend the home rule bill. he confirmed chamberlain's statement that nothing short of the exclusion of ulster would be of the slightest use. the covenanters were not men who would have acted as they had done for the sake of minor details that could be adjusted by "paper safeguards," they were "fighting for a great principle and a great ideal," and if their determination to resist was not morally justified he "did not see how resistance could ever be justified in history at all." but if the exclusion of ulster was to be offered, he would immediately go to belfast and lay the proposal before his followers. he did not intend "that ulster should be a pawn in any political game," and would not allow himself to be manoeuvred into a position where it could afterwards be said that ulster had resorted to arms to secure something that had been rejected when offered by legislation. the sympathy of ulstermen with loyalists in other parts of ireland was as deep and sincere as ever, but no one had ever supposed that ulster could by force of arms do more than preserve her own territory from subjection to dublin. as for the nationalists, they would never succeed in coercing ulster, but "by showing that good government can come under home rule they might try and win her over to the case of the rest of ireland." that was a plan that had never yet been tried. the significance of the announcement which mr. asquith had now made lay in the fact that it was an acknowledgment by the government for the first time that there was an "ulster question" to be dealt with--that ulster was not, as had hitherto been the liberal theory, like any other minority who must submit to the will of the majority opposed to it, but a distinct community, conditioned by special circumstances entitling it to special treatment. the prime minister had thus, as mr. bonar law insisted, "destroyed utterly the whole foundation on which for the last two years the treatment extended to ulster in this bill has been justified." from that day it became impossible ever again to contend that ulster was merely a recalcitrant minority in a larger unity, without rights of her own. the speeches of the unionist leaders in the house of commons showed clearly enough how little faith they had that the government intended to do anything that could lead to an agreed settlement. the interval that passed before the nature of the government's proposals was made known increased rather than diminished this distrust. the air was full of suggestions, the most notable of which was put forward by the veteran constitutional lawyer, mr. frederic harrison, who proposed that ulster should be governed by a separate committee elected by its own constituencies, with full legislative, administrative, and financial powers, subject only to the crown and the imperial parliament.[ ] unionists did not believe that the liberal cabinet would be allowed by their nationalist masters to offer anything so liberal to ulster; nor did that province desire autonomy for itself. they believed that the chief desire of the government was not to appease ulster, but to put her in a tactically indefensible position. this fear had been expressed by lord lansdowne as long before as the previous october, when he wrote privately to carson in reference to lord loreburn's suggested conference that he suspected the intention of the government to be "to offer us terms which they know we cannot accept, and then throw on us the odium of having obstructed a settlement." mr. walter long had the same apprehension in march as to the purpose of mr. asquith's unknown proposals. both these leaders herein showed insight and prescience, for not only mr. asquith's government, but also that which succeeded it, had resort on many subsequent occasions to the manoeuvre suspected by lord lansdowne. on the other hand, there were encouraging signs in the country. to the intense satisfaction of unionists, mr. c.f.g. masterman, who had just been promoted to the cabinet, lost his seat in east london when he sought re-election in february, and a day or two later the government suffered another defeat in scotland. on the th of february lord milner, a fearless supporter of the ulster cause, wrote to carson that a british covenant had been drawn up in support of the ulster covenanters, and that the first signatures, in addition to his own, were those of field-marshal lord roberts, admiral of the fleet sir e. seymour, the duke of portland, lord balfour of burleigh, lord desborough, lord lovat, mr. rudyard kipling, sir w. ramsay, f.r.s., the dean of canterbury, professors dicey and goudy, sir george hayter chubb, and mr. salvidge, the influential alderman of liverpool. on the th of march mr. walter long, writing from the office of the union defence league, of which he was president, was able to inform carson that there was "a rush to sign the covenant--we are really almost overpowered." this was supplemented by a women's covenant, which, like the men's, "had been numerously and influentially signed, about or per cent, of the signatories, it was said, being liberals."[ ] long believed from this and other evidence that had reached him that "public opinion was now really aroused in the country," and that the steadfast policy of ulster had the undoubted support of the electorate. only those who were in the confidence of mr. asquith and his colleagues at the beginning of can know whether the "proposals" they then made were ever seriously put forward as an effort towards appeasement. if they were sincerely meant for such, it implied a degree of ignorance of the chief factor in the problem with which it is difficult to credit able ministers who had been face to face with that problem for years. they must have supposed that their leading opponents were capable of saying emphatically one thing and meaning quite another. for the unionist leaders had stated over and over again in the most unmistakable terms, both in the recent debate on the address, and on innumerable former occasions, that nothing except the "exclusion of ulster" could furnish a basis for negotiation towards settlement. and yet, when the prime minister at last put his cards on the table on the th of march, in moving the second reading of the home rule bill--which now entered on its third and last lap under the parliament act--it was found that his much-trumpeted proposals were derisory to the last degree. the scheme was that which came to be known as county option with a time limit. any county in ulster, including the cities of belfast and derry, was to be given the right to vote itself out of the home rule jurisdiction, on a requisition signed by a specified proportion of its parliamentary electorate, for a period of six years. mr. bonar law said at once, on behalf of the unionist party, that apart from all other objections to the government scheme, and they were many, the time limit for exclusion made the whole proposal a mockery. all that it meant was that when the preparations in ulster for resistance to home rule had been got rid of--for it would be practically impossible to keep them in full swing for six years--ulster should then be compelled to submit to the very thing to which she refused to submit now. carson described the proposal as a "sentence of death with a stay of execution for six years." he noted with satisfaction indeed the admission of the principle of exclusion, but expressed his conviction that the time limit had been introduced merely in order to make it impossible for ulster to accept. ulster wanted the question settled once for all, so that she might turn her attention from politics to her ordinary business. the time limit would keep the fever of political agitation at a high temperature for six years, and at the end of that period forcible resistance would be as necessary as ever, while in the interval all administration would be paralysed by the unworkable nature of the system to be introduced for six years. although there were other gross blots on the scheme outlined by the prime minister, yet, if the time limit were dropped, carson said he would submit it to a convention in belfast; but he utterly declined to do so if the time limit was to be retained. the debate was adjourned indefinitely, and before it could be resumed the whole situation was rendered still more grave by the events to be narrated in the next chapter, and by a menacing speech delivered by mr. churchill at bradford on the th of march. he hinted that, if ulster persisted in refusing the offer made by the prime minister, which was the government's last word, the forces of the crown would have to be employed against her; there were, he said, "worse things than bloodshed even on an extended scale"; and he ended by saying, "let us go forward together and put these grave matters to the proof."[ ] two days later mr. asquith, in answer to questions in the house of commons, announced that no particulars of the government scheme would be given unless the principle of the proposals were accepted as a basis of agreement. the leader of the unionist party replied by moving a vote of censure on the government on the th of march. mr. churchill's bradford speech, and one no less defiant by mr. devlin the day following it, had charged with inflammable material the atmosphere in which the debate was conducted. sir edward carson began his speech by saying that, after these recent events, "i feel that i ought not to be here, but in belfast." there were some sharp passages between him and churchill, whom he accused of being anxious to provoke the ulster people to make an attack on the soldiers. a highly provocative speech by mr. devlin followed, at the end of which carson rose and left the house, saying audibly, "i am off to belfast." he was accompanied out of the chamber by eight ulster members, and was followed by ringing and sustained cheers of encouragement and approval from the crowded unionist benches. it was a scene which those who witnessed it are not likely to forget. the idea of accommodation between the combatant parties was at an end. footnotes: [ ] _the yorkshire post_, september nd, . [ ] _the liverpool daily courier_, september th, . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] _the annual register_, , p. . [ ] _annual register_, , pp. - . [ ] _the times_, march th, . chapter xvi the curragh incident when mr. bonar law moved the vote of censure on the government on the th of march he had no idea that the cabinet had secretly taken in hand an enterprise which, had it been known, would have furnished infinitely stronger grounds for their impeachment than anything relating to their "proposals" for amending the home rule bill. it was an enterprise that, when it did become known, very nearly brought about their fall from power. the whole truth about the famous "curragh incident" has never been ascertained, and the answers given by the ministers chiefly concerned, under cross-examination in the house of commons, were so evasive and in several instances so contradictory as to make it certain that they were exceedingly anxious that the truth should be concealed. but when the available evidence is pieced together it leads almost irresistibly to the conclusion that in march the cabinet, or at any rate some of the most prominent members of it, decided to make an imposing demonstration of military force against ulster, and that they expected, if they did not hope, that this operation would goad the ulstermen into a clash with the forces of the crown, which, by putting them morally in the wrong, would deprive them of the popular sympathy they enjoyed in so large and increasing a measure. when mr. churchill spoke at bradford on the th of march of "putting these grave matters to the proof" he was already deeply involved in what came to be known as "the plot against ulster," to which his words were doubtless an allusion. that plot may perhaps have originated at mr. lloyd george's breakfast-table on the th, when he entertained mr. redmond, mr. dillon, mr. devlin, mr. o'connor, and the chief secretary for ireland, mr. birrell; for on the same day it was decided to send a squadron of battleships with attendant cruisers and destroyers from the coast of spain to lamlash, in the isle of arran, opposite belfast lough; and a sub-committee of the cabinet, consisting of lord crewe, mr. churchill, colonel seely, mr. birrell, and sir john simon, was appointed to deal with affairs connected with ulster. this sub-committee held its first meeting the following day, and the next was the date of mr. churchill's threatening speech at bradford, with its reference to the prospect of bloodshed and of putting grave matters to the proof. bearing in mind this sequence of events, it is not easy to credit the contention of the government, after the plot had been discovered, that the despatch of the fleet to the neighbourhood of the ulster coast had no connection with the other naval and military operations which immediately followed. for on the th, while churchill was travelling in the train to bradford, seely, the secretary of state for war, was drafting a letter to sir arthur paget, the commander-in-chief in ireland, informing him of reports (it was never discovered where the reports, which were without the smallest foundation, came from) that attempts might be made "in various parts of ireland by evil-disposed persons" to raid government stores of arms and ammunition, and instructing the general to "take special precautions" to safeguard the military depots. it was added that "information shows that armagh, omagh, carrickfergus, and enniskillen are insufficiently guarded."[ ] it is permissible to wonder, if there was danger from evil-disposed persons "in various parts of ireland," from whom came the information that the places particularly needing reinforcements were a ring of strategically important towns round the outskirts of the loyalist counties of ulster. whatever the source of the alleged "information"--whether it originated at mr. lloyd george's breakfast-table or elsewhere--seely evidently thought it alarmingly urgent, for within forty-eight hours he telegraphed to paget asking for a reply before a.m. next morning as to what steps he had taken, and ordering the general to come at once to london, bringing with him detailed plans. on the th sir a. paget telegraphed that he "had taken all available steps"; but, on second thoughts, he wrote on the th saying that there were sufficient troops at enniskillen to guard the depot, that he was making a small increase to the detachment at carrickfergus, and that, instead of strengthening the garrisons of omagh and armagh, the stores there were being removed--an operation that would take eight days. he explained his reason for this departure from instructions to be that such a movement of troops as had been ordered by the war office would, "in the present state of the country, create intense excitement in ulster and possibly precipitate a crisis."[ ] as soon as this communication reached the war office orders were sent that the arms and ammunition at omagh and armagh, for the safety of which from evil-disposed persons seely had been so apprehensive, were not to be removed, although they had already been packed for transport. this order was sent on the th of march, and on the same day sir arthur paget arrived in london from ireland and had a consultation with the ulster sub-committee of the cabinet, and with sir john french and other members of the army council at the war office. news of this meeting reached the ears of sir edward carson, who was also aware that a false report was being spread of attempts by unionists to influence the army, and in his speech on the vote of censure on the th he said: "i have never suggested that the army should not be sent to ulster. i have never suggested that it should not do its duty when sent there. i hope and expect it will." at the same time reports were circulating in dublin--did they come from downing street?--that the government were preparing to take strong measures against the ulster unionist council, and to arrest the leaders. in allusion to these reports the dublin correspondent of _the times_ telegraphed on the th of march: "any man or government that increases the danger by blundering or hasty action will accept a terrible responsibility." what passed at the interviews which sir arthur paget had with ministers on the th and th has never been disclosed. but it is clear, from the events which followed, either that an entirely new plan on a much larger scale was now inaugurated, or that a development now took place which churchill and seely, and perhaps other ministers also, had contemplated from the beginning and had concealed behind the pretended insignificance of precautions to guard depots. it is noteworthy, at all events, that the measures contemplated happened to be the stationing of troops in considerable strength in important strategical positions round ulster, simultaneously with the despatch of a powerful fleet to within a few hours of belfast. the orders issued by the war office, at any rate, indicated something on a far bigger scale than the original pretext could justify. paget's fear of precipitating a crisis was brushed aside, and general friend, who was acting for him in dublin during his absence, was instructed by telegram to send to the four ulster towns more than double the number of men that paget had deemed would be sufficient to protect the government stores. but still more significant was another order given to friend on the th. the dorset regiment, quartered in the victoria barracks in belfast, were to be moved four miles out to holywood, taking with them their stores and ammunition, amounting to some thirty tons; and such was the anxiety of the government to get the troops out of the city that they were told to leave their rifles behind, if necessary, after rendering them useless by removing the bolts.[ ] the government had vetoed paget's plan of removing the stores from omagh and armagh, because their real object was to increase the garrisons at those places; but, as they had no scruple about moving the much larger supply from the victoria barracks through the most intensely orange quarter of belfast, it could hardly be wondered at if such an order, under the circumstances, was held to give colour to the idea that ministers wished to provoke violent opposition to the troops. not less inconsistent with the original pretext was the despatch of a battalion to newry and dundalk. at the latter place there was already a brigade of artillery, with eighteen guns, which would prove a tough nut for "evil-disposed persons" to crack; and although both towns would be important points to hold with an army making war on ulster, they were both in nationalist territory where there could be no fear of raids by unionists. yet the urgency was considered so great at the war office to occupy these places in strength not later than the th that two cruisers were ordered to kingstown to take the troops to dundalk by sea, if there should be difficulty about land transport. whatever may have been the actual design of mr. churchill and colonel seely, who appear to have practically taken the whole management of the affair into their own hands, the dispositions must have suggested to anyone with elementary knowledge of military matters that nothing less than an overpowering attack on belfast was in contemplation. the transfer of the troops from victoria barracks, where they would have been useful to support the civil power in case of rioting, to holywood, where they would be less serviceable for that purpose but where they would be in rapid communication by water with the garrison of carrickfergus on the opposite shore of the lough; the ordering of h.m.s. _pathfinder_ and _attentive_ to belfast lough, where they were to arrive "at daybreak on saturday the st instant" with instructions to support the soldiers if necessary "by guns and search-lights from the ships[ ]"; the secret and rapid garrisoning of strategic points on all the railways leading to belfast,--all this pointed, not to the safeguarding of stores of army boots and rifles, but to operations of an offensive campaign. it was in this light that the commander-in-chief in ireland himself interpreted his instructions, and, seeing that he had taken the responsibility of not fully obeying the much more modest orders he had received in ireland on the th, it is easy to understand that he thought the steps now to be taken would lead to serious consequences. he also foresaw that he might have trouble with some of the officers under his command, for before leaving london he persuaded the secretary of state and sir john french to give the following permission: "officers actually domiciled in ulster would be exempted from taking part in any operation that might take place. they would be permitted to 'disappear' [that being the exact phrase used by the war office], and when all was over would be allowed to resume their places without their career or position being affected."[ ] having obtained this concession, sir arthur paget returned the same night to dublin, where he arrived on the th and had a conference with his general officers. he told them of the instructions he had received, which the government called "precautionary" and believed "would be carried out without resistance." the commander-in-chief did not share the government's optimism. he thought "that the moves would create intense excitement," that by next day "the country would be ablaze," and that the result might be "active operations against organised bodies of the ulster volunteer force under their responsible leaders." with regard to the permission for officers domiciled in ulster to "disappear," he informed his generals that any other officers who were not prepared to carry out their duty would be dismissed the service. there was, apparently, some misunderstanding as to whether officers without an ulster domicile who objected to fight against ulster were to say so at once and accept dismissal, or were to wait until they received some specific order which they felt unable to obey. many of the officers understood the general to mean the former of these two alternatives, and the colonel of one line regiment gave his officers half an hour to make up their minds on a question affecting their whole future career; every one of them objected to going against ulster, and "nine or ten refused under any condition" to do so.[ ] another regimental commanding officer told his subordinates that "steps have been taken in ulster so that any aggression must come from the ulsterites, and they will have to shed the first blood," on which his comment was: "the idea of provoking ulster is hellish."[ ] in consequence of what he learnt at the conference with his generals on the morning of the th sir arthur paget telegraphed to the war office: "officer commanding th lancers states that all officers except two, and one doubtful, are resigning their commissions to-day. i much fear same conditions in the th lancers. fear men will refuse to move[ ]"; and later in the day he reported that the "brigadier and officers, rd cavalry brigade, prefer to accept dismissal if ordered north."[ ] next day he had to add that the colonel and all the officers of the th hussars had taken up the same attitude.[ ] this was very disconcerting news for the war office, where it had been taken for granted that very few, if any, officers, except perhaps a few natives of ulster, would elect to wreck their careers, if suddenly confronted with so terrible a choice, rather than take part in operations against the ulster loyalists. instructions were immediately wired to paget in dublin to "suspend any senior officers who have tendered their resignations"; to refuse to accept the resignation of junior officers; and to send general gough, the brigadier in command of the rd cavalry brigade, and the commanding officers of the two lancer regiments and the th hussars, to report themselves promptly at the war office after relieving them of their commands. had the war office made up its mind what to do with general gough and the other cavalry officers when they arrived in london? the inference to be drawn from the correspondence published by the government makes it appear probable that the first intention was to punish these officers severely _pour encourager les autres_. an officer to replace gough had actually been appointed and sent to ireland, though mr. asquith denied in the house of commons that the offending generals had been dismissed. but, if that was the intention, it was abandoned. the reason is not plain; but the probability is that it had been discovered that sympathy with gough was widespread in the army, and that his dismissal would bring about very numerous resignations. it was said that a large part of the staff of the war office itself would have laid down their commissions, and that aldershot would have been denuded of officers.[ ] colonel seely himself described it as a "situation of grave peril to the army."[ ] anyhow, no disciplinary action of any kind was taken. it was decided to treat the matter as one of "misunderstanding," and when gough and his brother officers appeared at the war office on monday the rd they were told that it was all a mistake to suppose that the government had ever intended warlike operations against ulster (the orders to the fleet had been cancelled by wireless on the st), and that they might return at once to their commands, with the assurance that they would not be required to serve against ulster loyalists. general gough, who before leaving ireland had asked sir a. paget for a clear definition in writing of the duties that officers would be expected to perform if they went to ulster,[ ] thought that in view of the "misunderstanding" it would be wise to have colonel seely's assurance also in black and white. seely had to hurry off to a cabinet meeting, and in his absence the adjutant-general reduced to writing the verbal statement of the secretary of state. a very confused story about the subsequent fortunes of this piece of paper made it the central mystery round which raged angry debates. this much, however, is not doubtful. seely went from the cabinet to buckingham palace; when he returned to downing street the paper was there, but the cabinet had broken up. he looked at the paper, saw that it did not accurately reproduce the assurance he had verbally given to gough, and with the help of lord morley he thereupon added two paragraphs (which mr. balfour designated "the peccant paragraphs") to make it conform to his promise. the addition so made was the only part of the document that gave the assurance that the officers would not be called upon "to crush political opposition to the policy or principles of the home rule bill." with this paper in his pocket general gough returned to his command at the curragh. there the matter might have ended had not some of the facts become known to unionist members of the house of commons, and to the press. on sunday, the nd, mr. asquith sent a communication to _the times_ (published on the rd) in which he minimised the whole matter, putting forward the original pretext of movements of troops solely to protect government property--an account at variance with a statement two days later by churchill in regard to the reason for naval movements--and on the rd seely also made a statement in the house of commons on the same lines as the prime minister's, which ended by saying that all the movements of troops were completed "and all orders issued have been punctually and implicitly obeyed." this was an hour or two after his interview with the generals who had been summoned from ireland to be dismissed for refusal to obey orders. but mr. bonar law had his own information, which was much fuller than the government imagined. a long and heated debate followed colonel seely's statement, and was continued on the two following days, gradually dragging to light the facts with a much greater profusion of detail than is necessary for this narrative. on the th mr. l.s. amery made a speech which infuriated the radicals and labour members, but the speaker, as was his intention, made them quite as angry with the government as with himself. the cause of offence was that the government was thought to have allowed itself to be coerced by the soldiers, while the latter had been allowed to make their obedience to orders contingent on a bargain struck with the government. this aspect of the case was forcibly argued by mr. j. ward, the labour member for stoke, in a speech greatly admired by enthusiasts for "democratic" principles. although mr. ward's invective was mainly directed against the unionist opposition, the latter listened to it with secret pleasure, perceiving that it was in reality more damaging to the government than to themselves, since ministers were forced into an attitude of defence against their own usually docile supporters. it may here be mentioned that at a much later date, when mr. john ward, in the light of experience gained by his own distinguished service as an officer in the great war, had come to the conviction that "the possibility of forcing ulster within the ambit of a dublin parliament has now become unthinkable," he acknowledged that in the only way by which mr. asquith's home rule act could have been enforced was through and by the power of the army.[ ] so much shaken were the government by these attacks that on the next day, the th of march, colonel seely, at the end of a long narrative of the transaction, announced his resignation from the government. he had, he said, unintentionally misled his colleagues by adding without their knowledge to the paper given to general gough; the cabinet as a whole was quite innocent of the great offence given to democratic sentiment. this announcement having had the desired effect of relieving the ministry as a whole from responsibility for the "peccant paragraphs," and averting radical wrath from their heads, the prime minister later in the debate said he was not going to accept seely's resignation. yet mr. churchill exhibited a fine frenzy of indignation against mr. austen chamberlain for describing it as a "put-up job." only a fairly fertile imagination could suggest a transaction to which the phrase would be more justly applicable. the idea that seely, in adding the paragraphs, was tampering in any way with the considered policy of the cabinet was absurd, although it served the purpose of averting a crisis in the house of commons. he had been in constant and close communication with churchill, who had himself been present at the war office conference with gough, and who had seen the prime minister earlier in company with sir john french. the whole business had been discussed at the cabinet meeting, and when seely returned from his audience of the king he found the prime minister, mr. churchill, and lord morley still in the cabinet room. mr. asquith said on the th in the house of commons that no minister except seely had seen the added paragraphs, and almost at the same moment in the house of lords lord morley was saying that he had helped seely to draft them. moreover, lord morley actually took a copy of them, which he read in the house of lords, and he included the substance of them in his exposition of the government policy in the upper house. furthermore, general gough was on his way to ireland that night, and if it had been true that the prime minister, or any other minister, disapproved of what seely had done, there was no reason why gough should not have found a telegram waiting for him at the curragh in the morning cancelling seely's paragraphs and withdrawing the assurance they contained. no step of that kind was taken, and the government, while repudiating in the house of commons the action for which seely was allowed to take the sole responsibility, permitted gough to retain in his despatch-box the document signed by the army council. for it was not only the secretary of state for war who was involved. the memorandum had been written by the adjutant-general, and it bore the initials of sir john french and sir spencer ewart as well as colonel seely's. these members of the army council knew that the verbal assurance given by the secretary of state to gough had not been completely embodied in the written memorandum without the paragraph which had been repudiated after the debate in the commons on the th, and they were not prepared to go back on their written word, or to be satisfied by the "put-up job" resignation of their civilian chief. they both sent in their resignations; and, as they refused even under pressure to withdraw them, the secretary of state had no choice but to do the same on the th of march, this time beyond recall. mr. asquith announced on the same day that he had himself become secretary of state for war, and would have to go to scotland for re-election. the facts as here related were only extracted by the most persistent and laborious cross-examination of the government, who employed all the familiar arts of official evasion in order to conceal the truth from the country. day after day ministers were bombarded by batteries of questions in the house of commons, in addition to the lengthy debates that occupied the house for several consecutive days. this pressure compelled the prime minister to produce a white paper, entitled "correspondence relating to recent events in the irish command."[ ] it was published on the th of march, the third day of the continuous debates, and, although mr. asquith said it contained "all the material documents," it was immediately apparent to members who had closely studied the admissions that had been dragged from the ministers chiefly concerned, that it was very far from doing so. much the most important documents had, in fact, been withheld. suspicion as to the good faith of the government was increased when it was found that the lord chancellor, lord haldane, had interpolated into the official report of his speech in the house of lords a significant word which transformed his definite pledge that ulster would not be coerced, into a mere statement that no "immediate" coercion was contemplated. in the face of such evasion and prevarication it was out of the question to let the matter drop. on the nd of april the government was forced to publish a second white paper,[ ] which contained a large number of highly important documents omitted from the first. but it was evident that much was still being kept back, and, in particular, that what had passed between sir arthur paget and his officers at a conference mentioned in the published correspondence was being carefully concealed. mr. bonar law demanded a judicial inquiry, where evidence could be taken on oath. mr. asquith refused, saying that an insinuation against the honour of ministers could only be properly investigated by the house of commons itself, and that a day would be given for a vote of censure if the leader of the opposition meant that he could not trust the word of ministers of the crown. mr. bonar law sharply retorted that he "had already accused the prime minister of making a statement which was false."[ ] but even this did not suffice to drive the government to face the ordeal of having their own account of the affair at the curragh sifted by the sworn evidence of others who knew the facts. they preferred to take cover under the dutiful cheers of their parliamentary majority when they repeated their explanations, which had already been proved to be untrue. but the ulster unionist council had, meantime, been making inquiries on their own account. there was nothing in the least improper, although the supporters of the government tried to make out that there was, in the officers at the curragh revealing what the commander-in-chief had said to them, so long as they did not communicate anything to the press. they were not, and could not be, pledged to secrecy. it thus happened that it was possible for the old town hall in belfast to put together a more complete account of the whole affair than it suited the government to reveal to parliament. on the th of april the standing committee issued to the press a statement giving the main additional facts which a sworn inquiry would have elicited. it bore the signatures of lord londonderry and sir edward carson, and there can have been few foolhardy enough to suggest that these were men who would be likely to take such a step without first satisfying themselves as to the trustworthiness of the evidence, a point on which the judgment of one of them at all events was admittedly unrivalled. from this statement it appeared that sir arthur paget, so far from indicating that mere "precautionary measures" for the protection of government stores were in contemplation, told his generals that preparations had been made for the employment of some , troops in ulster, in conjunction with naval operations. the gravity of the plan was revealed by the general's use of the words "battles" and "the enemy," and his statement that he would himself be "in the firing line" at the first "battle." he said that, when some casualties had been suffered by the troops, he intended to approach "the enemy" with a flag of truce and demand their surrender, and if this should be refused he would order an assault on their position. the cavalry, whose pro-ulster sentiments must have been well known to the commander-in-chief, were told that they would only be required to prevent the infantry "bumping into the enemy," or in other words to act as a cavalry screen; that they would not be called upon to fire on "the enemy"; and that as soon as the infantry became engaged, they would be withdrawn and sent to cork, where "a disturbance would be arranged" to provide a pretext for the movement. a military governor of belfast was to be appointed, and the general purpose of the operations was to blockade ulster by land and sea, and to provoke the ulster men to shed the first blood. the publication of this statement with the authority of the two ulster leaders created a tremendous sensation. but it probably strengthened the resolution of the government to refuse at all costs a judicial inquiry, which they knew would only supply sworn corroboration of the ulster unionist council's story. in this they were assisted in an unexpected way. just when the pressure was at its highest, relief came by the diversion of attention and interest caused by another startling event in ulster, which will be described in the following chapters. this curragh incident, which caused intense and prolonged excitement in march , and nearly upset the asquith government, had more than momentary importance in connection with the ulster movement. it proved to demonstration the intense sympathy with the loyalist cause that pervaded the army. that sympathy was not, as radical politicians like mr. john ward believed, an aristocratic sentiment only to be found in the mess-rooms of smart cavalry regiments. it existed in all branches of the service, and among the rank and file as well as the commissioned ranks. sir arthur paget's telegram reporting to the war office the feeling in the th and th lancers, said, "fear men will refuse to move."[ ] the men had not the same facility as the officers in making their sentiments known at headquarters, but their sympathies were the same. the government had no excuse for being ignorant of this feeling in the army. it had been a matter of notoriety for a long time. its existence and its danger had been reported by lord wolseley to the duke of cambridge, back in the old days of gladstonian home rule, in a letter that had been since published. in july _the times_ gave the warning in a leading article that "the crisis, the approach of which ministers affect to treat with unconcern, is already causing uneasiness and apprehension in the public services, and especially in the army.... it is notorious that some officers have already begun to speak of sending in their papers." lord roberts had uttered a significant warning in the house of lords not long before the incident at the curragh. colonel seely himself had been made aware of it in the previous december when he signed a war office memorandum on the subject[ ]; and, indeed, no officer could fail to be aware of it who had ever been quartered in ireland. nor was it surprising that this sympathy should manifest itself. no one is quicker to appreciate the difference between loyalty and disloyalty than the soldier. there were few regiments in the army that had not learnt by experience that the king's uniform was constantly insulted in nationalist ireland, and as invariably welcomed and honoured in ulster. in the vote of censure debate on the th of march mr. cave quoted an irish newspaper, which had described the british army as "the most immoral and degraded force in europe," and warned irishmen that, by joining it, all they would get was "a red coat, a dishonoured name, a besmirched character." on the other hand, the very troops who were sent north from the curragh against the advice of sir arthur paget, to provoke "the ulsterites to shed the first blood," had, as the commander-in-chief reported, "everywhere a good reception."[ ] the welcoming cheers at holywood and carrickfergus and armagh were probably a pleasant novelty to men fresh from the curragh or fermoy. even in belfast itself the contrast was brought home to troops quartered in victoria barracks, all of whom were well aware that on the death of a comrade his coffin would have to be borne by a roundabout route to the cemetery, to avoid the nationalist quarter of the city where a military funeral would be exposed to insult. such experiences, as they harden into traditions, sink deep into the consciousness of an army and breed sentiments that are not easily eradicated. soldiers ought, of course, to have no politics; but when it appeared that they might be called upon to open fire on those whom they had always counted "on our side," in order to subject them forcibly to men who hated the sight of a british flag and were always ready to spit upon it, human nature asserted itself. and the incident taught the government something as to the difficulty they would have in enforcing the home rule bill in ulster. footnotes: [ ] see white paper (cd. ), no. ii. [ ] see white paper (cd. ), no. vi. [ ] see white paper (cd. ), no. vii. [ ] white paper (cd. ), part ii, no. ii. [ ] white paper (cd. ), part iii. [ ] see _parliamentary debates_, vol. lx, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] cd. , no. xvii. [ ] ibid., nos. xviii, xx. [ ] ibid., nos. xxii, xxiii. [ ] see _parliamentary debates_, vol. lx, p. . [ ] ibid., p. . [ ] white paper (cd. ), no. xx. [ ] _the nineteenth century and after_, january , art. "the army and ireland," by lieut.-colonel john ward, c.b., c.m.g., m.p. [ ] cd. . [ ] cd. . [ ] _parliamentary debate_, vol. lxi, p. . [ ] white paper (cd. ), no. xvii. see _ante_, p. . [ ] white paper (cd. ), no. i. [ ] ibid., no. xxvii. chapter xvii arming the u.v.f. if the "evil-disposed persons" who so excited the fancy of colonel seely were supposed to be ulster loyalists, the whole story was an absurdity that did no credit to the government's intelligence in ireland; and if there ever was any "information," such as the war office alleged, it must have come from a source totally ignorant of ulster psychology. raids on government stores were never part of the ulster programme. the excitement of the curragh incident passed off without causing any sort of disturbance, and, as we have seen, the troops who were sent north received everywhere in ulster a loyal welcome. this was a fine tribute to the discipline and restraint of the people, and was a further proof of their confidence in their leaders. those leaders, it happened, were at that very moment taking measures to place arms in the hands of the u.v.f. without robbing government depots or any one else. that method was left to their opponents in ireland at a later date, who adopted it on an extensive scale accompanied by systematic terrorism. the ulster plan was quite different. all the arms they obtained were paid for, and their only crime was that they successfully hoodwinked mr. asquith's colleagues and agents. every movement has its fabius, and also its hotspur. both are needed--the men of prudence and caution, anxious to avoid extreme courses, slow to commit themselves too far or to burn their boats with the river behind them; and the impetuous spirits, who chafe at half-measures, cannot endure temporising, and are impatient for the order to advance against any odds. major f.h. crawford had more of the temperament of a hotspur than of a fabius, but he nevertheless possessed qualities of patience, reticence, discretion, and coolness which enabled him to render invaluable service to the ulster cause in an enterprise that would certainly have miscarried in the hands of a man endowed only with impetuosity and reckless courage. if the story of his adventures in procuring arms for the u.v.f. be ever told in minute detail, it will present all the features of an exciting novel by mr. john buchan. fred crawford, the man who followed a family tradition when he signed the covenant with his own blood,[ ] began life as a premium apprentice in harland and wolf's great ship-building yard, after which he served for a year as an engineer in the white star line, before settling down to his father's manufacturing business in belfast. like so many ardent loyalists in ulster, he came of liberal stock. he was for years honorary secretary of the reform club in belfast. the more staid members of this highly respectable establishment were not a little startled and perplexed when it was brought to their attention in that advertisements in the name of one "hugh matthews," giving the belfast reform club as his address, had appeared in a number of foreign newspapers--french, belgian, italian, german, and austrian--inquiring for " , rifles and one million rounds of small-arm ammunition." the membership of the club included no hugh matthews; but inquiry showed that the name covered the identity of the hon. secretary; and crawford, who sought no concealment in the matter, justified the advertisements by pointing out that the liberal government which had lately come into power had begun its rule in ireland by repealing the act prohibiting the importation of arms, and that there was therefore nothing illegal in what he was doing. but he resigned his secretaryship, which he felt might hamper future transactions of the same kind. the advertisement was no doubt half bravado and half practical joke; he wanted to see whether it would attract notice, and if anything would come of it. but it had also an element of serious purpose. crawford regarded the advent to power of the liberal party as ominous, as indeed all ulster did, for the liberal party was a home rule party; and he had from his youth been convinced that the day would come when ulster would have to carry out lord randolph churchill's injunction. that being so, he was not the man to tarry till solemn assemblies of merchants, lawyers, and divines should propound a policy; if there was to be fighting, crawford was going to be ready for it, and thought that preparation for such a contingency could not begin too soon. and the advertisements were not barren of practical result. there was an astonishing number of replies; crawford purchased a few rifles, and obtained samples of others; and, what was more important, he gained knowledge of the continental trade in second-hand firearms, which had its centre in the free port of hamburg, and of the men engaged in that trade. this knowledge he turned to account in and the two following years. he had been for nearly twenty years an officer of artillery militia, and when the u.v.f. was organised in he became its director of ordnance on the headquarters staff. he was also a member of the standing committee of the ulster unionist council, where he persistently advocated preparation for armed resistance long before most of his colleagues thought such a policy necessary. but early in he obtained leave to get samples of procurable firearms, and his promptitude in acting on it, and in presenting before certain members of the committee a collection of gleaming rifles with bayonets fixed, took away the breath of the more cautious of his colleagues. from this time forward crawford was frequently engaged in this business. he got into communication with the dealers in arms whose acquaintance he had made six years before. he went himself to hamburg, and, after learning something of the chicanery prevalent in the trade, which it took all his resourcefulness to overcome, he fell in with an honest jew by whose help he succeeded in sending a thousand rifles safely to belfast. other consignments followed from time to time in larger or smaller quantities, in the transport of which all the devices of old-time smuggling were put to the test. crawford bought a schooner, which for a year or more proved very useful, and, while employing her in bringing arms to ulster, he made acquaintance with a skipper of one of the antrim iron ore company's coasting steamers, whose name was agnew, a fine seaman of the best type produced by the british mercantile marine, who afterwards proved an invaluable ally, to whose loyalty and ability crawford and ulster owed a deep debt of gratitude, as they also did to mr. robert browne, managing director of the antrim iron ore company, for placing at their disposal both vessels and seamen from time to time. now and then the goods fell a victim to custom house vigilance; for although there was at this time nothing illegal in importing firearms, it was not considered prudent to carry on the trade openly, which would certainly have led to prohibition being introduced and enforced; and, consequently, infringements of shipping regulations had to be risked, which gave the authorities the right to interfere if they discovered rifles where zinc plates or musical instruments ought to have been. on one occasion a case of arms was shipped on a small steamer from glasgow to portrush, but was not entered in the manifest, so that the skipper (being a worthy man) knew nothing--officially--of this box which lay on deck instead of descending into the hold. but two customs officials, who noticed it with unsatisfied curiosity, decided, just as the boat cast off, to make the trip to portrush. happily it was a dirty night, and they, being bad sailors, were constrained to take refuge from the elements in the captain's cabin. but when portrush was reached search and research proved unavailing to find the mysterious box; the skipper could find no mention of it in the manifest and thought the customs house gentlemen must have been dreaming; they, on the other hand, threatened to seize the ship if the box did not materialise, and were told to do so at their peril. but exactly off ballycastle, which had been passed while the officials were poorly, there was a float in the sea attached to a line, which in due course led to the recovery of a case of valuable property that was none the worse for a few hours' rest on the bottom of the moyle. qualities of a different sort were called into play in negotiating the purchase of machine-guns from messrs. vickers & co., at woolwich. here a strong american accent, combined with the providential circumstance that mexico happened to be in the grip of revolutionary civil war, overcame all difficulties, and mr. john washington graham, u.s.a. (otherwise fred h. crawford of belfast) played his part so effectively that he did not fail to finish the deal by extracting a handsome commission for himself, which found its way subsequently to the coffers of the ulster unionist council. but he compensated the company by making a suggestion for improving the mechanism of the maxim-gun which the great ordnance manufacturers permanently adopted without having to pay for any patent rights. major crawford was, however, by no means the only person who was at this time bringing arms and ammunition into ulster, which, as already explained, although not illegal, could not be safely done openly on a large scale. ammunition in small quantities dribbled into belfast pretty constantly, many amateur importers deriving pleasurable excitement from feeling themselves conspirators, and affording amusement to others by the tales told of the ingenious expedients resorted to by the smugglers. there was a dock porter at belfast, an intense admirer of sir edward carson, who was the retailer of one of the best of these stories. he was always on the look-out for the leader arriving by the liverpool steamer, and would allow no one else, if he could help it, to handle the great man's hand-baggage; and when carson was not a passenger, any of his satellites who happened to be travelling came in for vicarious attention. thus, it happened on one occasion that the writer, arriving alone from liverpool, was hailed from the shore before the boat was made fast. "is sir edward on board?" a shake of the head brought a look of pathetic disappointment to the face of the hero-worshipper; but he was on board before the gangway was down and busy collecting the belongings of the leader's unworthy substitute. when laden with these and half-way down the gangway he stopped, and, entirely careless of the fact that he was obstructing a number of passengers impatient to land, he turned and whispered--a whisper that might be heard thirty yards off--with a knowing wink of the eye: "we're getting in plenty of stuff now." "yes, yes," was the reply. "never mind about that now; put those things on a car." but he continued, without budging from the gangway, "och aye, we're getting in plenty; but my god, didn't mrs. blank o' dungannon bate all? did ye hear about her?" "no, i never heard of mrs. blank of dungannon. but do hurry along, my good man; you're keeping back all the passengers." "what! ye never heard o' mrs. blank o' dungannon? wait now till i tell ye. mrs. blank came off this boat not a fortnight ago, an' as she came down this gangway i declare to god you'd ha' swore she was within a week of her time--and divil a ha'porth the matter with her, only cartridges. an' the fun was that the custom house boys knowed rightly what it was, but they dursn't lay a hand on her nor search her, for fear they were wrong." this admiring tribute to the heroic matron of dungannon--whose real name was not concealed by the porter--was heard by a number of people, and probably most of them thought themselves compensated by the story for the delay it caused them in leaving the steamer. by the summer of several thousands of rifles had been brought into ulster; but in may of that year the mishap occurred to which lord roberts referred in his letter to colonel hickman on the th of june, when he wrote: "i am sorry to read about the capture of rifles."[ ] crawford had been obliged to find some place in london for storing the arms which he was procuring from his friends in hamburg, and with the help of sir william bull, m.p. for hammersmith, the yard of an old-fashioned inn in that district was found where it was believed they would be safe until means of transporting them to the north of ireland could be devised. the inn was taken by a firm calling itself john ferguson & co., the active member of which was sir william bull's brother-in-law, captain budden; and the business appeared to consist of dealing in second-hand scientific instruments and machinery, curiosities, antique armour and weapons, old furniture, and so forth, which were brought in very heavy cases and deposited in the yard. for a time it proved useful, and the maxims from woolwich passed safely through the hammersmith store. but the london police got wind of the hammersmith armoury, and seized a consignment of between six and seven thousand excellent italian rifles. a rusty and little-known act of parliament had to be dug up to provide legal authority for the seizure. many sportsmen and others then learnt for the first time that, under the gun-barrel proof act, , every gun-barrel in england must bear the gun-makers' company's proof-mark showing that its strength has been tested and approved. as the penalty for being in possession of guns not so marked was a fine of £ per barrel, to have put in a claim for the italian rifles seized at hammersmith would have involved a payment of more than £ , , and would have given the government information as to the channel through which they had been imported. no move was made, therefore, so far as the firearms were concerned, but the bayonets attached to them, for the seizure of which there was no legal justification, were claimed by crawford's agent in hamburg, and eventually reached ulster safely by another route. about the same time a consignment of half a million rounds of small-arm ammunition, which was discovered by the authorities through faulty packing in cement-bags, was also confiscated in another part of the country. these losses convinced crawford that a complete change of method must be adopted if faith was to be kept with the ulster volunteers, who were implicitly trusting their leaders to provide them with weapons to enable them to make good the covenant. more than a year before this time he had told the special committee dealing with arms, to which he was immediately responsible, that, in his judgment, the only way of dealing effectively with the problem was not by getting small quantities smuggled from time to time by various devices and through disguised ordinary trade channels, but by bringing off a grand _coup_, as if running a blockade in time of war. he had crossed the channel on purpose to submit this view to sir edward carson and captain craig early in , but at that time nothing was done to give effect to it. but the seizure of so large a number as six thousand rifles at a time when the political situation looked like moving towards a crisis in the near future, made necessary a bolder attempt to procure the necessary arms. when general sir george richardson took command of the u.v.f. in july he placed captain (afterwards lieut.-colonel) wilfrid bliss spender on his staff, and soon afterwards appointed him a.q.m.g. of the forces. captain spender's duties comprised the supply of equipment, arms, and ammunition, the organisation of transport, and the supervision of communications. he was now requested to confer with major fred crawford with a view to preparing a scheme for procuring arms and ammunition, to be submitted to a special sub-committee appointed to deal with this matter, of which captain james craig was chairman. spender gave his attention mainly to the difficulties that would attend the landing and distribution of arms if they reached ulster in safety; crawford said he could undertake to purchase and bring them from a foreign port. crawford's proposed _modus operandi_ may be given in his own words: "i would immediately go to hamburg and see b.s. [the hebrew dealer in firearms with whom he had been in communication for some six or seven years, and whom he had found perfectly honest, and not at all grasping], and consult him as to what he had to offer. i would purchase , to , rifles, modern weapons if possible, and not the italian vetteli rifles we had been getting, all to take the same ammunition and fitted with bayonets. i would purchase a suitable steamer of tons in some foreign port and load her up with the arms, and either bring her in direct or transfer the cargo to a local steamer in some estuary or bay on the scottish coast. i felt confident, though i knew the difficulties in front of me, that i could carry it through all right."[ ] the sub-committee accepted crawford's proposal, and, when it had been confirmed by headquarters council, he was commissioned to go to hamburg to see how the land lay. on arriving there he found that b.s. had still in store ten thousand vetteli rifles and a million rounds of ammunition for them, which he had been holding for crawford for two years. after a day or two the dealer laid three alternative proposals before his ulster customer: (a) twenty thousand vetteli rifles, with bayonets (ammunition would have to be specially manufactured).( ) thirty thousand russian rifles with bayonets (lacking scabbards) and ammunition, (c) fifteen thousand new austrian, and five thousand german army rifles with bayonets, both to take standard mannlicher cartridges. the last mentioned of these alternatives was much the most costly, being double the price of the first and nearly treble that of the second; but it had great advantages over the other two. ammunition for the italian weapons was only manufactured in italy, and, if further supplies should be required, could only be got from that country. the russian rifles were perfectly new and unused, but were of an obsolete pattern; they were single-loaders, and fresh supplies of cartridges would be nearly as difficult to procure for them as for the italian. the austrian and german patterns were both first-rate; the rifles were up-to-date clip-loaders, and, what was the most important consideration, ammunition for them would be easily procurable in the united kingdom or from america or canada. but the difference in cost was so great that crawford returned to belfast to explain matters to his committee, calling in london on his way to inform carson and craig. he strongly urged the acceptance of the third alternative offer, laying stress, among other considerations, on the moral effect on men who knew they had in their hands the most modern weapon with all latest improvements. carson was content to be guided on a technical matter of this sort by the judgment of a man whom he knew to be an expert, and as james craig, who was in control of the fund ear-marked for the purchase of arms, also agreed, crawford had not much difficulty in persuading the committee when he reached belfast, although at first they were rather staggered by the difference in cost between the various proposals. it was not until the beginning of february that crawford returned to hamburg to accept this offer, and to make arrangements with b.s. for carrying out the rest of his scheme for transporting his precious but dangerous cargo to ulster. on his way through london he called again on carson. "i pointed out to sir edward, my dear old chief," says crawford in a written account of the interview, "that some of my committee had no idea of the seriousness of the undertaking, and, when they did realise what they were in for, might want to back out of it. i said, 'once i cross this time to hamburg there is no turning back with me, no matter what the circumstances are so far as my personal safety is concerned; and no contrary orders from the committee to cancel what they have agreed to with me will i obey. i shall carry out the _coup_ if i lose my life in the attempt. now, sir edward, you know what i am about to undertake, and the risks those who back me up must run. are you willing to back me to the finish in this undertaking? if you are not, i don't go. but, if you are, i would go even if i knew i should not return; it is for ulster and her freedom i am working, and this alone.' i so well remember that scene. we were alone; sir edward was sitting opposite to me. when i had finished, his face was stern and grim, and there was a glint in his eye. he rose to his full height, looking me in the eye; he advanced to where i was sitting and stared down at me, and shook his clenched fist in my face, and said in a steady, determined voice, which thrilled me and which i shall never forget: 'crawford, i'll see you through this business, if i should have to go to prison for it.' i rose from my chair; i held out my hand and said, 'sir edward, that is all i want. i leave to-night; good-bye.'" next day crawford was in hamburg. he immediately concluded his agreement with b.s., and began making arrangements for carrying out the plan he had outlined to the committee in belfast. as will be seen in the next chapter, he was actually in the middle of this adventure at the very time when seely and churchill were worrying lest "evil-disposed persons" should raid and rob the scantily stocked government stores at omagh and enniskillen. footnotes: [ ] _ante_, p. . [ ] _ante_, p. . [ ] from a manuscript narrative by colonel f.h. crawford. chapter xviii a voyage of adventure although mr. lloyd george's message to mankind on new year's day, , was that "anglo-german relations were far more friendly than for years past,"[ ] and that there was therefore no need to strengthen the british navy, it may be doubted, with the knowledge we now possess, whether the german government would have been greatly incensed at the idea of a cargo of firearms finding its way from hamburg to ireland in the spring of that year without the knowledge of the british government. but if that were the case fred crawford had no reason to suspect it. german surveillance was always both efficient and obtrusive, and he had to make his preparations under a vigilance by the authorities which showed no signs of laxity. those preparations involved the assembling and the packing of , modern rifles, , of which had to be brought from a factory in austria; , italian rifles previously purchased, which b.s. had in store; bayonets for all the firearms; and upwards of , , rounds of small-arm ammunition. the packing of the arms was a matter to which crawford gave particular attention. he kept in mind the circumstances under which he expected them to be landed in ulster. avoidance of confusion and rapidity of handling were of the first importance. rifles, bayonets, and ammunition must be not separated in bulk, requiring to be laboriously reassembled at their destination. he therefore insisted that parcels should be made up containing five rifles in each, with bayonets to match, and rounds of ammunition per rifle, each parcel weighing about lbs. he attached so much importance to this system of packing that he adhered to it even after discovering that it would cost about £ , , and would take more than a month to complete. while the work of packing was going on, crawford, who found he was exciting the curiosity of the hamburg police, kept out of sight as much as possible, and he paid more than one visit to the committee in belfast, leaving the supervision to the skipper and packer, whom he had found he could trust. in the meantime, by advertisements in the scandinavian countries, he was looking out for a suitable steamer to carry the cargo. for a crew his thoughts turned to his old friend, andrew agnew, skipper in the employment of the antrim iron ore company. happily he was not only able to secure the services of agnew himself, but agnew brought with him his mate and his chief and second engineers. this was a great gain; for they were not only splendid men at their job, but were men willing to risk their liberty or their lives for the ulster cause. deck-hands and firemen would be procurable at whatever port a steamer was to be bought. several vessels were offered in response to crawford's advertisements, and on the th of march, when the packing of the arms was well advanced, crawford, agnew, and his chief engineer went to norway to inspect these steamers. eventually they selected the s.s. _fanny_, which had just returned to bergen with a cargo of coal from newcastle. she was only an eight-knot vessel, but her skipper, a norwegian, gave a favourable report of her sea-going qualities and coal consumption, and agnew and his engineer were satisfied by their inspection of her. the deal was quickly completed, and the captain and his norwegian crew willingly consented to remain in charge of the _fanny_; and, in order to enable her to sail under the norwegian flag, as a precaution against possible confiscation in british waters, it was arranged that the captain should be the nominal purchaser, giving crawford a mortgage for her full value. then, leaving agnew to get sufficient stores on board the _fanny_ for a three-months' cruise, crawford returned to hamburg on the th, and thence to belfast to report progress. agnew's orders were to bring the _fanny_ in three weeks' time to a rendezvous marked on the chart between the danish islands of langeland and fünen, where he was to pick up the cargo of arms, which crawford would bring in lighters from hamburg through the kiel canal. while crawford was in belfast arrangements were made to enable him to keep in communication with spender, so that in case of necessity he could be warned not to approach the irish coast, but to cruise in the baltic till a more favourable opportunity. he was to let spender know later where he could be reached with final instructions as to landing the arms; the rendezvous so agreed upon subsequently was lough laxford, a wild and inaccessible spot on the west coast of sutherlandshire. crawford was warned by b.s. that he was far from confident of a successful end to their labours at hamburg. he had never before shipped anything like so large a number of firearms; and the long process of packing, and crawford's own mysterious coming and going, would be certain to excite suspicion, which would reach the secret agents of the british government, and lead either to a protest addressed to the german authorities, followed by a prohibition on shipping the arms, or to confiscation by the british authorities when the cargo entered british territorial waters. these fears must have been present to the mind of b.s. when he met crawford at the station in hamburg on the th on his return from belfast, for the precautions taken to avoid being followed gave their movements the character of an adventure by one of stanley weyman's heroes of romance. whether any suspicion had in fact been aroused remains unknown. anyhow, the barges were ready laden, with a tug waiting till the tide should serve about midnight for making a start down the elbe, and through the canal to kiel. the modest sum of £ procured an order authorising the tug and barges to proceed through the canal without stopping, and requiring other shipping to let them pass. a black flag was the signal of this privileged position, which suggested the "jolly roger" to crawford's thoughts, and gave a sense of insolent audacity when great liners of ten or fifteen thousand tons were seen making way for a tug-boat towing a couple of lighters. for the success of the enterprise up to this point crawford was greatly indebted to the jew, b.s. from first to last this gentleman "played the game" with sterling honesty and straightforward dealing that won his customers' warm admiration. several times he accepted crawford's word as sufficient security when cash was not immediately forthcoming, and in no instance did he bear out the character traditionally attributed to his race. on arrival at kiel, crawford, after a short absence from the tug, was informed that three men had been inquiring from the lightermen and the tug's skipper about the nature and destination of the cargo. all such evidences of curiosity on the subject were rather alarming, but it turned out that the visitors were probably mexicans--of what political party there it would be impossible to guess--whose interest had been aroused by the rumour, which crawford had encouraged, that guns were being shipped to that distracted republic. still more alarming was the arrival on board the tug of a german official in resplendent uniform, who insisted that he must inspect the cargo. crawford knew no german, but the shipping agent who accompanied him produced papers showing that all formalities had been complied with, and all requisite authorisation obtained. neither official papers, however, nor arguments made any impression on the officer until it occurred to crawford to produce a -marks note, which proved much more persuasive, and sent the official on his way rejoicing, with expressions of civility on both sides. the relief of the ulsterman when the last of the kiel forts was left behind, and he knew that his cargo was clear of germany, may be imagined. a night was spent crossing kiel bay, and in the morning of the th they were close to langeland, and approaching the rendezvous with the _fanny_. she was there waiting, and agnew, in obedience to orders, had already painted out her name on bows and stern. the next thing was to transfer the arms from the lighters to the _fanny_. crawford was apprehensive lest the danish authorities should take an interest in the proceedings if the work was carried out in the narrow channel between the islands, and he proposed, as it was quite calm, to defer operations till they were further from the shore. but the norwegian captain declared that he had often transhipped cargo at this spot, and that there was no danger whatever. nevertheless, crawford's fears were realised. before the work was half finished a danish port officer came on board, asked what the cargo comprised, and demanded to see the ship's papers. according to the manifest the _fanny_ was bound for iceland with a general cargo, part of which was to be shipped at bergen. the danish officer then spent half an hour examining the bales, and, although he did not open any of them, crawford felt no doubt he knew perfectly the nature of their contents. finally he insisted on carrying off the papers, both of the _fanny_ and the tug-boat, saying that all the information must be forwarded to copenhagen to be dealt with by the government authorities, but that the papers would be returned early next morning. one can well believe crawford when he says that he suffered "mental agony" that night. after all that he had planned, and all that he had accomplished by many months of personal energy and resource, he saw complete and ignominious failure staring him in the face. he realised the heavy financial loss to the ulster loyalists, for his cargo represented about £ , of their money; and he realised the bitter disappointment of their hopes, which was far worse than any loss of money. he pictured to himself what must happen in the morning--"to have to follow a torpedo-boat into the naval base and lie there till the whole ulster scheme was unravelled and known to the world as a ghastly failure, and the province and sir edward and all the leaders the laughing stock of the world"--and the thought of it all plunged him almost into despair. almost, but not quite. he was not the man to give way to despair. if it came to the worst he would "put all the foreign crew and their belongings into the boats and send them off; agnew and i would arm ourselves with a bundle of rifles, and cut it open and have rounds to fight any attempt to board us, and if we slipped this by any chance, he and i would bring her to england together, he on deck and i in the engine-room. he knew all about navigation and i knew all about engines, having been a marine engineer in my youth." but a less desperate job called for immediate attention. the men engaged in transferring the cargo from the barges to the steamer wanted to knock off work for the night; but the offer of double pay persuaded them to stick to it, and they worked with such good will that by midnight every bale was safely below hatches in the _fanny_. crawford then instructed the shipping agent to be off in the tug at break of day, giving him letters to post which would apprise the committee in belfast of what had happened, and give them the means of communicating with himself according to previously concerted plans. before morning a change occurred in the weather, which crawford regarded as providential. he was gladdened by the sight of a sea churned white by half a gale, while a mist lay on the water, reducing visibility to about yards. it would be impossible for the port officer's motor-boat to face such a sea, or, if it did, to find the _fanny_, unless guided by her fog-whistle. as soon as eight o'clock had passed--the hour by which the return of the ship's papers had been promised--crawford weighed anchor, and crept out of the narrow channel under cover of the fog, only narrowly escaping going aground on the way among the banks and shallows that made it impossible to sail before daylight, but eventually the open sea was safely reached. but the _fanny_ was now without papers, and in law was a pirate ship. it was therefore desirable for her to change her costume. as many hands as possible were turned to the task of giving a new colour to the funnel and making some other effective alterations in her appearance, including a new name on her bows and stern. thus renovated, and after a delay of some days, caused by trifling mishaps, she left the cattegat behind and steered a course for british waters. the original plan had been to set a course for iceland, and, when north of the shetlands, to turn to the southward to lough laxford, the agreed rendezvous with spender. but the incident at langeland, which had made the danish authorities suspect illegal traffic with iceland, made a change of plan imperative. before leaving danish waters crawford tried to communicate this change to belfast. but, meantime, information had reached belfast of certain measures being taken by the government, and spender, hoping to catch crawford before he left kiel, went to dublin to telegraph from there. in dublin he was dismayed to read in the newspapers that a mysterious vessel called the _fanny_, said to be carrying arms for ulster, had been captured by the danish authorities in the baltic. for several days no further news reached belfast, where it was assumed that the whole enterprise had failed; and then a code message informed the committee that crawford was in london. spender at once went over to see him, in order to warn him not to bring the arms to ireland for the present. he was to take them back to hamburg, or throw them overboard, or sink the _fanny_ and take to her boats, according to circumstances. but in london, instead of crawford, spender found the hamburg skipper and packer, who told him of crawford's escape from langeland with the loss of the ship's papers. spender, knowing nothing of crawford's change of plan, and anxious to convey to him the latest instructions, went off on a wild-goose chase to the highlands of scotland, where he spent the best part of an unhappy week watching the waves tumbling in lough laxford, and looking as anxiously as tristan for the expected ship. meantime the _fanny_ had crossed the north sea, and crawford sent agnew ashore at yarmouth on the th of april with orders to hurry to belfast, where he was to procure another steamer and bring it to a rendezvous at lundy island, in the bristol channel. crawford himself, having rechristened the _fanny_ for the second time (this time the _doreen_), proceeded down the english channel, where he had a rather adventurous cruise in a gale of wind. he kept close to the french coast, to avoid any unwelcome attentions in british waters, but on the way had an attack of malaria, which the captain thought so grave that, no doubt with the most humane motives, he declared his intention of putting crawford ashore at dunkirk to save his life, a design which no persuasion short of crawford's handling of his revolver in true pirate fashion would make the norwegian abandon. in the heavy seas of the channel the _doreen_ could not make more than four knots, and she was consequently twenty-four hours late for the rendezvous with agnew at lundy, where she arrived on the th of april. the bristol channel seemed to swarm with pilot boats eager to be of service, whose inquisitive and expert eyes were anything but welcome to the custodian of ulster's rifles; and to his highly strung imagination every movement of every trawler appeared to betoken suspicion. and, indeed, they were not without excuse for curiosity; for, a foreign steamer whose course seemed indeterminate, now making for cardiff and now for st. ives, observed at one time north-east of lundy and a few hours later south of the island--a tramp, in fact, that was obviously "loitering" with no ascertainable destination, was enough to keep telescopes to the eyes of devon pilots and fisher-folk, and to set their tongues wagging. but there was no help for it. crawford could not leave the rendezvous till agnew arrived, and was forced to wander round lundy and up and down the bristol channel for two days and nights, until, at a.m. on monday morning, the th of april, a signal from a passing steamer, the _balmerino_, gave the welcome tidings that agnew was on board and was proceeding to sea. when the two steamers were sufficiently far from lundy lighthouse and other prying eyes to make friendly intercourse safe, agnew came on board the _doreen_, bringing with him another north irish seaman whom he introduced to crawford. this man handed to crawford a paper he had brought from belfast. it was typewritten; it bore no address and no signature; it was no doubt a duplicate of what spender had taken to the highlands, for its purport, as given by crawford from memory, was to the following effect: "owing to great changes since you left, and altered circumstances, the committee think it would be unwise to bring the cargo here at present, and instruct you to proceed to the baltic and cruise there for three months, keeping in touch with the committee, or else to store the goods at hamburg till required." the "great changes" referred to were the operations that led to the curragh incident, the story of which crawford now learnt from agnew. the presence of the fleet at lamlash, and of destroyers off carrickfergus, was enough to make the committee deem it an inopportune moment for crawford to bring his goods to belfast lough. but the latter was hardly in a condition to appreciate the gravity of the situation, and the indignation which the missive aroused in him is intelligible. after all he had come through, the ups and downs, dangers and escapes--far more varied than have been here recorded--the disappointment at being ordered back was cruel; and in his eyes such instructions were despicably pusillanimous. the caution that had prompted his instructors to leave the order unsigned moved him to contempt, and in his wrath he was confident that "the chief at any rate had nothing to do with it." he told the messenger that he did not know who had sent the paper, and did not want to know, and instructed him to take it back and inform the senders that, as it bore no signature, no date, no address, and no official stamp, he declined to recognise it and refused to obey it; and, further, that unless he received within six days properly authenticated instructions for delivering his cargo, he would run his ship ashore at high water in the county down, and let the ulstermen salve as much as they could when the tide ebbed. but crawford determined to make another effort first to accomplish his task by less desperate methods. he therefore decided to accompany the messenger back to belfast. the _doreen_, late _fanny_, was too foreign-looking to pass unchallenged up belfast lough, but he believed that if the cargo could be transhipped to a vessel known to all watchers on the north irish coast, a policy of audacity would have a good chance of success. the s.s. _balmerino_, which had brought agnew and the messenger to lundy, was such a vessel; her owner, mr. sam kelly, was an intimate friend of crawford's; and if he could see kelly the matter, he hoped, might be quickly arranged. the reliance which crawford placed in mr. sam kelly was fully justified, for the assistance rendered by this gentleman was essential to the success of the enterprise. he it was who freely supplied two steamers, with crews and stevedores, thereby enabling the last part of this adventurous voyage to be carried through; and the willingness with which mr. kelly risked financial loss, and much besides, placed ulster under an obligation to him for which he sought no recompense. crawford accordingly went off in the _balmerino_, landed in south wales on tuesday, the th of april, and hastened by the quickest route to belfast. agnew took charge of the _doreen_, with instructions to be at the tuskar light, on the wexford coast, on the following friday night, the th, and to return there every night until crawford rejoined him. a friend of crawford's, mr. richard cowser, with whom he had a conversation on the telephone from dublin, met him at the railway station in belfast and told him that he had a motor waiting to take him to craigavon, where the council was expecting him, and that he would see mr. sam kelly, the owner of the _balmerino_, there also. this news made crawford very angry. he accused his friend of breach of confidence in letting anyone know that he was coming to belfast; he declared he would have nothing to do with the council after the unsigned orders he had received at lundy; and he besought his friend to take his car to craigavon and bring back kelly, repeating his determination to bring in his cargo, even if he had to run his ship ashore to do so. mr. cowser replied that this would be very disappointing to sir edward carson, who was waiting for crawford at craigavon, having come from london on purpose for this council meeting. "what!" exclaimed crawford, "is sir edward there? why did you not say so at once? where is your car? let us waste no time till i see the chief and report to him." that evening of the th of april, at craigavon, was a memorable one for all who were present at the meeting. carson invited crawford to relate all he had done, and to explain how he proposed to proceed. the latter did not mince matters in saying what he thought of the lundy instructions, which he again declared angrily he intended to disobey. when he had finished his narrative and his protestations against what he considered a cowardly policy--a policy that would deprive ulster of succour as sorely needed as derry needed the _mountjoy_ to break the boom--carson put a few questions to him in regard to the feasibility of his plans. crawford explained the advantage it would be to transfer the cargo from the _fanny_ to a local steamer, which he felt confident he could bring into larne, and after the transhipment he would send the _fanny_ straight back to the baltic, where she could settle her account with the danish authorities and recover her papers. some members of the council were sceptical about the possibility of transhipping the cargo at sea, but crawford, who had fully discussed it with agnew, believed that if favoured by calm weather it could be done. when carson, after hearing all that was to be said on both sides in the long debate between fabius and hotspur, finally supported the latter, the question was decided. there was no split--there never was in these deliberations in ulster; those whose judgment was overruled always supported loyally the policy decided upon. immediate measures were then taken to give effect to the decision. kelly knew of a suitable craft, the s.s. _clydevalley_, for sale at that moment in glasgow, which would be in belfast next morning with a cargo of coal. this was providential. a collier familiar to every longshoreman in belfast lough, carrying on her usual trade this week, could hardly be suspected of carrying rifles when she returned next week ostensibly in the same line of business. it was settled that crawford should cross to glasgow at once and buy her; the steamer, when bought, was to go from belfast to llandudno, where she would pick up crawford on the sands, and proceed to keep the rendezvous with agnew at the tuskar light on friday; and, after taking over the _fanny's_ cargo, would then steam boldly up belfast lough and through the musgrave channel to the belfast docks, where he undertook to arrive on the friday week, the th of april, the various proposals which named larne, bangor, and donaghadee as ports of discharge having all been rejected after full discussion. this last decision was not approved by crawford, for he and spender had long before this time agreed that larne harbour was the proper place to land the arms, both because the large number of country roads leading to it would facilitate rapid distribution, and because it would be more difficult for the authorities to interfere with the disembarkation there than at any of the other ports. before parting from the council crawford made it quite clear that during the remainder of the adventure he would recognise no orders of any kind unless they bore the autograph signature of sir edward carson. on this understanding he set out for glasgow, bought the _clydevalley_, and went by train to llandudno to await her arrival. these affairs had left very little margin of time to spare. the _clydevalley_ could not be at llandudno before the morning of the th, and agnew would be looking for her at the tuskar the same evening. as it actually turned out she only arrived at the welsh watering-place late that night, and, after picking up crawford, who had spent an anxious day on the beach, arrived off the wexford coast at daybreak on saturday, the th. not a sign of the _fanny_ was to be seen all that day, or the following night; and when the skipper of the _clydevalley_, who had been on the _balmerino_ and was privy to the arrangements with agnew, gave crawford reason to think there might have been a misunderstanding as to the rendezvous, yarmouth having been also mentioned in that connection, crawford was in a condition almost of desperation. it was, indeed, a situation to test the nerves, to say nothing of the temper, of even the most resolute. it was sunday, and crawford had undertaken to be at copeland island, at the mouth of belfast lough, on friday evening for final landing instructions. the precious cargo, which had passed safely through so many hazards, had vanished and was he knew not where. he had heard nothing of the _fanny_ (or _doreen_) since he landed at tenby five days previously. had she been captured by a destroyer from pembroke, or overhauled, pirate as she was without papers, by customs officials from rosslare? or had agnew mistaken his instructions, and risked all the dangers of the english channel in a fruitless voyage to yarmouth, where, even if still undetected, the _fanny_ would be too far away to reach copeland by friday, unless agnew could be communicated with at once? there was only one way in which such communication could be managed, and that way crawford now took with characteristic promptitude and energy. the _clydevalley_ crossed the irish sea to fishguard, where he took train on sunday night to london and yarmouth, having first made arrangements with the skipper for keeping in touch. but there was no trace of the _fanny_ at yarmouth, and no word from agnew at the post office. there appeared to be no solution of the problem, and every precious hour that slipped away made ultimate failure more menacing. but at two o'clock the outlook entirely changed. a second visit to the post office was rewarded by a telegram in code from agnew saying all was well, and that he would be at holyhead to pick up crawford on tuesday evening. there was just time to catch a london train that arrived in time for the irish mail from euston. on tuesday morning crawford was pacing the breakwater at holyhead, and a few hours later he was discussing matters with agnew in the little cabin of the _clydevalley_. the latter had amply made up for the loss of time caused by some misunderstanding as to the rendezvous at the tuskar, for he was able to show crawford, to his intense delight, that the cargo had all been safely and successfully transferred to the hold of the _clydevalley_ in a bay on the welsh coast, mainly at night. some sixteen transport labourers from belfast, willing ulster hands, had shifted the stuff in less than half the time taken by germans at langeland over the same job. there was, therefore, nothing more to be done except to steam leisurely to copeland, for which there was ample time before friday evening. the _fanny_ had departed to an appointed rendezvous on the baltic coast of denmark. it was now the turn of the _clydevalley_ to yield up her obscure identity, and to assume an historic name appropriate to the adventure she was bringing to a triumphant climax--a name of good omen in ulster ears. strips of canvas, feet long, were cut and painted with white letters on a black ground, and affixed to bows and stern, so that the men waiting at copeland might hail the arrival of the _mountjoy ii_. off copeland island a small vessel was waiting, which agnew recognised as a tender belonging to messrs. workman & clark. the men on board, as soon as they could make out the name of the approaching vessel, understood at once, and raised a ringing cheer. two of them were seen gesticulating and hailing the _mountjoy_. crawford, suspecting fresh orders to retreat, paid no attention, and told agnew to hold on his course; and even when presently he was able to recognise mr. cowser and mr. dawson bates on board the tender, and to hear them shouting that they had important instructions for him, he still refused to let them come on board. "if the orders are not signed by sir edward carson," he shouted back, "you can take them back to where they came from." but the orders they brought had been signed by the leader, a special messenger having been sent to london to obtain his signature, and the change of plan they indicated was, in fact, just what crawford desired. the bulk of the arms were to be landed at larne, the port he had always favoured, and lesser quantities were to be taken to bangor and donaghadee. it was . that night, the th of april , when the _mountjoy ii_ steamed alongside the landing-stage at larne, where she had been eagerly awaited for a couple of hours. the voyage of adventure was over. fred crawford, with the able and zealous help of andrew agnew, had accomplished the difficult and dangerous task he had undertaken, and a service had been rendered to ulster not unworthy to rank beside the breaking of the boom across the foyle by the first and more renowned _mountjoy_. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . chapter xix on the brink of civil war the arrangements that had been made for the landing and disposal of the arms when they arrived in port were the work of an extremely efficient and complete organisation. in the previous summer captain spender, it will be remembered, had been appointed to a position on sir george richardson's staff which included in its duties that of the organisation of transport. a railway board, a supply board, and a transport board had been formed, on which leading business men willingly served; every u.v.f. unit had its horse transport, and in addition a special motor corps, organised in squadrons, and a special corps of motor-lorries were formed. more than half the owners of motor-cars in ulster placed their cars at the disposal of the motor corps, to be used as and when required. the corps was organised in sections of four cars each, and in squadrons of seventeen cars each, with motor cyclist despatch-riders; a signalling corps of despatch-riders and signallers completed the organisation. the lively interest aroused by the practice and displays of the last-mentioned corps did much to promote the high standard of proficiency attained by its "flag-waggers," many of whom were women and girls. in particular the signalling-station at bangor gained a reputation which attracted many english sympathisers with ulster to pay it a visit when they came to belfast for the great unionist demonstrations. the despatch-riders on motor-cycles made the ulster council independent of the post office, which for very good reasons they used as little as possible. post-houses were opened at all the most important centres in ulster, between which messages were transmitted by despatch-rider or signal according to the nature of the intervening country. along the coast of down and antrim the organisation of signals was complete and effective. the usefulness of the despatch-riders' corps was fully tested and proved during the curragh incident, when news of all that was taking place at the curragh was received by this means two or three times a day at the old town hall in belfast, where there was much information of what was going on that was unknown at the irish office in london. all this organisation was at the disposal of the leaders for handling the arms brought in the hold of the _mountjoy ii_. the perfection of the arrangements for the immediate distribution of the rifles and ammunition among the loyalist population, and the almost miraculous precision with which they were carried out on that memorable friday night, extorted the admiration even of the most inveterate political enemies of ulster. the smoothness with which the machinery of organisation worked was only possible on account of the hearty willingness of all the workers, combined with the discipline to which they gladly submitted themselves. the whole u.v.f. was warned for a trial mobilisation on the evening of the th of april, and the owners of all motor-cars and lorries were requested to co-operate. very few either of the volunteers or the motor owners knew that anything more than manoeuvres by night for practice purposes was to take place. all motors from certain specified districts were ordered to be at larne by o'clock in the evening; from other districts the vehicles were to assemble at bangor and donaghadee respectively, at a later hour. all the roads leading to these ports were patrolled by volunteers, and at every cross-roads over the greater part of nine counties men of the local battalions were stationed to give directions to motor-drivers who might not be familiar with the roads. at certain points these men were provided with reserve supplies of petrol, and with repairing tools that might be needed in case of breakdown. it is a remarkable testimony to the zeal of these men for the cause that, although none of them knew he was taking part in an exciting adventure, not one, so far as is known, left his post throughout a cold and wet night, having received orders not to go home till daybreak. and these were men, it must be remembered, who before putting on the felt hats, puttees, and bandoliers which constituted their uniform, had already done a full day's work, and were not to receive a sixpence for their night's job. at the three ports of discharge large forces of volunteers were concentrated. sir george richardson, g.o.c. in c., remained in belfast through the night, being kept fully and constantly informed of the progress of events by signal and motor-cyclist despatch-riders. captain james craig was in charge of the operations at bangor; at larne general sir william adair was in command, with captain spender as staff officer. the attention of the customs authorities in belfast was diverted by a clever stratagem. a tramp steamer was brought up the musgrave channel after dark, her conduct being as furtive and suspicious as it was possible to make it appear. at the same time a large wagon was brought to the docks as if awaiting a load. the skipper of the tramp took an unconscionable time, by skilful blundering, in bringing his craft to her moorings. the suspicions of the authorities were successfully aroused; but every possible hindrance was put in their way when they began to investigate. the hour was too late: could they not wait till daylight? no? well, then, what was their authority? when that was settled, it appeared that the skipper had mislaid his keys and could not produce the ship's papers--and so on. by these devices the belief of the officers that they had caught the offender they were after was increasingly confirmed every minute, while several hours passed before they were allowed to realise that they had discovered a mare's-nest. for when at last they "would stand no more nonsense," and had the hatches opened and the papers produced, the latter were quite in order, and the cargo--which they wasted a little additional time in turning over--contained nothing but coal. meantime the real business was proceeding twenty miles away. all communications by wire from the three ports were blocked by "earthing" the wires, so as to cause short circuit. the police and coast-guards were "peacefully picketed," as trade unionists would call it, in their various barracks--they were shut in and strongly guarded. no conflict took place anywhere between the authorities and the volunteers, and the only casualty of any kind was the unfortunate death of one coast-guardsman from heart disease at donaghadee. at larne, where much the largest portion of the _mountjoy's_ cargo was landed, a triple cordon of volunteers surrounded the town and harbour, and no one without a pass was allowed through. the motors arrived with a punctuality that was wonderful, considering that many of them had come from long distances. as the drivers arrived near the town and found themselves in an apparently endless procession of similar vehicles, their astonishment and excitement became intense. only when close to the harbour did they learn what they were there for, and received instructions how to proceed. they had more than two hours to wait in drizzling rain before the _mountjoy_ appeared round the point of islandmagee, although her approach had been made known to spender by signal at dusk. there were about five hundred motor vehicles assembled at larne alone, and such an invasion of flaring head-lights gave the inhabitants of the little town unwonted excitement. practically all the able-bodied men of the place were either on duty as volunteers or were willing workers in the landing of the arms. the women stood at their doors and gave encouraging greeting to the drivers; many of them ran improvised canteens, which supplied the workers with welcome refreshments during the night. there was a not unnatural tendency at first on the part of some of the motor-drivers to look upon the event more in the light of a meet of hounds than of the gravest possible business, and to hang about discussing the adventure with the other "sportsmen." but the use of vigorous language brought them back to recognition of the seriousness of the work before them, and the discharge of the cargo proceeded hour after hour with the utmost rapidity and with the regularity of a well-oiled machine. the cars drew up beside the _mountjoy_ in an endless _queue_; each received its quota of bales according to its carrying capacity, and was despatched on its homeward journey without a moment's delay. the wisdom of crawford's system of packing was fully vindicated. there was no confusion, no waiting to bring ammunition from one part of the ship's hold to match with rifles brought from another, and bayonets from a third. the packages, as they were carried from the steamer or the cranes, were counted by checking clerks, and their destination noted as each car received its load. but even the large number of vehicles available would have been insufficient for the purpose on hand if each had been limited to a single load; dumps had therefore been formed at a number of selected places in the surrounding districts, where the arms were temporarily deposited so as to allow the cars to return and perform the same duty several times during the night. while the _mountjoy_ was discharging the larne consignment on to the quay, she was at the same time transhipping a smaller quantity into a motor-boat, moored against her side, which when laden hurried off to donaghadee; and she left larne at in the morning to discharge the last portion of her cargo at bangor, which was successfully accomplished in broad daylight after her arrival there about . . crawford refused to leave the ship at either larne or bangor, feeling himself bound in honour to remain with the crew until they were safe from arrest by the naval authorities. it was well known in belfast that a look-out was being kept for the _fanny_, which had figured in the press as "the mystery ship" ever since the affair at langeland, and had several times been reported to have been viewed at all sorts of odd places on the map, from the orkneys to tory island. just as agnew was casting off from bangor, when the last bale of arms had gone ashore, a message from u.v.f. headquarters informed him that a thirty-knot cruiser was out looking for the _fanny_. to mislead the coast-guards on shore a course was immediately set for the clyde--the very quarter from which a cruiser coming from lamlash was to be expected--and when some way out to sea crawford cut the cords holding the canvas sheets that bore the name of the _mountjoy_, so that within five minutes the filibustering pirate had again become the staid old collier _clydevalley_, which for months past had carried her regular weekly cargo of coal from scotland to belfast. as before at langeland, so now at copeland, fog providentially covered retreat, and through it the _clydevalley_ made her way undetected down the irish sea. at daybreak next morning crawford landed at rosslare; and agnew then proceeded along the french and danish coasts to the baltic to the rendezvous with the _fanny_, in order to bring back the ulstermen members of her crew, after which "the mystery ship" was finally disposed of at hamburg. sir edward carson and lord londonderry were both in london on the th of april. at an early hour next morning a telegram was delivered to each of them, containing the single word "lion." it was a code message signifying that the landing of the arms had been carried out without a hitch. before long special editions of the newspapers proclaimed the news to all the world, and as fresh details appeared in every successive issue during the day the public excitement grew in intensity. wherever two or three unionists were gathered together exultation was the prevailing mood, and eagerness to send congratulations to friends in ulster. soon after breakfast a visitor to sir edward carson found a motor brougham standing at his door, and on being admitted was told that "lord roberts is with sir edward." the great little field-marshal, on learning the news, had lost not a moment in coming to offer his congratulations to the ulster leader. "magnificent!" he exclaimed, on entering the room and holding out his hand, "magnificent! nothing could have been better done; it was a piece of organisation that any army in europe might be proud of." but it was not to be expected that the government and its supporters would relish the news. the radical press, of course, rang all the changes of angry vituperation, especially those papers which had been prominent in ridiculing "ulster bluff" and "king carson's wooden guns"; and they now speculated as to whether carson could be "convicted of complicity" in what mr. asquith in the house of commons described as "this grave and unprecedented outrage." carson soon set that question at rest by quietly rising in his place in the house and saying that he took full responsibility for everything that had been done. the prime minister, amid the frenzied cheers of his followers, assured the house that "his majesty's government will take, without delay, appropriate steps to vindicate the authority of the law." for a short time there was some curiosity as to what the appropriate steps would be. none, however, of any sort were taken; the government contented itself with sending a few destroyers to patrol for a short time the coasts of antrim and down, where they were saluted by the ulster signalling stations, and their officers hospitably entertained on shore by loyalist residents. on the th of april a further debate on the curragh incident took place in the house of commons, which was a curious example of the rapid changes of mood that characterise that assembly. most of the speeches both from the front and back benches were, if possible, even more bitter, angry, and defiant than usual. but at the close of one of the bitterest of them all mr. churchill read a typewritten passage that was recognised as a tiny olive-branch held out to ulster. carson responded next day in a conciliatory tone, and the prime minister was thought to suggest a renewal of negotiations in private. for some time nothing came of this hint; but on the th of may mr. asquith announced that the third reading of the home rule bill (for the third successive year, as required by the parliament act before being presented for the signature of the king) would be taken before whitsuntide, but that the government intended to make another attempt to appease ulster by introducing "an amending proposal, in the hope that a settlement by agreement may be arrived at"; and that the two bills--the home rule bill and the bill to amend it--might become law practically at the same time. but he gave no hint as to what the "amending proposal" was to be, and the reception of the announcement by the opposition did not seem to presage agreement. mr. bonar law insisted that the house of commons ought to be told what the amending bill would propose, before it was asked finally to pass the home rule bill. but the real fact was, as every member of the house of commons fully realised, that mr. asquith was not a free agent in this matter. the nationalists were not at all pleased at the attempts already made, trivial as they were, to satisfy ulster, and mr. redmond protested against the promise of an amending bill of any kind. mr. asquith could make no proposal sufficient to allay the hostility of ulster that would not alienate the nationalists, whose support was essential to the continuance of his government in office. on the same day as this debate in parliament the result of a by-election at grimsby was announced in which the unionist candidate retained the seat; a week later the unionists won a seat in derbyshire; and two days afterwards crowned these successes with a resounding victory at ipswich. the last-mentioned contest was considered so important that mr. lloyd george and sir edward carson went down to speak the evening before the poll for their respective sides. mr. lloyd george, the chancellor of the exchequer, made his appeal to the cupidity of the constituency, which was informed that it would gain £ , a year from his new budget, in addition to large sums, of which he gave the figure, for old age pensions and under the government's health insurance act.[ ] sir edward carson laid stress on ulster's determination to resist home rule by force. the unionist candidate won the seat next day in this essentially working-class constituency by a substantial majority, although his liberal opponent, mr. masterman, was a cabinet minister trying for the second time to return to parliament. out of seven elections since the beginning of the session the government had lost four. it happened that the two latest new members took their seats on the th of may, on which date the home rule bill was passed by the house of commons on third reading for the last time. the occasion was celebrated by the nationalists, not unnaturally, by a great demonstration of triumph, both in the house itself and outside in palace yard. men on the other side reflected that the tragedy of civil war had been brought one stage nearer. the reply of ulster to the passing of the bill was a series of reviews of the u.v.f. during the whitsuntide recess. carson, londonderry, craig, and most of the other ulster members attended these parades, which excited intense enthusiasm through the country, more especially as the arms brought by the _mountjoy_ were now seen for the first time in the hands of the volunteers. several battalions were presented with colours which had been provided by lady londonderry, lady massereene, mrs. craig, and other local ladies, and the ceremony included the dedication of these colours by the bishop of down and the moderator of the presbyterian church. many visitors from england witnessed these displays, and among them were several deputations of liberal and labour working men, who reported on their return that what they had seen had converted them to sympathy with ulster.[ ] after the recess the promised amending bill was introduced in the house of lords on the rd of june by the marquis of crewe, who explained that it embodied mr. asquith's proposals of the th of march, and that he invited amendments. lord lansdowne at once declared that these proposals, which had been rejected as inadequate three months ago, were doubly insufficient now. but the invitation to amend the bill was accepted, lord londonderry asking the pertinent question whether the government would tell mr. redmond that they would insist on acceptance of any amendments made in response to lord crewe's invitation--a question to which no answer was forthcoming. lord milner, in the course of the debate, said the bill would have to be entirely remodelled, and he laid stress on the point that if ulster were coerced to join the rest of ireland it would make a united ireland for ever impossible, and that the employment of the army and navy for the purpose of coercion would give a shock to the empire which it would not long survive; to which lord roberts added that such a policy would mean the utter destruction of the army, as he had warned the prime minister before the incident at the curragh. on the th of july the bill was amended by substituting the permanent exclusion of the whole province of ulster--which mr. balfour had named "the clean cut"--for the proposed county option with a time limit; and several other alterations of minor importance were also made. the bill as amended passed the third reading on the th, when lord lansdowne predicted that, whatever might be the fate of the measure and of the home rule bill which it modified, the one thing certain was that the idea of coercing ulster was dead. in ulster itself, meanwhile, the people were bent on making lord lansdowne's certainty doubly sure. carson went over for the boyne celebration on the th of july. the frequency of his visits did nothing to damp the ardour with which his arrival was always hailed by his followers. the same wonderful scenes, whether at larne or at the belfast docks, were repeated time after time without appearing to grow stale by repetition. they gave colour to the radical jeer at "king carson," for no royal personage could have been given a more regal reception than was accorded to "sir edward" (as everybody affectionately called him in belfast) half a dozen times within a few months. this occasion, when he arrived on the th by the liverpool steamer, accompanied by mr. walter long, was no exception. his route had been announced in the press. countless union jacks were displayed in every village along both shores of the lough. every vessel at anchor, including the gigantic white star liner _britannic_, was dressed; every fog-horn bellowed a welcome; the multitude of men at work in the great ship-yards crowded to places commanding a view of the incoming packet, and waved handkerchiefs and raised cheers for sir edward; fellow passengers jostled each other to get sight of him as he went down the gangway and to give him a parting cheer from the deck; the dock sheds were packed with people, many of them bare-headed and bare-footed women, who pressed close in the hope of touching his hand, or hearing one of his kindly and humorous greetings. it was the same in the streets all the way from the docks to the centre of the city, and out through the working-class district of ballymacarret to the country beyond, and in every hamlet on the road to newtownards and mount stewart--people congregating to give him a cheer as he passed in lord londonderry's motor-car, or pausing in their work on the land to wave a greeting from fields bordering the road. radical newspapers in england believed--or at any rate tried to make their readers believe--that the "northcliffe press," particularly _the times_ and _daily mail_, gave an exaggerated account of these extraordinary demonstrations of welcome to carson, and of the impressiveness of the great meetings which he addressed. but the accounts in lord northcliffe's papers did not differ materially from those in other journals like _the daily telegraph, the daily express, the standard, the morning post, the observer, the scotsman_, and _the spectator_. there was no exaggeration. the special correspondents gave faithful accounts of what they saw and heard, and no more. editorial support was a different matter. lord northcliffe's papers were unfailing in their support of the ulster cause, as were many other great british journals; and even when at a later period lord northcliffe's attitude on the general question of irish government underwent a change that was profoundly disappointing to ulstermen, his papers never countenanced the idea of applying coercion to ulster. in the years to _the times_ remained true to the tradition started by john walter, who, himself a liberal, went personally to belfast in to inform himself on the question, then for the first time raised by gladstone; and, having done so, supported the loyalist cause in ireland till his death. a series of weighty articles in and approved and encouraged the resistance threatened by ulster to home rule, and justified the measures taken in preparation for it. whatever may have been the reason for a different attitude at a later date, ulster owed a debt of gratitude to _the times_ in those troubled years. the long-expected crisis appeared to be very close when carson arrived in belfast on the th of july, . he had come to attend a meeting of the ulster unionist council--sitting for the first time as the provisional government. craig communicated to the press the previous day the preamble and some of the articles of the constitution of the provisional government, hitherto kept strictly secret, one article being that the administration would be taken over "in trust for the constitution of the united kingdom," and that "upon the restoration of direct imperial government, the provisional government shall cease to exist." at this session on the th, the proceedings of which were private, carson explained the extreme gravity of the situation now reached. the home rule bill would become law probably in a few weeks. it was pretty certain that the nationalists would not permit the government to accept the amending bill in the altered form in which it had left the upper house. in that case, nothing remained for them in ulster but to carry out the policy they had resolved upon long ago, and to make good the covenant. after his forty minutes' speech a quiet and business-like discussion followed. plenary authority to take any action necessary in emergency was conferred unanimously on the executive. the course to be followed in assuming the administration was explained and agreed to, and when they separated all the members felt that the crisis for which they had been preparing so long had at last come upon them. there was no flinching. next day there was a parade of , u.v.f. at larne. a distinguished american who was present said after the march past, "you could destroy these volunteers, but you could not conquer them." carson spoke with exceptional solemnity to the men, telling them candidly that, "unless something happens the evidence of which is not visible at present," he could discern nothing but darkness ahead, and no hope of peace. he ended by exhorting his followers throughout ulster to preserve their self-control and to "commit no act against any individual or against any man's property which would sully the great name you have already won." as usual, his influence was powerful enough to prevent disturbance. the government had made extensive military preparations to maintain order on the th of july; but, as a well-known "character" in belfast expressed it, "sir edward was worth twenty battalions in keeping order." the anniversary was celebrated everywhere by enormous masses of men in a state of tense excitement. lord londonderry addressed an immense gathering at enniskillen; seventy thousand orangemen marched from belfast to drumbeg to hear carson, who sounded the same warning note as at larne two days before. but nowhere throughout the province was a single occurrence reported that called for action by the police. when the ulster leaders returned to london on the th they were met by reports of differences in the cabinet over the amending bill, which was to be brought before the house of commons on the following monday. nationalist pressure no doubt dictated the deletion of the amendments made by the peers and the restoration of the bill to its original shape. a minority of the cabinet was said to be opposed to this course. whether that was true or false, the prime minister must by this time have realised that he had allowed the country to drift to the brink of civil war, and that some genuine effort must be made to arrive at a peaceable solution. accordingly on monday, the th, instead of introducing the amending bill, mr. asquith announced in the house of commons that his majesty the king, "in view of the grave situation which has arisen, has thought it right to summon representatives of parties, both british and irish, to a conference at buckingham palace, with the object of discussing outstanding issues in relation to the problem of irish government." the prime minister added that at the king's suggestion the speaker, mr. james lowther, would preside over the conference, which would begin its proceedings the following day. the liberals, the british unionists, the nationalists, and the ulstermen were respectively represented at the buckingham palace conference by mr. asquith and mr. lloyd george, lord lansdowne and mr. bonar law, mr. redmond and mr. dillon, sir edward carson and captain james craig. the king opened the conference in person on the st with a speech recognising the extreme gravity of the situation, and making an impressive appeal for a peaceful settlement of the question at issue. his majesty then withdrew. the conference deliberated for four days, but were unable to agree as to what area in ulster should be excluded from the jurisdiction of the parliament in dublin. on the th mr. asquith announced the breakdown of the conference, and said that in consequence the amending bill would be introduced in the house of commons on thursday, the th of july. here was the old deadlock. the last glimmer of hope that civil war might be averted seemed to be extinguished. only ten days had elapsed since carson had gloomily predicted at larne that peace was impossible "unless something happens, the evidence of which is not visible at present." but that "something" did happen--though it was something infinitely more dreadful, infinitely more devastating in its consequences, even though less dishonouring to the nation, than the alternative from which it saved us. balanced, as it seemed, on the brink of civil war, great britain and ireland together toppled over on the other side into the maelstrom of world-wide war. on the th of july, when the amending bill was to be discussed, the prime minister said that, with the concurrence of mr. bonar law and sir edward carson, it would be indefinitely postponed, in order that the country at this grave crisis in the history of the world "should present a united front and be able to speak and act with the authority of an undivided nation." to achieve this, all domestic quarrels must be laid aside, and he promised that "no business of a controversial character" would be undertaken. thus it happened that the amending bill was never seen by the house of commons. four days later the united kingdom was at war with the greatest military empire in the world. the opportunity had come for ulster to prove whether her cherished loyalty was a reality or a sham. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] _annual register_, , p. . chapter xx ulster in the war more than a year before the outbreak of the great war a writer in _the morning post_, describing the ulster volunteers who were then beginning to attract attention in england, used language which was more accurately prophetic than he can have realised in may : "what these men have been preparing for in ulster," he wrote, "may be of value as a military asset in time of national emergency. i have seen the men at drill, i have seen them on parade, and experts assure me that in the matter of discipline, physique, and all things which go to the making of a military force they are worthy to rank with our regular soldiers. it is an open secret that, once assured of the maintenance unimpaired of the union between great britain and ireland under the imperial parliament alone, a vast proportion of the citizen army of ulster would cheerfully hold itself at the disposal of the imperial government and volunteer for service either at home or abroad!"[ ] the only error in the prediction was that the writer underestimated the sacrifice ulster would be willing to make for the empire. when the testing time came fifteen months after this appreciation was published all hope of unimpaired maintenance of the union had to be sorrowfully given up, and only those who were in a position to comprehend, with sympathy, the depth and intensity of the feeling in ulster on the subject could realise all that this meant to the people there. yet, all the same, their "citizen army" did not hesitate to "hold itself at the disposal of the imperial government, and volunteer for service at home or abroad." in august the u.v.f., of . men, was without question the most efficient force of infantry in the united kingdom outside the regular army. the medical comb did not seriously thin its ranks; and although the age test considerably reduced its number, it still left a body of fine material for the british army. some of the best of its officers, like captain arthur o'neill, m.p., of the life guards, and lord castlereagh of the blues, had to leave the u.v.f. to rejoin the regiments to which they belonged, or to take up staff appointments at the front. in spite of such losses there was a strong desire in the force, which was shared by the political leaders, that it should be kept intact as far as possible and form a distinct unit for active service, and efforts were at once made to get the war office to arrange for this to be done. pressure of work at the war office, and lord kitchener's aversion from anything that he thought savoured of political considerations in the organisation of the army, imposed a delay of several weeks before this was satisfactorily arranged; and the consequence was that in the first few weeks of the war a large number of the keenest young men in ulster enlisted in various regiments before it was known that an ulster division was to be formed out of the u.v.f. it was the beginning of september before carson was in a position to go to belfast to announce that such an arrangement had been made with lord kitchener. and when he went he had also the painful duty of telling the people of ulster that the government was going to give them the meanest recompense for the promptitude with which they had thrown aside all party purposes in order to assist the empire. when war broke out a "party truce" had been proclaimed. the unionist leaders promised their support to the government in carrying on the war, and mr. asquith pledged the government to drop all controversial legislation. the consideration of the amending bill had been shelved by agreement, mr. asquith stating that the postponement "must be without prejudice to the domestic and political position of any party." on this understanding the unionist party supported, almost without so much as a word of criticism, all the emergency measures proposed by the government. yet on the th of august mr. asquith astonished the unionists by announcing that the promise to take no controversial business was not to prevent him advising the king to sign the home rule bill, which had been hung up in the house of lords by the introduction of the amending bill, and had never been either rejected or passed by that house. mr. balfour immediately protested against this conduct as a breach of faith; but mr. redmond's speech on that occasion contained the explanation of the government's conduct. the nationalist leader gave a strong hint that any help in the war from the southern provinces of ireland would depend on whether or not the home rule bill was to become law at once. although the personal loyalty of mr. redmond was beyond question, and although he was no doubt sincere when he subsequently denied that his speech was so intended, it was in reality an application of the old maxim that england's difficulty is ireland's opportunity. in any case, the cabinet knew that, however unjustly ulster might be treated, she could be relied upon to do everything in her power to further the successful prosecution of the war, and they cynically came to the conclusion that the best thing to do was to placate those whose loyalty was less assured. this was the unpleasant tale that sir edward carson had to unfold to the ulster unionist council on the rd of september. after explaining how and why he had consented to the indefinite postponement of the amending bill, he continued: "and so, without any condition of any kind, we agreed that the bill should be postponed without prejudice to the position of either party. england's difficulty is not ulster's opportunity. england's difficulty is our difficulty; and england's sorrows have always been, and always will be, our sorrows. i have seen it stated that the germans thought they had hit on an opportune moment, owing to our domestic difficulties, to make their bullying demand against our country. they little understood for what we were fighting. we were not fighting to get away from england; we were fighting to stay with england, and the power that attempted to lay a hand upon england, whatever might be our domestic quarrels, would at once bring us together--as it has brought us together--as one man." in order to avoid controversy at such a time, carson declared he would say nothing about their opponents. he insisted that, however unworthily the government might act in a great national emergency, ulstermen must distinguish between the prime minister as a party leader and the prime minister as the representative of the whole nation. their duty was to "think not of him or his party, but of our country," and they must show that "we do not seek to purchase terms by selling our patriotism." he then referred to the pride they all felt in the u.v.f.; how he had "watched them grow from infancy," through self-sacrificing toil to their present high efficiency, with the purpose of "allowing us to be put into no degraded position in the united kingdom." but under the altered conditions their duty was clear: "our country and our empire are in danger. and under these circumstances, knowing that the very basis of our political faith is our belief in the greatness of the united kingdom and of the empire, i say to our volunteers without hesitation, go and help to save your country. go and win honour for ulster and for ireland. to every man that goes, or has gone, and not to them only, but to every irishman, you and i say, from the bottom of our hearts, 'god bless you and bring you home safe and victorious.'" the arrangements with the war office for forming a division from the ulster volunteers were then explained, which would enable the men "to go as old comrades accustomed to do their military training together." carson touched lightly on fears that had been expressed lest political advantage should be taken by the government or by the nationalists of the conversion of the u.v.f. into a division of the british army, which would leave ulster defenceless. "we are quite strong enough," he said, "to take care of ourselves, and so i say to men, so far as they have confidence and trust in me, that i advise them to go and do their duty to the country, and we will take care of politics hereafter." he concluded by moving a resolution, which was unanimously carried by the council, urging "all loyalists who owe allegiance to our cause" to join the army at once if qualified for military service. from beginning to end of this splendidly patriotic oration no allusion was made to the nationalist attitude to the war. few people in ulster had any belief that the spots on the leopard were going to disappear, even when the home rule bill had been placed on the statute-book. the "difficulty" and the "opportunity" would continue in their old relations. people in belfast, as elsewhere, did justice to the patriotic tone of mr. redmond's speech in the house of commons on the rd of august, which made so deep an impression in england; but they believed him mistaken in attributing to "the democracy of ireland" a complete change of sentiment towards england, and their scepticism was more than justified by subsequent events. but they also scrutinised more carefully than englishmen the precise words used by the nationalist leader. englishmen, both in the house of commons and in the country, were carried off their feet in an ecstasy of joy and wonder at mr. redmond's confident offer of loyal help from ireland to the empire in the mighty world conflict. ireland was to be "the one bright spot." ulstermen, on the other hand, did not fail to observe that the offer was limited to service at home. "i say to the government," said mr. redmond, "that they may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops from ireland. i say that the coast of ireland will be defended from foreign invasion by her armed sons, and for this purpose armed nationalist catholics in the south will be only too glad to join arms with the armed protestant ulstermen in the north." these sentences were rapturously applauded in the house of commons. when they were read in ulster the shrewd men of the north asked what danger threatened the "coast of ireland"; and whether, supposing there were a danger, the british navy would not be a surer defence than the "armed sons" of ireland whether from south or north. it was not on the coast of ireland but the coast of flanders that men were needed, and it was thither that the "armed protestant ulstermen" were preparing to go in thousands. they would not be behind the catholics of the south in the spirit of comradeship invoked by mr. redmond if they were to stand shoulder to shoulder under the fire of prussian batteries; but they could not wax enthusiastic over the suggestion that, while they went to france, mr. redmond's nationalist volunteers should be trained and armed by the government to defend the irish coast--and possibly, later, to impose their will upon ulster. the organisation and the training of the ulster division forms no part of the present narrative, but it must be stated that after carson's speech on the rd of september, recruiting went on uninterruptedly and rapidly, and the whole energies of the local leaders and of the rank and file were thrown into the work of preparation. captain james craig, promoted to be lieutenant-colonel, was appointed q.m.g. of the division; but the arduous duties of this post, in which he tried to do the work of half a dozen men, brought about a complete breakdown of health some months later, with the result that, to his deep disappointment, he was forbidden to go with the division to france. no one displayed a finer spirit than his brother, mr. charles craig, m.p. for south antrim. he had never done any soldiering, as his brother had in south africa, and he was over military age in ; but he did not allow either his age, his military inexperience, or his membership of the house of commons to serve as excuse for separating himself from the men with whom he had learnt the elements of drill in the u.v.f. he obtained a commission as captain in the ulster division, and went with it to france, where he was wounded and taken prisoner in the great engagement at thiepval in the battle of the somme, and had to endure all the rigours of captivity in germany till the end of the war. there was afterwards not a little pungent comment among his friends on the fact that, when honours were descending in showers on the heads of the just and the unjust alike, a full share of which reached members of parliament, sometimes for no very conspicuous merit, no recognition of any kind was awarded to this gallant ulster officer, who had set so fine an example and unostentatiously done so much more than his duty. the government's act of treachery in regard to "controversial business" was consummated on the th of september, when the home rule bill received the royal assent. on the th mr. asquith put forward his defence in the house of commons. in a sentence of mellifluous optimism that was to be woefully falsified in a not-distant future, he declared his confidence that the action his ministry was taking would bring "for the first time for a hundred years irish opinion, irish sentiment, irish loyalty, flowing with a strong and a continuous and ever-increasing stream into the great reservoir of imperial resources and imperial unity." he acknowledged, however, that the government had pledged itself not to put the home rule bill on the statute-book until the amending bill had been disposed of. that promise was not now to be kept; instead he gave another, which, when the time came, was equally violated, namely, to introduce the amending bill "in the next session of parliament, before the irish government bill can possibly come into operation." meantime, there was to be a suspensory bill to provide that the home rule bill should remain in abeyance till the end of the war, and he gave an assurance "which would be in spirit and in substance completely fulfilled, that the home rule bill will not and cannot come into operation until parliament has had the fullest opportunity, by an amending bill, of altering, modifying, or qualifying its provisions in such a way as to secure the general consent both of ireland and of the united kingdom." the prime minister, further, paid a tribute to "the patriotic and public spirit which had been shown by the ulster volunteers," whose conduct has made "the employment of force, any kind of force, for what you call the coercion of ulster, an absolutely unthinkable thing." but a verbal acknowledgment of the public spirit shown by the u.v.f. in the first month of the war was a paltry recompense for the government's breach of faith, as mr. bonar law immediately pointed out in a stinging rejoinder. the leader of the opposition concluded his powerful indictment by saying that such conduct by the government could not be allowed to pass without protest, but that at such a moment of national danger debate in parliament on this domestic quarrel, forced upon them by ministers, was indecent; and that, having made his protest, neither he nor his party would take further part in that indecency. thereupon the whole unionist party followed mr. bonar law out of the chamber. but that was not the end of the incident. it had been decided, with sir edward carson's approval, that "ulster day," the second anniversary of the covenant, should be celebrated in ulster by special religious services. the intention had been to focus attention on the larger aspects of imperial instead of local patriotism; but what had just occurred in parliament could not be ignored, and it necessitated a reaffirmation of ulster's unchanged attitude in the domestic quarrel. mr. bonar law now determined to accompany sir edward carson to belfast to renew and to amplify under these circumstances the pledges of british unionists to ulster. the occasion was a memorable one in several respects. on the th of september sir edward carson had been quietly married in the country to miss frewen, and he was accompanied to belfast a few days later by the new lady carson, who then made acquaintance with ulster and her husband's followers for the first time. the scenes that invariably marked the leader's arrival from england have been already described; but the presence of his wife led to a more exuberant welcome than ever on this occasion; and the recent parliamentary storm, with its sequel in the visit of the leader of the unionist party, contributed further to the unbounded enthusiasm of the populace. there was a meeting of the council on the morning of the th, ulster day, at which carson told the whole story of the conferences, negotiations, conversations, and what not, that had been going on up to, and even since, the outbreak of war, in the course of which he observed that, if he had committed any fault, "it was that he believed the prime minister." he paid a just tribute to mr. bonar law, whose constancy, patience, and "resolution to be no party even under these difficult circumstances to anything that would be throwing over ulster, were matters which would be photographed upon his mind to the very end of his life." but while, naturally, resentment at the conduct of the government found forcible expression, and the policy that would be pursued "after the war" was outlined, the keynote of the speeches at this council meeting, and also at the overwhelming demonstration addressed by mr. bonar law in the ulster hall in the evening, was "country before party." as the unionist leader truly said: "this is not an anti-home rule meeting. that can wait, and you are strong enough to let it wait with quiet confidence." but before passing to the great issues raised by the war, introduced by a telling allusion to the idea that germany had calculated on ulster being a thorn in england's side, mr. bonar law gave the message to ulster which he had specially crossed the channel to deliver in person. he reminded the audience that hitherto the promise of support to ulster by the unionists of great britain, given long before at blenheim, had been coupled with the condition that, if an appeal were made to the electorate, the unionist party would bow to the verdict of the country. "but now," he went on, "after the way in which advantage has been taken of your patriotism, i say to you, and i say it with the full authority of our party, we give the pledge without any condition." during the two days which he spent in belfast mr. bonar law, and other visitors from england, paid visits to the training camps at newcastle and ballykinler, where the st brigade of the ulster division was undergoing training for the front. both now, and for some time to come, there was a good deal of unworthy political jealousy of the division, which showed itself in a tendency to belittle the recruiting figures from ulster, and in sneers in the nationalist press at the delay in sending to the front a body of troops whose friends had advertised their supposed efficiency before the war. these troops were themselves fretting to get to france; and they believed, rightly or wrongly, that political intrigue was at work to keep them ingloriously at home, while other divisions, lacking their preliminary training, were receiving preference in the supply of equipment. one small circumstance, arising out of the conditions in which "kitchener's army" had to be raised, afforded genuine enjoyment in ulster. men were enlisting far more rapidly than the factories could provide arms, uniforms, and other equipment. rifles for teaching the recruits to drill and manoeuvre were a long way short of requirements. it was a great joy to the ulstermen when the war office borrowed their much-ridiculed "dummy rifles" and "wooden guns," and took them to english training camps for use by the "new army." but this volume is not concerned with the conduct of the great war, nor is it necessary to enter in detail into the controversy that arose as to the efforts of the rest of ireland, in comparison with those of ulster, to serve the empire in the hour of need. it will be sufficient to cite the testimony of two authorities, neither of whom can be suspected of bias on the side of ulster. the chronicler of the _annual register_ records that: "in ulster, as in england, the flow of recruits outran the provision made for them by the war office, and by about the middle of october the protestant districts had furnished some , , of which belfast alone had contributed , , or per , of the population--the highest proportion of all the towns in the united kingdom."[ ] the second witness is the democratic orator who took a foremost part in the house of commons in denouncing the curragh officers who resigned their commissions rather than march against ulster. colonel john ward, m.p., writing two years after the war, in which he had not kept his eyes shut, said: "it would be presumptuous for a mere englishman to praise the gallantry and patriotism of scotland, wales, and ulster; their record stands second to none in the annals of the war. the case of the south of ireland, her most ardent admirer will admit, is not as any other in the whole british empire. to the everlasting credit of the great leader of the irish nationalists, mr. john redmond, his gallant son, and his very lovable brother--together with many real, great-souled irish soldiers whose loss we so deeply deplore--saw the light and followed the only course open to good men and true. but the patriotism and devotion of the few only show up in greater and more exaggerated contrast the sullen indifference of the majority, and the active hostility of the minority, who would have seen our country and its people overrun and defeated not only without regret, but with fiendish delight."[ ] no generous-minded ulsterman would wish to detract a word from the tribute paid by colonel ward to the redmond family and other gallant catholic nationalists who stood manfully for the empire in the day of trial; but the concluding sentence in the above quotation cannot be gainsaid. and the pathetic thing was that mr. redmond himself never seems to have understood the true sentiments of the majority of those who had been his followers before the war. in a speech in the house on the th of september he referred contemptuously to a "little group of men who never belonged to the national constitutional party, who were circulating anti-recruiting handbills and were publishing little wretched rags once a week or once a month," which were not worth a moment's notice. the near future was to show that these adherents of sinn fein were not so negligible as mr. redmond sincerely believed. the real fact was that his own patriotic attitude at the outbreak of war undermined his leadership in ireland. the "separatism" which had always been, as ulster never ceased to believe, the true underlying, though not always the acknowledged, motive power of irish nationalism, was beginning again to assert itself, and to find expression in "handbills" and "wretched rags." it was discovering other leaders and spokesmen than mr. redmond and his party, whom it was destined before long to sweep utterly away. footnotes: [ ] _morning post_, may th, . [ ] _the annual register_, , p. . [ ] "the army and ireland," _nineteenth century and after_, january , by lieut.-colonel john ward, c.b., c.m.g., m.p. chapter xxi negotiations for settlement the position in which ulster was now placed was, from the political point of view, a very anxious one. had the war not broken out when it did, there was a very prevalent belief that the government could not have avoided a general election either before, or immediately after, the placing of home rule on the statute-book; and as to the result of such an election no unionist had any misgiving. even if the government had remained content to disregard the electorate, it would have been impossible for them to subject ulster to a dublin parliament. the organisation there was powerful enough to prevent it, by force if necessary, and the curragh incident had proved that the army could not be employed against the loyalists. but the whole outlook had now changed. the war had put off all thought of a general election till an indefinite future; the ulster volunteers, and every other wheel in the very effective machinery prepared for resistance to home rule, were now diverted to a wholly different purpose; and at the same time the hated bill had become an act, and the only alleviation was the promise, for what it might be worth, of an amending bill the scope of which remained undefined. while, therefore, the ulster leaders and people threw themselves with all their energy into the patriotic work to which the war gave the call, the situation so created at home caused them much uneasiness. no one felt it more than lord londonderry. indeed, as the autumn of wore on, the despondency he fell into was so marked that his friends could not avoid disquietude on his personal account in addition to all the other grounds for anxiety. he and lady londonderry, it is true, took a leading part in all the activities to which the war gave rise --encouraging recruiting, organising hospitals, and making provision of every kind for soldiers and their dependents, in ulster and in the county of durham. but when in london in november, lord londonderry would sit moodily at the carlton club, speaking to few except intimate friends, and apparently overcome by depression. he was pessimistic about the war. his only son was at the front, and he seemed persuaded he would never return. the affairs of ulster, to which he had given his whole heart, looked black; and he went about as if all his purpose in life was gone. he went with lady londonderry to mount stewart for christmas, and one or two intimate friends who visited him there in january were greatly disturbed in mind on his account. but the public in belfast, who saw him going in and out of the ulster club as usual, did not know anything was amiss, and were terribly shocked as well as grieved when they heard of his sudden death at wynyard on the th of february. the death of lord londonderry was felt by many thousands in ulster as a personal bereavement. if he did not arouse the unbounded, and almost delirious, devotion which none but sir edward carson ever evoked in the north of ireland, the deep respect and warm affection felt towards him by all who knew him, and by great numbers who did not, was a tribute which his modesty and integrity of character and genial friendliness of disposition richly deserved. he was faithfully described by carson himself to the ulster unionist council several months after his death as "a great leader, a great and devoted public servant, a great patriot, a great gentleman, and above all the greatest of great friends." ulster, meantime, had already had a foretaste of the sacrifices the war was to demand when the division should go to the front. in november captain the hon. arthur o'neill, m.p. for mid antrim, who had gone to the front with the first expeditionary force, was killed in action in france. there was a certain sense of sad pride in the reflection that the first member of the house of commons to give his life for king and country was a representative of ulster; and the constituency which suffered the loss of a promising young member by the death of this gallant life guardsman consoled itself by electing in his place his younger brother, major hugh o'neill, then serving in the ulster division, who afterwards proved himself a most valuable member of the ulster parliamentary party, and eventually became the first speaker of the ulster parliament created by the act of . notwithstanding the bitter outbreak of party passion caused by the government's action in putting the home rule bill on the statute-book in september, the party truce was well maintained throughout the autumn and winter. and the most striking proof of the transformation wrought by the war was seen when mr. asquith, when constrained to form a truly national administration in may , included sir edward carson in his cabinet with the office of attorney-general. mr. redmond was at the same time invited to join the government, and his refusal to do so when the british unionists, the labour leaders, and the ulster leaders all responded to the prime minister's appeal to their patriotism, did not appear in the eyes of ulstermen to confirm the nationalist leader's profession of loyalty to the empire; though they did him the justice of believing that he would have accepted office if he had felt free to follow his own inclination. his inability to do so, and the complaints of his followers, including mr. dillon, at the admission of carson to the cabinet, revealed the incapacity of the nationalists to rise to a level above party. carson, however, did not remain very long in the government. disapproving of the policy pursued in relation to our allies in the balkans, he resigned on the th of october, . but he had remained long enough to prove his value in council to the most energetic of his colleagues in the cabinet. men like mr. churchill and mr. lloyd george, although they had been the bitterest of carson's opponents eighteen months previously, seldom omitted from this time forward to seek his advice in times of difficulty; and the latter of these two, when things were going badly with the allies more than a year later, endeavoured to persuade mr. asquith to include carson in a committee of four to be charged with the entire conduct of the war. it was, perhaps, fortunate that the ulster leader was not a member of the government when the rebellion broke out in the south of ireland at easter . for this event suddenly brought to the front again the whole home rule question, which everybody had hoped might be allowed to sleep till the end of the war; and it would have been a misfortune if carson had not then been in a position of independence to play his part in this new act of the irish drama. the government had many warnings of what was brewing. but mr. birrell, the chief secretary, who in frivolity seemed a contemporary embodiment of nero, deemed cheap wit a sufficient reply to all remonstrances, and had to confess afterwards that he had utterly miscalculated the forces with which he had to deal. he was completely taken by surprise when, on the th of april, an attempt to land weapons from a german vessel, escorted by a submarine from which sir roger casement landed in the west of ireland, proved that the irish rebels were in league with the enemy; and even after this ominous event, he did nothing to provide against the outbreak that occurred in dublin four days later. the rising in the capital, and in several other places in the south of ireland, was not got under for a week, during which time more than houses had been burnt, £ , , sterling worth of property destroyed or damaged, and , casualties had been suffered, of which were fatal. the aims of the insurgents were disclosed in a proclamation which referred to the administration in ireland as a "long usurpation by a foreign people and government." it declared that the irish republican brotherhood--the same organisation that planned and carried out the phoenix park murders in --had now seized the right moment for "reviving the old traditions of irish nationhood," and announced that the new irish republic was a sovereign independent state, which was entitled to claim the allegiance of every irish man and woman. the rebellion was the subject of debates in both houses of parliament on the th and th of may--mr. birrell having in the interval, to use a phrase of carlyle's, "taken himself and his incompetence elsewhere"--when mr. dillon, speaking for the nationalist party, poured forth a flood of passionate sympathy with the rebels, declaring that he was proud of youths who could boast of having slaughtered british soldiers, and he denounced the government for suppressing the rising in "a sea of blood." the actual fact was, that out of a large number of prisoners taken red-handed in the act of armed rebellion who were condemned to death after trial by court-martial, the great majority were reprieved, and thirteen in all were executed. whether such measures deserved the frightful description coined by mr. dillon's flamboyant rhetoric everybody can judge for himself, after considering whether in any other country or at any other period of the world's history, active assistance of a foreign enemy--for that is what it amounted to--has been visited with a more lenient retribution. on the same day that mr. dillon thus justified the whole basis of ulster's unchanging attitude towards nationalism by blurting out his sympathy with england's enemies, mr. asquith announced that he was himself going to ireland to investigate matters on the spot. these two events, mr. dillon's speech and the prime minister's visit to dublin--where he certainly exhibited no stern anger against the rebels, even if the stories were exaggerated which reported him to have shown them ostentatious friendliness--went far to transform what had been a wretched fiasco into a success. cowed at first by their complete failure, the rebels found encouragement in the complacency of the prime minister, and the fear or sympathy, whichever it was, of the nationalist party. from that moment they rapidly increased in influence, until they proved two years later that they had become the predominant power all over ireland except in ulster. in ulster the rebellion was regarded with mixed feelings. the strongest sentiment was one of horror at the treacherous blow dealt to the empire while engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a foreign enemy. but, was it unpardonably pharisaic if there was also some self-glorification in the thought that ulstermen in this respect were not as other men were? there was also a prevalent feeling that after what had occurred they would hear no more of home rule, at any rate during the war. it appeared inconceivable that any sane government could think of handing over the control of ireland in time of war to people who had just proved their active hostility to great britain in so unmistakable a fashion. but they were soon undeceived. mr. asquith, on his return, told the house of commons what he had learnt during his few days' sojourn in ireland. his first proposition was that the existing machinery of government in ireland had completely broken down. that was undeniable. it was the natural fruit of the birrell regime. mr. asquith was himself responsible for it. but no more strange or illogical conclusion could be drawn from it than that which mr. asquith proceeded to propound. this was that there was now "a unique opportunity for a new departure for the settlement of outstanding problems "--which, when translated from asquithian into plain english, meant that now was the time for home rule. the pledge to postpone the question till after the war was to be swept aside, and, instead of building up by sound and sensible administration what mr. birrel's abnegation of government had allowed to crumble into "breakdown," the rebels were to be rewarded for traffic with the enemy and destruction of the central parts of dublin, with great loss of life, by being allowed to point to the triumphant success of their activity, which was certain to prove the most effective of all possible propaganda for their political ideals in ireland. some regard, however, was still to be paid to the promise of an amending bill. the prime minister repeated that no one contemplated the coercion of ulster; that an attempt must be made to come to agreement about the terms on which the home rule act could be brought into immediate operation; and that the cabinet had deputed to mr. lloyd george the task of negotiating to this end with both parties in ireland. accordingly, mr. lloyd george, then secretary of state for war, interviewed sir edward carson on the one hand and mr. redmond and mr. devlin on the other, and submitted to them separately the proposals which he said the cabinet were prepared to make.[ ] on the th of june carson explained the cabinet's proposals at a special meeting of the ulster unionist council held in private. his task was an extremely difficult one, for the advice he had to offer was utterly detestable to himself, and he knew it would be no less so to his hearers. and the latter, profound as was their trust in him as their leader, were men of singularly independent judgment and quite capable of respectfully declining to take any course they did not themselves approve. indeed, carson emphasised the fact that he could not, and had not attempted to, bind the council to take the same view of the situation as himself. at the same time he clearly and frankly stated what his own opinion was, saying: "i would indeed be a poor leader of a great movement if i hesitated to express my own views of any proposition put before you."[ ] his speech, which took nearly two hours in delivery, was a perfect model of lucid exposition and convincing argument. he reviewed in close detail the course of events that had led to the present situation. he maintained from first to last the highest ground of patriotism. mentioning that numerous correspondents had asked why he did not challenge the nationalist professions of loyalty two years before at the beginning of the war, which had since then been so signally falsified, he answered: "because i had no desire to show a dissentient ireland to the germans. i am glad, even with what has happened, that we played the game, and if we had to do it again we would play the game. and then suddenly came the rebellion in dublin. i cannot find words to describe my own horror when i heard of it. for i am bound to admit to you that i was not thinking merely of ulster; i was thinking of the war; i was thinking, as i am always thinking, of what will happen if we are beaten in the war. i was thinking of the sacrifice of human lives at the front, and in gallipoli, and at kut, when suddenly i heard that the whole thing was interrupted by, forsooth, an irish rebellion--by what mr. dillon in the house of commons called a clean fight! it is not ulster or ireland that is now at stake: it is the british empire. we have therefore to consider not merely a local problem, but a great imperial problem--how to win the war." he then outlined the representations that had been made to him by the cabinet as to the injury to the allied cause resulting from the unsettled irish question--the disturbance of good relations with the united states, whence we were obtaining vast quantities of munitions; the bad effect of our local differences on opinion in allied and neutral countries. he admitted that these evil effects were largely due to false and hostile propaganda to which the british government weakly neglected to provide an antidote; he believed they were grossly exaggerated. but in time of war they could not contend with their own government nor be deaf to its appeals, especially when that government contained all their own party leaders, on whose support they had hitherto leaned. one of carson's chief difficulties was to make men grasp the significance of the fact that home rule was now actually established by act of parliament. the point that the act was on the statute-book was constantly lost sight of, with all that it implied. he drove home the unwelcome truth that simple repeal of that act was not practical politics. the only hope for ulster to escape going under a parliament in dublin lay in the promised amending bill. but they had no assurance how much that bill, when produced, would do for them. was it likely, he asked, to do more than was now offered by the government? he then told the council what mr. lloyd george's proposals were. the cabinet offered on the one hand a "clean cut," not indeed of the whole of ulster, but of the six most protestant counties, and on the other to bring the home rule act, so modified, into immediate operation. he pointed out that none of them could contemplate using the u.v.f. for fighting purposes at home after the war; and that, even if such a thing were thinkable, they could not expect to get more by forcible resistance to the act than what was now offered by legislation. but to carson himself, and to all who listened to him that day, the heartrending question was whether they could suffer a separation to be made between the loyalists in the six counties and those in the other three counties of the province. it could only be done, carson declared, if, after considering all the circumstances of the case as he unfolded it to them, the delegates from cavan, monaghan, and donegal could make the self-sacrifice of releasing the other counties from the obligation to stand or fall together. carson ended by saying that he did not intend to take a vote--he "could be no party to having ulstermen vote one against the other." what was to be done must be done by agreement, or not at all. he offered to confer separately with the delegates from the three omitted counties, and the council adjourned till the th of june to enable this conference to be held. in the interval a large number of the delegates held meetings of their local associations, most of which passed resolutions in favour of accepting the government's proposals. but there was undoubtedly a widespread feeling that it would be a betrayal of the loyalists of cavan, monaghan, and donegal, and even a positive breach of the covenant, to accept exclusion from the home rule act for only a portion of ulster. this was, it is true, a misunderstanding of the strict meaning of the covenant, which had been expressly conditioned so as not to extend to such unforeseen circumstances as the war had brought about[ ]; but there was a general desire to avoid if possible taking technical points, and both carson himself and the council were ready to sacrifice the opportunity for a tolerable settlement should the representatives of the three counties not freely consent to what was proposed. in a spirit of self-sacrifice which deeply touched every member of the council, this consent was given. carson had obtained leave for lord farnham to return from the army in france to be present at the meeting. lord farnham, as a delegate from cavan, made a speech at the adjourned meeting on the th which filled his hearers with admiration. that he was almost heart-broken by the turn events had taken he made no attempt to conceal; and his distress was shared by those who heard his moving words. but he showed that he possessed the instinct of statesmanship which compelled him to recognise, in spite of the powerful pull of sentiment and self-interest in the opposite direction, that the course recommended by carson was the path of wisdom. with breaking voice he thanked the latter "for the clearness, and the fairness, and the manliness with which he has put the deplorable situation that has arisen before us, and for his manly advice as leader "; and he then read a resolution that had been passed earlier in the day by the delegates of the three counties, which, after recording a protest against any settlement excluding them from ulster, expressed sorrowful acquiescence, on grounds of the larger patriotism, in whatever decision might be come to in the matter by their colleagues from the six counties. it was the saddest hour the ulster unionist council ever spent. men not prone to emotion shed tears. it was the most poignant ordeal the ulster leader ever passed through. but it was just one of those occasions when far-seeing statesmanship demands the ruthless silencing of promptings that spring from emotion. many of those who on that terrible th of june were most torn by doubt as to the necessity for the decision arrived at, realised before long that their leader had never been guided by surer insight than in the counsel he gave them that day. the resolution adopted by the council was a lengthy one. after reciting the unaltered attachment of ulster to the union, it placed on record the appeal that had been made by the government on patriotic grounds for a settlement of the irish difficulty, which the council did not think it right at such a time of national emergency to resist; but it was careful to reserve, in case the negotiations should break down from any other cause, complete freedom to revert to "opposition to the whole policy of home rule for ireland." meantime the nationalist leaders had been submitting mr. lloyd george's proposals to their own people, and on the th of june mr. redmond made a speech in dublin from which it appeared that he was submitting a very different proposal to that explained by carson in belfast. for mr. redmond told his dublin audience that, while the home rule act was to come into operation at once, the exclusion of the six counties was to be only for the period of the war and twelve months afterwards. that would, of course, have been even less favourable to ulster than the terms offered by mr. asquith and rejected by carson in march . exclusion for the period of the war meant nothing; it would have been useless to ulster; it was no concession whatever; and carson would have refused, as he did in , even to submit it to the unionist council in belfast. mr. lloyd george, who must have known this, had told him quite clearly that there was to be a "definite clean cut," with no suggestion of a time limit. there was, however, an idea that after the war an imperial conference would be held, at which the whole constitutional relations of the component nations of the british empire would be reviewed, and that the permanent status of ireland would then come under reconsideration with the rest. in this sense the arrangement now proposed was spoken of as "provisional"; but both mr. lloyd george and the prime minister made it perfectly plain that the proposed exclusion of the six ulster counties from home rule could never be reversed except by a fresh act of parliament. but when the question was raised by mr. redmond in the house of commons on the th of july, in a speech of marked moderation, he explained that he had understood the exclusion, like all the rest of the scheme, to be strictly "provisional," with the consequence that it would come to an end automatically at the end of the specified period unless prolonged by new legislation; and he refused to respond to an earnest appeal by mr. asquith not to let slip this opportunity of obtaining, with the consent of the unionist party, immediate home rule for the greater part of ireland, more especially as mr. redmond himself had disclaimed any desire to bring ulster within the home rule jurisdiction without her own consent. the negotiations for settlement thus fell to the ground, and the bitter sacrifice which ulster had brought herself to offer, in response to the government's urgent appeal, bore no fruit, unless it was to afford one more proof of her loyalty to england and the empire. she was to find that such proofs were for the most part thrown away, and merely were used by her enemies, and by some who professed to be her friends, as a starting-point for demands on her for further concessions. but, although all british parties in turn did their best to impress upon ulster that loyalty did not pay, she never succeeded in learning the lesson sufficiently to be guided by it in her political conduct. footnotes: [ ] mr. lloyd george's memory was at fault when he said in the house of commons on the th of february, , that on the occasion referred to in the text he had seen sir edward carson and mr. redmond together. [ ] the quotations from this speech, which was never published, are from a report privately taken by the ulster unionist council. [ ] see _ante_, p. . chapter xxii the irish convention after the failure of mr. lloyd george's negotiations for settlement in the summer of the nationalists practically dropped all pretence of helping the government to carry on the war. they were, no doubt, beginning to realise how completely they were losing hold of the people of southern ireland, and that the only chance of regaining their vanishing popularity was by an attitude of hostility to the british government. frequently during the autumn and winter they raised debates in parliament on the demand that the home rule act should immediately come into operation, and threatened that if this were not done recruits from ireland would not be forthcoming, although the need for men was now a matter of great national urgency. they ignored the fact that mr. redmond was a consenting party to mr. asquith's policy of holding home rule in abeyance till after the war, and attempted to explain away their own loss of influence in ireland by alleging that the exasperation of the irish people at the delay in obtaining "self-government" was the cause of their alienation from england, and of the growth of sinn fein. in december the asquith government came to an end, and mr. lloyd george became prime minister. he had shown his estimate of sir edward carson's statesmanship by pressing mr. asquith to entrust the entire conduct of the war to a committee of four, of whom the ulster leader should be one; and, having failed in this attempt to infuse energy and decision into the counsels of his chief, he turned him out and formed a ministry with carson in the office of first lord of the admiralty, at that time one of the most vital in the government. colonel james craig also joined the ministry as treasurer of the household. the change of government did nothing to alter the attitude of the nationalists, unless, indeed, the return of carson to high office added to the fierceness of their attacks. on the th of february --just when "unrestricted submarine warfare" was bringing the country into its greatest peril--mr. dillon called upon the government to release twenty-eight men who had been deported from ireland, and who were declared by mr. duke, the chief secretary, to have been deeply implicated in the easter rebellion of the previous year; and a week later mr. t.p. o'connor returned to the charge with another demand for home rule without further ado. the debate on mr. o'connor's motion on the th of march was made memorable by the speech of major william redmond, home on leave from the trenches in france, whose sincere and impassioned appeal for oblivion of old historic quarrels between irish catholics and protestants, who were at that moment fighting and dying side by side in france, made a deep impression on the house of commons and the country. and when this gallant officer fell in action not long afterwards and was carried out of the firing line by ulster soldiers, his speech on the th of march was recalled and made the peg on which to hang many adjurations to ulster to come into line with their nationalist fellow-countrymen of the south. such appeals revealed a curious inability to grasp the realities of the situation. men spoke and wrote as if it were something new and wonderful for irishmen of the "two nations" to be found fighting side by side in the british army--as if the same thing had not been seen in the peninsula, in the crimea, on the indian frontier, in south africa, and in many another fight. ulstermen, like everybody else who knew major redmond, deplored the loss of a very gallant officer and a very lovable man. but they could not understand why his death should be made a reason for a change in their political convictions. when major arthur o'neill, an ulster member, was killed in action in , no one had suggested that nationalists should on that account turn unionists. why, they wondered, should unionists any more turn nationalists because a nationalist m.p. had made the same supreme sacrifice? all this sentimental talk of that time was founded on the misconception that ulster's attachment to the union was the result of personal prejudice against catholics of the south, instead of being, as it was, a deliberate and reasoned conviction as to the best government for ireland. this distinction was clearly brought out in the same debate by sir john lonsdale, who, when carson became a member of the cabinet, had been elected leader of the ulster party in the house of commons; and an emphatic pronouncement, which went to the root of the controversy, was made in reply to the nationalists by the prime minister. in the north-eastern portion of ireland, he said: "you have a population as hostile to irish rule as the rest of ireland is to british rule, yea, and as ready to rebel against it as the rest of ireland is against british rule--as alien in blood, in religious faith, in traditions, in outlook--as alien from the rest of ireland in this respect as the inhabitants of fife or aberdeen. to place them under national rule against their will would be as glaring an outrage on the principles of liberty and self-government as the denial of self-government would be for the rest of ireland." the government were, therefore, prepared, said mr. lloyd george, to bring in home rule immediately for that part of ireland that wanted it, but not for the northern part which did not want it. mr. redmond made a fine display of indignation at this refusal to coerce ulster; and, in imitation of the unionists in , marched out of the house at the head of his party. next day he issued a manifesto to men of irish blood in the united states and in the dominions, calling on them to use all means in their power to exert pressure on the british government. it was clear that this sort of thing could not be tolerated in the middle of a war in which great britain was fighting for her life, and at a crisis in it when her fortunes were far from prosperous. accordingly, on the th of march mr. bonar law warned the nationalists that their conduct might make it necessary to appeal to the country on the ground that they were obstructing the prosecution of the war. but he also announced that the cabinet intended to make one more attempt to arrive at a settlement of the apparently insoluble problem of irish government. two months passed before it was made known how this attempt was to be made. on the th of may the prime minister addressed a letter in duplicate to mr. redmond and sir john lonsdale, representing the two irish parties respectively, in which he put forward for their consideration two alternative methods of procedure, after premising that the government felt precluded from proposing during the war any measures except such as "would be substantially accepted by both sides." these alternatives were: _(a)_ a "bill for the immediate application of the home rule act to ireland, but excluding therefrom the six counties of north-east ulster," or, _(b)_ a convention of irishmen "for the purpose of drafting a constitution ... which should secure a just balance of all the opposing interests." sir john lonsdale replied to the prime minister that he would take the government's first proposal to belfast for consideration by the council; but as mr. redmond, on the other hand, peremptorily refused to have anything to say to it, it became necessary to fall back on the other alternative, namely the assembling of an irish convention. the members chosen to sit in the convention were to be "representative men" in emerson's meaning of the words, but not in the democratic sense as deriving their authority from direct popular election. certain political organisations and parties were each invited to nominate a certain number; the churches were represented by their leading clergy; men occupying public positions, such as chairmen of local authorities, were given _ex-officio_ seats; and a certain number were nominated by the government. the total membership of this variegated assembly was ninety-five. the sinn fein party were invited to join, but refused to have anything to do with it, declaring that they would consider nothing short of complete independence for ireland. the majority of the irish people thus stood aloof from the convention altogether. as the purpose for which the convention was called was quickly lost sight of by many, and by none more than its chairman, it is well to remember what that purpose was. if it had not been for the opposition of ulster, the home rule act of would have been in force for years, and none of the many attempts at settlement would have been necessary. the one and only thing required was to reconcile, if possible, the aspirations of ulster with those of the rest of ireland. that was the purpose, and the only purpose, of the convention; and in the letter addressed to sir john lonsdale equally with mr. redmond, the prime minister distinctly laid it down that unless its conclusions were accepted "by both sides," nothing could come of it. to leave no shadow of doubt on this point mr. bonar law, in reply to a specific question, said that there could be no "substantial agreement" to which ulster was not a party. it is necessary to emphasise this point, because for such a purpose the heterogeneous conglomeration of nationalists of all shades that formed the great majority of the convention was worse than useless. the convention was in reality a bi-lateral conference, in which one of the two sides was four times as numerous as the other. yet much party capital was subsequently made of the fact that the nationalist members agreed upon a scheme of home rule--an achievement which had no element of the miraculous or even of the unexpected about it. notwithstanding that the sinn fein party had displayed their contempt for the convention, and under the delusion that it would "create an atmosphere of good-will" for its meeting, the government released without condition or reservation all the prisoners concerned in the easter rebellion of . it was like playing a penny whistle to conciliate a cobra. the prisoners, from whose minds nothing was further than any thought of good-will to england, were received by the populace in dublin with a rapturous ovation, their triumphal procession being headed by mr. de valera, who was soon afterwards elected member for east clare by a majority of nearly thirty thousand. four months later, the chief secretary told parliament that the young men of southern ireland, who had refused to serve in the army, were being enrolled in preparation for another rebellion. it was only after some hesitation that the ulster unionist council decided not to hold aloof from the convention, as the sinn feiners did. carson accompanied sir john lonsdale to belfast and explained the explicit pledges by ministers that participation would not commit them to anything, that they would not be bound by any majority vote, and that without their concurrence no legislation was to be founded on any agreement between the other groups in the convention; he also urged that ulster could not refuse to do what the government held would be helpful in the prosecution of the war. the invitation to nominate five delegates was therefore accepted; and when the membership of the convention was complete there were nineteen out of ninety-five who could be reckoned as supporters in general of the ulster point of view. among them were the primate, the moderator of the general assembly, the duke of abercorn, the marquis of londonderry, mr. h.m. pollock, chairman of the belfast chamber of commerce, one labour representative, mr j. hanna, and the lord mayors of belfast and derry. it was agreed that mr. h.t. barrie, member for north derry, should act as chairman and leader of the ulster group, and he discharged this difficult duty with unfailing tact and ability. there was some difficulty in finding a suitable chairman, for no party was willing to accept any strong man opposed to their own views, while an impartial man was not to be found in ireland. eventually the choice fell on sir horace plunkett as a gentleman who, if eagerly supported by none, was accepted by each group as preferable to a more formidable opponent. sir horace made no pretence of impartiality. whatever influence he possessed was used as a partisan of the nationalists. he was not, like the speaker of the house of commons, a silent guardian of order; he often harangued the assembly, which, on one occasion at least, he addressed for over an hour; and he issued manifestos, _questionnaires_, and letters to members, one of which was sharply censured as misleading both by mr. barrie and the bishop of raphoe. the procedure adopted was described by the chairman himself as "unprecedented." it was not only that, but was unsuitable in the last degree for the purpose in view. when it is borne in mind what that purpose was, it is clear that the only business-like method would have been to invite the ulster delegates at the outset to formulate their objections to coming under the home rule act of , and then to see whether mr. redmond could make any concessions which would persuade ulster to accept something less than the permanent exclusion of six counties, which had been their _minimum_ hitherto. the procedure actually followed was ludicrously different. the object, as stated by the chairman, was "to avoid raising contentious issues in such a way as to divide the convention on party lines,"[ ] which, to say the least, was a curious method of handling the most contentious problem in british politics. a fine opportunity was offered to amateur constitution-mongers. anyone was allowed to propound a scheme for the future government of ireland, which, of course, was an encouragement to endless wide-ranging debate, with the least conceivable likelihood of arriving at definite decisions. neither of the leaders of the two parties whose agreement was essential if the convention was to have any result took the initiative in bringing forward proposals. mr. redmond was invited to do so, but declined. mr. barrie had no reason to do so, because the ulster scheme for the government of ireland was the legislative union. so it was left to individuals with no official responsibility to set forth their ideas, which became the subject of protracted debates of a general character. it was further arranged that while contentious issues--the only ones that mattered--should be avoided, any conclusions reached on minor matters should be purely provisional, and contingent on agreement being come to ultimately on fundamentals. month after month was spent in thus discussing such questions as the powers which an irish parliament ought to wield, while the question whether ulster was to come into that parliament was left to stand over. committees and sub-committees were appointed to thresh out these details, and some of them relieved the tedium by wandering into such interesting by-ways of irrelevancy as housing and land purchase, all of which, in gilbertian phrase, "had nothing to do with the case." the ulster group raised no objection to all this expenditure of time and energy. for they saw that it was not time wasted. from the standpoint of the highest national interest it was, indeed, more useful than anything the convention could have accomplished by business-like methods. the summer and autumn of , and the early months of , covered a terribly critical period of the war. the country was never in greater peril, and the attitude of the nationalists in the house of commons added to the difficulties of the government, as mr. bonar law had complained in march. it was to placate them that the convention had been summoned. it was a bone thrown to a snarling dog, and the longer there was anything to gnaw the longer would the dog keep quiet. the ulster delegates understood this perfectly, and, as their chief desire was to help the government to get on with the war, they had no wish to curtail the proceedings of the convention, although they were never under the delusion that it could lead to anything in ireland. having regard to the origin of this strange assembly of irishmen it might have been supposed that its ingenuity would be directed to finding some modification of mr. asquith's home rule act which ulster could accept. that act was the point of departure for its investigation, and the quest was _ex hypothesi_ for some amendment that would not be an enlargement of the authority to be delegated to the subordinate parliament, or any further loosening of the tie with great britain. any proposal of the latter sort would be in the opposite direction from that in which the convention was intended to travel. yet this is precisely what was done from the very outset. the act of was brushed aside as beneath contempt; and the ulster delegates had to listen with amazement week after week to proposals for giving to the whole of ireland, including their own province, a constitution practically as independent of great britain as that of the dominions. but what astonished the ulstermen above everything was to find these extravagant demands of the nationalists supported by those who were supposed to be representatives of southern unionism, with lord midleton, a prominent member of the unionist party in england, at their head. the only material point on which lord midleton differed from the extremists led by the bishop of raphoe was that he wished to limit complete fiscal autonomy for ireland by reserving the control of customs duties to the imperial parliament. save in this single particular he joined forces with the nationalists, and shocked the unionists of the north by giving his support to a scheme of home rule going beyond anything ever suggested at westminster by any radical from gladstone to asquith. this question of the financial powers to be exercised by the hypothetical irish parliament occupied the convention and its committees for the greater part of its eight months of existence. in january lord midleton and mr. redmond came to an agreement on the subject which proved the undoing of them both, and produced the only really impressive scene in the convention. for some time mr. redmond had given the impression of being a tired man who had lost his wonted driving-force. he took little or no part in the lobbying and canvassing that was constantly going on behind the scenes in the convention; he appeared to be losing grip as a leader. but he cannot be blamed for his anxiety to come to terms with lord midleton; and when he found, no doubt greatly to his surprise, that a unionist leader was ready to abandon unionist principles and to accept dominion home rule for ireland, subject to a single reservation on the subject of customs, he naturally jumped at it, and assumed that his followers would do the same. but, while mr. redmond had been losing ground, the influence of the catholic bishop of raphoe had been on the increase, and that able and astute prelate was entirely opposed to the compromise on which mr. redmond and lord midleton were agreed. on the evening of the th of january it came to the knowledge of mr. redmond that when the question came up for decision next day, he would find mr. devlin, his principal lieutenant, in league with the ecclesiastics against him. he was personally too far committed to retrace his steps; to go forward meant disaster, for it would produce a deep cleavage in the nationalist ranks; and, as the state of affairs was generally known to members of the convention, the sitting of the following day was anticipated with unusual interest. there was an atmosphere of suppressed excitement when the chairman took his seat on the th. mr. redmond entered a few seconds later and took his usual place without betraying the slightest sign of disturbed equanimity. the bishop of raphoe strode past him, casting to left and right swift, challenging glances. mr. devlin slipped quietly into his seat beside the leader he had thrown over, without a word or gesture of greeting. all over the room small groups of members engaged in whispered conversation; an air of mysterious expectancy prevailed. the ulster members had been threatened that it was to be for them a day of disaster and dismay--a little isolated group, about to be deserted by friends and crushed by enemies. the chairman, in an agitated voice, opened proceedings by inviting questions. there was no response. a minute or so of tense pause ensued. then mr. redmond rose, and in a perfectly even voice and his usual measured diction, stated that he was aware that his proposal was repudiated by many of his usual followers; that the bishops were against him, and some leading nationalists, including mr. devlin; that, while he believed if he persisted he would have a majority, the result would be to split his party, a thing he wished to avoid; and that he had therefore decided not to proceed with his amendment, and under these circumstances felt he could be of no further use to the convention in the matter. for a minute or two the assembly could not grasp the full significance of what had happened. then it broke upon them that this was the fall of a notable leader, although they did not yet know that it was also the close of a distinguished career. mr. redmond's demeanour throughout what must have been a painful ordeal was beyond all praise. there was not a quiver in his voice, nor a hesitation for word or phrase. his self-possession and dignity and high-bred bearing won the respect and sympathy of the most strenuous of political opponents, even while they recognised that the defeat of the nationalist leader meant relief from pressure on themselves. mr. redmond took no further part in the work of the convention; his health was failing, and the members were startled by the news of his death on the th of march. not a single vote was taken in the convention until the th of march, , when it had been sitting for nearly seven months, and two days later the question which it had been summoned to consider, namely, the relation of ulster to the rest of ireland, was touched for the first time. the first clause in the bishop of raphoe's scheme, establishing a home rule constitution for all ireland, having been carried with lord midleton's help against the vote of the nineteen representatives of ulster, the latter proposed an amendment for the exclusion of the province, and were, of course, defeated by the combined forces of nationalism and southern unionism. thus, on the only issue that really mattered, there was no such "substantial agreement" as the government had postulated as essential before legislation could be undertaken; and on the th of april the convention came to an end without having achieved any useful result, except that it gave the government a breathing space from the irish question to get on with the war. it served, however, to bring prominently forward two of the ulster representatives whose full worth had not till then been sufficiently appreciated. mr. h.m. pollock had, it is true, been a valued adviser of sir edward carson on questions touching the trade and commerce of belfast. but in the convention he made more than one speech which proved him to be a financier with a comprehensive grasp of principle, and an extensive knowledge of the history and the intricate details of the financial relations between great britain and ireland. lord londonderry (the th marquis), who during his father's lifetime had represented an english constituency in the house of commons and naturally took no very prominent part in ulster affairs, although he made many excellent speeches on home rule both in parliament and on english platforms, and was colonel of a regiment of u.v.f., gave proof at once, on succeeding to the peerage in , that he was desirous of doing everything in his power to fill his father's place in the ulster movement. he displayed the same readiness to subordinate personal convenience, and other claims on his time and energy, to the cause so closely associated historically with his family. but it was his work in the convention that first convinced ulstermen of his capacity as well as his zeal. several of lord londonderry's speeches, and especially one in which he made an impromptu reply to mr. redmond, impressed the convention with his debating power and his general ability; and it gave the greatest satisfaction in ulster when it was realised that the son of the leader whose loss they mourned so deeply was as able as he was willing to carry on the hereditary tradition of service to the loyalist cause. in another respect, too, the convention had an indirect influence on the position in ulster. when it appeared likely, in january , that a deadlock would be reached in the convention, the prime minister himself intervened. a letter to the chairman was drafted and discussed in the cabinet; but the policy which appeared to commend itself to his colleagues was one that sir edward carson was unable to support, and he accordingly resigned office on the st, and was accompanied into retirement by colonel craig, the other ulster member of the ministry. sir john lonsdale, who for many years had been the very efficient honorary secretary and "whip" of the ulster parliamentary party, and its leader while carson was in office, had been raised to the peerage at the new year, with the title of lord armaghdale, so that the ulster leadership was vacant for carson to resume when he left the government, and he was formally re-elected to the position on the th of january. it was fortunate for ulster that the old helmsman was again free to take his place at the wheel, for there was still some rough weather ahead. the official report of the convention which was issued on the th of april was one of the most extraordinary documents ever published in a government blue book.[ ] it consisted for the most part of a confused bundle of separate notes and reports by a number of different groups and individuals, and numerous appendices comprising a mass of miscellaneous memoranda bristling with cross-references. the chairman was restricted to providing a bald narrative of the proceedings without any of the usual critical estimate of the general results attained; but he made up for this by setting forth his personal opinions in a letter to the prime minister, which, without the sanction of the convention, he prefixed to the report. as it was no easy matter to gain any clear idea from the report as to what the convention had done, its proceedings while in session having been screened from publicity by drastic censorship of the press, many people contented themselves with reading sir horace plunkett's unauthorised letter to mr. lloyd george; and, as it was in some important respects gravely misleading, it is not surprising that the truth in regard to the convention was never properly understood, and the ulster unionist council had solid justification for its resolution censuring the chairman's conduct as "unprecedented and unconstitutional." in this personal letter, as was to be expected of a partisan of the nationalists, sir horace plunkett laid stress on the fact that lord midleton had "accepted self-government for ireland "--by which was meant, of course, not self-government such as ireland always enjoyed through her representation, and indeed over-representation, in the imperial parliament, but through separate institutions. but if it had not been for this support of separate institutions by the southern unionists there would not have been even a colourable pretext for the assertion of sir horace plunkett that "a larger measure of agreement has been reached upon the principles and details of irish self-government than has ever yet been attained." the really surprising thing was how little agreement was displayed even among the nationalists themselves, who on several important issues were nearly equally divided. it was soon seen how little the policy of lord midleton was approved by those whom he was supposed to represent. although it was exceedingly difficult to obtain accurate information about what was going on in the convention, enough became known in dublin to cause serious misgiving to southern unionists. the council of the irish unionist alliance, who had nominated lord midleton as a delegate, asked him to confer with them on the subject; but he refused. on the th of march, , a "call to unionists," a manifesto signed by twenty-four influential southern unionists, appeared in the press. a southern unionist committee was formed which before the end of may was able to publish the names of well-known men in all walks of life who were in accord with the "call," and to announce that the supporters of their protest against lord midleton's proceedings numbered upwards of fourteen thousand, of whom more than two thousand were farmers in the south and west. this committee then took steps to purge the irish unionist alliance by making it more truly representative of southern unionist opinion. a special meeting of the council of the organisation on the th of january, , brought on a general engagement between lord midleton and his opponents. the general trend of opinion was disclosed when, after the defeat of a motion by lord midleton for excluding ulster unionists from full membership of the alliance, sir edward carson was elected one of its presidents, and lord farnham was chosen chairman of the executive committee. the executive committee was then entirely reconstituted, by the rejection of every one of lord midleton's supporters; and the new body issued a statement explaining the grounds of dissatisfaction with lord midleton's action in the convention, and declaring that he had "lost the confidence of the general body of southern unionists." thereupon lord midleton and a small aristocratic clique associated with him seceded from the alliance, and set up a little organisation of their own. footnotes: [ ] _report of the proceedings of the irish convention_ (cd. ), p. . [ ] cd. . chapter xxiii nationalists and conscription while the irish convention was toilfully bringing to a close its eight months' career of futility, the british empire was in the grip of the most terrible ordeal through which it has ever passed. on the st of march, , the assembled irishmen in dublin were discussing whether or not proportional representation should form part of the hypothetical constitution of ireland, and on the same day the germans well-nigh overwhelmed the th army at the opening of the great offensive campaign which threatened to break irretrievably the allied line by the capture of amiens. the world held its breath. englishmen hardly dared to think of the fate that seemed impending over their country. irishmen continued complacently debating the paltry details of the bishop of raphoe's clauses. irishmen and englishmen together were being killed or maimed by scores of thousands in a supreme effort to stay the advance of the boche to paris and the sea. it happened that on the very day when the report of the convention was laid on the table of the house of commons, the prime minister made a statement of profound gravity, beginning with words such as the british parliament can never before have been compelled to hear from the lips of the head of the government. for the moment, said mr. lloyd george, there was a lull in the storm; but more attacks were to come, and-- the "fate of the empire, the fate of europe, and the fate of liberty throughout the world may depend on the success with which the very last of these attacks is resisted and countered." mr. asquith struck the same note, urging the house-- "with all the earnestness and with all the solemnity of which i am capable, to realise that never before in the experience of any man within these walls, or of his fathers and his forefathers, has this country and all the great traditions and ideals which are embodied in our history--never has this, the most splendid inheritance ever bequeathed to a people, been in greater peril, or in more need of united safeguarding than at this present time." not demosthenes himself, in his most impassioned appeal to the athenians, more fitly matched moving words to urgent occasion than these two statesmen in the simple, restrained sentences, in which they warned the commons of the peril hanging over england. but was eloquent persuasion really required at such a moment to still the voice of faction in the british house of commons? let those who would assume the negative study the official parliamentary report of the debate on the th of april, . they will find a record which no loyal irishman will ever be able to read without a tingling sense of shame. the whole body of members, with one exception, listened to the prime minister's grave words in silence touched with awe, feeling that perhaps they were sitting there on the eve of the greatest tragedy in their country's history. the single exception was the nationalist party. from those same benches whence arose nineteen years back the never-forgotten cheers that greeted the tale of british disaster in south africa, now came a shower of snarling interruptions that broke persistently into the prime minister's speech, and with angry menace impeded his unfolding of the government's proposals for meeting the supreme ordeal of the war. what was the reason? it was because ireland, the greater part of which had till now successfully shirked its share of privation and sacrifice, was at last to be asked to take up its corner of the burden. the need for men to replace casualties at the front was pressing, urgent, imperative. many indeed blamed the government for having delayed too long in filling the depleted ranks of our splendid armies in france; the moment had come when another day's delay would have been criminal. as mr. lloyd george pointed out, the battle that was being waged in front of amiens "proves that the enemy has definitely decided to seek a military decision this year, whatever the consequences to himself." the germans had just called up a fresh class of recruits calculated to place more than half a million of efficient young men in the line. the collapse of russia had released the vast german armies of the east for use against england and france. it was under such circumstances that the prime minister proposed "to submit to parliament to-day certain recommendations in order to assist this country and the allies to weather the storm. they will involve," continued mr. lloyd george, "extreme sacrifices on the part of large classes of the population, and nothing would justify them but the most extreme necessity, and the fact that we are fighting for all that is essential and most sacred in the national life." the age limit for compulsory military service was to be raised from forty-two to fifty, and ireland was to be included under the new military service bill now introduced. england, scotland, and wales had cheerfully submitted to conscription when first enacted by mr. asquith in , and to all the additional combings of industry and extension of obligation that had been required in the past two years. agriculture and other essential industries were being starved for want of labour, and men had actually been brought back from the sorely pressed armies to produce supplies imperatively needed at home. but from all this ireland had hitherto been exempt. to escape the call of the country a man had only to prove that he was "ordinarily resident in ireland"; for conscription did not cross the irish sea. from most of the privations cheerfully borne in great britain the irishman had been equally free. food rationing did not trouble him, and, lest he should go short of accustomed plenty, it was even forbidden to carry a parcel of butter across the channel from ireland. horse-racing went on as usual. emigration had been suspended during the war, so that ireland was unusually full of young men who, owing to the unwonted prosperity of the country resulting from war prices for its produce, were "having the time of their lives." mr. bonar law, in the debates on the military service bill, gave reasons for the calculation that there were not far short of , young men of military age, and of "al" physique, in ireland available for the army. no wonder that mr. lloyd george said it would be impossible to leave this reservoir of man-power untouched when men of fifty, whose sons were already with the colours, were to be called up in great britain! but the bare suggestion of doing such a thing raised a hurricane of angry vituperation and menace from the nationalists in the house of commons. when mr. lloyd george, in conciliatory accents, observed that he had no wish to raise unnecessary controversy, as heaven knew they had trouble enough already, "you will get more of it," shouted mr. flavin. "you will have another battle front in ireland," interjected mr. byrne. mr. flavin, getting more and more excited, called out, with reference to the machinery for enrolment explained by the prime minister--"it will never begin. ireland will not have it at any price"; and again, a moment later, "you come across and try to take them." mr. devlin was fully as fierce as these less prominent members of his party, and after many wrathful interruptions he turned aside the debate into a discussion about a trumpery report of one of the sub-committees of the irish convention. it was truly a sad and shameful scene to be witnessed in the house of commons at such a moment. it would have been so even if the contention of the nationalists had been reasonably tenable. but it was not. they maintained that only an irish parliament had the right to enforce conscription in ireland. but at the beginning of the war they had accepted the proviso that it should run its course before home rule came into operation. and even if it had been in operation, and a parliament had been sitting in dublin under mr. asquith's act, which the nationalists had accepted as a settlement of their demands, that parliament would have had nothing to do with the raising of military forces by conscription or otherwise, this being a duty reserved, as in every federal or quasi-federal constitution, for the central legislative authority alone. but it was useless to point this out to the infuriated nationalist members. mr. william o'brien denounced the idea of compelling irishmen to bear the same burden as their british fellow-subjects as "a declaration of war against ireland"; and he and mr. healy joined mr. dillon and his followers in opposing with all their parliamentary skill, and all their voting power, the extension to ireland of compulsory service. mr. healy, whose vindictive memory had not forgotten the curragh incident before the war, could not forbear from having an ungenerous fling at general gough, who had just been driven back by the overwhelming numerical superiority of the german attack, and who, at the moment when mr. healy was taunting him in the house of commons, was re-forming his gallant th army to resist the enemy's further advance. in comparison with this mr. healy's stale gibe at "carson's army," however inappropriate to the occasion, was a venial offence. carson himself replied in a gentle and conciliatory tone to mr. healy's coarse diatribe. "my honourable friend," he said, "talked of carson's army. you may, if you like, call it with contempt carson's army. but it has just gone into action for the fourth time, and many of them have paid the supreme sacrifice. they have covered themselves with glory, and, what is more, they have covered ireland with glory, and they have left behind sad homes throughout the small hamlets of ulster, as i well know, losing three or four sons in many a home." on behalf of ulster carson gave unhesitating support to the government. he and his colleagues from ulster had always voted against the exemption of ireland from the military service acts. it was true, no doubt, as the nationalists jeeringly maintained, that conscription was no more desired in ulster than in any other part of the united kingdom. of course it was not; it was liked nowhere. but carson declared that "equality of sacrifice" was the principle to be acted upon, and ulster accepted it. he "would go about hanging his head in shame," if his own part of the united kingdom were absolved from sacrifice which the national necessity imposed on the inhabitants of great britain. the bill was carried through by the th of april in the teeth of nationalist opposition maintained through all its stages. mr. bonar law announced emphatically that the government intended to enforce the compulsory powers in ireland; but he also said that yet another attempt was to be made to settle the constitutional question by bringing in "at an early date" a measure of home rule which the government hoped might be carried at once and "without violent controversy." after the experience of the past this seemed an amazingly sanguine estimate of the prospects of any proposals that ingenuity could devise. but what the nature of the measure was to have been was never made known; for the bill was still in the hands of a drafting committee when a dangerous german intrigue in ireland was discovered; and the lord-lieutenant made a proclamation on the th of may announcing that the government had information "that certain of the king's subjects in ireland had entered into a treasonable communication with the german enemy, and that strict measures must be taken to put down this german plot."[ ] on the same day one hundred and fifty sinn feiners were arrested, including mr. de valera and mr. arthur griffith, and on the th a statement was published indicating the connection between this conspiracy and casement's designs in . the government had definitely ascertained some weeks earlier, and must have known at the very time when they were promising a new home rule bill, that a plan for landing arms in ireland was ripe for execution.[ ] indeed, on the th of april a german agent who had landed in ireland was arrested, with papers in his possession showing that de valera had worked out a detailed organisation of the rebel army, and expected to be in a position to muster half a million of trained men.[ ] such was the fruit of the government's infatuation which, under the delusion of "creating an atmosphere of good-will" for the convention, had released a few months previously a number of dangerous men who had been proved to be in league with the germans, and who now took advantage of this clemency to conspire afresh with the foreign enemy. it was not surprising that mr. bonar law said it was impossible for the government, under these circumstances, to proceed with their proposals for a new home rule bill. on the other hand, no sooner was the military service act on the statute-book than the government began to recede from mr. bonar law's declaration that they would at all costs enforce it in ireland. they intimated that if voluntary recruiting improved it might be possible to dispense with compulsion. but although mr. shortt--who succeeded mr. duke as chief secretary in may, at the same time as lord wimborne was replaced in the lord-lieutenancy by field-marshal lord french--complained on the th of july that the nationalists had given no help to the government in obtaining voluntary recruits in ireland, and, "instead of taking sinn fein by the throat, had tried to go one better,"[ ] the compulsory powers of the military service act remained a dead letter. the fact was that the nationalists had followed up their fierce opposition to the bill by raising a still more fierce agitation in ireland against conscription. in this they joined hands with sinn fein, and the whole weight of the catholic church was thrown into the same scale. from the altars of that church the thunderbolts of ecclesiastical anathema were loosed against the government, and--what was more effective--against any who should obey the call to arms. the government gave way before the violence of the storm, and the lesson to be learnt from their defeat was not thrown away on the rebel party in ireland. there was, naturally, widespread indignation in england at the spectacle of the youth of ireland taking its ease at home and earning extravagantly high war-time wages while middle-aged bread-winners in england were compulsorily called to the colours; but the marvellously easy-going disposition of englishmen submitted to the injustice with no more than a legitimate grumble. in june , while this agitation against conscription was at its height, the hostility of the nationalists took a new turn. a manifesto, intended as a justification of their resistance to conscription, was issued in the form of a letter to mr. wilson, president of the united states, signed by mr. dillon, mr. devlin, mr. william o'brien, mr. healy, the lord mayor of dublin, and some others, including leaders of sinn fein. it was a remarkable document, the authorship of which was popularly attributed to mr. t.m. healy. if it ever came under the eye of mr. wilson, a man of literary taste and judgment, it must have afforded him a momentary diversion from the cares of his exalted office. a longer experience than his of diplomatic correspondence would fail to produce from the pigeon-holes of all the chanceries a rival to this extraordinary composition, the ill-arranged paragraphs of which formed an inextricable jumble of irrelevant material, in which bad logic, bad history, and barren invective were confusedly intermingled in a torrent of turgid rhetoric. the extent of its range may be judged from the fact that shakespeare's allusions to joan of arc were not deemed too remote from the subject of conscription in ireland during the great war to find a place in this amazing despatch. for the amusement of anyone who may care to examine so rare a curiosity of english prose, it will be found in full in the appendix to this volume, where it may be compared by way of contrast with the restrained rejoinder sent also to president wilson by sir edward carson, the lord mayor of belfast, the mayor of derry, and several loyalist representatives of labour in ulster. in the nationalist letter to president wilson reference was made more than once to the sympathy that prevailed in ireland in the eighteenth century with the american colonists in the war of independence. the use made of it was a good example of the way in which a half-truth may, for argumentative purposes, be more misleading than a complete falsehood. "to-day, as in the days of george washington"--so mr. wilson was informed--"nearly half the american forces have been furnished from the descendants of our banished race." no mention was made of the fact that the members of the "banished race" in washington's army were presbyterian emigrants from ulster, who formed almost the entire population of great districts in the american colonies at that time.[ ] the late mr. whitelaw reid told an edinburgh audience in that more than half the presbyterian population of ulster emigrated to america between and , and that at the date of the revolution they made more than one-sixth of the population of the colonies. the declaration of independence itself, he added-- "is sacredly preserved in the handwriting of an ulsterman, who was secretary of congress. it was publicly read by an ulsterman, and first printed by another. washington's first cabinet had four members, of whom one was an ulsterman."[ ] it is, of course, true that not all ulster presbyterians of that period were the firm and loyal friends of great britain that their descendants became after a century's experience of the legislative union. but it is the latter who best in ireland can trace kinship with the founders of the united states, and who are entitled--if any irishmen are--to base on that kinship a claim to the sympathy and support of the american people. footnotes: [ ] _annual register_, , p, . [ ] ibid., p. [ ] ibid. [ ] _annual register_, , p. . [ ] see lecky's _history of england in the eighteenth century_, vol. iv, p. . [ ] see lecture to the edinburgh philosophical institution by whitelaw reid, reported in _the scotsman_, november nd, . chapter xxiv the ulster parliament on the th of november, , the parliament elected in december was at last dissolved, a few days after the armistice with germany. the new house of commons was very different from the old. seventy-two sinn fein members were returned from ireland, sweeping away all but half a dozen of the old nationalist party; but, in accordance with their fixed policy, the sinn fein members never presented themselves at westminster to take the oath and their seats. that quarter of the house of commons which for thirty years had been packed with the most fierce and disciplined of the political parties was therefore now given over to mild supporters of the coalition government, the only remnant of so-called "constitutional nationalism" being mr. t.p. o'connor, mr. devlin, captain redmond, and two or three less prominent companions, who survived like monuments of a bygone age. ulster unionists, on the other hand, were greatly strengthened by the recent redistribution act. sir edward carson was elected member for the great working-class constituency of the duncairn division of belfast, instead of for dublin university, which he had so long represented, and twenty-two ardent supporters accompanied him from ulster to westminster. in the reconstruction of the government which followed the election, carson was pressed to return to office, but declined. colonel james craig, whose war services in connection with the ulster division were rewarded by a baronetcy, became parliamentary secretary to the ministry of pensions, and the marquis of londonderry accepted office as parliamentary under-secretary of state in the air ministry. although the termination of hostilities by the armistice was not in the legal sense the "end of the war," it brought it within sight. no one in january dreamt that the process of making peace and ratifying the necessary treaties would drag on for a seemingly interminable length of time, and it was realised, with grave misgiving in ulster, that the home rule act of would necessarily come into force as soon as peace was finally declared, while as yet nothing had been done to redeem the promise of an amending bill given by mr. asquith, and reiterated by mr. lloyd george. the compact between the latter and the unionist party, on which the coalition had swept the country, had made it clear that fresh irish legislation was to be expected, and the general lines on which it would be based were laid down; but there was also an intimation that a settlement must wait till the condition of ireland should warrant it.[ ] the state of ireland was certainly not such as to make it appear probable that any sane government would take the risk of handing over control of the country immediately to the sinn feiners, whom the recent elections had proved to be in an overwhelming majority in the three southern provinces. by the law, not of england alone, but of every civilised state, that party was tainted through and through with high treason. it had attempted to "succour the king's enemies" in every way in its power. the government had in its possession evidence of two conspiracies, in which, during the late frightful war, these irishmen had been in league with the germans to bring defeat and disaster upon england and her allies, and the second of these plots was only made possible by the misconceived clemency of the government in releasing from custody the ring-leaders in the first. and these sinn fein rebels left the government no excuse for any illusion as to their being either chastened or contrite in spirit. contemptuously ignoring their election as members of the imperial parliament, where they never put in an appearance because it would require them to take an oath of allegiance to the crown, they openly held a congress in dublin in january where a declaration of independence was read, and a demand made for the evacuation of ireland by the forces of the crown. a "ministry" was also appointed, which purported to make itself responsible for administration in ireland. outrages of a daring character became more and more frequent, and gave evidence of being the work of efficient organisation. president wilson's coinage of the unfortunate and ambiguous expression "self-determination" made it a catch-penny cry in relation to ireland; but, in reply to mr. devlin's demand for a recognition of that "principle," mr. lloyd george pointed out that it had been tried in the convention, with the result that both nationalists and unionists had been divided among themselves, and he said he despaired of any settlement in ireland until irishmen could agree. nevertheless, in october he appointed a cabinet committee, with mr. walter long as chairman, to make recommendations for dealing with the question of irish government. but murders of soldiers and police had now become so scandalously frequent that in november a proclamation was issued suppressing sinn fein and kindred organisations. it did nothing to improve the state of the country, which grew worse than ever in the last few weeks of the year. on the th of december a carefully planned attempt on the life of the lord-lieutenant, lord french, proved how complete was the impunity relied upon by the organised assassins who, calling themselves an irish republican army, terrorised the country. it was in such conditions that, just before the close of the parliamentary session, the prime minister disclosed the intentions of the government. he laid down three "basic facts," which he said governed the situation: ( ) three-fourths of the irish people were bitterly hostile, and were at heart rebels against the crown and government. ( ) ulster was a complete contrast, which would make it an outrage to place her people under the rest of ireland.[ ] ( ) no separation from the empire could be tolerated, and any attempt to force it would be fought as the united states had fought against secession. on these considerations he based the proposals which were to be embodied in legislation in the next session. sir edward carson, who in the light of past experience was too wary to take all mr. lloyd george's declarations at their face value, said at once that he could give no support to the policy outlined by the prime minister until he was convinced that the latter intended to go through with it to the end. the bill to give effect to these proposals (which became the government of ireland act, ) was formally introduced on the th of february, , and carson then went over to belfast to consult with the unionist council as to the action to be taken by the ulster members. the measure was a long and complicated one of seventy clauses and six schedules. its effect, stated briefly, was to set up two parliaments in ireland, one for the six protestant counties of ulster and the other for the rest of ireland. in principle it was the "clean cut" which had been several times proposed, except that, instead of retaining ulster in legislative union with great britain, she was to be endowed with local institutions of her own in every respect similar to, and commensurate with, those given to the parliament in dublin. in addition, a council of ireland was created, composed of an equal number of members from each of the two legislatures. this council was given powers in regard to private bill legislation, and matters of minor importance affecting both parts of the island which the two parliaments might mutually agree to commit to its administration. power was given to the two parliaments to establish by identical acts at any time a parliament for all ireland to supersede the council, and to form a single autonomous constitution for the whole of ireland. the council of ireland occupied a prominent place in the debates on the bill. it was held up as a symbol of the "unity of ireland," and the authors of the measure were able to point to it as supplying machinery by which "partition" could be terminated as soon as irishmen agreed among themselves in wishing to have a single national government. it was not a feature of the bill that found favour in ulster; but, as it could do no harm and provided an argument against those who denounced "partition," the ulster members did not think it worth while to oppose it. but when carson met the ulster unionist council on the th of march the most difficult point he had to deal with was the same that had given so much trouble in the negotiations of . the bill defined the area subject to the "parliament of northern ireland" as the six counties which the ulster council had agreed four years earlier to accept as the area to be excluded from the home rule act. the question now to be decided was whether this same area should still be accepted, or an amendment moved for including in northern ireland the other three counties of the province of ulster. the same harrowing experience which the council had undergone in was repeated in an aggravated form.[ ] to separate themselves from fellow loyalists in monaghan, cavan, and donegal was hateful to every delegate from the other six counties, and it was heartrending to be compelled to resist another moving appeal by so valued a friend as lord farnham. but the inexorable index of statistics demonstrated that, although unionists were in a majority when geographical ulster was considered as a unit, yet the distribution of population made it certain that a separate parliament for the whole province would have a precarious existence, while its administration of purely nationalist districts would mean unending conflict. it was, therefore, decided that no proposal for extending the area should be made by the ulster members. carson made it clear in the debates on the bill that ulster had not moved from her old position of desiring nothing except the union; that he was still convinced there was "no alternative to the union unless separation"; but that, while he would take no responsibility for a bill which ulster did not want, he and his colleagues would not actively oppose its progress to the statute-book. it did not, however, receive the royal assent until two days before christmas, and during all these months the condition of ireland was one of increasing anarchy. the act provided that, if the people of southern ireland refused to work the new constitution, the administration should be carried on by a system similar to crown colony government. carson gave an assurance that in ulster they would do their best to make the act a success, and immediate steps were taken in belfast to make good this undertaking. to the people of ulster the act of , though it involved the sacrifice of much that they had ardently hoped to preserve, came as a relief to their worst fears. it was represented as a final settlement, and finality was what they chiefly desired, if they could get it without being forced to submit to a dublin parliament. the disloyal conduct of nationalist ireland during the war, and the treason and terrorism organised by sinn fein after the war, had widened the already broad gulf between north and south. the determination never to submit to an all-ireland parliament was more firmly fixed than ever. the act of , which repealed mr. asquith's act of , gave ulster what she had prepared to fight for, if necessary, before the war. it was the fulfilment of the craigavon resolution--to take over the government "of those districts which they could control."[ ] the parliament of northern ireland established by the act was in fact the legalisation of the ulster provisional government of . it placed ulster in a position of equality with the south, both politically and economically. the two legislatures in ireland possessed the same powers, and were subject to an equal reservation of authority to the imperial parliament. but with the passing of the act the long and consummate leadership of sir edward carson came to an end. if he had not succeeded in bringing the ulster people into a promised land, he had at least conducted an orderly retreat to a position of safety. the almost miraculous skill with which he had directed all the operations of a protracted and harassing campaign, avoiding traps and pitfalls at every step, foreseeing and providing against countless crises, frustrating with unfailing adroitness the manoeuvres both of implacable enemies and treacherous "friends," was fully appreciated by his grateful followers, who had for years past regarded him with an intensity of personal devotion seldom given even to the greatest of political leaders. but he felt that the task of opening a new chapter in the history of ulster, and of inaugurating the new institutions now established, was work for younger hands. hard as he was pressed to accept the position of first prime minister of ulster, he firmly persisted in his refusal; and on his recommendation the man who had been his able and faithful lieutenant throughout the long ulster movement was unanimously chosen to succeed him in the leadership. sir james craig did not hesitate to respond to the call, although to do so he had to resign an important post in the british government, that of parliamentary secretary to the admiralty, with excellent prospects of further promotion. as soon as the elections in "northern ireland," conducted under the system of proportional representation, as provided by the act of , were complete, sir james, whose followers numbered forty as against a nationalist and sinn fein minority of twelve, was sent for by the viceroy and commissioned to form a ministry. he immediately set himself to his new and exceedingly difficult duties with characteristic thoroughness. the whole apparatus of government administration had to be built up from the foundation. departments, for which there was no existing office accommodation or personnel, had to be called into existence and efficiently organised, and all this preliminary work had to be undertaken at a time when the territory subject to the new government was beset by open and concealed enemies working havoc with bombs and revolvers, with which the government had not yet legal power to cope. but sir james craig pressed on with the work, undismayed by the difficulties, and resolved that the parliament in belfast should be opened at the earliest possible date. the marquis of londonderry gave a fresh proof of his ulster patriotism by resigning his office in the imperial government and accepting the portfolio of education in sir james craig's cabinet, and with it the leadership of the ulster senate; in which the duke of abercorn also, to the great satisfaction of the ulster people, consented to take a seat. mr. dawson bates, the indefatigable secretary of the ulster unionist council during the whole of the ulster movement, was appointed minister for home affairs, and mr. e.m. archdale became minister for agriculture. the first act of the house of commons of northern ireland was to choose major hugh o'neill as their speaker, while the important position of chairman of committees was entrusted to mr. thomas moles, one of the ablest recruits of the ulster parliamentary party, whom the general election of had sent to westminster as one of the members for belfast, and who had given ample evidence of his capacity both in the imperial parliament and on the secretarial staff of the irish convention of . meantime, in the south the act of was treated with absolute contempt; no step was taken to hold elections or to form an administration, although it must be remembered that the flouted act conferred a larger measure of home rule than had ever been offered by previous bills. thus by one of those curious ironies that have continually marked the history of ireland, the only part of the island where home rule operated was the part that had never desired it, while the provinces that had demanded home rule for generations refused to use it when it was granted them. in ulster the new order of things was accepted with acquiescence rather than with enthusiasm. but the warmer emotion was immediately called forth when it became known that his majesty the king had decided to open the ulster parliament in person on the nd of june, , especially as it was fully realised that, owing to the anarchical condition of the country, the king's presence in belfast would be a characteristic disregard of personal danger in the discharge of public duty. and when, on the eve of the royal visit, it was intimated that the queen had been graciously pleased to accede to sir james craig's request that she should accompany the king to belfast, the enthusiasm of the loyal people of the north rose to fever heat. at any time, and under any circumstances, the reigning sovereign and his consort would have been received by a population so noted for its sentiment of loyalty to the throne as that of ulster with demonstrations of devotion exceeding the ordinary. but the present occasion was felt to have a very special significance. the opening of parliament by the king in state is one of the most ancient and splendid of ceremonial pageants illustrating the history of british institutions. it was felt in ulster that the association of this time-honoured ceremonial with the baptism, so to speak, of the latest offspring of the mother of parliaments stamped the royal seal upon the achievement of ulster, and gave it a dignity, prestige, and promise of permanence which might otherwise have been lacking. no city in the united kingdom had witnessed so many extraordinary displays of popular enthusiasm in the last ten years as belfast, some of which had left on the minds of observers a firm belief that such intensity of emotion in a great concourse of people could not be exceeded. the scene in the streets when the king and queen drove from the quay, on the arrival of the royal yacht, to the city hall, was held by general consent to equal, since it could not surpass, any of those great demonstrations of the past in popular fervour. at any rate, persons of long experience in attendance on the royal family gave it as their opinion in the evening that they had never before seen so impressive a display of public devotion to the person of the sovereign. two buildings in belfast inseparably associated with ulster's stand for union, the city hall and the ulster hall, were the scenes of the chief events of the king's visit. the former, described by one of the english correspondents as "easily the most magnificent municipal building in the three kingdoms,"[ ] was placed at the disposal of the ulster government by the corporation for temporary use as a parliament house. the council chamber, a fine hall of dignified proportions with a dais and canopied chair at the upper end, made an appropriate frame for the ceremony of opening parliament, and the arrangements both of the chamber itself and of the approaches and entrances to it made it a simple matter to model the procedure as closely as possible on that followed at westminster. among the many distinguished people who assembled in the ulster capital for the occasion, there was one notable absentee. lord carson of duncairn--for this was the title that sir edward carson had assumed on being appointed a lord of appeal in ordinary a few weeks previously--was detained in london by judicial duty in the house of lords; and possibly reasons of delicacy not difficult to understand restrained him from making arrangements for absence. but the marked ovation given to lady carson wherever she was recognised in the streets of belfast showed that the great leader was not absent from the popular mind at this moment of vindication of his statesmanship. such an event as that which brought his majesty to belfast was naturally an occasion for bestowing marks of distinction for public service. sir james craig wisely made it also an occasion for letting bygones be bygones by recommending lord pirrie for a step in the peerage. among those who received honours were several whose names have appeared in the preceding chapters of this book. mr. william robert young, for thirty years one of the most indefatigable workers for the unionist cause in ulster, and colonel wallace, one of the most influential of carson's local lieutenants, were made privy councillors, as was also colonel percival-maxwell, who raised and commanded a battalion of the ulster division in the war. colonel f.h. crawford and colonel spender were awarded the c.b.e. for services to the nation during the war; but ulstermen did not forget services of another sort to the ulster cause before the germans came on the scene.[ ] a knighthood was given to mr. dawson bates, who had exchanged the secretaryship of the ulster unionist council for the portfolio of a cabinet minister. these honours were bestowed by the king in person at an investiture held in the ulster hall in the afternoon. there must have been many present whose minds went back to some of the most stirring events of ulster's domestic history which had been transacted in the same building within recent years. did sir hamar greenwood, the chief secretary, as he stood in attendance on the sovereign in the resplendent uniform of a privy councillor, look in curiosity round the walls which he and mr. churchill had been prohibited from entering on a memorable occasion when they had to content themselves with an imported tent in a football field instead? did colonel wallace's thoughts wander back to the scene of wild enthusiasm in that hall on the evening before the covenant, when he presented the ancient boyne flag to the ulster leader? did those who spontaneously started the national anthem in the presence of the king without warrant from the prearranged programme, and made the queen smile at the emphasis with which they "confounded politics" and "frustrated knavish tricks," remember the fervour with which on many a past occasion the same strains testified to ulster's loyalty in the midst of perplexity and apprehension? if these memories crowded in, they must have added to the sense of relief arising from the conviction that the ceremony they were now witnessing was the realisation of the policy propounded by carson, when he declared that ulster must always be ruled either by the imperial parliament or by a government of her own. but the moment of all others on that memorable day that must have been suggestive of such reflections was when the king formally opened the first parliament of northern ireland in the same building that had witnessed the signing of the ulster covenant. without the earlier event the later could not have been. if could have been fully foreseen in it might have appeared to many covenanters as the disappointment of a cherished ideal. but those who lived to listen to the king's speech in the city hall realised that it was the dissipation of foreboding. however regarded, it was, as king george himself pronounced, "a profoundly moving occasion in irish history." the speech from the throne in which these words occurred made a deep impression all over the world, and nowhere more than in ulster itself. no people more ardently shared the touchingly expressed desire of the king that his coming to ireland might "prove to be the first step towards an end of strife amongst her people, whatever their race or creed." so, too, when his majesty told the ulster parliament that he "felt assured they would do their utmost to make it an instrument of happiness and good government for all parts of the community which they represented," the ulster people believed that the king's confidence in them would not prove to have been misplaced. happily, no prophetic vision of those things that were shortly to come to pass broke in to disturb the sense of satisfaction with the haven that had been reached. the future, with its treachery, its alarms, its fresh causes of uncertainty and of conflict, was mercifully hidden from the eyes of the ulster people when they acclaimed the inauguration of their parliament by their king. they accepted responsibility for the efficient working of institutions thus placed in their keeping by the highest constitutional authority in the british empire, although they had never asked for them, and still believed that the system they had been driven to abandon was better than the new; and they opened this fresh chapter in their history in firm faith that what had received so striking a token of the sovereign's sympathy and approval would never be taken from them except with their own consent. footnotes: [ ] see letter from mr. lloyd george to mr. bonar law, published in the press on november th, . [ ] precisely twenty-four months later this outrage was committed by mr. lloyd george himself, with the concurrence of mr. austen chamberlain. [ ] _ante_, p. . [ ] see _ante_, p. . [ ] _the morning post_, june rd, . [ ] see _ante_, chapter xviii. appendix a nationalist letter to president wilson to the president of the united states of america sir, when, a century and a half ago, the american colonies dared to assert the ancient principle that the subject should not be taxed without the consent of his representatives, england strove to crush them. to-day england threatens to crush the people of ireland if they do not accept a tax, not in money but in blood, against the protest of their representatives. during the american revolution the champions of your liberties appealed to the irish parliament against british aggression, and asked for a sympathetic judgment on their action. what the verdict was, history records. to-day it is our turn to appeal to the people of america. we seek no more fitting prelude to that appeal than the terms in which your forefathers greeted ours: "we are desirous of possessing the good opinion of the virtuous and humane. we are peculiarly desirous of furnishing you with the true state of our motives and objects, the better to enable you to judge of our conduct with accuracy, and determine the merits of the controversy with impartiality and precision." if the irish race had been conscriptable by england in the war against the united colonies is it certain that your republic would to-day flourish in the enjoyment of its noble constitution? since then the irish parliament has been destroyed, by methods described by the greatest of british statesmen as those of "black-guardism and baseness." ireland, deprived of its protection and overborne by more than six to one in the british lower house, and by more than a hundred to one in the upper house, is summoned by england to submit to a hitherto-unheard-of decree against her liberties. in the fourth year of a war ostensibly begun for the defence of small nations, a law conscribing the manhood of ireland has been passed, in defiance of the wishes of our people. the british parliament, which enacted it, had long outrun its course, being in the eighth year of an existence constitutionally limited to five. to warrant the coercive statute, no recourse was had to the electorate of britain, much less to that of ireland. yet the measure was forced through within a week, despite the votes of irish representatives, and under a system of closure never applied to the debates which established conscription for great britain on a milder basis. to repel the calumnies invented to becloud our action, we venture to address the successors of the belligerents who once appealed to ireland. the feelings which inspire america deeply concern our race; so, in the forefront of our remonstrance, we feel bound to set forth that this conscription act involves for irishmen questions far larger than any affecting mere internal politics. they raise a sovereign principle between a nation that has never abandoned her independent rights, and an adjacent nation that has persistently sought to strangle them. were ireland to surrender that principle, she must submit to a usurped power, condone the fraudulent prostration of her parliament in , and abandon all claim to distinct nationality. deep-seated and far-reaching are the problems remorselessly aroused by the unthinking and violent courses taken at westminster. thus the sudden and unlooked-for departure of british politicians from their past military procedure towards this island provokes acutely the fundamental issue of self-determination. that issue will decide whether our whole economic, social, and political life must lie at the uncontrolled disposition of another race whose title to legislate for us rests on force and fraud alone. ireland is a nation more ancient than england, and is one of the oldest in christendom. its geographical boundaries are clearly defined. it cherishes its own traditions, history, language, music, and culture. it throbs with a national consciousness sharpened not only by religious persecution, but by the violation of its territorial, juristic, and legislative rights. the authority of which its invaders boasted rests solely on an alleged papal bull. the symbols of attempted conquest are roofless castles, ruined abbeys, and confiscated cathedrals. the title of king of ireland was first conferred on the english monarch by a statute of the parliament held in ireland in , when only four of our counties lay under english sway. that title originated in no english enactment. neither did the irish parliament so originate. every military aid granted by that parliament to english kings was purely voluntary. even when the penal code denied representation to the majority of the irish population, military service was never enforced against them. for generations england claimed control over both legislative and judicial functions in ireland, but in these pretensions were altogether renounced, and the sovereignty of the irish legislature was solemnly recognised. a memorable british statute declared it-- "established and ascertained for ever, and shall at no time hereafter be questioned or questionable." for this, the spirit evoked by the successful revolt of the united states of america is to be thanked, and ireland won no mean return for the sympathy invited by your congress. yet scarcely had george iii signified his royal assent to that "scrap of paper," when his ministers began to debauch the irish parliament. no catholic had, for over a century, been allowed to sit within its walls; and only a handful of the population enjoyed the franchise. in , by shameless bribery, a majority of corrupt colonists was procured to embrace the london subjugation and vote away the existence of their legislature for pensions, pelf, and titles. the authors of the act of union, however, sought to soften its shackles by limiting the future jurisdiction of the british parliament. imposed on "a reluctant and protesting nation," it was tempered by articles guaranteeing ireland against the coarser and more obvious forms of injustice. to guard against undue taxation, "exemptions and abatements" were stipulated for; but the "predominant partner" has long since dishonoured that part of the contract, and the weaker side has no power to enforce it. no military burdens were provided for, although britain framed the terms of the treaty to her own liking. that an obligation to yield enforced service was thereby undertaken has never hitherto been asserted. we therefore cannot neglect to support this protest by citing a main proviso of the treaty of union. before the destruction of the irish parliament no standing army or navy was raised, nor was any contribution made, except by way of gift, to the british army or navy. no irish law for the levying of drafts existed; and such a proposal was deemed unconstitutional. hence the th article of the treaty provides that-- "all laws in force at the time of the union shall remain as now by law established, subject only to such alterations and regulations from time to time as circumstances may appear to the parliament of the united kingdom to require." where there was no law establishing military service for ireland, what "alteration or regulation" respecting such a law can legally bind? can an enactment such as conscription, affecting the legal and moral rights of an entire people, be described as an "alteration" or "regulation" springing from a pre-existing law? is the treaty to be construed as britain pleases, and always to the prejudice of the weaker side? british military statecraft has hitherto rigidly held by a separate tradition for ireland. the territorial military system, created in for great britain, was not set up in ireland. the irish militia was then actually disbanded, and the war office insisted that no territorial force to replace it should be embodied. stranger still, the volunteer acts (naval or military) from to (some twenty in all) were never extended to ireland. in , when a conservative house of commons agreed to tolerate volunteering, the measure was thrown out by the house of lords on the plea that irishmen must not be allowed to learn the use of arms. for, despite the bill of rights, the privilege of free citizens to bear arms in self-defence has been refused to us. the constitution of america affirms that right as appertaining to the common people, but the men of ireland are forbidden to bear arms in their own defence. where, then, lies the basis of the claim that they can be forced to take them up for the defence of others? it will suffice to present such considerations in outline without disinterring the details of the past misgovernment of our country. mr. gladstone avowed that these were marked by "every horror and every shame that could disgrace the relations between a strong country and a weak one." after an orgy of martial law the scottish general, abercromby, commander-in-chief in ireland, wrote: "every crime, every cruelty that could be committed by cossacks or calmucks has been transacted here.... the abuses of all kinds i found can scarcely be believed or enumerated." lord holland recalls that many people "were sold at so much a head to the prussians." we shall, therefore, pass by the story of the destruction of our manufactures, of artificial famines, of the fomentation of uprisings, of a hundred coercion acts, culminating in the perpetual "act of repression" obtained by forgery, which graced queen victoria's jubilee year in . in our island the suspension of the habeas corpus act, the repression of free speech, gibbetings, shootings, and bayonetings, are commonplace events. the effects of forced emigration and famine american generosity has softened; and we do not seek a verdict on the general merits of a system which enjoys the commendation of no foreigner except albert, prince consort, who declared that the irish "were no more worthy of sympathy than the poles." it is known to you how our population shrank to its present fallen state. grants of money for emigration, "especially of families," were provided even by the land act of . previous poor law acts had stimulated this "remedy." so late as a "congested district" board was empowered to "aid emigration," although millions of irishmen had in the nineteenth century been evicted from their homes or driven abroad. seventy years ago our population stood at , , , and, in the normal ratio of increase, it should to-day amount to , , . instead, it has dwindled to , , ; and it is from this residuum that our manhood between the ages of eighteen and fifty-one is to be delivered up in such measure as the strategists of the english war cabinet may demand. to-day, as in the days of george washington, nearly half the american forces have been furnished from the descendants of our banished race. if england could not, during your revolution, regard that enrolment with satisfaction, might she not set something now to ireland's credit from the racial composition of your army or navy? no other small nation has been so bereft by law of her children, but in vain for ireland has the bread of exile been thrown upon the waters. yet, while self-determination is refused, we are required by law to bleed to "make the world safe for democracy "--in every country except our own. surely this cannot be the meaning of america's message to mankind glowing from the pen of her illustrious president? in the years during which the stranger sway has blighted ireland her people have never had occasion to welcome an unselfish or generous deed at the hands of their rulers. every so-called "concession" was but the loosening of a fetter. every benefit sprang from a manipulation of our own money by a foreign treasury denying us an honest audit of accounts. none was yielded as an act of grace. all were the offspring of constraint, tumult, or political necessity. reason and arguments fell on deaf ears. to england the union has brought enhanced wealth, population, power, and importance; to ireland increased taxation, stunted industries, swollen emigration, and callous officialism. possessing in this land neither moral nor intellectual pre-eminence, nor any prestige derived from past merit or present esteem, the british executive claims to restrain our liberties, control our fortunes, and exercise over our people the power of life and death. to obstruct the recent home rule bill it allowed its favourites to defy its parliament without punishment, to import arms from suspect regions with impunity, to threaten "to break every law" to effectuate their designs to infect the army with mutiny and set up a rival executive backed by military array to enforce the rule of a caste against the vast majority of the people. the highest offices of state became the guerdon of the organisers of rebellion, boastful of aid from germany. to-day they are pillars of the constitution, and the chief instrument of law. the only laurels lacking to the leaders of the mutineers are those transplanted from the field of battle! are we to fight to maintain a system so repugnant, and must irishmen be content to remain slaves themselves after freedom for distant lands has been purchased by their blood? heretofore in every clime, whenever the weak called for a defender, wherever the flag of liberty was unfurled, that blood freely flowed. profiting by irish sympathy with righteous causes britain, at the outbreak of war, attracted to her armies tens of thousands of our youth ere even the western hemisphere had awakened to the wail of "small nations." irishmen, in their chivalrous eagerness, laid themselves open to the reproach from some of their brethren of forgetting the woes of their own land, which had suffered from its rulers, at one time or another, almost every inhumanity for which germany is impeached. it was hard to bear the taunt that the army they were joining was that which held ireland in subjection; but fresh bitterness has been added to such reproaches by what has since taken place. nevertheless, in the face of persistent discouragements, irish chivalry remained ardent and aflame in the first years of the war. tens of thousands of the children of the gael have perished in the conflict. their bones bleach upon the soil of flanders or moulder beneath the waves of suvla bay. the slopes of gallipoli, the sands of egypt, mesopotamia and judasa afford them sepulture. mons and ypres provide their monuments. wherever the battle-line extends from the english channel to the persian gulf their ghostly voices whisper a response to the roll-call of the guardian-spirits of liberty. what is their reward? the spot on earth they loved best, and the land to which they owed their first duty, and which they hoped their sacrifices might help to freedom, lies unredeemed under an age-long thraldom. so, too, would it for ever lie, were every man and every youth within the shores of ireland to immolate himself in england's service, unless the clamour of a dominant caste be rebuked and stilled. yet proof after proof accumulates that british cabinets continue to be towards our country as conscienceless as ever. they deceive frankly nations throughout the world as to their irish policy, while withholding from us even the act of home rule which in was placed on the statute-book. the recent "convention," which they composed to initiate reform, was brought to confusion by a letter from the prime minister diminishing his original engagements. such insincere manoeuvres have left an indelible sense of wrong rankling in the hearts of ireland. capitulations are observed with french canadians, with the maltese, with the hindoos, with the mohammedan arabs, or the african boers; but never has the word of england, in any capital case, been kept towards the "sister" island. the parliaments of australia and of south africa--both of which (unlike our ancient legislature) were founded by british enactments--refused to adopt conscription. this was well known when the law against ireland was resolved on. for opposing the application of that law to irishmen, and while this appeal to you, sir, was being penned, members of our conference have been arrested and deported without trial. it was even sought to poison the wells of american sympathy by levelling against them and others an allegation which its authors have failed to submit to the investigation of any tribunal. to overlay malpractice by imputing to its victims perverse or criminal conduct is the stale but never-failing device of tyranny. a claim has also been put forward by the british foreign office to prevent you, mr. president, as the head of a great allied republic, from acquiring first-hand information of the reasons why ireland has rejected, and will resist, conscription except in so far as the military governor of ireland, field-marshal lord french, may be pleased to allow you to peruse his version of our opinions. america's present conflict with germany obstructs no argument that we advance. "liberty and ordered peace" we, too, strive for; and confidently do we look to you, sir, and to america--whose freedom irishmen risked something to establish--to lend ear and weight to the prayer that another unprovoked wrong against the defenceless may not stain this sorry century. we know that america entered the war because her rights as a neutral, in respect of ocean navigation, were interfered with, and only then. yet america in her strength had a guarantee that in victory she would not be cheated of that for which she joined in the struggle. ireland, having no such strength, has no such guarantee; and experience has taught us that justice (much less gratitude) is not to be wrung from a hostile government. what ireland is to give, a free ireland must determine. we are sadly aware, from recent proclamations and deportations, of the efforts of british authorities to inflame prejudice against our country. we therefore crave allowance briefly to notice the insinuation that the irish coasts, with native connivance, could be made a base for the destruction of american shipping. an official statement asserts that: "an important feature in every plan was the establishment of submarine bases in ireland to menace the shipping of all nations." on this it is enough to say that every creek, inlet, or estuary that indents our shores, and every harbour, mole, or jetty is watchfully patrolled by british authority. moreover, irish vessels, with their cargoes, crews, and passengers, have suffered in this war proportionately to those of britain. another state paper palliates the deportations by blazoning the descent of a solitary invader upon a remote island on the th of april, heralded by mysterious warnings from the admiralty to the irish command. no discussion is permitted of the tryst of this british soldier with the local coast-guards, of his speedy bent towards a police barrack, and his subsequent confidences with the london authorities. only one instance exists in history of a project to profane our coasts by making them a base to launch attacks on international shipping. that plot was framed, not by native wickedness, but by an english viceroy, and the proofs are piled up under his hand in british state papers. for huge bribes were proffered by lord falkland, lord-lieutenant of ireland, to both the royal secretary and the prince of wales, to obtain consent for the use of irish harbours to convenience turkish and algerine pirates in raiding sea-going commerce. the plot is old, but the plea of "increasing his majesty's revenues" by which it was commended is everlasting. nor will age lessen its significance for the citizens of that republic which, amidst the tremors and greed of european diplomacy, extirpated the traffic of algerine corsairs ninety years ago. british experts cherish lord falkland's fame as the sire of their most knightly cavalier, and in their eyes its lustre shines undimmed, though his excellency, foiled of marine booty, enriched himself by seizing the lands of his untried prisoners in dublin castle. moving are other retrospects evoked by the present outbreak of malignity against our nation. the slanders of the hour recall those let loose to cloak previous deportations in days of panic less ignoble. then it was the primate of all ireland, archbishop oliver plunkett, who was dragged to london and arraigned for high treason. poignant memories quicken at every incident which accompanied his degradation before the lord chief justice of england. a troop of witnesses was suborned to swear that his grace "endeavoured and compassed the king's death," sought to "levy war in ireland and introduce a foreign power," and conspired "to take a view of all the several ports and places in ireland where it would be convenient to land from france." an open trial, indeed, was not denied him; but with hasty rites he was branded a base and false traitor and doomed to be hanged, drawn, and quartered at tyburn. that desperate felon, after prolonged investigation by the holy see, has lately been declared a martyr worthy of universal veneration. the fathers of the american revolution were likewise pursued in turn by the venom of governments. could they have been snatched from their homes and haled to london, what fate would have befallen them? there your noblest patriots might also have perished amidst scenes of shame, and their effigies would now bedeck a british chamber of horrors. nor would death itself have shielded their reputations from hatchments of dishonour. for the greatest of englishmen reviled even the sacred name of joan of arc, the stainless maid of france, to belittle a fallen foe and spice a ribald stage-play. it is hardly thirty years since every irish leader was made the victim of a special statute of proscription, and was cited to answer vague charges before london judges. during and a malignant and unprecedented inquisition was maintained to vilify them, backed by all the resources of british power. no war then raged to breed alarms, yet no weapon that perjury or forgery could fashion was left unemployed to destroy the characters of more than eighty national representatives--some of whom survive to join in this address. that plot came to an end amidst the confusion of their persecutors, but fresh accusations may be daily contrived and buttressed by the chicanery of state. in every generation the irish nation is challenged to plead to a new indictment, and to the present summons answer is made before no narrow forum but to the tribunal of the world. so answering, we commit our cause, as did america, to "the virtuous and humane," and also more humbly to the providence of god. well assured are we that you, mr. president, whose exhortations have inspired the small nations of the world with fortitude to defend to the last their liberties against oppressors, will not be found among those who would condemn ireland for a determination which is irrevocable to continue steadfastly in the course mapped out for her, no matter what the odds, by an unexampled unity of national judgment and national right. given at the mansion house, dublin, this th day of june, . laurence o'neill, lord mayor of dublin, chairman of a conference of representative irishmen whose names stand hereunder. joseph devlin, john dillon, michael johnson, william o'brien (lab.), t.m. healy, william o'brien, thomas kelly, and john macneill: {acting in the place e. de valera and a. griffith, deported th of may, , to separate prisons in england, without trial or accusation--communication with whom has been cut off.} appendix b unionist letter to president wilson city hall, belfast, _august st_, . to the president of the united states of america sir, a manifesto signed by the leader of the irish nationalist party and certain other irish gentlemen has been widely circulated in the united kingdom, in the form of a letter purporting to have been addressed to your excellency.[ ] its purpose appears to be to offer an explanation of, and an excuse for, the conduct of the nationalist party in obstructing the extension to ireland of compulsory military service, which the rest of the united kingdom has felt compelled to adopt as the necessary means of defeating the german design to dominate the world. at a time when all the free democracies of the world have, with whatever reluctance, accepted the burden of conscription as the only alternative to the destruction of free institutions and of international justice, it is easily intelligible that those who maintain ireland's right to solitary and privileged exemption from the same obligation should betray their consciousness that an apologia is required to enable them to escape condemnation at the bar of civilised, and especially of american, opinion. but, inasmuch as the document referred to would give to anyone not intimately familiar with british domestic affairs the impression that it represents the unanimous opinion of irishmen, it is important that your excellency and the american people should be assured that this is very far from being the case. there is in ireland a minority, whom we claim to represent, comprising one-fourth to one-third of the total population of the island, located mainly, but not exclusively, in the province of ulster, who dissent emphatically from the views of mr. dillon and his associates. this minority, through their representatives in parliament, have maintained throughout the present war that the same obligations should in all respects be borne by ireland as by great britain, and it has caused them as irishmen a keen sense of shame that their country has not submitted to this equality of sacrifice. your excellency does not need to be informed that this question has become entangled in the ancient controversy concerning the constitutional status of ireland in the united kingdom. this is, indeed, sufficiently clear from the terms of the nationalist manifesto addressed to you, every paragraph of which is coloured by allusion to bygone history and threadbare political disputes. it is not our intention to traverse the same ground. there is in the manifesto almost no assertion with regard to past events which is not either a distortion or a misinterpretation of historical fact. but we consider that this is not the moment for discussing the faults and follies of the past, still less for rehearsing ancient grievances, whether well or ill founded, in language of extravagant rhetoric. at a time when the very existence of civilisation hangs in the balance, all smaller issues, whatever their merits or however they may affect our internal political problems, should in our judgment have remained in abeyance, while the parties interested in their solution should have joined in whole-hearted co-operation against the common enemy. there is, however, one matter to which reference must be made, in order to make clear the position of the irish minority whom we represent. the nationalist party have based their claim to american sympathy on the historic appeal addressed to irishmen by the british colonists who fought for independence in america a hundred and fifty years ago. by no irishmen was that appeal received with a more lively sympathy than by the protestants of ulster, the ancestors of those for whom we speak to-day--a fact that was not surprising in view of the circumstance that more than one-sixth part of the entire colonial population in america at the time of the declaration of independence consisted of emigrants from ulster. the ulstermen of to-day, forming as they do the chief industrial community in ireland, are as devoted adherents to the cause of democratic freedom as were their forefathers in the eighteenth century. but the experience of a century of social and economic progress under the legislative union with great britain has convinced them that under no other system of government could more complete liberty be enjoyed by the irish people. this, however, is not the occasion for a reasoned defence of "unionist" policy. our sole purpose in referring to the matter is to show, whatever be the merits of the dispute, that a very substantial volume of irish opinion is warmly attached to the existing constitution of the united kingdom, and regards as wholly unwarranted the theory that our political status affords any sort of parallel to that of the "small nations" oppressed by alien rule, for whose emancipation the allied democracies are fighting in this war. the irish representation in the imperial parliament throws a significant sidelight on this prevalent fiction. whereas england is only represented by one member for every , of population, and scotland by one for every , , ireland has a member for every , of her people. with a population below that of scotland, ireland has more members in the house of commons, and more than she could claim on a basis of representation strictly proportionate to population in the united kingdom. speaking in dublin on the st of july, , the late mr. john redmond gave the following description of the present condition of ireland, which offers a striking contrast to the extravagant declamation that represents that country as downtrodden by a harsh and unsympathetic system of government: "to-day," he said, "the people, broadly speaking, own the soil. to-day the labourers live in decent habitations. to-day there is absolute freedom in local government and local taxation of the country. to-day we have the widest parliamentary and municipal franchise. the congested districts, the scene of some of the most awful horrors of the old famine days, have been transformed. the farms have been enlarged, decent dwellings have been provided, and a new spirit of hope and independence is to-day among the people. in towns legislation has been passed facilitating the housing of the working classes--a piece of legislation far in advance of anything obtained for the town tenants of england. we have a system of old-age pensions in ireland whereby every old man and woman over seventy is safe from the workhouse and free to spend their last days in comparative comfort." such are the conditions which, in the eyes of nationalist politicians, constitute a tyranny so intolerable as to justify ireland in repudiating her fair share in the burden of war against the enemies of civilisation. the appeal which the nationalists make to the principle of "self-determination" strikes ulster protestants as singularly inappropriate. mr. dillon and his co-signatories have been careful not to inform your excellency that it was their own opposition that prevented the question of irish government being settled in accordance with that principle in . the british government were prepared at that time to bring the home rule act of into immediate operation, if the nationalists had consented to exclude from its scope the distinctively protestant population of the north, who desired to adhere to the union. this compromise was rejected by the nationalist leaders, whose policy was thus shown to be one of "self-determination" for themselves, combined with coercive domination over us. it is because the british government, while prepared to concede the principle of self-determination impartially to both divisions in ireland, has declined to drive us forcibly into such subjection that the nationalist party conceive themselves entitled to resist the law of conscription. and the method by which this resistance has been made effective is, in our view, not less deplorable than the spirit that dictated it. the most active opponents of conscription in ireland are men who have been twice detected during the war in treasonable traffic with the enemy, and their most powerful support has been that of ecclesiastics, who have not scrupled to employ weapons of spiritual terrorism which have elsewhere in the civilised world fallen out of political use since the middle ages. the claim of these men, in league with germany on the one hand, and with the forces of clericalism on the other, to resist a law passed by parliament as necessary for national defence is, moreover, inconsistent with any political status short of independent sovereignty--status which could only be attained by ireland by an act of secession from the united kingdom, such as the american union averted only by resort to civil war. in every federal or other constitution embracing subordinate legislatures the raising and control of military forces are matters reserved for the supreme legislative authority alone, and they are so reserved for the imperial parliament of the united kingdom in the home rule act of , the "withholding" of which during the war is complained of by the nationalists who have addressed your excellency. the contention of these gentlemen that until the internal government of ireland is changed in accordance with their demands, ireland is justified in resisting the law of conscription, is one that finds support in no intelligible theory of political science. to us as irishmen--convinced as we are of the righteousness of the cause for which we are fighting, and resolved that no sacrifice can be too great to "make the world safe for democracy"--it is a matter of poignant regret that the conduct of the nationalist leaders in refusing to lay aside matters of domestic dispute, in order to put forth the whole strength of the country against germany should have cast a stain on the good name of ireland. we have done everything in our power to dissociate ourselves from their action, and we disclaim responsibility for it at the bar of posterity and history. edward carson. james johnston, lord mayor of belfast. h.m. pollock, president belfast chamber of commerce. r.n. anderson, mayor of londonderry, and president londonderry chamber of commerce. john m. andrews, chairman ulster unionist labour association. james a. turkington, vice-chairman ulster unionist labour association, and secretary power-loom and allied trades friendly society, and ex-secretary power-loom tenters' trade union of ireland. thompson donald, hon. secretary ulster unionist labour association, and ex-district secretary shipwrights' association. henry fleming, hon. secretary ulster unionist labour association, member of boilermakers' iron and steel shipbuilders' society. footnotes: [ ] see appendix a. index abercorn, james, nd duke of, at the belfast convention, ; president of the ulster unionist council, ; illness, , , ; signs the covenant, ; death, abercorn, james, rd duke of, , abercorn, mary, duchess of, president of the women's unionist council, adair, gen. sir wm., at larne, afghan campaign, africa, south, war, agar-robartes, hon. thomas, amendment on the home rule bill, , - , agnew, capt. andrew, viii, , , , , , albert hall, meetings at, , , , alexander, dr., bishop of derry, at the albert hall, allen, c.e., allen, w.j., althorp, lord, altrincham, election, amending bill, , , ; postponed, , ; _see_ home rule america, war of independence, amery, l.c.s., at belfast, ; on the curragh incident, amiens, threatened capture of, anderson, r.n., mayor of londonderry, letter to president wilson, , - andrews, john m., letter to president wilson, - andrews, thomas, , , anglo-german relations, , _annual register_, viii, note, , note, , note, , note, note, note, note, note, note, note, note, note, note, , note, note archdale, e.m., ; chairman of the standing committee, ; minister for agriculture, armagh, military depot, , armaghdale, lord, ; signs the covenant, : _see_ lonsdale armistice, the, army, british, sympathy with ulster loyalists, - arran, isle of, asquith, rt. hon. h.h., on the opposition of ulster to home rule, , ; at the albert hall, ; hull, ; reading, ; bury st. edmunds, ; opinion of sir e. carson's speech, ; at ladybank, ; manchester, ; policy on the ulster question, - ; on the curragh incident, , ; secretary of state for war, ; promises an amending bill, ; on the landing of arms, ; at the buckingham palace conference, ; on the postponement of the amending bill, , ; defence of home rule bill, ; in dublin, ; on the settlement of the irish question, ; on the national danger, _attentive_, h.m.s., austrian rifles, baird, j.d., at belfast, balfour, rt. hon. a.j., at belfast, , ; on election tactics, ; on exclusion of ulster, ; resigns leadership of the unionist party, ; how regarded in ulster, ; message from, ; the "peccant paragraphs," balfour, lord, of burleigh, signs the british covenant, ballycastle, ballykinler, training camp, ballymacarret, ballymena, meeting at, ballymoney, meeting at, ballyroney, meeting at, _balmerino_, s.s., , balmoral, belfast, meeting at, - , bangor, , barrie, h.t., bates, richard dawson, secretary of the ulster unionist council, , ; organises demonstration, ; on board a tender, ; minister for home affairs, ; knighthood, bedford, duke of, chairman of the british league for the support of ulster, belfast, ; convention of , - , ; meetings at, , , ; services on ulster day, ; city hall, , ; covenant signed, - ; drill hall, opened, ; riots, ; review of the ulster volunteer force at, ; customs authorities, stratagem against, ; reception of the king and queen, belfast lough, , , , _belfast newsletter_, note, benn, sir john, beresford, lord charles, at belfast, , ; at the ulster club, ; liverpool, ; member of a committee of the provisional government, berwick, , birrell, rt. hon. augustine, chief secretary for ireland, on the character of sinn feinism, ; at ilfracombe, ; on the home rule bill, ; the right to fight, ; member of a sub-committee on ulster, ; conduct in the irish rebellion, ; character of his administration, blenheim, meeting at, boyne, the, ; battle of, ; celebration, bradford, , , bristol, , ; channel, _britannic_, h.m.s., british covenant, signing the, british league for the support of ulster and the union, formation, browne, robert, managing director of the antrim iron ore company, brunner, sir john, president of the national liberal federation, buckingham palace conference, budden, captain, budget, ; "the people's," "budget league," formed, bull, sir william, bury st. edmunds, butcher, sir j.g., at belfast, cambridge, h.r.h. duke of, cambridgeshire, election, campbell, james, lord chancellor of ireland, , , canterbury, dean of, signs the british covenant, carlyle, thomas, carrickfergus, military depot, , carson, lady, at belfast, , carson, rt. hon. sir edward, viii; accepts leadership, - ; political views, ; at the ulster hall, , ; at the ulster unionist council meetings, , - ; relations with lord londonderry, , ; on the parliament bill, ; at the craigavon meeting, - , ; character of his speaking, ; at the conference at belfast, ; at dublin, ; portrush, ; refuses leadership of unionist party, ; meetings in lancashire, ; popularity, , , ; at belfast, , , - , , ; criticism of w. churchill's speech, ; on fiscal autonomy for ireland, ; at the balmoral meeting, , ; ovation, ; attacks on, ; on the home rule bill, , ; at the londonderry house conference, ; on the resistance of ulster, , ; character of his leadership, ; reads the ulster covenant, ; tour of the province, , ; opinion of the covenant, ; presentation to, ; speech on the covenant, ; at the service in the ulster hall, ; at the city hall, - ; signs the covenant, ; at liverpool, ; on the exclusion of ulster, , ; death of his wife, ; at opening of drill hall, ; in scotland and england, ; at durham, ; chairman of the central authority, ; indemnity guarantee fund, ; inspection of the ulster volunteer force, , , , , ; on the time limit for exclusion, ; leaves the house of commons, ; on the plot against ulster, ; signs statement on the curragh incident, ; interview with major f.h. crawford, , ; congratulations from lord roberts, ; at ipswich, ; at the buckingham palace conference, ; on the patriotism of ulster, - ; tribute to b. law, ; second marriage, ; tribute to lord londonderry, ; appointed attorney-general, ; resignation, ; on the irish rebellion, ; appointed first lord of the admiralty, ; resignation, ; re-elected leader of the ulster party, ; member of the irish unionist alliance, ; on the military service bill, ; letter to president wilson, , - ; m.p. for duncairn, ; declines office, ; on the government of ireland act, ; conclusion of his leadership, ; lord of appeal in ordinary, ; unable to be present at the opening of the ulster parliament, casement, sir roger, , ; in league with germany, cassel, felix, at belfast, castlereagh, viscount, , ; at belfast, ; signs the covenant, cavan, , cave, rt. hon. george, ; at belfast, ; letter to _the times_, cecil, lord hugh, at belfast, , ; at the balmoral meeting, ; on the resistance of ulster, chamberlain, rt. hon. austen, candidate for the leadership of the unionist party, ; message from, ; at skipton, ; on the policy of the government, chamberlain, rt. hon. joseph, at belfast, ; views on home rule, , ; tariff policy, ; his advice to sir e. carson, chambers, james, signs the covenant, chichester, capt. the hon. a.c., commander in the ulster volunteer force, childers, mr. erskine, on fiscal autonomy for ireland, china expeditionary force, chubb, sir george hayter, signs the british covenant, churchill, mrs., at belfast, churchill, lord randolph, at belfast, , ; at the ulster hall meeting, , , ; saying of, , ; reception at larne, ; views on home rule, ; _life of,_ churchill, rt. hon. winston s., at manchester, ; _life of lord randolph churchill_, , ; at dundee, , ; views on home rule, ; projected visit to belfast, - ; letter to lord londonderry, ; change of plan, ; reception at belfast, ; departure from, ; on home rule, ; letters on the ulster menace, ; on the resistance of ulster, , ; the policy of exclusion, ; at bradford, , , city hall, belfast, , clark, sir george, clogher, bishop of, signs the covenant, _clydevalley, s.s.,_ - , ; renamed, coleraine, meeting at, , comber, copeland island, , , _correspondence relating to recent events in the irish command_, covenant, british, signing the, covenant, ulster, draft, ; terms, - ; series of demonstrations, - ; meeting in the ulster hall, ; signing the, - ; anniversary, , , cowser, richard, , craig, charles, , ; serves in the war, ; taken prisoner, craig, james, member of the ulster unionist council, ; meeting at craigavon, ; gift for organisation, ; member of the commission of five, ; on the resistance of ulster, ; draft of the covenant, ; organises the demonstration, ; presentation of a silver key and pen to sir e. carson, ; indemnity guarantee fund, ; at the reviews of the u.v.f., , , ; at bangor, ; at the buckingham palace conference, ; appointed q.m.g. of the ulster division, ; treasurer of the household, ; resignation, ; baronetcy, ; secretary to the ministry of pensions, ; secretary to the admiralty, ; resignation, ; prime minister of the northern parliament, craig, john, craig, mrs., presents colours to the u.v.f., craigavon, meeting at, - , , , , crawford, colonel f.h., viii; signs the covenant, , ; commander in the u.v.f., ; characteristics, ; career, ; secretary of the reform club, ; advertises for rifles, ; director of ordnance, ; method of procuring arms, - ; schooner, ; agreement with b.s., - ; interview with sir e. carson, , ; voyage in s.s. _fanny_, - ; conveys arms from hamburg, - ; attack of malaria, ; declines to obey unsigned orders, ; at belfast, ; purchases s.s. _clydevalley_, , ; lands the arms, ; at rosslare, ; awarded the o.b.e., crewe, election, , crewe, marq. of, , , ; on the amending bill, cromwell, oliver, crozier, dr., archbp. of armagh, member of provisional government, crumlin, meeting at, curragh incident, - , curzon, marq., on the parliament bill, ; the home rule bill, ; the loyalty of ulster, _daily express, the_, _daily mail, the_, _daily news, the_, , _daily telegraph, the_, , d'arcy, dr., primate of all ireland, ; signs the covenant, darlington, davis, jefferson, democracy, axiom of, derbyshire, election, derry, relief of, , ; meeting at, ; election, ; riots, desborough, lord, signs the british covenant, devlin, joseph, , , , , ; with mr. w. churchill in belfast, , ; the irish convention, ; on the military service bill, ; letter to president wilson, , - ; demands self-determination, devonshire, th duke of, views on home rule, , ; on the resistance of ulster, , ; _life of_, note, note dicey, prof., signs the british covenant, dickson, scott, at belfast, ; at the balmoral meeting, "die hards" party, dillon, john, , ; at the buckingham palace conference, ; on the irish rebellion, ; letter to pres. wilson, , - donaghadee, , donald, thompson, letter to pres. wilson, - donegal, , _doreen_, s.s., , ; at lundy, dorset regiment, transferred to holywood, , dromore, meeting at, dublin, insurrection, , ; unionist demonstration at, ; nationalist convention, meeting, ; congress in, dufferin and ava, dow. marchioness of, duke, rt. hon. h.e., chief secretary for ireland, duncairn, election, dundalk, dundee, , dunleath, lord, durham, sir e. carson at, east fife, edinburgh, , ; ulstermen sign the covenant, ; meeting at, ; philosophical institution, lecture at the, edward vii, king, death, election, general, of , ; of , ; of jan. , , , ; of dec. , ; of , elections, result of, , , emmet, robert, , , enniskillen, meeting at, , ; military depot, , erne, earl of, member of the ulster unionist council, ; at the craigavon meeting, ; signs the covenant, ewart, g.h., president of the belfast chamber of commerce, ewart, sir william, member of the ulster unionist council, ; signs the covenant, _fanny_, s.s., voyage, viii, - ; alterations in her appearance, ; rechristened, ; transference of the cargo, farnham, lord, at the ulster unionist council meeting, , ; irish unionist alliance, ferguson, john, & co., fiennes, mr., at belfast, finance bill, rejected, finlay, sir robert, at belfast, ; at the balmoral meeting, fishguard, flavin, mr., on the military service bill, fleming, henry, letter to pres. wilson, - flood, henry, patriotism, foyle, the, , _freemason's journal, the_, , french, f.m., viscount, member of the army council, ; resignation, ; lord lieutenant of ireland, ; attempt on his life, frewen, miss, marriage, ; _see_ carson friend, general, gambetta, léon, george v, king, conference at buckingham palace, ; opens the ulster parliament, , ; reception in belfast, george, rt. hon. d. lloyd, chancellor of the exchequer, budget, ; at edinburgh, ; on the exclusion of ulster, ; anglo-german relations, , ; opinion of sir e. carson's speech, ; plot against ulster, ; at ipswich, ; the buckingham palace conference, ; secretary of state for war, ; negotiations for the settlement of the irish question, , , ; prime minister, ; on home rule, ; alternative proposals, ; statement on the war, , ; military service bill, ; letter to b. law, note; basic facts on the irish question, ; government of ireland act, german rifles, gibson, t.h., sec. of ulster unionist council, ; resignation, gilmour, captain, at belfast, gladstone, rt. hon. w.e., ; on the character of the nationalists, ; conversion to home rule, , , ; home rule bills, , , ; personality, glasgow, , ; meeting at, goschen, viscount, views on home rule, , goudy, prof., signs the british covenant, gough, general sir hugh, commanding the rd cavalry brigade, ; at the war office, ; return to the curragh, ; driven back by the germans, government of ireland act, , graham, john washington, grattan, henry, patriotism, greenwood, sir hamar, at belfast, ; chief secretary for ireland, grey, earl, on the home rule bill, grey, sir edward, on the home rule bill, ; at berwick, griffith, arthur, arrested, ; deported, griffith-boscawen, sir arthur, at belfast, grimsby, election, guest, capt. frederick, at belfast, guinness, walter, supports exclusion of ulster, gun-barrel proof act, haldane, viscount, , halifax, lord, , hall, frank, halsbury, earl of, hamburg, col. crawford at, hamilton, lord claud, at belfast, ; provisional government, hamilton, george c., m.p. for altrincham, hamilton, gustavus, governor of enniskillen, hamilton, marq. of, interest in the ulster movement, ; signs the covenant, hammersmith armoury, ; seizure of arms at, hanna, j., harding, canon, harland and wolff, messrs., harrison, frederic, on the ulster question, hartington, marq. of, views on home rule, health insurance act, healy, t.m., , ; on the military service bill, ; letter to pres. wilson, , - henry, denis, member of the ulster unionist council, hickman, colonel thomas, member of provisional government, ; career, ; letter from lord roberts, , hills, j.w., at belfast, holland, bernard, _life of the eighth duke of devonshire_, note, note holywood, , , home rule, - ; a separatist movement, ; memorial against, home rule bill, , , , - , , , ; political meetings, ; under the "guillotine," ; in the house of lords, ; rejected, ; time limit for exclusion, ; passed, , ; receives the royal assent, home rule bill, amending bill, , , , , hull, mr. asquith at, ilfracombe, indemnity guarantee fund, subscriptions, , ipswich, election, ireland, two nations, , ; rebellions, ; animosity of rival creeds, ; condition, , , ; insurrection, ; fiscal autonomy, - ; financial clauses of the home rule bill, ; prohibition of the importation of arms, ; easter rebellion, ; exemption from conscription, ; german plot in, ; agitation against conscription, ; anarchy, ireland, council of, ireland, government of, act, , - ireland, northern, parliament, - irish convention, - ; members, , ; report, , _irish news, the_, irish republican army, system of terrorism, irish republican brotherhood, irish unionist alliance, , ; co-operation with the ulster unionist council, islandmagee, italian vetteli rifles, , , james ii, king, , johnston, james, lord mayor of belfast, letter to pres. wilson, , - kelly, sam, kelly, thomas, letter to pres. wilson, - kennedy, sir robert, member of provisional government, kettle, prof. t.m., on fiscal autonomy for ireland, kiel, kingstown, cruisers at, kipling, rudyard, "ulster ," , ; signs the british covenant, kitchener, f.m. earl, , kossuth, labour party, , ladybank, mr. asquith at, lamlash, battleships at, lane-fox, george, at belfast, langeland, lansdowne, marq. of, scheme of reform for the house of lords, ; on the parliament bill, ; message from, ; on the ulster question, ; the amending bill, ; at the buckingham palace conference, larne, , , , law, rt. hon. a. bonar, leader of unionist party, , ; on home rule, , ; at the albert hall, ; on fiscal autonomy for ireland, ; at the balmoral meeting, - ; reception at larne, ; his speech, ; indictment against the government, , , , ; on the resistance of ulster, , , ; messages from, , ; at wallsend, ; bristol, ; on the exclusion of ulster, , ; demands inquiry into the curragh incident, ; on the amending bill, ; at the buckingham palace conference, ; at belfast, ; tribute to, ; at the ulster hall, ; warning to the nationalists, ; on the military service bill, , lecky, w.e.h., _history of england in the eighteenth century_, note leeds, meeting at, leo xiii, pope, leslie, shane, _henry edward manning_, note liberal party, policy, ; victory in , ; majority, , ; tactics, ; number of votes, , ; defeated in , liddell, r.m., lincoln, abraham, ; saying of, linlithgow, election, lisburn, meeting at, , liverpool, _liverpool daily courier, the_, extract from, _liverpool daily post and mercury,_ note llandudno, lloyd, mr. george, at belfast, logue, cardinal, london school of economics, conference at, londonderry house, conference at, , , londonderry, marchioness of, member of the ulster women's unionist council, ; on the covenant, ; presents colours to the u.v.f., ; work in the war, londonderry, th marq. of, viii; on home rule, ; ulster unionist council, ; popularity, ; character, ; relations with sir e. carson, , ; on the parliament bill, ; conference at belfast, ; at the ulster hall meeting, , , ; the ulster unionist council meetings, , ; reply to w. churchill, ; at belfast, ; at the balmoral meeting, ; signs the covenant, ; at the ulster club, ; liverpool, ; on the house of lords, ; president of the ulster unionist council, ; indemnity guarantee fund, ; at the reviews of the u.v.f., , ; on the curragh incident, ; on the amending bill, ; at enniskillen, ; despondency, ; death, ; tribute to, londonderry, th marq. of, viii; member of the irish convention, , ; under-secretary of state in the air ministry, ; resignation, ; minister of education, long, rt. hon. walter, ; founder of the union defence league, ; leader of the irish unionists, ; at the ulster hall, ; candidate for the leadership of the unionist party, ; at belfast, , ; at the balmoral meeting, , ; the londonderry house conference, ; message from, ; on the policy of the government, ; signs the british covenant, ; chairman of a cabinet committee on the irish question, lonsdale, sir john b., member of the ulster unionist council, ; hon. sec. of the irish unionist party, ; signs covenant, ; indemnity guarantee fund, ; leader of the ulster party, ; at belfast, ; raised to the peerage, ; _see_ armaghdale lords, house of, rejection of the home rule bill, , ; of the finance bill, , ; forced to accept the parliament bill, ; position under the parliament act, ; debates on the home rule bill, loreburn, lord, letters to _the times_, , lough laxford, , , lough, thomas, on fiscal autonomy for ireland, lovat, lord, signs the british covenant, lowther, rt. hon. james, at the buckingham palace conference, loyal orange institution, lundy, lyons, w.h.h., macdonnell, lord, on fiscal autonomy for ireland, mackinder, h.j., at belfast, macnaghten, sir charles, member provisional government, macnaghten, lord, lord of appeal, , ; signs the covenant, macneill, john, letter to pres. wilson, - mahan, admiral, maine, sir h., _popular government_, extract from, malcolm, sir ian, at belfast, manchester, , ; election, _manchester guardian, the_, manning, cardinal, on home rule, mary, h.m., queen, at the opening of the ulster parliament, ; reception in belfast, massereene, lady, presents colours to the ulster volunteer force, massingham, mr., masterman, rt. hon. c.f.g., , mazzini, mccalmont, col. james, ulster unionist council, ; commander of a u.v.f regiment, mccammon, mr., mcdowell, sir alexander, criticism of the ulster covenant, mcmordie, mr., lord mayor of belfast, at the service in the ulster hall, ; receives sir e. carson, ; at the ulster club, meath election petition in , melbourne, lord, mersey, the, midleton, earl of, at the irish convention, ; supports home rule, ; secedes from the irish unionist alliance, midlothian, election, military service act, ii., - milner, viscount, signs the british covenant, ; on the amending bill, moles, thomas, viii; chairman of committee in the northern parliament, molyneux, patriotism, monaghan, , montgomery, b.w.d., secretary of the ulster club, montgomery, dr., montgomery, major-gen., member of provisional government, moore, william, ulster unionist council, ; on the amendment to the home rule bill, ; exclusion of ulster, morley, viscount, _life of gladstone_, ; on the resistance of ulster, ; helps colonel seely to draft the "peccant paragraphs," , _morning post, the_, , , , note _motu proprio_, vatican decree, mount stewart, , _mountjoy_, the, , _mountjoy ii_, s.s., cargo landed at larne, , moyle, the, musgrave channel, , musgrave, henry, _nation, the_, national insurance bill, nationalist party, in the house of commons, , ; attitude on the war, ; opposition to conscription, - nationalists, the, compared with the ulster unionists, ; disloyalty, - ; policy, , , , ; ancestry, ; demand dissolution of the union, ; attitude on the war, , , ; members of the irish convention, - ; letter to pres. wilson, , - ; demand "self-determination," , nationality, root of, ; plea of , navy, reduction of, , _nec temere_, vatican decree, neild, herbert, at belfast, newcastle, , ; training camp, newman, cardinal, newry, newtownards, ; meeting at, , _nineteenth century, the_, note, note nonconformists, ; opposition to home rule, northcliffe, viscount, norwich, ulster members at, o'brien, william, ; on the military service bill, ; letter to pres. wilson, , - _observer, the_, , note, o'connell, daniel, o'connor, t.p., , , ; on home rule, omagh, military depot, , omash, miss, viii o'neill, capt. hon. arthur, ; killed in the war, , o'neill, major hugh, serves in the war, ; speaker of the northern parliament, o'neill, hugh, earl of tyrone, o'neill, laurence, lord mayor of dublin, letter to pres. wilson, , - o'neill, hon. r.t., member of the ulster unionist council, ormsby-gore, capt. the hon. w.g.a., at belfast, o'shea, divorce, paget, sir arthur, commander-in-chief in ireland, letter from colonel seely, ; in london, ; interviews with ministers, ; instructions from the war office, , ; conference with his officers, , ; on the employment of troops in ulster, parliament, assembled, , , ; dissolved, , ; adjourned, parliament act, , , - , , _parliamentary debates_, viii, _note,_ , note, note, note parnell, charles, saying of, ; leader of the nationalist party, ; downfall, _pathfinder_, h.m.s., _patriotic_, r.m.s., peel, sir robert, peel, w., at belfast, "people's budget," ; rejection, percival-maxwell, col., privy councillor, phoenix park murders, pirrie, lord, unpopularity in belfast, ; peerage conferred, pitt, rt. hon. william, plunkett, sir horace, chairman of the irish convention, , ; letter to lloyd george, pollock, sir ernest, at belfast, pollock, h.m., member of the irish convention, , portadown, meeting at, , portland, duke of, signs the british covenant, portrush, , presbyterian church, general assembly of the, presbyterians, political views, preston, george, subscription to the indemnity guarantee fund, prisoners, release of, protestants, irish, distrust of roman catholics, ; dislike of clerical influence, ramsay, sir w., signs the british covenant, ranfurly, earl of, organises the ulster loyalist union, , ; member of the unionist council, raphoe, bishop of, member of the irish convention, , - rawlinson, j.f.p., at belfast, reade, r.h., reading, mr. asquith at, ; election, redistribution act, redmond, capt., redmond, john, ; on the national movement, ; policy, ; on home rule, , ; with mr. w. churchill in belfast, , ; opinion of sir e. carson's speech, ; protests against amending bill, ; at buckingham palace conference, ; conditional offer of help in the war, , ; tribute to, ; patriotism, ; refuses office, ; at dublin, ; on the exclusion of ulster, ; manifesto, ; at the irish convention, - ; death, ; on the condition of ireland, redmond, major w., his speech in the house, ; killed in the war, reform club, belfast, , , reid, whitelaw, renan, e., on the root of nationality, _reynolds's newspaper_, richardson, gen. sir george, commander-in-chief of the u.v.f., , ; career, ; characteristics, ; at belfast, , ; reviews the u.v.f., - rifles, seized by government, , ; purchase of, ; packing, ; landed in ulster, roberts, f.m. earl, , ; letter to col. hickman, , ; signs british covenant, ; congratulations to sir e. carson, ; on the result of coercing ulster, robertson, rt. hon. j.m., secretary to the board of trade, on fiscal autonomy for ireland, ; at newcastle, rochdale, unionist association at, roe, owen, roman catholics, irish, disloyalty ; character of the priest, ; methods of enforcing obedience, - rosebery, earl of, , ; at glasgow, ; on the characteristics of the ulster race, rosslare, royal irish rifles, the th, russia, collapse of, russian rifles, s.b., the hebrew dealer in firearms, ; agreement with major f.h. crawford, - ; honesty, st. aldwyn, viscount, on the king's prerogative, salisbury, marq. of, at belfast, , ; message from, ; views on home rule, salvidge, mr., alderman of liverpool, , ; signs the british covenant, samuel, mr. herbert, at belfast, sanderson, colonel, chairman of the ulster parliamentary party, , _saturday review, the_, extract from, sclater, edward, secretary of the unionist clubs, scotland, the covenant, _scotsman, the_, , , note seely, col. sec. of state for war, letter to sir a. paget, ; statement to gen. gough, ; adds paragraphs, , ; on the curragh incident, ; resignation, , seymour, adm. sir e., signs british covenant, sharman-crawford, col., member of the ulster unionist council, ; of the commission of five, shaw, lord, _letters to isabel_, note shiel park, meeting at, shipyards, observance of ulster day, shortt, rt. hon. e., chief secretary for ireland, simon, sir john, sinclair, rt. hon. thomas, at the ulster convention, ; member of the ulster unionist council, , ; on home rule, ; member of a commission, ; on the covenant, , ; signs it, sinn fein party, refuse to join the convention, ; in league with germany, , ; arrests, ; members of parliament, , ; treason of, ; congress in dublin, ; outrages, sinn feinism, spirit of, skipton, smiley, kerr, smith, rt. hon. f.e. (lord birkenhead), on the policy of ulster, , ; on the covenant, ; at the ulster club, ; at liverpool, ; at the inspection of the u.v.f., ; "galloper" to gen. sir g. richardson, smith, mr. harold, solemn league and covenant, ; _see_ ulster somme, battle of the, _spectator, the_, spender, col. w. bliss, u.v.f., , , , ; awarded the o.b.e., _standard, the_, , , _star, the_, extract from, stronge, sir james, member of the ulster unionist council, stuart-wortley, mr., at belfast, submarine warfare, suffragists' campaign, swift, patriotism, tariff reform policy, , ; controversy, , , templetown, lord, founds the unionist clubs, , thiepval, battle at, _times, the_, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ; letters in, , tirah expedition, tone, wolfe, , , tramp steamer, diverts suspicion, turkington, james a., letter to pres. wilson, - tuskar light, , tyrone, contingent of orangemen, ulster, use of the term, vii; opposition to home rule, , , ; loyalty, - , , , - , ; ancestry, ; political views, ; landlords and tenants, ; mottoes, , ; reluctant acceptance of a separate constitution, ; organisations, - ; policy, , , , , , - , , - ; military drilling, ; characteristics of the people, ; time limit for exclusion, ; plot against, ; emigrants in america, , ; result of the government of ireland act, ulster, british league for the support of, formed, ulster club, belfast, ulster, convention of , , ulster covenant, draft, ; terms, - ; series of demonstrations, - ; meeting in the ulster hall, ; signing the, - ; anniversary, , , ulster day, , ; religious observance, , ulster division, st brigade, training, ; recruiting, ulster hall, ; meetings, , , , , , , , , ; service, , ulster loyalist anti-repeal union, ulster loyalist and patriotic union, ulster movement, vii, ulster parliament, appointment of ministers, - ; opened, - ulster provisional government, , , , ; judiciary, ; constitution, ulster unionist clubs, founded, - ulster unionist council, vii, ; meetings, , , , , - , , , , , , , - , ; members, , ; co-operation with the irish unionist alliance, ; resolution adopted, - ; character, ; scheme for the provisional government, ; statement on the curragh incident, ulster unionist members of parliament, ; tour in scotland and england, ulster unionists, letter to pres. wilson, , - ulster volunteer force, , , , ; indemnity guarantee fund, , ; growth, , ; parades, , - , , , ; strength, ; arming the, - , ; organisation, ; despatch-riders' corps, ; trial mobilisation, ; presentation of colours, ; volunteer for service in the war, ; organisation and training of the division, ulster women's unionist association, work of the, ulster women's unionist council, formed, ; meeting, "ulster ," rudyard kipling's, , "ulster's reward," william watson's, union defence league, in london, unionist associations of ireland, joint committee, unionist party, administration, , ; defeated, ; number of votes, , , ; dissensions on tariff reform, ; members at belfast, unionists, southern manifesto, ; committee formed, ; result of the government act, valera, e. de, m.p. for east clare, ; arrested, ; deported, vatican decrees, vickers & co., messrs., victoria, queen, wallace, col. r.h., member of the ulster unionist council, ; member of a commission, ; grand master of the belfast lodges, ; popularity, ; career, ; applies for leave to drill, ; at the ulster unionist council meeting, , ; presentation of a banner to sir e. carson, ; command in the u.v.f., , ; privy councillor, wallsend, walter, mr. john, war, the great, , , war office, treatment of gen. gough, ward, lieut.-col. john, on the curragh incident, ; "the army and ireland," note, warden, f.w., note washington, george, , watson, sir william, "ulster's reward," waziri expedition, _westminster gazette_, ; cartoon, whig revolution of , white paper, note, note, note, note, note, note, note, , note, william iii, king, banner, willoughby de broke, lord, wilson, president, letter from the nationalists, , - ; from the unionists, , - ; phrase of "self-determination," wimborne, lord, lord-lieutenant of ireland, resignation, wolff, g., wolseley, viscount, women's unionist council, ulster, formed, ; meeting, workman and clark, messrs., workman, frank, wynyard, lord londonderry's death at, yarmouth, york, york, archbp. of, on the home rule bill, _yorkshire post, the_, , young, rt. hon. john, member of the ulster unionist council, ; at the meeting, ; takes part in the campaign, ; signs the covenant, young, w.r., organises the ulster loyalist and patriotic union, , ; signs the covenant, ; privy councillor, zhob valley field force, expedition, proofreaders what's the matter with ireland? by ruth russell to my mother contents i. what's the matter with ireland ii. sinn fein and revolution iii. irish labor and class revolution iv. ae's peaceful revolution v. the catholic church and communism vi. what about belfast? elected government of the republic of ireland (american delegation) january , . _miss ruth' russell, chicago, illinois_. dear miss russell: i have read the advance copy of your book, "what's the matter with ireland?", with much interest. i congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in understanding irish conditions and grasped the irish viewpoint. i hope your book will be widely read. your first chapter will be instructive to those who have been deceived by the recent cry of irish prosperity. cries of this sort are echoed without thought as to their truth, and gain credence as they pass from mouth to mouth. i hope we shall have many more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths. having visited ireland, i feel you cannot doubt that the poet was right-- "there never was a nation yet could rule another well." i imagine, too, that having seen the character of british rule there, you must realize better than before what it was your american patriots of ' hastened to rid themselves of. in a country with such natural resources as ireland, can you believe it possible that if government by the people obtained there could be such conditions of unemployment and misery as you found? do you not think that if the elected government of the republic were left unhampered by foreign usurpation, we might in the coming years hope to rival the boast of lord clare in : "there is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, with the same rapidity in the same period as ireland--from to ." and that progress like this, with the present social outlook in ireland, would mean the peace, contentment and happiness of millions of human beings? yours very truly, (signed) eÁmon de valÉra. foreword "and tell us what is the matter with ireland." this was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with ireland, gave me before i sailed for that bit of europe which lies closest to america. it became perfectly obvious that ireland was poor; poor to ignorance, poor to starvation, poor to insanity and death. and that the cause of her poverty is her exploitation by the world capitalist next door to her. in ireland there is no disagreement as to the cause of her poverty. there is very little difference as to the best remedy--three-fourths of ireland have expressed their belief that the country can live only as a republic. even the two great forces in ireland that are said to be for the _status quo_, i found in active sympathy with the republican cause. in the catholic church the young priests are eager workers for sinn fein, and in ulster the laborers are backing their leaders in a plea for self-determination. but there are, of course, those who say that a republic is not enough. in the cities where poverty is blackest, there are those who state that the new republic must be a workers' republic. in the villages and country places where the co-operative movement is growing strong, there are those who believe that the new republic must be a co-operative commonwealth. i what's the matter with ireland? out of a job is ireland poor? i decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. i dressed myself as a working girl--it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the irish people belong--and in a week in the slums of dublin i found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage slavery, or acceptance of charity. at the woman's employment bureau of the ministry of munitions, i discovered that , irish boys and girls are annually sent to the english harvests, and that during the war there were , placements in the english munition factories. "but i don't want to leave home," i heard a little ex-fusemaker say as we stood in queues at the chicken-wire hatch in the big bare room turned over by the ministry of munitions for the replacement of women who had worked on army supplies. her voice trembled with the uncertainty of one who knew she could not dictate. "then you've got to be a servant," said the direct young woman at the hatch. "there's nothing left in ireland but domestic jobs." "isn't--you told me there might be something in belfast?" "linen mills are on part time now--no chance. there's only one place for good jobs now--that's across the channel." the little girl bit her lip. she shook her head and went out the rear exit provided for ex-war workers. together we splashed into the broken-bricked alley that was sloppy with melting spring sleet. "maybe she doesn't know everything," said the little girl, fingering a religious medal that shone beneath her brown muffler. "maybe some one's dropped out. let's say a prayer." through the cutting sleet we bent our way to dublin's largest factory--a plant where , girls are employed at what are the best woman's wages in dublin, $ . to $ a week. "you gotta be pretty brassy to ask for work here," said the little girl. "everybody wants to work here. but you can't get anything unless you're b-brassy, can you?" we entered a big-windowed, red-bricked factory, and in response to our timid application, a black-clad woman shook her head wearily. down a puddly, straw-strewn lane we were blown to one of the factories next in size--a fifty to hand factory is considered big in dublin. the sign on the door was scrawled: "no hands wanted." but in the courage of companionship we mounted the black, narrow-treaded wooden stairs to a box-littered room where white-aproned girls were nailing candy containers together. while we waited for the manager to come out, we stood with bowed heads so that the sleet could pool off our hats, and through a big crack in the plank floor we could see hard red candies swirling below. suddenly we heard a voice and looked up to see the ticking-aproned manager spluttering: "well, can't you read?" up in a loft-like, saw-dusty room where girls were stuffing dolls and daubing red paint on china cheeks, an excited manager declared he was losing his own job. the new woman's trade union league wanted him to pay more than one dollar a week to his girls. he would show the union his books. wasn't it better to have some job than none at all? down the wet street, now glinting blindingly in the late sun, we walked into a grubby little tea shop for a sixpenny pot of tea between us. out of my pocket i pulled a wage list of well-paying, imagination-stirring jobs in england. there were all sorts of jobs from toy-making at $ . a week to glass-blowing at $ . on the face of the little girl as she told me that she would meet me at the ministry of munitions the next morning there was a look of worried indecision. that night along gloucester street, past the georgian mansion houses built before the union of ireland and england--great, flat-faced, uprising structures behind whose verdigrised knockers and shattered door fans comes the murmur of tenements--i walked till i came to a much polished brass plate lettered "st. anthony's working girls' home." "why don't you go to england?" was the first question the matron put to me when i told her that i could get no factory work. "all the girls are going." in the stone-flagged cellar the girls were cooking their individual dinners at a stove deep set in the stone wall. a big, curly-haired girl was holding bread on a fork above the red coals. "last time i got lonesome," she was admitting. "but the best parlor maid job here is $ a year. and over at basingstoke in england i've one waiting for me at $ a year. if you want to live nowadays i suppose you've gotta be lonesome." next day at the alley of the employment bureau, i met the little girl of the day before. she said a little dully: "well, i took--shirt-making--edinburgh." instead of migrating, a girl may marry. but her husband in most cases can't make enough money to support a family. to keep an average family of five, just going, on food alone, costs $ a year. some farm hands get only $ . an average unskilled worker obtains $ a year. an organized unskilled worker receives $ , and an organized skilled worker, $ . therefore, if a girl marries, she has not only to bear children but to go out to work beside. their constant toil makes the women of ireland something less than well-cared-for slaves. take the mother in dublin. in dublin there have long been too many casual laborers. one-third of dublin's population of , are in this class. now, while wages for some sorts of casual labor like dock work increased during the war, it has become almost impossible for dublin laborers to get a day's job. for the unemployed are flocking for the good wages from the four fields of ireland. on the days the man is out of work the woman must go out to wash or "char." i understood these conditions better after i spent a night in a typical one-room home in the dockers' quarters near the liffey. widow hannan was my hostess. the widow is a strong, black-haired young woman who took an active part in the rebellion of , and whose husband was killed fighting under james connolly. we slept in the first floor front. in with the widow lay her three children, and in the cot catty-corner from the bed i was bunked. just when the night air was thinning to gray there was a shattering rap on the ground-level window. the half-dressed young factory daughter clambered over the others and ripped down the rain coat that served as a night-time window curtain. against the square-paned window was hunched a forward-shouldered woman. as she was being beckoned to the door, i rose, and to do my hair had to wedge myself in between the breakfast-table and the filmy mirror that hung among the half-tone pictures of the rebels of . on the iron mantel, gray with coal dust, there was a family comb. "god save all here," said the neighbor entering. "mary, himself's had no work for four days. keep the young ones out of the grate for me. i've got to go out washing." "my sister-in-law has a husband and seven children to support," said the widow in explanation to me. "during the war, he could do with her going out just once in a while--now it's all the time." then to the sister-in-law: "i've a wash myself today." the big shoes that must once have belonged to the visitor's man, hit the floor loosely as she walked slowly out. then as lodger i was given the only chair at the breakfast-table. the mother and girl sat at a plank bench and supped their tea from their saucerless cups. as there was no place else to sit, the children took their bread and jam as they perched on the bed, and when they finished, surreptitiously wiped their fingers on the brown-covered hay mattress. before we were through, they had run to the street and back to warm their cold legs inside the fender till the floor was tracked with mud from the street, ashes from the grate, and bits of crumbled bread. in the evening i heard the murmur of revolution. with the shawled mothers who line the lane on a pleasant evening, i stood between the widow and a twenty-year-old girl who held her tiny blind baby in her arms. across the narrow street with its water-filled gutters, barefoot children in holey sweaters or with burlap tied about their shoulders, slapped their feet as they jigged, or jumped at hop-scotch. back of them in typical dublin decay rose the stables of an anciently prosperous shipping concern; in the v dip of the roofless walls, spiky grass grew and through the barred windows the wet gray sky was slotted. suddenly the girl-mother spoke: "why, there's himself coming back, mary. see him turning up from the timber on the quay. there was sorrow in his eyes like the submarine times when he came to tell me no boat docked this morning. baby or no baby, i'll have to get work for myself, for he's not given me a farthing for a fortnight." a big danish-looking chap was homing towards the door. without meeting the girl's eyes, he slunk into the doorway. his broad shoulders sagged under his sun-faded coat, and he blocked the light from the glassless window on the staircase as he disappeared. when he slouched out again his hand dropped from his hip pocket. "it's to drill he's going," the young mother snugged her shawl in more tightly about her baby. then she said with a little break in her voice: "oh, it's very pleasant, just this, with the girls jigging and rattling their legs of a spring evening." a girl's voice defiantly telling a soldier that if he didn't wear his civvies when he came to call he needn't come at all, rose clearly from a dark doorway. a lamplighter streaked yellow flame into the square lamp hanging from the stone shell opposite. a jarvey, hugging a bundle of hay, drove his horse clankingly over the cobblestones. then grimly came the whisper of the widow of the rebellion close to my ear: "oh, we'll have enough in the army this time." difficult as the irish worker's fight is, the able person is loath to give up and accept charity. but whether she wants to or not, if she can't find work she must go to the poorhouse. before the war it was estimated that over one-half the inmates of the irish workhouses were employable. during the war, when there were more jobs than usual to be had, there was a great exodus from the hated poorhouse; there was a drop in workhouse wards from , to , . but now jobs are getting less again and there is a melancholy return back over the hills to the poorhouse. night refuges, i found, are the last stage in this journey. there, with every day out of work, women become more unemployable--clothes and constitutions wear out; minds lose hope in effort and rely on luck. as i sat with a tableful of charwomen and general housework girls in a refuge in dublin, i read two ads from the paper. one offered a job for a general servant with wages at $ a year. the other ran: "wanted: a strong humble general housework girl to live out; $ . a week." i put the choice up to the table. "if you haven't anybody of your own to live with," advised a husky-voiced, mufflered girl next me as she warmed her fingers about her mug of tea and regarded me from under her cotton velvet hat with some suspicion, "you should get the job living with the family. it takes five dollars a week to live by yourself." then forestalling a protest she added: "you'll get two early evenings off--at eight o'clock." "whatever you get, don't let it go." a bird-faced woman leaned over the table so that the green black plume of her charity bonnet wagged across the center of the table. with her little warning eyes still on my face she settled back impressively. as she extracted a half sheet of newspaper from under her beaded cape and furtively wrapped up one of the two "hunks" of bread that each refugee got, she continued: "once i gave up a place because they let me have just potatoes and onions for dinner. no, hold on to whatever you get--whatever." and after we had night prayers that were so long drawn out that someone moaned: "do they want to scourge us with praying?", the old charwoman repeated the hopeless words: "hold on to whatever you get--whatever." in the pale gold light that flooded through the windows of the sixty-bed dormitory, the women turned down the mussed toweling sheets from the bolsters across the reddish gray spreads. "my clothes dried on me after the rain, and i do be coughing till my chest is sore," said the girl who had sat next me at the table and was next me in the sleeping room. "there was too many at the dispensary to wait." out of a sagging pocket in her creased mackintosh she took a clothes brush. she slipped her skirt from under her coat and with her blue-cold hand passed the flat brush back and forth over the muddy hem. "if i had a bit o' black for my shoes now--with your clothes i could get me a housemaid's job easy," her muffler covered the fact that she had no shirtwaist. then she added encouragingly: "you'd better get a job quick. there's only one blanket on these beds and clothes run down using them for covers at night." opposite us a gray-cheeked mother was wrapping a black petticoat about the legs of a small child. she tucked the little girl in the narrow bed they were both to sleep in, and babbled softly to the drowsy child: "no place yet. my heart do be falling out o' me. well, i'm not to blame because it's you that keeps me from getting it. you--" she bent over the bed and ended sharply: "oh, my darling, shall we die in dublin?" through the dusk, above the sound of coughing and canvas stretching as the women settled themselves for the night, there rose the soft voices of two women telling welcome fairy stories to each other: "it was a wild night," said one. "she was going along the liffey, and the wind coming up from the sea blew the cape about her face and she half fell into the water. he caught her, they kept company for seven years and then he married her. who do you suppose he turned out to be? why, a wealthy london baker. och, god send us all fortune." there was silence, then the whisper of the mother: "look up to the windows, darling. there's just a taste of daylight left." gradually it grew dark and quiet in this vault of human misery. then, far away from some remote chapel in the house, there floated the triumphant words of the practising choir: "alleluia! alleluia!" ill. what do emigration and low wages do to irish health? social conditions result in an extraordinary percentage of tuberculosis and lunacy, and in a baby shortage in ireland. individual propensities to sexual excess or common crime are, incidentally, responsible for little of the ill health in ireland. ireland's tuberculosis rate is higher than that of most of the countries in the "civilized" world. through sir william thompson, registrar-general of ireland, i was given much material about tuberculosis in ireland. an international pre-war chart showed ireland fourth on the tuberculosis list--it was exceeded only by austria, hungary, and servia.[ ] during the war, ireland's tuberculosis mortality rate showed a tendency to increase; in , her death list from tuberculosis was , and in it was , .[ ] emigration is heat to the tuberculosis thermometer. why? sir robert matheson, ex-registrar-general of ireland, explained at a meeting of the woman's national health association. the more fit, he said, emigrate, and the less fit stay home and propagate weak children. besides, emigrants who contract the disease elsewhere come home to die. many so return from the united states. numbers of the , annual migrants from the west coast of ireland to the english harvests return to nurse the tuberculosis they contracted across the channel. dr. birmingham, of the westport union, is quoted as saying that in september a disease known locally as the "english cold" is prevalent among the young men who have been harvesting in england. sometimes it is simple bronchitis. mostly it is incipent phthisis. it is easily traced to the wretched sleeping places called "paddy houses" in which irish laborers are permitted to be housed in england. these "paddy houses" are often death traps--crowded, dark, unventilated barns in which the men have to sleep on coarse bags on the floor.[ ] the irish wage causes tuberculosis to mount higher. dr. andrew trimble, chief tuberculosis officer for belfast, comments on the fact that the sex affected proves that economic conditions are to blame. under conditions of poverty, women become ill more quickly than men. dr. trimble writes: "in belfast and in ireland generally more females suffer from tuberculosis than males. in great britain, however, the reverse is the case.... in former years, however, they had much the same experience as we have in ireland ... and it would be necessary to go back over twenty-five years to come to a point where the mortality from tuberculosis among women equalled that now obtaining with us. it would seem that the hardships associated with poor economic conditions--insufficient wages, bad housing and want of fresh air, good food and sufficient clothing--tell more heavily on the female than on the male, and with the march of progress and better conditions of living ... tuberculosis amongst women is automatically reduced."[ ] the irish wage must choose a tuberculosis incubator for a home. ireland is a one-room-home country. in the great "rural slum" districts, the one-room cabin prevails. country slums exist where homes cannot be supported by the land they are built on--they occur, for instance, in the rocky fields of galway and donegal and in the stripped bog lands of sligo. galway and donegal cabins are made of stones wrested from the ground; in mayo, the walls are piled sod--mud cabins. roofing these western homes is the "skin o' th' soil" or sod with the grass roots in it. through the homemade roofs or barrel chimneys the wet atlantic winds often pour streams of water that puddle on the earthen floors. at one end of the cabin is a smoky dent that indicates the fireplace; and at the other there may be a stall or two. the small, deep-set windows are, as a rule, "fixed." rural slums are rivaled by city slums. even in the capital of ireland the poor are housed as badly as in the west of ireland. looking down on the city of dublin from the tower of st. patrick's cathedral, one can see roofs so smashed in that they look as if some giant had walked over them; great areas so packed with buildings that there are only darts of passageways for light and air. in ancient plaster cabins, in high old edifices with pointed huguenot roofs, in georgian mansion tenements, there are , families whose homes are one-room homes. dublin's proportion of those who live more than two to a room is higher than that of any other city in the british isles--london has . ; edinburgh, . ; dublin, . .[ ] in one-room homes tuberculosis breeds fast. a table from the dispensary for tuberculosis patients, an institution built in dublin as a memorial to the american, p.f. collier, shows that out of , cases came from one-room homes.[ ] as a type case, the report instances this: "nine members of the w---- family were found living in one room together in a condition bordering on starvation. both parents were very tubercular. the father had left the sanatorium of the south dublin union on hearing of the mother's delicacy. he hoped to earn a little to support the family that had been driven to such a state through illness that, houseless, it had had to sleep on stairs. the only regular income was $ . a week earned by the eldest girl, aged , in a factory. owing to want of food and unhealthy surroundings, she was in so run down a condition that it seemed certain she would become tubercular if not at once removed." the irish wage can't buy the "good old diet." milk and stirabout and potatoes once grew rosy-cheeked children. but bread and tea is the general diet now. war rations? ireland was not put on war rations. to regulate the amount of butter and bacon per family would have been superfluous labor. few families got even war rations.[ ] charitable organizations doubt if they should give relief to families who are able to have an occasional meal of potatoes in addition to their bread and tea. in a recent pamphlet[ ] the st. vincent de paul society said: "a widow ... who after paying the rent of her room, has a shilling a day to feed herself and two, three, four or even more children, is considered a doubtful case by the society. yet a shilling a day will only give the family bread and tea for every meal, with an occasional dish of potatoes. by strict economy a little margarine may be purchased, but by no process of reasoning may it be said that the family has enough to eat, or suitable food." the irish wage would have to be a high wage to buy the old diet. for that is not supplied by ireland for ireland any more. when ireland became a cow lot, cereal and vegetable crops became few. but milk should be plentiful? the recent vice-regal milk commission noted the lack of milk for the poor in ireland. why? the town of naas tells one reason. naas is in the midst of a grazing country, but naas babies have died for want of milk, because naas cattle are raised for beef exportation. the town of ennis tells another reason. ennis is also in the center of a grazing country. until the woman's national health association established a depot, ennis poor could not get retailed pitchersful of milk, for ennis cows are raised to supply wholesale cansful to creameries which make the supply into dairy products for exportation.[ ] bread-and-tea, and bread-and-tealess families get on the calling list of tuberculosis nurses. "the nurses often found," writes the woman's national health association, "that a large number of cases committed to their care were in an advanced stage of the disease ... in a number of cases families have been found entirely without food. this chronic state of lack of nourishment ... accounts in part for the fact that there are two and sometimes three persons affected in the same family."[ ] has mental as well as physical health been affected? lunacy is extraordinarily prevalent in ireland. in the lunacy inspectors' office in dublin castle, i was given the last comparison they had published of the insanity rates in england and wales, scotland and ireland. english and welsh insanity per , people was . ; scottish, . ; irish, . . the irish rate for showed an increase to . .[ ] emigration, remark lunacy experts, fostered lunacy. whole families withdrew from certain districts. consanguineous marriages became more frequent. weak-minded cousins wedded to bring forth weaker-minded children. and irish living conditions are a nemesis. they affect those who go as well as those who stay. commenting on the fact that the irish contribute the highest proportion of the white foreign-born population to the american hospitals for the insane, as well as filling their own asylums, the lunacy inspectors write: "as to why this should be, we can offer no reasoned explanation: but just as the irish famine was, apart from its direct effects, responsible for so much physical and mental distress in the country, so it would seem not improbable that the innutritious dietary and other deprivations of the majority of the population of ireland must, when acting over many generations, have led to impaired nutrition of the nervous system, and in this way have developed in the race those neuropathic and psychopathic tendencies which are precursors of insanity."[ ] babies don't like mentally and physically worn-out parents. babies used to be thought to have special predilection for ireland. but as a matter of fact, they come to the island less and less. ireland has for some time produced fewer babies to the thousand people than scotland. during the decade - scotland's annual average to every thousand people was . ;[ ] ireland's was . . from to ireland's total number of babies fell from , to , .[ ] but as was said in the beginning, it is not to individual excess that most of the ill health in ireland is due. it was not until recently that venereal disease as a factor in irish ill health has been a factor worth mentioning. in a lunacy report read: "the statistics show that general paralysis of the insane--a disease now almost unknown in ireland--is increasing in the more populous urban districts. at the same time the disease is still much less prevalent than in other countries, and in the rural districts it is practically non-existent. this is to a large extent due to the high standard of sexual morality that prevails all over ireland."[ ] nor do the irish suffer from the violence that accompanies common crime--for there is little crime under the most crime-provoking conditions. as the countess of aberdeen said: "in the past annual report by sir charles cameron, the medical officer of health for dublin, there are again some figures that tell a strange tale of poverty so widespread, of destitution so complete, of housing so unsanitary, of unemployment so little heeded, that one is amazed by the fact that no combined effort on the part of more fortunate citizens has been made toward bringing about a wholesome change, and this amazement is only lessened by the extraordinary freedom we in dublin enjoy from robberies, peculations, from crimes of violence and other misdeeds that would sharpen our perception of miseries now borne with a fortitude and a self-restraint that cannot but appeal strongly to any who, either from personal experience or philanthropic reading, know how crime and vice are associated elsewhere with conditions not more distressing and often less long-lived than ours."[ ] school closed there's small chance for the irish to better their condition through education. many irish children don't go to school. it is estimated that out of , school children, , do not attend school. why not? here are two reasons advanced by the vice-regal committee on primary education, ireland, in its report published by his majesty's stationers, dublin, : many families are too poor. england does not encourage irish education. irish poverty is recognized in the school laws; the irish education act passed by parliament in is full of excuses for children who must go to work instead of to school. thousands of irish youngsters must avail themselves of these excuses. ireland has , children under the age of at work. but scotland with virtually the same population has only , .[ ] eight-year-old michael mallin drags kelp out of a rush basket and packs it down for fertilizer between the brown ridges of the little hand-spaded field in donegal. "is there no school to be going to, michael?" "there do be a school, but to help my da' there is no one home but me." the act says that the following is a "reasonable excuse for the non-attendance of a child, namely, ... being engaged in necessary operations of husbandry."[ ] ten-year-old margaret duncan can be found sitting hunched up on a doorstep in a back street in belfast. her skirt and the step are webbed with threads clipped from machine-embroidered linen, or pulled from handkerchiefs for hemstitching. a few doors away little helen keefe, all elbows, is scrubbing her front steps. "but school's on." "aye," responds margaret, "but our mothers need us." the act plainly states that another reasonable excuse is "domestic necessity or other work requiring to be done at a particular time or season."[ ] william brady has a twelve-hour day in dublin. he's out in the morning at : to deliver papers. he's at school until three. he runs errands for the sweet shop till seven. "you get too tired for school work. how does your teacher like that?" "ash! she can't do anything." intuitively he knows that he can protect himself behind the fortress of words in the school attendance act: "a person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved that the employment by reason of being during the hours when school is not in session does not interfere with the efficient elementary instruction of the child."[ ] nine-year-old patrick gallagher may go to the letterkenny hiring fair and sell his baby services to a farmer. some one may say to paddy: "why aren't you at school?" "surely, i live over two miles away from school." the law thinks two miles are too far for him to walk. so he may be hired to work instead. reads the education act: "a person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved to the satisfaction of the court that during the employment there is not within two miles ... from the residence of the child any ... school which the child can attend."[ ] incidentally england does not encourage irish education. england does not provide enough money to erect the best schools nor to attract the best teachers. but england agreed to an irish education grant.[ ] she established a central board of education in ireland, and promised that through this board she would pay two-thirds of the school building bill and teachers' salaries to any one who was zealous enough to erect a school. does england come through with the funds? not, says the vice-regal committee, unless she feels like it. in she agreed with ireland that ireland's teachers should be paid higher salaries, but stipulated that the increase in salaries would not mean an immediate increase in grants. new building grants were suspended altogether for a time. in , an annual grant of £ , was diverted from irish primary education and used for quite extraneous purposes. and when england does give money for irish education, she pays no heed to the requirements stated by the irish commissioners of education.[ ] instead she says: "this amount i happen to be giving to english education; i will grant a proportionate amount to irish education." "if english primary education happens to require financial aid from the treasury, irish primary education is to get some and in proportion thereto," writes the committee. "if england happens not to require any, then, of course, neither does ireland. a starving man is to be fed only if some one else is hungry.... it seems to us extraordinary that irish primary education should be financed on lines that have little relation to the needs of the case."[ ] so there are not enough schools to go to. belfast teachers testified before the committee that in their city alone there were , children without school accommodations. some of the number are on the streets. others are packed into educational holes of calcutta. new schools, said the teachers, are needed not only for these pupils but also for those incarcerated in unsuitable schools--unheated schools or schools in whose dark rooms gas must burn daily. on the point of unsuitability, the testimony of a special investigator named f.h. dale was quoted. he said: "i have no hesitation in reporting that both in point of convenience for teachers and in the requirements necessary for the health of teachers and scholars, the average school buildings in dublin and belfast are markedly inferior to the average school buildings now in use in english cities of corresponding size." so if unsuitable schools were removed, belfast would have to provide for some thousands of school children beyond the estimate of , , and other localities according to their similar great need.[ ] live, interesting primary teachers are few in ireland. the low pay does not begin to compensate irish school teachers for the great sacrifices they must make. women teachers in ireland begin at $ a year; men at $ . if it were not for the fact that there are very few openings for educated young men and women in a grazing country there would probably be even greater scarcity.[ ] since three-fourths of the schools are rural those who determine to teach must resign themselves to social and professional hermitage. what is the result of these factors on the teaching morale? the report at the education office shows , teachers, and only , of these are marked highly efficient.[ ] thus the committee of the lord lieutenant. [footnote : "ireland's crusade against tuberculosis." edited by countess of aberdeen. maunsel and company. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : "marriages, births, and deaths in ireland, ." his majesty's stationery office. dublin. . p. ix.] [footnote : "ireland's crusade against tuberculosis." p. - .] [footnote : "report of chief tuberculosis officer of belfast for the three years ended march, ." hugh adair. belfast. . p. .] [footnote : "appendix report housing conditions of dublin." alex thorn. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : "first annual report p.f. collier memorial dispensary." dollard. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : "starvation in dublin." by lionel gordon-smith and cruise o'brien. wood printing works. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : "the poor in dublin." pamphlet. st. vincent de paul society.] [footnote : "how local milk depots in ireland are worked." dollard. dublin. . p. - .] [footnote : "second annual report of the woman's national health association." waller and company. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : "supplement fifty-fourth report inspectors of lunacy." alex thorn. dublin. . p. vii.] [footnote : _ibid_. p. xxvii.] [footnote : "sixty-second annual report of the registrar general for scotland, ." his majesty's stationery office. edinburgh. . p. lxvii.] [footnote : "marriages, births, and deaths in ireland, ." p. xii.] [footnote : "supplement fifty-fourth report inspectors of lunacy." p. xxxii.] [footnote : "the woman's national health association and infant welfare." the child. june, . p. .] [footnote : figures supplied by h.c. ferguson, superintendent of charity organization society, belfast, .] [footnote : "irish education act, ." ( & vict.) chap. . p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. et al.] [footnote . "vice-regal committee of enquiry into primary education, ireland, ." his majesty's stationery office. dublin. . p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. martin reservation. p. - .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] [footnote : _ibid_. p. .] ii sinn fein and revolution will social condition lead to immediate revolution? "eamonn de valera, the president of the irish republic, who has been in hiding since his escape from lincoln jail, will be welcomed back to dublin by a public reception. tomorrow evening at seven o'clock he will be met at the mount street bridge by lawrence o'neill, lord mayor of dublin...." the news note was in the morning papers. in small type it was hidden on the back pages--the irish papers have a curious habit of six-pointing articles in which the people are vitally interested and putting three-column heads on such stuff as: "do dublin girls rouge?" that day the concern of the people was unquestionably not rouge but republics. for the question that sibilated in grafton street cafes and at the tram change at nelson pillar was: "will dublin castle permit?" orders and gun enforcement. the empire did not deviate from the usual program of empires--action without discussion. in the crises that are always occurring between organized revolt and the empire, there is never any consideration of the physical agony that goads the people to revolt. there wasn't now. by early afternoon, the answer, on great, black-lettered posters, was swabbed to the sides of buildings all over town: "de valera reception forbidden!" that was the headline, and after instructions warning the people not to take part in the ceremony, the government order ended: "god save the king!" how would the revolutionaries reply? rumors ran riot. the sinn fein volunteers would pit themselves against his majesty's troops. the streets would be red again. the belief that the meeting would be held in spite of the proclamation was supported by a statement on green-lettered posters that appeared later next the british dictum: "lord mayor requests good order at reception!" this plea was followed by a paragraph asking that the people attending the reception would not allow themselves to be provoked into disorder by the british military. then there was the concluding exclamation: "god save ireland!" on my way to the sinn fein headquarters in harcourt street, i passed the mansion house of the lord mayor and found two long-coated dublin military police stripping the new wet poster from the yellow walls. when i arrived at number , harcourt street, i saw black-clad mrs. sheehy-sheffington, in somewhat agitated absorption of thought, coming down the worn steps of the old georgian house. in the upper back room, earnest young secretaries worked in swift silence. one of them, a curly-haired girl with her mouth o-ed about a cigarette, puffed unceasingly. at last harry boland, secretary of sinn fein, entered. "the council decides tonight," he admitted. his eyes were bright and faraway like one whose mind is on a coming crisis. when i told him i would drop in again to hear the decision, he protested that they would be at it till late. on my counter protest that time made no difference to me, he promised that if i would not come he would send me word at eleven that night. "but i think," he added, "we won't know till morning." at ten that night, boots knocked at my door. i concluded that there had been a stampeded decision. but on going out i discovered the associated press correspondent there. he told me that he heard that i was to receive the news and that he did not believe that there was any necessity of bothering the sinn feiners twice for the same decision. "i think the reception is quite likely," he volunteered. "this afternoon a good many of the sinn fein army were at university chapel at confession. at the girls' hostels of national university--which is regarded as a sort of adolescent sinn fein headquarters--there have been strict orders that the girls are to remain indoors tomorrow night." when the messenger arrived at eleven to say that no decision had been reached, i made an appointment for an interview on the following day with devalera. electricity was in the air by morning. there were all sorts of sparks. young men in civilian clothes ran for trams with their hands over their hip pockets. a delightful girl whom i had met, boarded my car with a heavy parcel in her hands. as the british officer next me rose to give her his seat, her cheeks became very pink. sometime later she told me that, like the rest of the sinn fein volunteers, she had received her mobilization orders, and that the parcel the officer had relented for was--her rifle. at that time, her division of the woman's section of the sinn fein volunteers was pressing a plan for the holding of the reception. in order, however, that no needed fighters would be killed, the girls had asked that they should be first to meet the president. then, when the machine guns commenced, "only girls" would fall. into college green a brute of a tank had cruised. the man in charge was inviting people to have a look. inside there were red-lipped munition boxes, provender cases, and through the skewer-sized sight-holes next the jutting guns, there were glimpses of shoppers emerging from grafton street into the green. over the city, against the silver-rimmed, irish gray clouds, aeroplanes--there were sixteen in one formation--buzzed insistently. between the little stone columns of the roof railing of trinity college, machine guns poked out their cold snouts. "smoke bombs were dropped over mount street bridge today," said harry boland with a shrug of his shoulders when i arrived at sinn fein headquarters to ask if the reception would still be held. "what can we do against a force like theirs?" but there was a strained feeling at headquarters as if the decision had been made after a hard fight. alderman thomas kelly, one of the oldest of the sinn feiners, told me that he had backed devalera in his refusal to countenance a needless loss of life, and that it was only after a good struggle that their point had won. "devalera's just beyond the town," whispered harry boland to me when he decided that we would leave to see the president at seven--the hour the executive was due to appear at the bridge. "they're searching all the cars that cross the canal bridges. if there is any trouble as we pass just say that you are an american citizen--that'd get you through anywhere." knots of still expectant people were gathered at the mount street bridge. squads of long-coated military police patrolled the place. children called at games. the starlight dripped into the canal. at portobello bridge we made our crossing. nothing happened. the constables did not even punch the cushions of our car as they did with others to see if munitions were concealed therein. we swooped down curving roads between white walls hung with masses of dark laurel. we stopped dead on a road arched with trees. we got out, clicked the car door softly shut, turned a corner, and walked some distance in the cool night. as we walked i made i forget what request in regard to the interview from young mr. boland, and with the reverent regard and complete obedience to devalera's wishes that is characteristic in the young sinn feiners--a state of mind that does not, however, prevent calling the president "dev"--he said simply: "but i must do what he tells me." at the door of a modestly comfortable home whose steps we mounted, a thick-set man blocked my way for a moment. "you won't," he asked, "say where you came?" "i'm sure," i returned, "i haven't an idea where i am." devalera was giving rapid, almost breathless, orders in irish to some one as i entered his room. his thin frame towered above a dark plush-covered table. a fire behind him surrounded him with a soft yellow aura. his white, ascetic, young--he is thirty-seven--face was lined with determination. doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portières, and the walls were almost as white as devalera's face. "pardon us for speaking irish," he apologized. "we forget. now first of all, we will go over the questions you sent me. i have written the answers. they must appear as i have put them down. that is the condition on which the interview takes place." did sinn fein plan immediate revolution? the president ran a fountain pen under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he was not a writer but a mathematician. no. the sudden set of the president's jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the rebellion till even his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no reception at the bridge. no. there would be no armed revolt till all peaceable methods had failed. if sinn fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a bolshevistic government? devalera returned that he was not sure what bolshevism is. as far as he understood bolshevism, sinn fein was not bolshevistic. but perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as misrepresented in the american press as sinn fein. right there, i took exception and said that from his own point of view i did not see what good slurring the american press would do his cause. immediately he answered as if only the principal phase of the matter had occurred to him: "but it's true." then he continued: the worker is unfairly treated. whether it is bolshevistic or not, sinn fein hopes to bring about a government in which there will be juster conditions for the laboring classes. cause and remedy of social conditions. the empire does not consider the cause of revolt.[ ] but the republic is interested not only in the cause but also in the remedy. relief, the republic has said, must come through sinn fein--ourselves. neither the sinn fein leaders nor the people believe in the power of the irish vote in the british house of commons. at the last general elections the sinn fein party pledged that if its members were elected they would not go to the british parliament, but would remain at home to form the irish parliament, the governing body of the irish republic. dodgers explaining why sinn fein had decided to forego the house of commons were widely distributed. these read: "what good has parliamentarianism been? for thirty-three years england has been considering home rule while irish members pleaded for it. but in three weeks the english parliament passed a conscriptive act for ireland, though the irish party was solid against it." on this platform, sinn fein won seventy-three out of seats. if sinn fein is to relieve the social conditions in ireland, it must, say sinn feiners, find out the cause. so they have pondered on this question: what is the cause of the unemployment in ireland today? the answer to that question was the one point that the sharp-mustached, sardonic little arthur griffith, founder of sinn fein, wanted the american delegates from the philadelphia race convention to carry back to america. it was revealed at a meeting of the irish parliament specially called for the delegates. cards were difficult to get for that meeting, and as each one passed through the long dreary ante-room of the circular assembly hall of the mansion house, he was subjected to close scrutiny by the two dozen irish volunteers on guard. in the civilian audience there was a sprinkling of american and australian officers. up on the platform was the throne of the lord mayor, in front of which sat the delegates--frank walsh, edward f. dunne, and michael ryan. in a roped-off semi-circle below the platform were deep upholstered chairs wherein rested the members of the irish parliament. countess markewicz was, of course, the only woman there. white-haired, trembling-handed laurence ginnel, who is given long jail terms because he refuses to take his hat off in a british court, sat forward on his chair. the rich young protestant named robert barton regarded the crowd through his shining eyeglasses. keen, boyish michael collins, minister of finance, fingered the paper he was going to read. the last two men had recently escaped from prison and were wanted by the police--both, as they say in ireland, were "on the run." "england kills irish industry," said the succinct arthur griffith as he rose from the right hand of devalera to address the delegates. "early in the nineteenth century, england wanted a cheap meat supply center. she therefore made it more profitable for the landowners in ireland to grow cattle instead of crops. only a few herders are required in cattle care. so literally millions of irish, tillers of the soil and millers of grain, were thrown out of employment, and from to the population fell from , , to , , . today, ireland, capable of supporting , , , cannot maintain , , ."[ ] what is the sinn fein remedy for unemployment? industry. plans were then under way for devalera to make his escape to america to obtain american capital to back irish industry. but money was not to be his sole business. he was to work for the recognition of irish consuls and irish mercantile marine. and inside ireland the movement to establish industry on a sound basis was going on. irish banks, irish courts, irish schools are to sustain the movement. at present the english-controlled irish banks handicap irish entrepreneurs by charging them one per cent more interest than english banks charge english borrowers; therefore, a national bank is regarded as an imperative need. decisions of british judges in irish courts may hamper irish industry; so in parts of the country perfectly legal courts of arbitration manned by irishmen have been established. school children under the present system of education are trained neither to commerce nor to love of the development of their native land; accordingly a sinn fein school fund is now being collected so that the irish parliament may soon be able to take over national education. sinn fein could develop industry more easily if ireland were free.[ ] there is hope. it lies in ireland's very lack of jobs. british labor does not like the competition of the cheap labor market next door. it rather welcomes the party that would push irish industry. for with irish industry developed irish labor would become scarce and high. already the british labor party has declared in favor of the self-determination of ireland, and it is expected that with its accession to power there may be a final granting of self-determination to ireland. as we were leaving the mansion house--to which some of us were invited to return to a reception for the delegates that evening--i found intense reaction to the speakers of the day. i asked a young american non-commissioned officer how he liked devalera. he seemed to be as stirred by the name as the young members of devalera's regiment who besiege mrs. devalera for some little valueless possession of the "chief's." the boy drew in his breath, and i expected him to let it out again in a flow of praise, but emotion seemed to get the better of him, and all he could manage was a fervent: "oh, gee!" then i came across young sylvia pankhurst, disowned by her family for her communist sympathies, and in dublin for the purpose of persuading the irish parliament to become soviet. the irish speakers, she told me, were much to be preferred to the americans. they used more figures and less figures of speech. and when i repeated her remark to desmond fitzgerald, a pink and fastidious member of parliament, he smilingly commented: "well, we irish are more sophisticated, aren't we?" the mailed fist in the afternoon the curtain went up on a matinee performance of the mailed fist. the first act was in the home of madame gonne-mcbride. it was, properly, an exposition of the power of the enemy. with madame gonne-mcbride, once called the most beautiful woman in europe, sylvia pankhurst, and the sister, of robert barton, i entered the big house on stephen's green. modern splashily vivid wall coloring. japanese screens. ancient carved madonnas. two big airedales thudded up and down in greeting to their mistress. i spoke of their unusual size. madame gonne-mcbride, taking the head of one of them between her hands: "they won't let any one arrest me again, will they?" she is tall and slim in her deep mourning--her husband was killed in the rebellion of . her widow's bonnet is a soft silky guipure lace placed on her head like a red cross worker's coif. on the breast of her black gown there hangs a large dull silver cross. beggars and flower-sellers greet her by name. it is said that a large part of her popularity is due to her work in obtaining free school lunches. anyway, there was great grief among the people when she was thrown into jail for supposed complicity in the unproved german plot. the arrest, she said, came one sunday night. she was walking unconcernedly from one of george russell's weekly gatherings, when five husky constables blocked the bridge road and hurried her off to jail. at last, on account of her ill health, she was released from prison--very weak and very pale. enter seventeen-year-old sean mcbride. places back against the door. blue eyes wide. breathlessly: "they're after bob barton and michael collins. they've surrounded the mansion house." hatless we raced across stephen's green--that little handkerchief of a park that never seemed so embroidered with turns and bridges and bandstands and duck ponds before. through the crowd that had already gathered we edged our way till we came to the double line of bayonets and batons that guarded the entrance to dawson street. over the broad, blue shoulder of the policeman directly in front of me, i glimpsed a wicked-looking little whippet tank with two very conscious british officers just head and shoulders out. still further down were three covered motor lorries that had been used to convey the soldiers. sean, for the especial benefit of constable just ahead: "wars for democracy and small nations! and that's the only way they can keep us in the british empire. brute force. nice exhibition for the american journalists in town." constable stalked sean back to edge of crowd. sean looked at him steadily with slight twinkle in his eye. miss barton, miss pankhurst, and i climbed up a low stone wall that commanded the guarded street, and clung to the iron paling on top. sean came and stood beneath. miss pankhurst, regarding crowd in puzzled manner: "why do you all smile? when the suffragists were arrested we used to become furious." sean looking up at her in kindly manner in which old rebel might glance at impatient young rebel: "you forget. we're very used to this." miss pankhurst made an unexpected jump from her place. she wedged her way to the line of soldiers. as she talked to two young tommies they blushed and fiddled with their bayonets like girls with their first bouquets of flowers. twice a british major admonished them. miss pankhurst, returning: "welsh boys. just babies. i asked them why they came out armed to kill fellow workers. they said they had enlisted for the war. if they had known they were to be sent to ireland they would have refused to go. i told them it was not too late to act. they could take off their uniforms. but they? they're weak--weak." as dusk fell, party capes and tulle mists of head dresses began to appear between the drab or tattered suits of the bystanders. among the coming reception guests was susan mitchell, co-editor with george russell on _the irish homestead_. susan mitchell, of constable: "can't i go through? no? but there's to be a party, and the tea will get all cold." in the courage of the crowd, the people began to sing the soldiers' song. it took courage. it was shortly after john o'sheehan had been sentenced for two years for caroling another seditious lyric. a surge of sound brought out the words: "the west's awake!" dying yokes. and a sudden right-about-face movement of the throng. crowd shouting: "up the americans!" with sinn fein and american flags flying, the delegates' car rolled up to the outskirts of the crowd. a sharp order. the crowd-fearing bayonets lunged forward. frank walsh, looking through his tortoise-rim glasses at the steel fence, got out of his car. he walked up to the pointing bayonets, and asked for the man in charge. frank walsh: "what's the row?" the casualness of the question must have disarmed lieutenant-colonel johnstone of the dublin military police. he laughed. then conferred. while the confab was on, the countess markewicz slipped from mr. walsh's car to our paling. she was, as usual, dressed in a "prepared" style. she had on her green tweed suit with biscuits in the pockets, "so if anything happened." countess markewicz, rubbing her hands: "excellent propaganda! excellent propaganda!" the motor lorries chugged. soldiers broke line, and climbed in. the people screamed, jumped, waved their hands, and hurrahed for walsh. mr. walsh returned to his car. and in the path made by the heartily boohed motor lorries, the american's machine commenced its victorious passage to the mansion house. in order to get through the crowd to the reception we sprang to the rear of the motor. clinging to the dusty mudguard, i remarked to miss pankhurst that we would not look very partified. and she, pushed about by the tattered people, said she did not mind. long ago she had decided she would never wear evening dresses because poor people never have them. last act. turkish-rugged and velvet-portièred reception room of the mansion house. assorted people shaking hands with the delegates. delegates filled with boyish glee at the stagey turn of events. frank walsh: "look! there's bob barton talking to his sister. out there by the portrait of queen victoria--see that man in a green uniform. that's michael collins of the irish volunteers and minister of finance of the irish republic. the very men they're after. "is this a play? or a dream?" [footnote . british propaganda, on the contrary, states that the irish are not in the physical agony of extreme poverty. they are prosperous. they made money on munitions, and their exports increased enormously during the war. "you could eat shell as easily as make it," was one of the first parliamentary rebuffs received by irishmen asking the establishment of national munition factories at the beginning of the war, according to edward j. riordan. mr. riordan is secretary of the national industrial development association. this is a non-political organization of which the countess of desart, the earl of carrick, and colonel sir nugent everard are some of the executive members. it was not until that ireland secured consideration of her rights to a share in the war expenditure. in that year, an all-ireland committee called on lloyd george. he said: "it is fair that ireland, contributing as she does not only in money but in flesh and blood, should have her fair share of expenditure.... i should be prepared to utilize whatever opportunities we can to utilize the opportunity this gives you to develop ireland industrially." after persistent effort, however, all that the all-ireland committee was able to get was five small munition factories. _the insignificance of these plants may be realized from the fact that at the time the armistice was declared there were only , workers in them._ as to trade increase:--when i was in ireland in , the last export statistics given out by the government were for . in exports were valued at $ , , ; in , at $ , , . but, according to the board of trade, prices had doubled in that time, so that _if exports had remained stationary, their value should have doubled to_ $ , , .] [footnote . that england controls this industrial situation was made clear during the war. then ship tonnage was scarce, and england's regular resources of agricultural supply were cut off. so england called on ireland to revert to agriculture. ireland's tillage acreage jumped from , , in to , , in . this change in policy brought prosperity to some of the farmers, and ireland's bank deposits rose from $ , , in to $ , , in . but england is reestablishing her former agricultural trade connections. according to f.a. smiddy, professor of economics at university college, cork, a return to grazing has already commenced in ireland, and _"prosperity" will last at most only two post-war years._] [footnote . british taxation saps irish capital. the imperial annual tax took $ , , put of ireland and put back $ , , into irish administration. irishmen argue that the excess might better go to the development of ireland. figures supplied department of agriculture, .] iii irish labor and class revolution "a change of flags is not enough." in the sputtering flare of the arc lamp in front of liberty hall stood squads of boys. some of them wore brass-buttoned, green woolen waists, and some, ordinary cotton shirts. some of them had on uniform knickers, and some, long, unpressed trousers. on the opposite side of the street were blocked similar squads of serious-eyed, high-chinned girls. some of them were in green tweed suits, and others as they had come from work. they were companies of the citizens' army recruited by the irish labor party, and assembled in honor of the return of the countess markewicz from jail. "though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, we'll keep the red flag flying here." young voices, impatient of the interim of waiting, sang the socialist song. the burden was taken up by the laborers, whose constant movement to keep a good view was attested by the hollow sound of their wooden-soled boots on the stone walks. and the refrain was hummed by the shawled, frayed-skirted creatures who were coming up from talbot street, gloucester street, peterson's lane, and all the family-to-a-room districts in dublin. on the skeletonish railroad crossing suspended over the liffey, tin-hatted and bayonet-carrying british soldiers were silhouetted against the moon-whitened sky. up to them floated the last oath of "the red flag": "with heads uncovered swear we all, to bear it onward till we fall. come dungeon dark or gallows grim, this song shall be our parting hymn." clattered over the bridge the horse-dragged brake. in the light of a search lamp played on it from an automobile behind, a small figure in a slouch hat and a big black coat waved a bouquet of narcissus. there was a surge of the block-long crowds and people who could not see lifted their hands and shouted: "up the countess!" as we waited in the light of the dim yellow bulbs threaded from the ceiling of the big bare upper front room of liberty hall, susan mitchell told me of "the chivalrous woman." the countess is a daughter of the gore-booth family which owned its sligo estate before america was discovered. as a girl the countess used to ride fast horses like mad along the rocky western coast. then she became a three-feathered débutante bowing at dublin castle. later she painted pictures in paris and married her handsome pole. but one day some one put an irish history in her hands. in a sudden whole-hearted conversion to the cause of the people, the countess turned to aid the irish labor organizers. she drilled boy scouts for the citizens' army. she fed starving strikers during the labor troubles of with sheep sent daily from her sligo estate. in the rebellion of she fought and killed under michael mallin of the citizens' army. she was hardly out of jail for participation in the rebellion when she was clapped in again for alleged complicity in the never-to-be-proved german plot. while she was in jail, she was elected the first woman member of parliament. white from imprisonment, her small round steel-rimmed glasses dropping away from her blue eyes, and her curly brown hair wisping out from under her black felt hat, the countess embraced a few of the women in the room and exchanged handclasps with the men. below the crowd was clamoring for her appearance at the window. "fellow rebels!" she began as she leaned out into the mellow night. then with the apparent desire to say everything at once that makes her public speech stuttery, she continued: "it's good to come out of jail to this. it is good to come out again to work for a republic. let us all join hands to make the new republic a workers' republic. a change of flags is not enough!" two oil flares with orange flame throwing off red sparks on the crowd, were fastened to the brake below. it was the brake that was to carry "madame" on her triumphal tour of dublin. the boys of the citizens' army made a human rope about the conveyance. in it i climbed with the countess, the plump little mrs. james connolly, the magisterial countess plunkett, commandant o'neill of the citizens' army, sean milroy, who escaped from lincoln jail with devalera, and two or three others. rows of constables were backed against the walls at irregular intervals. i asked sean milroy if he were not afraid that he would be re-taken, and he responded comfortably that the "peelers" would never attempt to take a political prisoner out of a gathering like that. as we neared the poverty-smelling coombe district, the countess remarked that this, st. patrick's, was her constituency. at the shaft of st. james fountain, the brake was halted. shedding her long coat, and standing straight in her green tweed suit, with the plush seat of the brake for her floor, the countess told the cheering workers that she was going to come down to live in the coombe. heated with the energy of talking and throwing her body about so that her voice would carry over the crowd that circled her, the countess sank down on the seat. as the brake drove on, motherly little mrs. connolly tried to slip the big coat over the countess. but the countess, in one of those sudden meditative silences during which she seems to retain only a subconsciousness of her surroundings, refused the offer of warmth with a shrug of her shoulders. then, emerging from her pre-occupation, she demanded of sean milroy: "what have you planned for your constituency? i'm going to have a soviet." the workers' republic like the countess, the irish labor party wants a workers' republic. but it wants a republic first. the irish labor party has been accused of accepting russian roubles, of hiding bags of bolshevik gold in the basement of liberty hall. whether it has taken russian gold or not, it is frankly desirous of possessing the russian form of government. james connolly, who is largely responsible for the present labor party in ireland, was, like lenin and trotsky, a marxian socialist, and worked for government by the proletariat. the irish labor party celebrated the russian revolution by calling a "bolshevik" meeting and cheering under a red flag in the assembly room of the mansion house. and in its last congress, it reaffirmed its "adherence to the principles of freedom, democracy, and peace enunciated in the russian revolution." how strong are the revolutionaries? the irish labor party is new but it already contains about , members.[ ] it plans to include every worker from the "white collar" to the "muffler" labor. and the laborers alone make up seven-eighths of the population. for while there are just , members of the professional and commercial classes, there are , , who are in agricultural, industrial and indefinite classes[ ]--most of the farmers are held to be laborers because outside the great estates, holdings average at thirty acres and are worked by the holders themselves.[ ] there's the revolutionary rub. the irish farmers make up the largest body of workers in ireland. the irish farmer sweated and bled for his land. would he yield it now for nationalization? i put the question up to william o'brien, the lame, never-smiling tailor who is secretary of the irish labor party. he said that the farm hand should be taken into consideration. the farm hand would profit by nationalization. at present he is condemned to slavery. at a hiring fair--called a "slave market" by the labor unions--he stands between the mooing cows and snorting pigs and offers his services for sale for as little as $ a year. he may wish to get more money. but his employer is also very often his landlord. what happens? in the spring of , , farm hands went on strike. lord bellew of ballyragget and lord powerscourt of enniskerry used the eviction threat to get the men back to work, and in rhode, evictions actually took place. the small farmer on bad land would profit by re-distribution. many such live in the west and northwest of ireland. take a farmer of donegal. there there's stony, boggy land. fires must be built about the stones so that the soil will lose its grip upon them and they may be hauled away to help make fences. immovable boulders are frequent, so frequent that the soil cannot be ploughed but must be spaded by hand. seaweed for fertilizer must be plucked from the rocks in the sea, carried up the mountain side and laid black and thick in the sterile brown furrows. near dungloe in donegal, one holding of acres was recently valued at $ . , and another of at $ . . so the labor party is confident of bringing over the farmers to its point of view. on the whole, it is said, the way of the labor propagandist is easy, for capital in ireland is very weak. first, there is very little of it. in the total income tax of the british isles was £ , , ; ireland with one-tenth the population contributed only one-fortieth of the tax. in the same year, the total excess profits tax was £ , , and ireland's proportion was slightly less than for the income tax.[ ] second, what capital there is, is not effectively organized. the first national commercial association is just forming in dublin. whether the future prove the numerical strength of labor or not, the leaders are determined that labor will be organically strong. it is developing a pyramid form of government. irish labor fosters the "one big union." in some towns all the labor, from teachers to dock-workers, have already coalesced. these unions select their district heads. the district heads are subsidiary to the general head in dublin. when each union inside the big union is ready to take over its industry, and their district and general heads are ready to take over government there will be a general strike for this end. the strike will be supported by the army--the citizens' army of the workers. "there you have," said james connolly, who promoted the one big union, "not only the most effective combination for industrial warfare, but also for the social administration of the future."[ ] "certainly we mean to take over industry by force if necessary," affirmed thomas johnson, treasurer of the irish labor party. he is a big-browed man with thick, pompadoured, gray hair, and the aspect of a live professor. some people call him the coming leader of ireland. in answer to my statement that it wouldn't be a very hard job to take over irish industry, he smiled and said: "that's why we welcome the entrance of outside capital into ireland. the more industry is developed, the less we will have to do afterward." the republic first labor agrees with sinn fein not only that irish industry must be developed but also that ireland must have independence. after the national war, the class war must come. first freedom from exploitation by capitalistic nations, and then freedom from capitalistic individuals. many socialists, it is said, do not understand why ireland should not plunge at once into the class war. it was a matter of regret to james connolly that many of his fellow socialists the world over would never understand his participation in the rebellion of . nora connolly, the smiling boy-like girl who smokes and works by a grate in liberty hall, says that on the eve of his execution, when he lay in bed with his leg shattered by a gun wound, her father said to her: "the socialists will never understand why i am here. they all forget i am an irishman." but james connolly's fellow socialists in ireland understand "why he was there," they back his participation in the national war. and they know every irishman will. so they go to the workers and say: "jim connolly died to make ireland free." then while the workers cheer, they swiftly show why connolly advocated the class war, too: "jim connolly lived to make ireland free. he believed that the world is for the man who works in it, but in ireland he saw seven-eighths of the people in the working class, and he knew that to these people life means crowded one-room homes, endless fridays, no schools or virtually none, and churches where resignation is preached to them. so his life was a dangerous fight to organize workers that they might become strong enough to take what is theirs." at liberty hall, one is told that the martyr's name is magnetizing the masses into the irish labor party. and, in order to propagate his ideas, the people are contributing their coppers towards a fund for the permanent establishment of the james connolly labor college. so labor fights for a republic first. at the last general elections it withdrew all its labor party candidates that the sinn fein candidates might have a clear field to demonstrate to the world how unified is irish sentiment in favor of a republic. and at the international labor and socialist conference held in berne in , cathal o'shannon, the bright young labor leader who goes about with his small frame swallowed up in an overcoat too big for him, made this declaration: "irish labor reaffirms its declaration in favor of free and absolute self-determination of each and every people, the irish included, in choosing the sovereignty and form of government under which it shall live. it rejoices that this self-determination has now been assured to the jugo-slavs, czecho-slovaks, alsatians and lorrainers, as well as to the finns, poles, ukrainians, and now to the arabs. this is not enough and it is not impartial. to be one and the other, this principle must also be applied in the same sense and under the same conditions to the peoples of ireland, india, egypt, and to such other people as have not yet secured the exercise of the inherent right.... irish labor claims no more and no less for ireland than for the others." after the republic, a workers' republic? after sinn fein, the labor party? madame markewicz is high in the councils of both sinn fein and labor. one day, lost in one of her trance-like meditations in which she states her intuitions with absolute disregard of expediency, she said to me: "labor will swamp sinn fein." [footnote . figures supplied by william o'brien, secretary irish labor party and trade union congress, .] [footnote . census of .] [footnote . figures supplied by department of agriculture of ireland, .] [footnote . figures read by thomas lough, m.p., in house of commons, may , .] [footnote . "reconquest of ireland," by james connolly. maunsel and company. . p. .] iv ae's peaceful revolution "the co-operative commonwealth" it was very dark. i could not find the number. the flat-faced little row of houses was set far back on the green. but at last i mounted some lofty steps, and entered a brown linoleum-covered hallway. in the front parlor sat the hostess. she was like some family portrait with her hair parted and drawn over her ears, with her black taffeta gown surmounted by a cameo-pinned lace collar. she poured tea. in a back parlor whose walls were hung with unframed paintings, a big brown-bearded man was passing teacups to women who were lounging in chairs and to men who stood black against the red glow of the grate. the big man was george russell, the famous ae, poet, painter and philosopher, the "north star of ireland." at last he sat down on the edge of a chair--his blue eyes atwinkle as if he knew some good secret of the happy end of human struggling and was only waiting the proper moment to tell. this much he did reveal as he gestured with the pipe that was more often in his hand than in his mouth: it is his belief that all acts purposed for good work out towards good. he gives ear to all sincere radicals, sinn feiners and "reds." but he states that he believes he is the only living pacifist, and disputes the value of bloody methods. he advocates the peaceful revolution of co-operation. his powerfully gentle personality has an undoubted effect on the revolutionaries, and while neither element wants to embrace pacifism, both want ae's revolution to go forward with theirs. his gaiety at the little sunday evenings which he holds quite regularly, goes far, i am told, towards easing the strain on the taut nerves of the sinn fein intellectuals who attend them. on the sunday evening i was present the subject of jail journals was broached. darrell figgis had just written one. in a dim corner of the room was miniatured the ivory face and the red gold beard of the much imprisoned figgis. "why write a jail journal?" queried ae, smiling towards the corner. "the rare book, the book that bibliophiles will pray to find twenty years from now, will be written by an irishman who never went to jail." some one, i think that it was "jimmy" stephens, author of "the crock of gold," who sat cross-legged on the end of a worn wicker chaise longue and talked with all the facility with which he writes, mentioned the countess's plan of living in the coombe district. ae returned that as far as he knew the countess was the only member of parliament who felt called upon to live with her constituency. then suddenly the whole room seemed to join a chorus of protest against president wilson. at the peace conference all power was his. he was backed by the richest, greatest nation in the world. but he failed to keep his promise of gaining the self-determination of small nations. was he yielding to the anti-irish sentiment brought about by english control of the cables and english propaganda in the united states--was he to let his great republic be intellectually dependent on the ancient monarchy? "perhaps," said ae to me after a few meditative puffs of his pipe, "you feel like the american who was with us on a similar occasion a few weeks ago. at last he burst out with: 'it's no conception which americans have of their president that he should take the place and the duties of god omnipotent in the world,'" one day i went to discuss irish labor with ae. i climbed up to that most curious of all magazine offices--the _irish homestead_ office up under the roof of plunkett house. it is a semi-circular room whose walls are covered with the lavender and purple people of ae's brush. ae was ambushed behind piles of newspapers, and behind him in a grate filled with smouldering peat blocks sat the black tea kettle. as a reporter, one of the few things for which i am allowed to retain respect is the editorial dead line. so i assured ae that i would be glad to return when he had finished writing. but with a courtesy that is evidently founded on an inversion of the american rule that business should always come before people, he assured me that he could sit down at the fire with me at once. now i knew that he had great sympathy with laborers. i recalled his terrible letter against dublin employers in the great strike of when he foretold that the success of the employers in starving the dublin poor would necessarily lead to "red ruin and the breaking up of laws.... the men whose manhood you have broken will loathe you, and will always be brooding and seeking to strike a new blow. the children will be taught to curse you. the infant being moulded in the womb will have breathed into its starved body the vitality of hate. it is not they--it is you who are pulling down the pillars of the social order."[ ] but i knew, too, that he was opposed to violence, so i wondered what he would say to this: "a labor leader just told me that it was his belief that industrial revolution would take place in ireland in two or three years. labor waits only till it has secured greater unity between the north and south. then it will take over industry and government by force." "i had hoped--i am trying to convince the labor leaders here," he said finally, "of the value of the italian plan for the taking over of industry. the italian seaman's union co-operatively purchased and ran boats on which they formerly had been merely workers." russia he spoke of for a moment. people shortly over from russia told him, as he had felt, that the soviet was not the dreadful thing it was made out to be. but a dictatorship of the workers he would not like. he wanted, he said with an upward movement of his big arms, he wanted to be free. "now i am for the building of a co-operative commonwealth on co-operative societies. ireland can and is developing her own industries through co-operation. she is developing them without aid from england and in the face of opposition in ireland. "england, you see, is used to dealing with problems of empire--with nations and great metropolises. when we bring her plans that mean life or death to just villages, the matter is too small to discuss. she is bored. "ireland offers opposition in the person of the 'gombeen man.' he is the local trader and money lender. and co-operative buying and selling takes away his monopoly of business. "paddy gallagher up in dungloe in the rosses will give you an idea of the poverty of the irish countryside, of the extent that the poverty is due to the gombeen men, 'the bosses of the rosses,' and of the ability of the co-operative society to develop and create industry even in such a locality. "societies like paddy gallagher's are springing up all over ireland. the rapid growth may be estimated from the fact that in their trade turnover was $ , , , and in , $ , , . these little units do not merely develop industry; they also bind up the economic and social interests of the people. "in a few years these new societies and others to be created will have dominated their districts, and political power will follow, and we will have new political ideals based on a democratic control of agriculture and industry, and states and people will move harmoniously to a given end. "ireland might attain, by orderly evolution, to a co-operative commonwealth in fifty to two hundred years. "but these are dangerous times for prophecy." paddy gallagher: giant killer. from the dark niche under the gray boulder where the violets grow, a donegal fairy flew to the mountain cabin to bring a birthday wish to patrick gallagher. the fairy designed not that great good would come to paddy, but that great good would come to his people through him. at least when paddy grew up, he slew the child-eating giant, poverty, who lived in donegal. paddy began to fight poverty when he could scarcely toddle. with his father, whose back was laden with a great rush basket, he used to pad in his bare feet down the mountainside to the dungloe harbor--down where the hills give the ocean a black embrace. father and son would wade into the ocean that was pink and lavender in the sunset. above them, the white curlews swooped and curved and opened their pine wood beaks to squawk a prayer for dead fish. but the workers did not stop to watch. their food also was in question. they must pluck the black seaweed to fertilize their field. when the early sun bronzed the bog, and streaked the dark pool below with gold, paddy and his father began to feed the dried wavy strands of kelp between the hungry brown furrow lips. they packed the long groove near the stone fence; they rounded past the big boulder that could not be budged; last of all, they filled the short far row in the strangely shaped little field. at noon, paddy's mother appeared at the half door of the cabin and called in the general direction of the field--it was difficult to see them, for their frieze suits had been dyed in bog water and she could not at once distinguish them from the brown earth. they were glad to come in to eat their sugarless and creamless oatmeal. in the evening paddy ran over the road to his cousin's. western clouds were blackening and his little cousin was pulling the pig into the cabin as a man puts other sort of treasure out of danger into a safe. paddy listened a moment. he could hear the castanets of the tweed weaver's loom and the hum of his uncle's deep voice as he sang at his work. he ran to the rear of the cabin and up the stone steps to the little addition. a lantern filled the room he entered with black, harp-like shadows of the loom. while the uncle stopped treadling and held the blue-tailed shuttle in his hand, the breathless little boy told him that the field was finished. "god grant," said the uncle with a solemnity that put fear into the heart of paddy, "there may be a harvest for you." paddy watched his mother work ceaselessly to aid in the fight that his father and he were making against poverty. during the month her needles would click unending wool into socks, and then on saturday she would trudge--often in a stiff atlantic gale--sixteen miles to the market in strabane. there she sold the socks at a penny a pair. in spite of combined hopes, the potato plants were floppily yellow that year. their stems felt like a dead man's fingers. no potatoes to eat. none to exchange for meal. what were they to do? the gombeen man told them. as member of the county council, he said, he would secure money for the repair of the roads. all those who worked on the road would get paid in meal. "let your da' not worry," said the fat gombeen man pompously to paddy. paddy had brought the ticket that his father had obtained by a week's work to exchange for twenty-eight pounds of corn meal. "i'll keep famine from the parish. charity's not dead yet." when paddy lugged the meal into the cabin, he found his mother lying on the bed with her face averted from the bowl of milk that some less hungry neighbor had brought in. his father's gaunt frame was hunched over the peat blocks on the flat hearth. paddy, full of desire to banish the brooding discouragement from the room, hastened to repeat the words of the gombeen man. but he felt that he had failed when his father, regarding the two stone sack, said hollowly: "charity? small pay to the men who keep the roads open for his vans." in the spring, paddy was nine, and had to go out in the world to fight poverty alone. his father had confided to him that they were in great debt to the gombeen man. paddy could help them get out. there was to be a hiring fair in strabane. paddy swung along the road to strabane pretending he was a man--he was to be hired out just like one. but when he arrived at the hiring field he shrank back. all the farm hands, big and little, stood herded together in between the cattle pens. a man? a beast. one overseer for a big estate came up to dicker for the boy, and said he would give him fifteen dollars for six months' work. paddy was just about to muster up courage to put the price up a bit, when a friend of the overseer came up with the prearranged remark: "a fine boy! well worth twelve dollars the six months!" "what do you want to know for?" asked the gombeen man, when at the end of paddy's back-breaking six months, paddy and his father brought him the fifteen dollars and asked how much they still owed. the gombeen man refuses accounts to everyone but the priest, magistrate, doctor and teacher. "what do you want to know how much you owe for? unless you want to pay me all off?" when paddy was seventeen he made a still bigger fight against debt. with the sons of other "tied" men, he went to work in the scottish harvests. his family was not as badly off as those of some of the boys. some had run so far behind that the gombeen man had served writs on them, obtained judgment against their holdings, and could evict them at pleasure. when paddy married and settled down in dungloe he found the reason for the unpayableness of the debt. one day he and his father shopped at the gombeen store together. they bought the same amount of meal. the father paid cash--seventeen shillings. forty-four days later, paddy brought his money. but the gombeen man presented him with a bill for twenty-one shillings and three pence. it did no good to say how much the father had paid for the same amount of meal. the gombeen man insisted that paddy's father had given eighteen shillings, and paddy was being charged just three shillings and three pence interest. or only per cent per annum! "why do we buy from him? why don't we get together and do our own buying?" asked the insurgent paddy. after much reflection he had decided on the tactics of his campaign against poverty and the recruiting for his army commenced that night as the neighbors visited about his turf fire. there was doubt on the faces of those tied to the gombeen man. but paddy continued: "let's try it out in a small way, say with fertilizer. that stuff he's selling us isn't as good as kelp, and he won't tell us what it's made of." the recruits fell in. they scraped up enough money to buy a twenty-ton load of rich manure from a neighboring co-operative society. the little deal saved them $ and brought them heavy crops. they organized. they needed a store. up in a rocky boreen on his little farm, paddy had an empty shed. again the neighbors explored the toes of their money stockings, and found enough to pay for filling the shed with flour, tea, sugar and meal. then, if they were "free" men, they came boldly to shop on the nights the store was open--moonlight or no moonlight. but if they were "tied" men, they crept fearsomely tip the rocks on dark nights only. the recruits recruited. financial and social returns began to come in. at the end of the first year there was a clear profit of over $ . in three years the society was recognized as one of the most efficient in ireland and presented by the pembroke fund with a fine stucco hall. jigs. dances. lectures. but the gombeen man wasn't "taking it lying down." he called on his political and religious friends to aid. first on the magistrate. when paddy became the political rival of the gombeen man for the county council, there was a joint debate. paddy used reduced prices as his argument. questions were hurled at him by the reddening trader. "wait till i get through," said paddy. "then i'll attend to you." that, said the trader, was a physical threat! so the gombeener's friend, the magistrate, threw paddy into jail. paddy went to prison full of fear that dissension might be sown in the society's ranks. but on coming out he discovered not only that he had won the election but that a committee was waiting to present him with a gorgeous french gilt clock, and that fires, just as on st. john's eve, were blazing on the mountains. but the trader took another friend of his aside. this time it was the village priest. bad dances, he said, were going on of nights in templecrone hall. what was paddy's surprise on a sunday in the windswept chapel by the sea to hear his beloved hall denounced as a place of sin. paddy knew the people would not come any more. then, the great inspiration. paddy remembered how his mother used to try to help with her knitting. he saw girls at spinning wheels or looms working full eight hours a day and earning only $ . to $ . a week. so with permission of the society, paddy had two long tables placed in the entertainment hall, and along the edges of the tables he had the latest type of knitting machines screwed. soon there were about girls working on a seven and a half hour day. they were paid by the piece, and it was not long before they were getting wages that ran from $ . to $ . a week. incidentally, mr. gallagher, as manager, gave himself only $ . a week. when i saw patrick gallagher in dungloe, he was dressed in a blue suit and a soft gray cap, and looked not unlike the keen sort of business men one sees on an ocean liner. and indeed he gave the impression that if he had not been a co-operationist for ireland, he might well have been a capitalist in america. he took me up the main street of dungloe into easily the busiest of the white plastered shops. he made plain the hints of growing industry. the bacon cured in dungloe. the egg-weighing--since weighing was introduced the farmers worked to increase the size of the eggs and the first year increased their sales $ , worth. the rentable farm machines. "come out into this old cabin and meet our baker," paddy continued when we went out the rear of the store. "we began to get bread from londonderry, but the old lough swilly road is too uncertain. see the ancient scotch oven--the coals are placed in the oven part and when they are still hot they are scooped out and the bread is put in their place. interesting, isn't it? but we are going to get a modern slide oven." after viewing the orchard and the beehives beneath the trees, i remarked on the size of the plant, and its suitability for his purpose. he said: "it used to belong to the gombeen man." the sea wind was blowing through the open windows of the mill. barefoot girls--it's only on sunday that donegal country girls wear shoes and then they put them on only when they are quite near church--silently needled khaki-worsted over the shining wire prongs. others spindled wool for new work. as they stood or sat at their work, the shy colleens told of an extra room added to a cabin, or a plump sum to a dowry through the money earned at the mill. none of them was planning, as their older sisters had had to plan, to go to scotland or america. "as the parents of most of the girls are members in the society they want the best working conditions possible for them," said mr. gallagher as he took me out the back entrance of the knitting mill. "so we're building this new factory. see that hole where we blasted for granite; we got enough for the entire mill in one blast. that motor is for the electricity to be used in the plant. "northern sky lights in the new building--the evenest light comes from the north. cement floor--good for cleaning but bad for the girls, so we are to have cork matting for them to stand on. slide-in seats under the tables--that's so that a girl may stand or sit at her work." "soon the hall will be free for entertainments again," i suggested. "won't the old cry be raised against it once more?" "no. we're too strong for that now." at the gallaghers' home, a sort of store-like place on the main street, mrs. gallagher with a soft shawl about her shoulders was waiting to introduce me to miss hester. miss hester was brought to dungloe by the co-operative society to care for the mothers at child-birth. she is the first nurse who ever came to work in donegal. but mr. gallagher wanted to talk more of dungloe's attainment and ambition. he compared the trade turnover of $ , for the first year of the society with $ , for . but there were more things to be done. the finest herring in the world swim the donegal coast. scots catch it. irish buy it. dungloe men wanted to fish, but the gombeen man would never lend money to promote industry. other plans for the development of dungloe were discussed, but the expense of the cartage of surplus products on the toy lough swilly road, and the impossibility of getting freight boats into the undredged harbor, were lead to rising ambition. "parliament is not interested in public improvements for dungloe," smiled mr. gallagher. "i suppose if i were a british member of parliament i would not want to hand out funds for the projection of a harbor in a faraway place like this. irish transportation will not be taken in hand until ireland can control her own economic policy." as the darkness closed in about our little fire the talk turned somehow to tales of the fairies of donegal, and mr. gallagher chuckled: "some persons about here still believe in the good people." then gentle mrs. gallagher, conscious of a benevolent force close at hand, began simply: "well, don't you think perhaps--" [footnote . "to the masters of dublin--an open letter." by ae. _the irish times_, oct. , .] v the catholic church and communism the limerick soviet a soviet supported by the catholic church--that was the singular spectacle i found when i broke through the military cordon about the proclaimed city of limerick. the city had been proclaimed for this reason: robert byrne, son of a limerick business man, had been imprisoned for political reasons. he fell ill from the effects of a hunger strike,[ ] and was sent to the hospital in the limerick workhouse. a "rescue party" was formed. in the mêlée that followed, robert byrne and a constable were killed. then according to a military order, limerick was proclaimed because of "the attack by armed men on police constables and the brutal murder of one of them." at limerick junction we were locked in our compartments. there were few on the train. two or three school boys with their initialed school caps. two or three women drinking tea from the wicker train baskets supplied at the junction. in the yards of the limerick station, the train came to a dead stop. then the conductor unlocked compartments, while a kilted scotch officer, with three bayonet-carrying soldiers behind him, asked for permits. at last we were pulled into the station filled with empty freight trucks and its guard of soldiers. through the dusk beyond the rain was slithering. "sorry. no cab, miss," said a constable. "the whole city's on strike." that explained my inability to get limerick on the wire. from kildare i had been trying all morning to reach limerick on the telephone. all the limerick shops i passed were blinded or shuttered. in the gray light, black lines of people moved desolately up and down, not allowed to congregate and apparently not wanting to remain in homes they were weary of. a few candles flickered in windows. after leaving my suitcase at a hotel, i left for the strike headquarters. on my way i neared sarsfield bridge. between it and me, there loomed a great black mass. close to it, i found it was a tank, stenciled with the name of scotch-and-soda, and surrounded by massed barbed wire inside a wooden fence. on the bridge, the guards paraded up and down and called to the people: "step to the road!" at the door of a river street house, i mounted gritty stone steps. a red-badged man opened the door part way. as soon as i told him i was an american journalist, the suspicious look on his face vanished. with much cordiality he invited me to come upstairs. while he knocked on a consultation door, he bade me wait. in the wavering hall light, the knots in the worn wooden floor threw blots of shadow. on an invitation to come in, i entered a badly lit room where workingmen sat at a long black scratched table. in the empty chair at the end of the table opposite the chairman, i was invited to sit down. as i asked my questions, every head was turned down towards me as if the strike committee was having its picture taken and everybody wanted to get in it. "yes, this is a soviet," said john cronin, the carpenter who was father of the baby soviet. "why did we form it? why do we pit people's rule against military rule? of course, as workers, we are against all military. but our particular grievance against the british military is this: when the town was unjustly proclaimed, the cordon was drawn to leave out a factory part of town that lies beyond the bridges. we had to ask the soldiers for permits to earn our daily bread. "you have seen how we have thrown the crank into production. but some activities are permitted to continue. bakers are working under our orders. the kept press is killed, but we have substituted our own paper." he held up a small sheet which said in large letters: the workers' bulletin issued by the limerick proletariat. "we've distributed food and slashed prices. the farmers send us their produce. the food committee has been able to cut down prices: eggs, for instance, are down from a dollar to sixty-six cents a dozen and milk from fourteen to six cents a quart. "in a few days we will engrave our own money. beside there will be an influx of money from england. about half the workers are affiliated to english unions and entitled to strike pay. we have, by the way, felt the sympathy of the union men in the army sent to guard us. a whole scotch regiment had to be sent home because it was letting workers go back and forth without passes. "and--we have told no one else--the national executive council of the irish labor party and trade union congress will change its headquarters from dublin to limerick. then if military rule isn't abrogated, a general strike of the entire country will be called." just here a boy with imaginative brown eyes, who was, i discovered later, the editor of the _workers' bulletin_, said suddenly: "there! isn't that enough to tell the young lady? how do we know that she is not from scotland yard?" in order to send my wire on the all-ireland strike, i stumbled along dark streets till i came to the postoffice. lantern light was streaming from a hatchway open in the big iron door in the rear. "who comes?" challenged the guards. while i was giving a most conversational reply, a dashing officer ran up and told me the password to the night telegraph room. streets were deserted when i attempted to find my way back to the hotel. at last i saw a cloaked figure separate itself from the column post box against which it was standing. i asked my way and discovered i was talking to a member of the black watch. limerick is the only town in the british isles that retains the ancient custom of a civilian night guard. while the strike was on, there were, during the day, special royal irish constables on duty in limerick. but, at night, in spite of unlit streets, the constables gave place to the sixty men of the black watch. "priests preached sermons sunday urging the people to withstand the enemy with the same spirit they did in the time of sarsfield," said young alphonsus o'mara, the mayor of limerick, whom i met at breakfast. his sinn fein beliefs had imprisoned him in his hotel, for his home was beyond the town and he would not ask the british military for a pass. opposite the breakfast room we could see the drawn blue shades of limerick's dry goods store. a woman staggered by with a burlap bag of coal on her shoulders. a donkey cart with a movie poster reading: "working under order of the strike committee: god and man," rolled past. a child hugging a pot of easter lilies shuffled by. "there's no idea that the people want communism. there can't be. the people here are catholics." but a little incident of the strike impressed me with the fact that there were communists among these fervent catholics. in order to pictorialize the predicament of the limerick workers to the world through the journalists who were gathered in limerick waiting the hoped-for arrival of the first transatlantic plane, the national executive council devised this plan. one bright spring afternoon, the amusement committee placed poster announcements of a hurling match that was to be held just outside of limerick at caherdavin. about one thousand people, mostly irish boys and girls, left town. at sunset, two by two, girls with yellow primroses at their waists, and boys with their hurling sticks in their hands, marched down the white-walled caherdavin road towards the bridge. the bridge guard hooped his arm towards the boat house occupied by the military. soldiers, strapping on cartridge belts, double-quicked to his aid. a machine gun sniffed the air from the upper story of the boat house. scotch-and-soda veered heavily bridgewards. a squad of fifty helmeted constables marched to the bridge, and marked time. but the boys and girls merely asked if they might go home, and when they were refused, turned about again and kept up a circling tramp, requesting admission. down near the broken treaty stone, in st. munchin's temperance hall, in a room half-filled with potatoes and eggs and milk, women who were to care for the exiles during their temporary banishment, were working. a few of the workers' red-badged guards came to herald the approach of the workers, and then sat down on a settle outside the hall. st. munchin's chapel bell struck the angelus. the red-badged guards rose and blessed themselves. the bishop on communism possibly, i thought, the clergymen of limerick were hurried into support of red labor. what was the attitude of those who had a perspective on the situation towards communism? just outside limerick, in the town of ennis in the county of clare--clare as well as kerry has the reputation of shooting down informers at sight--there dwells the most loved bishop in ireland. the lenten pastoral of the right reverend michael fogarty, bishop of killaloe, was so fervently national that when it was twice mailed to the friends of irish freedom in america it was twice refused carriage by the british government. there was no doubt that he was for sinn fein. but how did he stand towards labor? past an ancient norman castle on which was whitewashed the legend "up de valera!" into the low-built little town of ennis, i drove up to the modest colonial home that is called the "episcopal palace," bishop fogarty invited me to take off my "wet, cold, ugly coat," and to sit at a linen-covered spot at the long plush-hung library table. as he rang a bell, he told me i must be hungry after my drive. then a maid brought in a piping-hot dinner of delicious irish stew. i sat down quite frankly hungry, but from a rather resentful glance which the maid gave me, i have since suspicioned that i ate the bishop's dinner. first i told the bishop that i am a catholic. then i said i was informed that there was a reaction against the church in ireland, against being what american protestants call "priest-ridden." the first reason of the reaction, i was told, was the fact that the people felt that the hierarchy was not in favor of a republic. indeed i had it from an irish-american priest in dublin that many of the irish bishops were in a bad way, because neither the english government nor the people trusted them. "priest-ridden?" the bishop smiled. "priest-ridden? england would like us to control these people for her today. we couldn't if we would. priest-ridden? perhaps the other way about." the second reason, it was said, is due to the fact that the workers feel that the church is standing with the capitalists. a dublin catholic, wife of an american correspondent stationed in that city, told me that socialism is so strong in the very poor parish of st. mary's pro-cathedral in dublin that out of , members, there were , who were not practising their religion. "a lie!" exclaimed the bishop as his jaw shot out and his great muscular frame straightened as if to meet physical combat on the score. "it is simply not true. the loyalty of the irish to the catholic church is unquestionable." and anyway, he indicated, if the people desired a communistic government there is no essential opposition in the catholic church. in the past, said the bishop, the church in ireland had thrived under common ownership. when in the fifth century patrick evangelized ireland, the ancient irish were practising a kind of socialism. there was a common ownership of land. each freeman had a right to use a certain acreage. but the land of every man, from the king down, might be taken away by the state. there was an elected king, and assemblies of nobles and freemen. there were arbitration courts where the lawgivers decided on penalties, and whose decisions were enforced by the assemblies. one of the reasons, the bishop said, that england had found it difficult to rule the irish, was that she attempted to force a feudal government on a socialistic people. recently--to illustrate that the irish still retain their instinct for common ownership--there had been, as the bishop mentioned, a successful socialistic experiment in clare. on looking up this fact at a later time, i discovered that the experiment had points of resemblance to the ancient state.[ ] in the english socialist, robert owen, visited ireland. his outline of the possibilities of co-operation on socialistic lines inspired the foundation of the hibernian philanthropic society. it was in that arthur vandeleur, one of the members of the society, decided he would establish a socialist colony on his estate in ralahine, clare county. a large tract of land was to be possessed and developed by a group of tenants. this property was not, incidentally, a gift, but was to be held by mr. vandeleur until the tenants were able to pay for it. an elected committee of nine, and a general assembly of all men and women members of the society, were the government. the committee's decision against an offending member of society could be enforced or not by the members. the success of the society is acknowledged. through it was introduced the first reaping machine into ireland. by it the condition of the toiler was much raised, and might have been more greatly elevated but for the fact that the community had to pay a very heavy annual rental in kind to mr. vandeleur. the experiment came to a premature end, however, because of the passing of the estate out of the hands of mr. vandeleur, and the non-recognition of the right of such a community to hold a lease or to act as tenants under the land laws of great britain. "why should there not be a modernized form of the ancient gaelic state?" asked the bishop. when i spoke of the russian soviet, and stated that i heard that the roman catholic church had spread in eight dioceses under the new government, the bishop nodded his head. the church, he said, had nothing to fear from the soviet. "certainly not from the limerick soviet," i suggested. "it was there that i saw a red-badged guard rise to say the angelus." "isn't it well," smiled the bishop, "that communism is to be christianized?" [footnote : notice was given by the general prison board of ireland on november , , that no prisoner on hunger strike would obtain release. it was stated that the hunger-striker alone would be responsible for the consequences of his refusal to take food.] [footnote : "labour in irish history." by james connolly. maunsel and company. . p. .] vi what about belfast? sickness and death of carsonism the h.c. of l. has done an extraordinary thing. it is the high cost of living that has caused the sickness and death of carsonism. carsonism is a synonym for the division of the ulsterites by political and religious cries--there are , catholics and , non-catholics.[ ] the good work began during the war. driven by the war cost of living, unionist and protestant organized with sinn fein and catholic workers, and together they obtained increased pay. now they no longer want division. for they believe what the labor leaders have long preached: "carsonism with its continuance of the ancient cries of 'no popery!' and 'no home rule!' operates for the good of the rich mill owners and against the good of the workers. if the workers allow themselves to be divided on these scores, they can neither keep a union to get better wages nor elect men intent on securing industrial legislation. if the workers are really wise they will lay the carson ghost by working with the south of ireland towards a settlement of the political question. why not? the workers of the north and south are bound by the tie of a common poverty." "all my life," said dawson gordon, the protestant president of the irish textile federation, as we talked in the dark little union headquarters where shawled spinners and weavers were coming in with their big copper dues, "i have heard stories that were so much fuel on the prejudice pile. when i was small, i believed anything i was told about the catholics. i remember this tale that my mother repeated to me as she said her grandmother had told it to her: 'a neighbor of grandmother's was alone in her cabin one night. there was a knock at the door. a catholic woman begged for shelter. the neighbor could not bear to turn her back into the night. then as there was only one bed, the two women shared it. next morning grandmother heard a moaning in the cabin. on entering, she saw the neighbor lying alone on the bed, stabbed in the back. the neighbor's last words were: "never trust a catholic!"' as i grew a little older i found two other protestant friends whose grandmothers had had the same experience. and since i have been a labor organizer, i have run across catholics who told the same story turned about. so i began to think that there was a hell of a lot of great-grandmothers with stabbed friends--almost too many for belief. "but hysterical as they were, such stories served their purpose of division." from a schoolish-looking cupboard in the back of the room, mr. gordon extracted a much-thumbed pamphlet on the linen and jute industry, published after extended investigation by the united states in . mr. gordon turned to a certain page, and pointed a finger at a significant line which ran: "the wages of the linen workers in ireland are the lowest received in any mills in the united kingdom." then mr. gordon added: "another pre-war report by dr. h. w. bailie, chief medical officer of belfast, commented on the low wage of the sweated home worker--the report has since been suppressed. i remember one woman he told about. she embroidered dots for a penny. by working continuously all week she could just make $ . .[ ] "pay's not the only thing," continued mr. gordon. "working condition's another. go to the mills and see the wet spinners. the air of the room they work in is heavy with humidity. there are the women, waists open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back to prevent the irritation of loose ends on damp skins, bare feet on the cement floor. at noon they snatch up their shawls and rush home for a hurried lunch. it's not surprising that dr. bailie reported that poor working conditions were responsible for many premature births and many delicate children. nor that the low pay of the workers made them easy prey to tuberculosis. he wrote that, as in previous years, consumption was most prevalent among the poor.[ ] "why such pay and such working conditions?" asked mr. gordon. "because before the war there were only of us organized. labor organizer after labor organizer fought for the unity of the working people. but no sooner would such a speaker rise oft a platform than there would be calls from all parts of the house: 'are ye a sinn feiner?', 'what's yer religion?' or 'do ye vote unionist?' there was no way out. he had to declare himself. then one or the other half of his audience would rise and leave. with low wages, of course, the workers could not get a perspective on their battle. they were prisoners in belfast. they never had money enough even for the two-hour trip to dublin. rail rates are high. excursions almost unknown. then came the war. at that time wages were: "spinners and preparers, $ . a week. "weavers and winders, $ . a week. "general laborers, $ . a week. "but how much did it cost to feed a family of five? seven dollars a week. the workers had to get the difference. they couldn't without organization. with hunger at their heels, they forgot prejudices. catholics began to go to meetings in orange halls. protestants attended similar meetings in hibernian assembly rooms; at a small town near belfast there was a recent labor procession in which one-half of the band was orange and the other half hibernian, and yet there was perfect harmony. other unions than ours were at work. for instance, the irish transport and general workers' union began to gather men under the motto chosen from one of thomas davis' songs: "then let the orange lily be a badge, my patriot brother, the orange for you, the green for me, and each for one another.' "what happened? take our union for example. from in , the membership mounted to , in --that is the number represented today in the irish textile federation. with the growth in strength the federation made out its cost-of-living budget, and presented its case to the linen trade employers. at last the federation succeeded in obtaining this rate: "spinners and preparers, $ . a week. "weavers and winders, $ . a week. "general laborers, $ . a week." but, say the leaders, there will always be chance of disunion until the political question is settled. ulster labor decided to assist in that settlement. so it killed carsonism. and now it is trying to lay the carsonistic ghost. this is the way labor killed carsonism. i saw it done. i was in at the death. there was a parliamentary seat vacant in east antrim. carson, whose choice had hitherto been law, backed a canadian named major moore. but labor put up a sort of bull moose candidate named hanna. the carsonists realized the issue. during the campaign they reiterated that carsonism was to live or die by that vote. the dodgers for major moore ran: east antrim election what the enemies of unionism want the return of hanna why? because as _the freeman's journal_ of may , , states: "if hanna wins, his victory will be the death knell of carsonism." are you going to be the one to bring this about? vote solid for moore and show our enemies east antrim stands by carson at the meetings the carsonists continually stressed the point that this election meant more than the election or defeat of moore. it meant the election or defeat of carson and his ally, god. "god in his goodness," declared a woman advocate at a meeting held for moore at carrickfergus, "has spared sir edward carson to us, but the day may come when we will see ourselves without him, and i want to be sure that no one in ulster will have caused him one pain or sorrow."[ ] "it is owing to sir edward carson under almighty god," stated d.m. wilson, k.c., m.p., at a meeting at whitehead, "that we have been saved from home rule, and the man that knows these things would rather that his right arm were paralyzed than be guilty of any act that would tend to weaken the work of sir edward carson."[ ] "i am fully persuaded," added william coote, m.p., at the same meeting, "that the great country of the gun running will never be false to its great leader."[ ] one evening near a stuccoed golf club at a cross roads in upper green isle, with the v of the belfast lough shining in the distance, i waited to hear major moore address a crowd of workers. as the buzzing little audience gathered, boys climbed up telegraph poles with the stickers "we want hanna," and a small, pale-faced man with a protruding jaw was the center of a political argument for hanna. at last the brake arrived. the major, a tall, personable man, stood up in the cart. but all the good old ulster rallying cries he used, seemed to miss fire. "sir edward carson's for me--" "stand on your own feet, major muir," interrupted a worker. "heart and soul, i'll fight home rule--" "what aboot canada, major muir?" the major did not reply as he had at a previous meeting at carrickfergus that he hoped that the time would come when there would be a "truly imperial parliament in london--one that would represent not only the three kingdoms but the whole empire."[ ] instead he went on: "the unionist party stands for improved social legislation." "what aboot old age pensions?" and "why didn't the unionist party vote for working-men's compensation, major muir?" as he was preparing to drive away from the booing crowd, one of his supporters began to distribute dodgers. i had two in my hand when the small, pale-faced man with the jaw applied a match to them, and cried out as they flared in my hand: "that's what we do with trash." who won? when the election returns were made public in june, they read: major moore, , ; hanna, , . laying the ghost of carsonism by the permanent settlement of the irish political question was attempted last spring. it was then that ulster labor backed the rest of the irish labor party at berne when it asked for the "free and absolute self-determination of each and every people in choosing the sovereignty under which they shall live." the sinn fein baby in belfast the pacific endeavors of the high cost of living are greatly aided by the natural kindliness of the people. i think i have never met simpler charity to strangers. for instance, in the little matter of appealing for street directions, i found the shawled women and the pale men would go far out of their ways to put me on the right path. even when i inquired for the home of dennis mccullough, they looked at me quickly, said: "oh, you mean the big sinn feiner"? and readily directed me to his home. in the red brick home in the red brick row on the outskirts of the red brick town of belfast, mrs. dennis mccullough, daughter of the south of ireland, gave testimony that the goodheartedness of her neighbors prevails over their prejudice even in time of crisis. her husband, a piano merchant, has been in some seven prisons for his political activities. he had told of plank beds, of food he could not eat, of the quelling of prison outbreaks by hosing the prisoners and then letting them lie in their wet clothes on cold floors. he had spoken of evading prison at one time by availing himself of the ancient privilege of "taking sanctuary": he went to the famous pilgrimage center of lough derg, and though no sanctuary law prevails, the military did not care or dare to violate the religious feelings of the inhabitants by seizing him there. and then he had told of the last time: before his last arrest he had taken great care not to provoke the authorities because mrs. mccullough was about to give birth to her first child; but one evening when the couple and friends were seated about a quiet sunday evening tea table, six constables entered and hurried him off to jail without even presenting a warrant. it was at this point that mrs. mccullough gave her testimony: "our house is just a little island of sinn fein in this district. the neighbors knew my husband had been arrested. the papers told them that the arrests had been made in connection with that jules verne german submarine plot. but when my baby was born, my neighbors forgot everything but the fact that i was a human being who needed help. one neighbor came in to bake my bread; another to sweep my house; another to cook my meals. they were very good. "often at five o'clock, i watch the girls coming home from the mills. at six o'clock they eat supper. at seven the boys and girls walk out together, two by two." mrs. mccullough laughed. "you know, i think that's all i have against the ulsterites--there's nothing queer about them." by the grate, dennis mccullough held the baby in his arms with all the care one uses towards a treasure long withheld. his drawn white face was close to the dimpled cheeks. the rank and file of the belfastians, then, are joining the priests, co-operationists, labor unionists and sinn feiners in their fight for self-determination. for it is believed that as long as the irish people, irish or scotch-irish, remain under the domination of england, they will continue to suffer under exploitation by her capitalists. and the people of the north and the south are unanimous that english exploitation is what's the matter with ireland. [footnote : census of .] [footnote : england passed an order in regulating the wages of sweated women workers so that the minimum wage of a girl working a -hour week amounts to $ . . but the order concludes: "_this order shall have effect in all districts of great britain but not in ireland_." (ministry of labor. statutory rules and orders. . no. .)] [footnote : "report chief medical inspector, belfast, ."] [footnote : _belfast telegraph_, may , .] [footnote : _northern whig_, belfast, may , .] [footnote : _ibid_.] [footnote : _belfast telegraph_, may , .] the crimes of england by gilbert k. chesterton mcmxvi _contents_ chapter i some words to professor whirlwind the german professor, his need of education for debate--three mistakes of german controversialists--the multiplicity of excuses--falsehood against experience-- kultur preached by unkultur--the mistake about bernard shaw--german lack of welt-politik--where england is really wrong. chapter ii the protestant hero suitable finale for the german emperor--frederick ii. and the power of fear--german influence in england since lather--our german kings and allies-- triumph of frederick the great. chapter iii the enigma of waterloo how we helped napoleon--the revolution and the two germanics--religious resistance of austria and russia--irreligious resistance of prussia and england--negative irreligion of england--its idealism in snobbishness--positive irreligion of prussia; no idealism in anything--allegory and the french revolution--the dual personality of england; the double battle--triumph of blucher. chapter iv the coming of the janissaries the sad story of lord salisbury--ireland and heligoland--the young men of ireland--the dirty work--the use of german mercenaries--the unholy alliance--triumph of the german mercenaries. chapter v the lost england truth about england and ireland--murder and the two travellers--real defence of england--the lost revolution--story of cobbett and the germans--historical accuracy of cobbett--violence of the english language--exaggerated truths versus exaggerated lies--defeat of the people--triumph of the german mercenaries. chapter vi hamlet and the danes degeneration of grimm's fairy tales--from tales of terror to tales of terrorism--german mistake of being deep--the germanisation of shakespeare--carlyle and the spoilt child--the test of teutonism-- hell or hans andersen--causes of english inaction--barbarism and splendid isolation-- the peace of the plutocrats--hamlet the englishman--the triumph of bismarck. chapter vii the midnight of europe the two napoleons--their ultimate success--the interlude of sedan--the meaning of an emperor--the triumph of versailles--the true innocence of england-- triumph of the kaiser. chapter viii the wrong horse lord salisbury again--the influence of --the fairy tale of teutonism--the adoration of the crescent--the reign of the cynics--last words to professor whirlwind. chapter ix the awakening of england the march of montenegro--the anti-servile state--the prussian preparation--the sleep of england--the awakening of england. chapter x the battle of the marne the hour of peril--the human deluge--the english at the marne. the crimes of england i--_some words to professor whirlwind_ dear professor whirlwind, your name in the original german is too much for me; and this is the nearest i propose to get to it: but under the majestic image of pure wind marching in a movement wholly circular i seem to see, as in a vision, something of your mind. but the grand isolation of your thoughts leads you to express them in such words as are gratifying to yourself, and have an inconspicuous or even an unfortunate effect upon others. if anything were really to be made of your moral campaign against the english nation, it was clearly necessary that somebody, if it were only an englishman, should show you how to leave off professing philosophy and begin to practise it. i have therefore sold myself into the prussian service, and in return for a cast-off suit of the emperor's clothes (the uniform of an english midshipman), a german hausfrau's recipe for poison gas, two penny cigars, and twenty-five iron crosses, i have consented to instruct you in the rudiments of international controversy. of this part of my task i have here little to say that is not covered by a general adjuration to you to observe certain elementary rules. they are, roughly speaking, as follows:-- first, stick to one excuse. thus if a tradesman, with whom your social relations are slight, should chance to find you toying with the coppers in his till, you may possibly explain that you are interested in numismatics and are a collector of coins; and he may possibly believe you. but if you tell him afterwards that you pitied him for being overloaded with unwieldy copper discs, and were in the act of replacing them by a silver sixpence of your own, this further explanation, so far from increasing his confidence in your motives, will (strangely enough) actually decrease it. and if you are so unwise as to be struck by yet another brilliant idea, and tell him that the pennies were all bad pennies, which you were concealing to save him from a police prosecution for coining, the tradesman may even be so wayward as to institute a police prosecution himself. now this is not in any way an exaggeration of the way in which you have knocked the bottom out of any case you may ever conceivably have had in such matters as the sinking of the _lusitania_. with my own eyes i have seen the following explanations, apparently proceeding from your pen, (i) that the ship was a troop-ship carrying soldiers from canada; (ii) that if it wasn't, it was a merchant-ship unlawfully carrying munitions for the soldiers in france; (iii) that, as the passengers on the ship had been warned in an advertisement, germany was justified in blowing them to the moon; (iv) that there were guns, and the ship had to be torpedoed because the english captain was just going to fire them off; (v) that the english or american authorities, by throwing the _lusitania_ at the heads of the german commanders, subjected them to an insupportable temptation; which was apparently somehow demonstrated or intensified by the fact that the ship came up to schedule time, there being some mysterious principle by which having tea at tea-time justifies poisoning the tea; (vi) that the ship was not sunk by the germans at all but by the english, the english captain having deliberately tried to drown himself and some thousand of his own countrymen in order to cause an exchange of stiff notes between mr. wilson and the kaiser. if this interesting story be true, i can only say that such frantic and suicidal devotion to the most remote interests of his country almost earns the captain pardon for the crime. but do you not see, my dear professor, that the very richness and variety of your inventive genius throws a doubt upon each explanation when considered in itself? we who read you in england reach a condition of mind in which it no longer very much matters what explanation you offer, or whether you offer any at all. we are prepared to hear that you sank the _lusitania_ because the sea-born sons of england would live more happily as deep-sea fishes, or that every person on board was coming home to be hanged. you have explained yourself so completely, in this clear way, to the italians that they have declared war on you, and if you go on explaining yourself so clearly to the americans they may quite possibly do the same. second, when telling such lies as may seem necessary to your international standing, do not tell the lies to the people who know the truth. do not tell the eskimos that snow is bright green; nor tell the negroes in africa that the sun never shines in that dark continent. rather tell the eskimos that the sun never shines in africa; and then, turning to the tropical africans, see if they will believe that snow is green. similarly, the course indicated for you is to slander the russians to the english and the english to the russians; and there are hundreds of good old reliable slanders which can still be used against both of them. there are probably still russians who believe that every english gentleman puts a rope round his wife's neck and sells her in smithfield. there are certainly still englishmen who believe that every russian gentleman takes a rope to his wife's back and whips her every day. but these stories, picturesque and useful as they are, have a limit to their use like everything else; and the limit consists in the fact that they are not _true_, and that there necessarily exists a group of persons who know they are not true. it is so with matters of fact about which you asseverate so positively to us, as if they were matters of opinion. scarborough might be a fortress; but it is not. i happen to know it is not. mr. morel may deserve to be universally admired in england; but he is not universally admired in england. tell the russians that he is by all means; but do not tell us. we have seen him; we have also seen scarborough. you should think of this before you speak. third, don't perpetually boast that you are cultured in language which proves that you are not. you claim to thrust yourself upon everybody on the ground that you are stuffed with wit and wisdom, and have enough for the whole world. but people who have wit enough for the whole world, have wit enough for a whole newspaper paragraph. and you can seldom get through even a whole paragraph without being monotonous, or irrelevant, or unintelligible, or self-contradictory, or broken-minded generally. if you have something to teach us, teach it to us now. if you propose to convert us after you have conquered us, why not convert us before you have conquered us? as it is, we cannot believe what you say about your superior education because of the way in which you say it. if an englishman says, "i don't make no mistakes in english, not me," we can understand his remark; but we cannot endorse it. to say, "je parler le frenche language, non demi," is comprehensible, but not convincing. and when you say, as you did in a recent appeal to the americans, that the germanic powers have sacrificed a great deal of "red fluid" in defence of their culture, we point out to you that cultured people do not employ such a literary style. or when you say that the belgians were so ignorant as to think they were being butchered when they weren't, we only wonder whether _you_ are so ignorant as to think you are being believed when you aren't. thus, for instance, when you brag about burning venice to express your contempt for "tourists," we cannot think much of the culture, as culture, which supposes st. mark's to be a thing for tourists instead of historians. this, however, would be the least part of our unfavourable judgment. that judgment is complete when we have read such a paragraph as this, prominently displayed in a paper in which you specially spread yourself: "that the italians have a perfect knowledge of the fact that this city of antiquities and tourists is subject, and rightly subject, to attack and bombardment, is proved by the measures they took at the beginning of the war to remove some of their greatest art treasures." now culture may or may not include the power to admire antiquities, and to restrain oneself from the pleasure of breaking them like toys. but culture does, presumably, include the power to think. for less laborious intellects than your own it is generally sufficient to think once. but if you will think twice or twenty times, it cannot but dawn on you that there is something wrong in the reasoning by which the placing of diamonds in a safe proves that they are "rightly subject" to a burglar. the incessant assertion of such things can do little to spread your superior culture; and if you say them too often people may even begin to doubt whether you have any superior culture after all. the earnest friend now advising you cannot but grieve at such incautious garrulity. if you confined yourself to single words, uttered at intervals of about a month or so, no one could possibly raise any rational objection, or subject them to any rational criticism. in time you might come to use whole sentences without revealing the real state of things. through neglect of these maxims, my dear professor, every one of your attacks upon england has gone wide. in pure fact they have not touched the spot, which the real critics of england know to be a very vulnerable spot. we have a real critic of england in mr. bernard shaw, whose name you parade but apparently cannot spell; for in the paper to which i have referred he is called mr. bernhard shaw. perhaps you think he and bernhardi are the same man. but if you quoted mr. bernard shaw's statement instead of misquoting his name, you would find that his criticism of england is exactly the opposite of your own; and naturally, for it is a rational criticism. he does not blame england for being against germany. he does most definitely blame england for not being sufficiently firmly and emphatically on the side of russia. he is not such a fool as to accuse sir edward grey of being a fiendish machiavelli plotting against germany; he accuses him of being an amiable aristocratic stick who failed to frighten the junkers from their plan of war. now, it is not in the least a question of whether we happen to like this quality or that: mr. shaw, i rather fancy, would dislike such verbose compromise more than downright plotting. it is simply the fact that englishmen like grey are open to mr. shaw's attack and are not open to yours. it is not true that the english were sufficiently clearheaded or self-controlled to conspire for the destruction of germany. any man who knows england, any man who hates england as one hates a living thing, will tell you it is not true. the english may be snobs, they may be plutocrats, they may be hypocrites, but they are not, as a fact, plotters; and i gravely doubt whether they could be if they wanted to. the mass of the people are perfectly incapable of plotting at all, and if the small ring of rich people who finance our politics were plotting for anything, it was for peace at almost any price. any londoner who knows the london streets and newspapers as he knows the nelson column or the inner circle, knows that there were men in the governing class and in the cabinet who were literally thirsting to defend germany until germany, by her own act, became indefensible. if they said nothing in support of the tearing up of the promise of peace to belgium, it is simply because there was nothing to be said. you were the first people to talk about world-politics; and the first people to disregard them altogether. even your foreign policy is domestic policy. it does not even apply to any people who are not germans; and of your wild guesses about some twenty other peoples, not one has gone right even by accident. your two or three shots at my own not immaculate land have been such that you would have been much nearer the truth if you had tried to invade england by crossing the caucasus, or to discover england among the south sea islands. with your first delusion, that our courage was calculated and malignant when in truth our very corruption was timid and confused, i have already dealt. the case is the same with your second favourite phrase; that the british army is mercenary. you learnt it in books and not in battlefields; and i should like to be present at a scene in which you tried to bribe the most miserable little loafer in hammersmith as if he were a cynical condottiere selling his spear to some foreign city. it is not the fact, my dear sir. you have been misinformed. the british army is not at this moment a hireling army any more than it is a conscript army. it is a volunteer army in the strict sense of the word; nor do i object to your calling it an amateur army. there is no compulsion, and there is next to no pay. it is at this moment drawn from every class of the community, and there are very few classes which would not earn a little more money in their ordinary trades. it numbers very nearly as many men as it would if it were a conscript army; that is with the necessary margin of men unable to serve or needed to serve otherwise. ours is a country in which that democratic spirit which is common to christendom is rather unusually sluggish and far below the surface. and the most genuine and purely popular movement that we have had since the chartists has been the enlistment for this war. by all means say that such vague and sentimental volunteering is valueless in war if you think so; or even if you don't think so. by all means say that germany is unconquerable and that we cannot really kill you. but if you say that we do not really want to kill you, you do us an injustice. you do indeed. i need not consider the yet crazier things that some of you have said; as that the english intend to keep calais and fight france as well as germany for the privilege of purchasing a frontier and the need to keep a conscript army. that, also, is out of books, and pretty mouldy old books at that. it was said, i suppose, to gain sympathy among the french, and is therefore not my immediate business, as they are eminently capable of looking after themselves. i merely drop one word in passing, lest you waste your powerful intellect on such projects. the english may some day forgive you; the french never will. you teutons are too light and fickle to understand the latin seriousness. my only concern is to point out that about england, at least, you are invariably and miraculously wrong. now speaking seriously, my dear professor, it will not do. it could be easy to fence with you for ever and parry every point you attempt to make, until english people began to think there was nothing wrong with england at all. but i refuse to play for safety in this way. there is a very great deal that is really wrong with england, and it ought not to be forgotten even in the full blaze of your marvellous mistakes. i cannot have my countrymen tempted to those pleasures of intellectual pride which are the result of comparing themselves with you. the deep collapse and yawning chasm of your ineptitude leaves me upon a perilous spiritual elevation. your mistakes are matters of fact; but to enumerate them does not exhaust the truth. for instance, the learned man who rendered the phrase in an english advertisement "cut you dead" as "hack you to death," was in error; but to say that many such advertisements are vulgar is not an error. again, it is true that the english poor are harried and insecure, with insufficient instinct for armed revolt, though you will be wrong if you say that they are occupied literally in shooting the moon. it is true that the average englishman is too much attracted by aristocratic society; though you will be in error if you quote dining with duke humphrey as an example of it. in more ways than one you forget what is meant by idiom. i have therefore thought it advisable to provide you with a catalogue of the real crimes of england; and i have selected them on a principle which cannot fail to interest and please you. on many occasions we have been very wrong indeed. we were very wrong indeed when we took part in preventing europe from putting a term to the impious piracies of frederick the great. we were very wrong indeed when we allowed the triumph over napoleon to be soiled with the mire and blood of blucher's sullen savages. we were very wrong indeed when we allowed the peaceful king of denmark to be robbed in broad daylight by a brigand named bismarck; and when we allowed the prussian swashbucklers to enslave and silence the french provinces which they could neither govern nor persuade. we were very wrong indeed when we flung to such hungry adventurers a position so important as heligoland. we were very wrong indeed when we praised the soulless prussian education and copied the soulless prussian laws. knowing that you will mingle your tears with mine over this record of english wrong-doing, i dedicate it to you, and i remain, yours reverently, g. k. chesterton ii--_the protestant hero_ a question is current in our looser english journalism touching what should be done with the german emperor after a victory of the allies. our more feminine advisers incline to the view that he should be shot. this is to make a mistake about the very nature of hereditary monarchy. assuredly the emperor william at his worst would be entitled to say to his amiable crown prince what charles ii. said when his brother warned him of the plots of assassins: "they will never kill me to make you king." others, of greater monstrosity of mind, have suggested that he should be sent to st. helena. so far as an estimate of his historical importance goes, he might as well be sent to mount calvary. what we have to deal with is an elderly, nervous, not unintelligent person who happens to be a hohenzollern; and who, to do him justice, does think more of the hohenzollerns as a sacred caste than of his own particular place in it. in such families the old boast and motto of hereditary kingship has a horrible and degenerate truth. the king never dies; he only decays for ever. if it were a matter of the smallest importance what happened to the emperor william when once his house had been disarmed, i should satisfy my fancy with another picture of his declining years; a conclusion that would be peaceful, humane, harmonious, and forgiving. in various parts of the lanes and villages of south england the pedestrian will come upon an old and quiet public-house, decorated with a dark and faded portrait in a cocked hat and the singular inscription, "the king of prussia." these inn signs probably commemorate the visit of the allies after , though a great part of the english middle classes may well have connected them with the time when frederick ii. was earning his title of the great, along with a number of other territorial titles to which he had considerably less claim. sincere and simple-hearted dissenting ministers would dismount before that sign (for in those days dissenters drank beer like christians, and indeed manufactured most of it) and would pledge the old valour and the old victory of him whom they called the protestant hero. we should be using every word with literal exactitude if we said that he was really something devilish like a hero. whether he was a protestant hero or not can be decided best by those who have read the correspondence of a writer calling himself voltaire, who was quite shocked at frederick's utter lack of religion of any kind. but the little dissenter drank his beer in all innocence and rode on. and the great blasphemer of potsdam would have laughed had he known; it was a jest after his own heart. such was the jest he made when he called upon the emperors to come to communion, and partake of the eucharistic body of poland. had he been such a bible reader as the dissenter doubtless thought him, he might haply have foreseen the vengeance of humanity upon his house. he might have known what poland was and was yet to be; he might have known that he ate and drank to his damnation, discerning not the body of god. whether the placing of the present german emperor in charge of one of these wayside public-houses would be a jest after _his_ own heart possibly remains to be seen. but it would be much more melodious and fitting an end than any of the sublime euthanasias which his enemies provide for him. that old sign creaking above him as he sat on the bench outside his home of exile would be a much more genuine memory of the real greatness of his race than the modern and almost gimcrack stars and garters that were pulled in windsor chapel. from modern knighthood has departed all shadow of chivalry; how far we have travelled from it can easily be tested by the mere suggestion that sir thomas lipton, let us say, should wear his lady's sleeve round his hat or should watch his armour in the chapel of st. thomas of canterbury. the giving and receiving of the garter among despots and diplomatists is now only part of that sort of pottering mutual politeness which keeps the peace in an insecure and insincere state of society. but that old blackened wooden sign is at least and after all the sign of something; the sign of the time when one solitary hohenzollern did not only set fire to fields and cities, but did truly set on fire the minds of men, even though it were fire from hell. everything was young once, even frederick the great. it was an appropriate preface to the terrible epic of prussia that it began with an unnatural tragedy of the loss of youth. that blind and narrow savage who was the boy's father had just sufficient difficulty in stamping out every trace of decency in him, to show that some such traces must have been there. if the younger and greater frederick ever had a heart, it was a broken heart; broken by the same blow that broke his flute. when his only friend was executed before his eyes, there were two corpses to be borne away; and one to be borne on a high war-horse through victory after victory: but with a small bottle of poison in the pocket. it is not irrelevant thus to pause upon the high and dark house of his childhood. for the peculiar quality which marks out prussian arms and ambitions from all others of the kind consists in this wrinkled and premature antiquity. there is something comparatively boyish about the triumphs of all the other tyrants. there was something better than ambition in the beauty and ardour of the young napoleon. he was at least a lover; and his first campaign was like a love-story. all that was pagan in him worshipped the republic as men worship a woman, and all that was catholic in him understood the paradox of our lady of victories. henry viii., a far less reputable person, was in his early days a good knight of the later and more florid school of chivalry; we might almost say that he was a fine old english gentleman so long as he was young. even nero was loved in his first days: and there must have been some cause to make that christian maiden cast flowers on his dishonourable grave. but the spirit of the great hohenzollern smelt from the first of the charnel. he came out to his first victory like one broken by defeats; his strength was stripped to the bone and fearful as a fleshless resurrection; for the worst of what could come had already befallen him. the very construction of his kingship was built upon the destruction of his manhood. he had known the final shame; his soul had surrendered to force. he could not redress that wrong; he could only repeat it and repay it. he could make the souls of his soldiers surrender to his gibbet and his whipping-post; he could 'make the souls of the nations surrender to his soldiers. he could only break men in as he had been broken; while he could break in, he could never break out. he could not slay in anger, nor even sin with simplicity. thus he stands alone among the conquerors of their kind; his madness was not due to a mere misdirection of courage. before the whisper of war had come to him the foundations of his audacity had been laid in fear. of the work he did in this world there need be no considerable debate. it was romantic, if it be romantic that the dragon should swallow st. george. he turned a small country into a great one: he made a new diplomacy by the fulness and far-flung daring of his lies: he took away from criminality all reproach of carelessness and incompleteness. he achieved an amiable combination of thrift and theft. he undoubtedly gave to stark plunder something of the solidity of property. he protected whatever he stole as simpler men protect whatever they have earned or inherited. he turned his hollow eyes with a sort of loathsome affection upon the territories which had most reluctantly become his: at the end of the seven years' war men knew as little how he was to be turned out of silesia as they knew why he had ever been allowed in it. in poland, like a devil in possession, he tore asunder the body he inhabited; but it was long before any man dreamed that such disjected limbs could live again. nor were the effects of his break from christian tradition confined to christendom; macaulay's world-wide generalisation is very true though very macaulayese. but though, in a long view, he scattered the seeds of war all over the world, his own last days were passed in a long and comparatively prosperous peace; a peace which received and perhaps deserved a certain praise: a peace with which many european peoples were content. for though he did not understand justice, he could understand moderation. he was the most genuine and the most wicked of pacifists. he did not want any more wars. he had tortured and beggared all his neighbours; but he bore them no malice for it. the immediate cause of that spirited disaster, the intervention of england on behalf of the new hohenzollern throne, was due, of course, to the national policy of the first william pitt. he was the kind of man whose vanity and simplicity are too easily overwhelmed by the obvious. he saw nothing in a european crisis except a war with france; and nothing in a war with france except a repetition of the rather fruitless glories of agincourt and malplaquet. he was of the erastian whigs, sceptical but still healthy-minded, and neither good enough nor bad enough to understand that even the war of that irreligious age was ultimately a religious war. he had not a shade of irony in his whole being; and beside frederick, already as old as sin, he was like a rather brilliant schoolboy. but the direct causes were not the only causes, nor the true ones. the true causes were connected with the triumph of one of the two traditions which had long been struggling in england. and it is pathetic to record that the foreign tradition was then represented by two of the ablest men of that age, frederick of prussia and pitt; while what was really the old english tradition was represented by two of the stupidest men that mankind ever tolerated in any age, george iii. and lord bute. bute was the figurehead of a group of tories who set about fulfilling the fine if fanciful scheme for a democratic monarchy sketched by bolingbroke in "the patriot king." it was bent in all sincerity on bringing men's minds back to what are called domestic affairs, affairs as domestic as george iii. it might have arrested the advancing corruption of parliaments and enclosure of country-sides, by turning men's minds from the foreign glories of the great whigs like churchill and chatham; and one of its first acts was to terminate the alliance with prussia. unfortunately, whatever was picturesque in the piracy of potsdam was beyond the imagination of windsor. but whatever was prosaic in potsdam was already established at windsor; the economy of cold mutton, the heavy-handed taste in the arts, and the strange northern blend of boorishness with etiquette. if bolingbroke's ideas had been applied by a spirited person, by a stuart, for example, or even by queen elizabeth (who had real spirit along with her extraordinary vulgarity), the national soul might have broken free from its new northern chains. but it was the irony of the situation that the king to whom tories appealed as a refuge from germanism was himself a german. we have thus to refer the origins of the german influence in england back to the beginning of the hanoverian succession; and thence back to the quarrel between the king and the lawyers which had issue at naseby; and thence again to the angry exit of henry viii. from the mediaeval council of europe. it is easy to exaggerate the part played in the matter by that great and human, though very pagan person, martin luther. henry viii. was sincere in his hatred for the heresies of the german monk, for in speculative opinions henry was wholly catholic; and the two wrote against each other innumerable pages, largely consisting of terms of abuse, which were pretty well deserved on both sides. but luther was not a lutheran. he was a sign of the break-up of catholicism; but he was not a builder of protestantism. the countries which became corporately and democratically protestant, scotland, for instance, and holland, followed calvin and not luther. and calvin was a frenchman; an unpleasant frenchman, it is true, but one full of that french capacity for creating official entities which can really act, and have a kind of impersonal personality, such as the french monarchy or the terror. luther was an anarchist, and therefore a dreamer. he made that which is, perhaps, in the long run, the fullest and most shining manifestation of failure; he made a name. calvin made an active, governing, persecuting thing, called the kirk. there is something expressive of him in the fact that he called even his work of abstract theology "the institutes." in england, however, there were elements of chaos more akin to luther than to calvin. and we may thus explain many things which appear rather puzzling in our history, notably the victory of cromwell not only over the english royalists but over the scotch covenanters. it was the victory of that more happy-go-lucky sort of protestantism, which had in it much of aristocracy but much also of liberty, over that logical ambition of the kirk which would have made protestantism, if possible, as constructive as catholicism had been. it might be called the victory of individualist puritanism over socialist puritanism. it was what milton meant when he said that the new presbyter was an exaggeration of the old priest; it was his _office_ that acted, and acted very harshly. the enemies of the presbyterians were not without a meaning when they called themselves independents. to this day no one can understand scotland who does not realise that it retains much of its mediæval sympathy with france, the french equality, the french pronunciation of latin, and, strange as it may sound, is in nothing so french as in its presbyterianism. in this loose and negative sense only it may be said that the great modern mistakes of england can be traced to luther. it is true only in this, that both in germany and england a protestantism softer and less abstract than calvinism was found useful to the compromises of courtiers and aristocrats; for every abstract creed does something for human equality. lutheranism in germany rapidly became what it is to-day--a religion of court chaplains. the reformed church in england became something better; it became a profession for the younger sons of squires. but these parallel tendencies, in all their strength and weakness, reached, as it were, symbolic culmination when the mediæval monarchy was extinguished, and the english squires gave to what was little more than a german squire the damaged and diminished crown. it must be remembered that the germanics were at that time used as a sort of breeding-ground for princes. there is a strange process in history by which things that decay turn into the very opposite of themselves. thus in england puritanism began as the hardest of creeds, but has ended as the softest; soft-hearted and not unfrequently soft-headed. of old the puritan in war was certainly the puritan at his best; it was the puritan in peace whom no christian could be expected to stand. yet those englishmen to-day who claim descent from the great militarists of express the utmost horror of militarism. an inversion of an opposite kind has taken place in germany. out of the country that was once valued as providing a perpetual supply of kings small enough to be stop-gaps, has come the modern menace of the one great king who would swallow the kingdoms of the earth. but the old german kingdoms preserved, and were encouraged to preserve, the good things that go with small interests and strict boundaries, music, etiquette, a dreamy philosophy, and so on. they were small enough to be universal. their outlook could afford to be in some degree broad and many-sided. they had the impartiality of impotence. all this has been utterly reversed, and we find ourselves at war with a germany whose powers are the widest and whose outlook is the narrowest in the world. it is true, of course, that the english squires put themselves over the new german prince rather than under him. they put the crown on him as an extinguisher. it was part of the plan that the new-comer, though royal, should be almost rustic. hanover must be one of england's possessions and not england one of hanover's. but the fact that the court became a german court prepared the soil, so to speak; english politics were already subconsciously committed to two centuries of the belittlement of france and the gross exaggeration of germany. the period can be symbolically marked out by carteret, proud of talking german at the beginning of the period, and lord haldane, proud of talking german at the end of it. culture is already almost beginning to be spelt with a k. but all such pacific and only slowly growing teutonism was brought to a crisis and a decision when the voice of pitt called us, like a trumpet, to the rescue of the protestant hero. among all the monarchs of that faithless age, the nearest to a man was a woman. maria theresa of austria was a german of the more generous sort, limited in a domestic rather than a national sense, firm in the ancient faith at which all her own courtiers were sneering, and as brave as a young lioness. frederick hated her as he hated everything german and everything good. he sets forth in his own memoirs, with that clearness which adds something almost superhuman to the mysterious vileness of his character, how he calculated on her youth, her inexperience and her lack of friends as proof that she could be despoiled with safety. he invaded silesia in advance of his own declaration of war (as if he had run on ahead to say it was coming) and this new anarchic trick, combined with the corruptibility of nearly all the other courts, left him after the two silesian wars in possession of the stolen goods. but maria theresa had refused to submit to the immorality of nine points of the law. by appeals and concessions to france, russia, and other powers, she contrived to create something which, against the atheist innovator even in that atheist age, stood up for an instant like a spectre of the crusades. had that crusade been universal and whole-hearted, the great new precedent of mere force and fraud would have been broken; and the whole appalling judgment which is fallen upon christendom would have passed us by. but the other crusaders were only half in earnest for europe; frederick was quite in earnest for prussia; and he sought for allies, by whose aid this weak revival of good might be stamped out, and his adamantine impudence endure for ever. the allies he found were the english. it is not pleasant for an englishman to have to write the words. this was the first act of the tragedy, and with it we may leave frederick, for we are done with the fellow though not with his work. it is enough to add that if we call all his after actions satanic, it is not a term of abuse, but of theology. he was a tempter. he dragged the other kings to "partake of the body of poland," and learn the meaning of the black mass. poland lay prostrate before three giants in armour, and her name passed into a synonym for failure. the prussians, with their fine magnanimity, gave lectures on the hereditary maladies of the man they had murdered. they could not conceive of life in those limbs; and the time was far off when they should be undeceived. in that day five nations were to partake not of the body, but of the spirit of poland; and the trumpet of the resurrection of the peoples should be blown from warsaw to the western isles. iii--_the enigma of waterloo_ that great englishman charles fox, who was as national as nelson, went to his death with the firm conviction that england had made napoleon. he did not mean, of course, that any other italian gunner would have done just as well; but he did mean that by forcing the french back on their guns, as it were, we had made their chief gunner necessarily their chief citizen. had the french republic been left alone, it would probably have followed the example of most other ideal experiments; and praised peace along with progress and equality. it would almost certainly have eyed with the coldest suspicion any adventurer who appeared likely to substitute his personality for the pure impersonality of the sovereign people; and would have considered it the very flower of republican chastity to provide a brutus for such a caesar. but if it was undesirable that equality should be threatened by a citizen, it was intolerable that it should be simply forbidden by a foreigner. if france could not put up with french soldiers she would very soon have to put up with austrian soldiers; and it would be absurd if, having decided to rely on soldiering, she had hampered the best french soldier even on the ground that he was not french. so that whether we regard napoleon as a hero rushing to the country's help, or a tyrant profiting by the country's extremity, it is equally clear that those who made the war made the war-lord; and those who tried to destroy the republic were those who created the empire. so, at least, fox argued against that much less english prig who would have called him unpatriotic; and he threw the blame upon pitt's government for having joined the anti-french alliance, and so tipped up the scale in favour of a military france. but whether he was right or no, he would have been the readiest to admit that england was not the first to fly at the throat of the young republic. something in europe much vaster and vaguer had from the first stirred against it. what was it then that first made war--and made napoleon? there is only one possible answer: the germans. this is the second act of our drama of the degradation of england to the level of germany. and it has this very important development; that germany means by this time _all_ the germans, just as it does to-day. the savagery of prussia and the stupidity of austria are now combined. mercilessness and muddleheadedness are met together; unrighteousness and unreasonableness have kissed each other; and the tempter and the tempted are agreed. the great and good maria theresa was already old. she had a son who was a philosopher of the school of frederick; also a daughter who was more fortunate, for she was guillotined. it was natural, no doubt, that her brother and relatives should disapprove of the incident; but it occurred long after the whole germanic power had been hurled against the new republic. louis xvi. himself was still alive and nominally ruling when the first pressure came from prussia and austria, demanding that the trend of the french emancipation should be reversed. it is impossible to deny, therefore, that what the united germanics were resolved to destroy was the reform and not even the revolution. the part which joseph of austria played in the matter is symbolic. for he was what is called an enlightened despot, which is the worst kind of despot. he was as irreligious as frederick the great, but not so disgusting or amusing. the old and kindly austrian family, of which maria theresa was the affectionate mother, and marie antoinette the rather uneducated daughter, was already superseded and summed up by a rather dried-up young man self-schooled to a prussian efficiency. the needle is already veering northward. prussia is already beginning to be the captain of the germanics "in shining armour." austria is already becoming a loyal _sekundant_. but there still remains one great difference between austria and prussia which developed more and more as the energy of the young napoleon was driven like a wedge between them. the difference can be most shortly stated by saying that austria did, in some blundering and barbaric way, care for europe; but prussia cared for nothing but prussia. austria is not a nation; you cannot really find austria on the map. but austria is a kind of empire; a holy roman empire that never came, an expanding and contracting-dream. it does feel itself, in a vague patriarchal way, the leader, not of a nation, but of nations. it is like some dying emperor of rome in the decline; who should admit that the legions had been withdrawn from britain or from parthia, but would feel it as fundamentally natural that they should have been there, as in sicily or southern gaul. i would not assert that the aged francis joseph imagines that he is emperor of scotland or of denmark; but i should guess that he retains some notion that if he did rule both the scots and the danes, it would not be more incongruous than his ruling both the hungarians and the poles. this cosmopolitanism of austria has in it a kind of shadow of responsibility for christendom. and it was this that made the difference between its proceedings and those of the purely selfish adventurer from the north, the wild dog of pomerania. it may be believed, as fox himself came at last to believe, that napoleon in his latest years was really an enemy to freedom, in the sense that he was an enemy to that very special and occidental form of freedom which we call nationalism. the resistance of the spaniards, for instance, was certainly a popular resistance. it had that peculiar, belated, almost secretive strength with which war is made by the people. it was quite easy for a conqueror to get into spain; his great difficulty was to get out again. it was one of the paradoxes of history that he who had turned the mob into an army, in defence of its rights against the princes, should at last have his army worn down, not by princes but by mobs. it is equally certain that at the other end of europe, in burning moscow and on the bridge of the beresina, he had found the common soul, even as he had found the common sky, his enemy. but all this does not affect the first great lines of the quarrel, which had begun before horsemen in germanic uniform had waited vainly upon the road to varennes or had failed upon the miry slope up to the windmill of valmy. and that duel, on which depended all that our europe has since become, had great russia and gallant spain and our own glorious island only as subordinates or seconds. that duel, first, last, and for ever, was a duel between the frenchman and the german; that is, between the citizen and the barbarian. it is not necessary nowadays to defend the french revolution, it is not necessary to defend even napoleon, its child and champion, from criticisms in the style of southey and alison, which even at the time had more of the atmosphere of bath and cheltenham than of turcoing and talavera. the french revolution was attacked because it was democratic and defended because it was democratic; and napoleon was not feared as the last of the iron despots, but as the first of the iron democrats. what france set out to prove france has proved; not that common men are all angels, or all diplomatists, or all gentlemen (for these inane aristocratic illusions were no part of the jacobin theory), but that common men can all be citizens and can all be soldiers; that common men can fight and can rule. there is no need to confuse the question with any of those escapades of a floundering modernism which have made nonsense of this civic common-sense. some free traders have seemed to leave a man no country to fight for; some free lovers seem to leave a man no household to rule. but these things have not established themselves either in france or anywhere else. what has been established is not free trade or free love, but freedom; and it is nowhere so patriotic or so domestic as in the country from which it came. the poor men of france have not loved the land less because they have shared it. even the patricians are patriots; and if some honest royalists or aristocrats are still saying that democracy cannot organise and cannot obey, they are none the less organised by it and obeying it, nobly living or splendidly dead for it, along the line from switzerland to the sea. but for austria, and even more for russia, there was this to be said; that the french republican ideal was incomplete, and that they possessed, in a corrupt but still positive and often popular sense, what was needed to complete it. the czar was not democratic, but he was humanitarian. he was a christian pacifist; there is something of the tolstoyan in every russian. it is not wholly fanciful to talk of the white czar: for russia even destruction has a deathly softness as of snow. her ideas are often innocent and even childish; like the idea of peace. the phrase holy alliance was a beautiful truth for the czar, though only a blasphemous jest for his rascally allies, metternich and castlereagh. austria, though she had lately fallen to a somewhat treasonable toying with heathens and heretics of turkey and prussia, still retained something of the old catholic comfort for the soul. priests still bore witness to that mighty mediaeval institution which even its enemies concede to be a noble nightmare. all their hoary political iniquities had not deprived them of that dignity. if they darkened the sun in heaven, they clothed it with the strong colours of sunrise in garment or gloriole; if they had given men stones for bread, the stones were carved with kindly faces and fascinating tales. if justice counted on their shameful gibbets hundreds of the innocent dead, they could still say that for them death was more hopeful than life for the heathen. if the new daylight discovered their vile tortures, there had lingered in the darkness some dim memory that they were tortures of purgatory and not, like those which parisian and prussian diabolists showed shameless in the sunshine, of naked hell. they claimed a truth not yet disentangled from human nature; for indeed earth is not even earth without heaven, as a landscape is not a landscape without the sky. and in, a universe without god there is not room enough for a man. it may be held, therefore, that there must in any case have come a conflict between the old world and the new; if only because the old are often broad, while the young are always narrow. the church had learnt, not at the end but at the beginning of her centuries, that the funeral of god is always a premature burial. if the bugles of bonaparte raised the living populace of the passing hour, she could blow that yet more revolutionary trumpet that shall raise all the democracy of the dead. but if we concede that collision was inevitable between the new republic on the one hand and holy russia and the holy roman empire on the other, there remain two great european forces which, in different attitudes and from very different motives, determined the ultimate combination. neither of them had any tincture of catholic mysticism. neither of them had any tincture of jacobin idealism. neither of them, therefore, had any real moral reason for being in the war at all. the first was england, and the second was prussia. it is very arguable that england must, in any case, have fought to keep her influence on the ports of the north sea. it is quite equally arguable that if she had been as heartily on the side of the french revolution as she was at last against it, she could have claimed the same concessions from the other side. it is certain that england had no necessary communion with the arms and tortures of the continental tyrannies, and that she stood at the parting of the ways. england was indeed an aristocracy, but a liberal one; and the ideas growing in the middle classes were those which had already made america, and were remaking france. the fiercest jacobins, such as danton, were deep in the liberal literature of england. the people had no religion to fight for, as in russia or la vendée. the parson was no longer a priest, and had long been a small squire. already that one great blank in our land had made snobbishness the only religion of south england; and turned rich men into a mythology. the effect can be well summed up in that decorous abbreviation by which our rustics speak of "lady's bedstraw," where they once spoke of "our lady's bedstraw." we have dropped the comparatively democratic adjective, and kept the aristocratic noun. south england is still, as it was called in the middle ages, a garden; but it is the kind where grow the plants called "lords and ladies." we became more and more insular even about our continental conquests; we stood upon our island as if on an anchored ship. we never thought of nelson at naples, but only eternally at trafalgar; and even that spanish name we managed to pronounce wrong. but even if we regard the first attack upon napoleon as a national necessity, the general trend remains true. it only changes the tale from a tragedy of choice to a tragedy of chance. and the tragedy was that, for a second time, we were at one with the germans. but if england had nothing to fight for but a compromise, prussia had nothing to fight for but a negation. she was and is, in the supreme sense, the spirit that denies. it is as certain that she was fighting against liberty in napoleon as it is that she was fighting against religion in maria theresa. what she was fighting for she would have found it quite impossible to tell you. at the best, it was for prussia; if it was anything else, it was tyranny. she cringed to napoleon when he beat her, and only joined in the chase when braver people had beaten him. she professed to restore the bourbons, and tried to rob them while she was restoring them. for her own hand she would have wrecked the restoration with the revolution. alone in all that agony of peoples, she had not the star of one solitary ideal to light the night of her nihilism. the french revolution has a quality which all men feel; and which may be called a sudden antiquity. its classicalism was not altogether a cant. when it had happened it seemed to have happened thousands of years ago. it spoke in parables; in the hammering of spears and the awful cap of phrygia. to some it seemed to pass like a vision; and yet it seemed eternal as a group of statuary. one almost thought of its most strenuous figures as naked. it is always with a shock of comicality that we remember that its date was so recent that umbrellas were fashionable and top-hats beginning to be tried. and it is a curious fact, giving a kind of completeness to this sense of the thing as something that happened outside the world, that its first great act of arms and also its last were both primarily symbols; and but for this visionary character, were in a manner vain. it began with the taking of the old and almost empty prison called the bastille; and we always think of it as the beginning of the revolution, though the real revolution did not come till some time after. and it ended when wellington and blucher met in ; and we always think of it as the end of napoleon; though napoleon had really fallen before. and the popular imagery is right, as it generally is in such things: for the mob is an artist, though not a man of science. the riot of the th of july did not specially deliver prisoners inside the bastille, but it did deliver the prisoners outside. napoleon when he returned was indeed a _revenant_, that is, a ghost. but waterloo was all the more final in that it was a spectral resurrection and a second death. and in this second case there were other elements that were yet more strangely symbolic. that doubtful and double battle before waterloo was like the dual personality in a dream. it corresponded curiously to the double mind of the englishman. we connect quatre bras with things romantically english to the verge of sentimentalism, with byron and "the black brunswicker." we naturally sympathise with wellington against ney. we do not sympathise, and even then we did not really sympathise, with blucher against napoleon. germany has complained that we passed over lightly the presence of prussians at the decisive action. and well we might. even at the time our sentiment was not solely jealousy, but very largely shame. wellington, the grimmest and even the most unamiable of tories, with no french sympathies and not enough human ones, has recorded his opinion of his prussian allies in terms of curt disgust. peel, the primmest and most snobbish tory that ever praised "our gallant allies" in a frigid official speech, could not contain himself about the conduct of blucher's men. our middle classes did well to adorn their parlours with the picture of the "meeting of wellington and blucher." they should have hung up a companion piece of pilate and herod shaking hands. then, after that meeting amid the ashes of hougomont, where they dreamed they had trodden out the embers of all democracy, the prussians rode on before, doing after their kind. after them went that ironical aristocrat out of embittered ireland, with what thoughts we know; and blucher, with what thoughts we care not; and his soldiers entered paris, and stole the sword of joan of arc. iv--_the coming of the janissaries_ the late lord salisbury, a sad and humorous man, made many public and serious remarks that have been proved false and perilous, and many private and frivolous remarks which were valuable and ought to be immortal. he struck dead the stiff and false psychology of "social reform," with its suggestion that the number of public-houses made people drunk, by saying that there were a number of bedrooms at hatfield, but they never made him sleepy. because of this it is possible to forgive him for having talked about "living and dying nations": though it is of such sayings that living nations die. in the same spirit he included the nation of ireland in the "celtic fringe" upon the west of england. it seems sufficient to remark that the fringe is considerably broader than the garment. but the fearful satire of time has very sufficiently avenged the irish nation upon him, largely by the instrumentality of another fragment of the british robe which he cast away almost contemptuously in the north sea. the name of it is heligoland; and he gave it to the germans. the subsequent history of the two islands on either side of england has been sufficiently ironical. if lord salisbury had foreseen exactly what would happen to heligoland, as well as to ireland, he might well have found no sleep at hatfield in one bedroom or a hundred. in the eastern isle he was strengthening a fortress that would one day be called upon to destroy us. in the western isle he was weakening a fortress that would one day be called upon to save us. in that day his trusted ally, william hohenzollern, was to batter our ships and boats from the bight of heligoland; and in that day his old and once-imprisoned enemy, john redmond, was to rise in the hour of english jeopardy, and be thanked in thunder for the free offer of the irish sword. all that robert cecil thought valueless has been our loss, and all that he thought feeble our stay. among those of his political class or creed who accepted and welcomed the irish leader's alliance, there were some who knew the real past relations between england and ireland, and some who first felt them in that hour. all knew that england could no longer be a mere mistress; many knew that she was now in some sense a suppliant. some knew that she deserved to be a suppliant. these were they who knew a little of the thing called history; and if they thought at all of such dead catchwords as the "celtic fringe" for a description of ireland, it was to doubt whether we were worthy to kiss the hem of her garment. if there be still any englishman who thinks such language extravagant, this chapter is written to enlighten him. in the last two chapters i have sketched in outline the way in which england, partly by historical accident, but partly also by false philosophy, was drawn into the orbit of germany, the centre of whose circle was already at berlin. i need not recapitulate the causes at all fully here. luther was hardly a heresiarch for england, though a hobby for henry viii. but the negative germanism of the reformation, its drag towards the north, its quarantine against latin culture, was in a sense the beginning of the business. it is well represented in two facts; the barbaric refusal of the new astronomical calendar merely because it was invented by a pope, and the singular decision to pronounce latin as if it were something else, making it not a dead language but a new language. later, the part played by particular royalties is complex and accidental; "the furious german" came and passed; the much less interesting germans came and stayed. their influence was negative but not negligible; they kept england out of that current of european life into which the gallophil stuarts might have carried her. only one of the hanoverians was actively german; so german that he actually gloried in the name of briton, and spelt it wrong. incidentally, he lost america. it is notable that all those eminent among the real britons, who spelt it right, respected and would parley with the american revolution, however jingo or legitimist they were; the romantic conservative burke, the earth-devouring imperialist chatham, even, in reality, the jog-trot tory north. the intractability was in the elector of hanover more than in the king of england; in the narrow and petty german prince who was bored by shakespeare and approximately inspired by handel. what really clinched the unlucky companionship of england and germany was the first and second alliance with prussia; the first in which we prevented the hardening tradition of frederick the great being broken up by the seven years' war; the second in which we prevented it being broken up by the french revolution and napoleon. in the first we helped prussia to escape like a young brigand; in the second we helped the brigand to adjudicate as a respectable magistrate. having aided his lawlessness, we defended his legitimacy. we helped to give the bourbon prince his crown, though our allies the prussians (in their cheery way) tried to pick a few jewels out of it before he got it. through the whole of that period, so important in history, it must be said that we were to be reckoned on for the support of unreformed laws and the rule of unwilling subjects. there is, as it were, an ugly echo even to the name of nelson in the name of naples. but whatever is to be said of the cause, the work which we did in it, with steel and gold, was so able and strenuous that an englishman can still be proud of it. we never performed a greater task than that in which we, in a sense, saved germany, save that in which a hundred years later, we have now, in a sense, to destroy her. history tends to be a facade of faded picturesqueness for most of those who have not specially studied it: a more or less monochrome background for the drama of their own day. to these it may well seem that it matters little whether we were on one side or the other in a fight in which all the figures are antiquated; bonaparte and blucher are both in old cocked hats; french kings and french regicides are both not only dead men but dead foreigners; the whole is a tapestry as decorative and as arbitrary as the wars of the roses. it was not so: we fought for something real when we fought for the old world against the new. if we want to know painfully and precisely what it was, we must open an old and sealed and very awful door, on a scene which was called ireland, but which then might well have been called hell. having chosen our part and made war upon the new world, we were soon made to understand what such spiritual infanticide involved; and were committed to a kind of massacre of the innocents. in ireland the young world was represented by young men, who shared the democratic dream of the continent, and were resolved to foil the plot of pitt; who was working a huge machine of corruption to its utmost to absorb ireland into the anti-jacobin scheme of england. there was present every coincidence that could make the british rulers feel they were mere abbots of misrule. the stiff and self-conscious figure of pitt has remained standing incongruously purse in hand; while his manlier rivals were stretching out their hands for the sword, the only possible resort of men who cannot be bought and refuse to be sold. a rebellion broke out and was repressed; and the government that repressed it was ten times more lawless than the rebellion. fate for once seemed to pick out a situation in plain black and white like an allegory; a tragedy of appalling platitudes. the heroes were really heroes; and the villains were nothing but villains. the common tangle of life, in which good men do evil by mistake and bad men do good by accident, seemed suspended for us as for a judgment. we had to do things that not only were vile, but felt vile. we had to destroy men who not only were noble, but looked noble. they were men like wolfe tone, a statesman in the grand style who was not suffered to found a state; and robert emmet, lover of his land and of a woman, in whose very appearance men saw something of the eagle grace of the young napoleon. but he was luckier than the young napoleon; for he has remained young. he was hanged; not before he had uttered one of those phrases that are the hinges of history. he made an epitaph of the refusal of an epitaph: and with a gesture has hung his tomb in heaven like mahomet's coffin. against such irishmen we could only produce castlereagh; one of the few men in human records who seem to have been made famous solely that they might be infamous. he sold his own country, he oppressed ours; for the rest he mixed his metaphors, and has saddled two separate and sensible nations with the horrible mixed metaphor called the union. here there is no possible see-saw of sympathies as there can be between brutus and caesar or between cromwell and charles i.: there is simply nobody who supposes that emmet was out for worldly gain, or that castlereagh was out for anything else. even the incidental resemblances between the two sides only served to sharpen the contrast and the complete superiority of the nationalists. thus, castlereagh and lord edward fitzgerald were both aristocrats. but castlereagh was the corrupt gentleman at the court, fitzgerald the generous gentleman upon the land; some portion of whose blood, along with some portion of his spirit, descended to that great gentleman, who--in the midst of the emetic immoralism of our modern politics--gave back that land to the irish peasantry. thus again, all such eighteenth-century aristocrats (like aristocrats almost anywhere) stood apart from the popular mysticism and the shrines of the poor; they were theoretically protestants, but practically pagans. but tone was the type of pagan who refuses to persecute, like gallio: pitt was the type of pagan who consents to persecute; and his place is with pilate. he was an intolerant indifferentist; ready to enfranchise the papists, but more ready to massacre them. thus, once more, the two pagans, tone and castlereagh, found a pagan end in suicide. but the circumstances were such that any man, of any party, felt that tone had died like cato and castlereagh had died like judas. the march of pitt's policy went on; and the chasm between light and darkness deepened. order was restored; and wherever order spread, there spread an anarchy more awful than the sun has ever looked on. torture came out of the crypts of the inquisition and walked in the sunlight of the streets and fields. a village vicar was slain with inconceivable stripes, and his corpse set on fire with frightful jests about a roasted priest. rape became a mode of government. the violation of virgins became a standing order of police. stamped still with the same terrible symbolism, the work of the english government and the english settlers seemed to resolve itself into animal atrocities against the wives and daughters of a race distinguished for a rare and detached purity, and of a religion which makes of innocence the mother of god. in its bodily aspects it became like a war of devils upon angels; as if england could produce nothing but torturers, and ireland nothing but martyrs. such was a part of the price paid by the irish body and the english soul, for the privilege of patching up a prussian after the sabre-stroke of jena. but germany was not merely present in the spirit: germany was present in the flesh. without any desire to underrate the exploits of the english or the orangemen, i can safely say that the finest touches were added by soldiers trained in a tradition inherited from the horrors of the thirty years' war, and of what the old ballad called "the cruel wars of high germanie." an irishman i know, whose brother is a soldier, and who has relatives in many distinguished posts of the british army, told me that in his childhood the legend (or rather the truth) of ' was so frightfully alive that his own mother would not have the word "soldier" spoken in her house. wherever we thus find the tradition alive we find that the hateful soldier means especially the german soldier. when the irish say, as some of them do say, that the german mercenary was worse than the orangemen, they say as much as human mouth can utter. beyond that there is nothing but the curse of god, which shall be uttered in an unknown tongue. the practice of using german soldiers, and even whole german regiments, in the make-up of the british army, came in with our german princes, and reappeared on many important occasions in our eighteenth-century history. they were probably among those who encamped triumphantly upon drumossie moor, and also (which is a more gratifying thought) among those who ran away with great rapidity at prestonpans. when that very typical german, george iii., narrow, serious, of a stunted culture and coarse in his very domesticity, quarrelled with all that was spirited, not only in the democracy of america but in the aristocracy of england, german troops were very fitted to be his ambassadors beyond the atlantic. with their well-drilled formations they followed burgoyne in that woodland march that failed at saratoga; and with their wooden faces beheld our downfall. their presence had long had its effect in various ways. in one way, curiously enough, their very militarism helped england to be less military; and especially to be more mercantile. it began to be felt, faintly of course and never consciously, that fighting was a thing that foreigners had to do. it vaguely increased the prestige of the germans as the military people, to the disadvantage of the french, whom it was the interest of our vanity to underrate. the mere mixture of their uniforms with ours made a background of pageantry in which it seemed more and more natural that english and german potentates should salute each other like cousins, and, in a sense, live in each other's countries. thus in the german emperor was already regarded as something of a menace by the english politicians, and as nothing but a madman by the english people. yet it did not seem in any way disgusting or dangerous that edward vii. should appear upon occasion in a prussian uniform. edward vii. was himself a friend to france, and worked for the french alliance. yet his appearance in the red trousers of a french soldier would have struck many people as funny; as funny as if he had dressed up as a chinaman. but the german hirelings or allies had another character which (by that same strain of evil coincidence which we are tracing in this book) encouraged all that was worst in the english conservatism and inequality, while discouraging all that was best in it. it is true that the ideal englishman was too much of a squire; but it is just to add that the ideal squire was a good squire. the best squire i know in fiction is duke theseus in "the midsummer night's dream," who is kind to his people and proud of his dogs; and would be a perfect human being if he were not just a little bit prone to be kind to both of them in the same way. but such natural and even pagan good-nature is consonant with the warm wet woods and comfortable clouds of south england; it never had any place among the harsh and thrifty squires in the plains of east prussia, the land of the east wind. they were peevish as well as proud, and everything they created, but especially their army, was made coherent by sheer brutality. discipline was cruel enough in all the eighteenth-century armies, created long after the decay of any faith or hope that could hold men together. but the state that was first in germany was first in ferocity. frederick the great had to forbid his english admirers to follow his regiments during the campaign, lest they should discover that the most enlightened of kings had only excluded torture from law to impose it without law. this influence, as we have seen, left on ireland a fearful mark which will never be effaced. english rule in ireland had been bad before; but in the broadening light of the revolutionary century i doubt whether it could have continued as bad, if we had not taken a side that forced us to flatter barbarian tyranny in europe. we should hardly have seen such a nightmare as the anglicising of ireland if we had not already seen the germanising of england. but even in england it was not without its effects; and one of its effects was to rouse a man who is, perhaps, the best english witness to the effect on the england of that time of the alliance with germany. with that man i shall deal in the chapter that follows. v--_the lost england_ telling the truth about ireland is not very pleasant to a patriotic englishman; but it is very patriotic. it is the truth and nothing but the truth which i have but touched on in the last chapter. several times, and especially at the beginning of this war, we narrowly escaped ruin because we neglected that truth, and would insist on treating our crimes of the ' and after as very distant; while in irish feeling, and in fact, they are very near. repentance of this remote sort is not at all appropriate to the case, and will not do. it may be a good thing to forget and forgive; but it is altogether too easy a trick to forget and be forgiven. the truth about ireland is simply this: that the relations between england and ireland are the relations between two men who have to travel together, one of whom tried to stab the other at the last stopping-place or to poison the other at the last inn. conversation may be courteous, but it will be occasionally forced. the topic of attempted murder, its examples in history and fiction, may be tactfully avoided in the sallies; but it will be occasionally present in the thoughts. silences, not devoid of strain, will fall from time to time. the partially murdered person may even think an assault unlikely to recur; but it is asking too much, perhaps, to expect him to find it impossible to imagine. and even if, as god grant, the predominant partner is really sorry for his former manner of predominating, and proves it in some unmistakable manner--as by saving the other from robbers at great personal risk--the victim may still be unable to repress an abstract psychological wonder about when his companion first began to feel like that. now this is not in the least an exaggerated parable of the position of england towards ireland, not only in ' , but far back from the treason that broke the treaty of limerick and far onwards through the great famine and after. the conduct of the english towards the irish after the rebellion was quite simply the conduct of one man who traps and binds another, and then calmly cuts him about with a knife. the conduct during the famine was quite simply the conduct of the first man if he entertained the later moments of the second man, by remarking in a chatty manner on the very hopeful chances of his bleeding to death. the british prime minister publicly refused to stop the famine by the use of english ships. the british prime minister positively spread the famine, by making the half-starved populations of ireland pay for the starved ones. the common verdict of a coroner's jury upon some emaciated wretch was "wilful murder by lord john russell": and that verdict was not only the verdict of irish public opinion, but is the verdict of history. but there were those in influential positions in england who were not content with publicly approving the act, but publicly proclaimed the motive. the _times_, which had then a national authority and respectability which gave its words a weight unknown in modern journalism, openly exulted in the prospect of a golden age when the kind of irishman native to ireland would be "as rare on the banks of the liffey as a red man on the banks of the manhattan." it seems sufficiently frantic that such a thing should have been said by one european of another, or even of a red indian, if red indians had occupied anything like the place of the irish then and since; if there were to be a red indian lord chief justice and a red indian commander-in-chief, if the red indian party in congress, containing first-rate orators and fashionable novelists, could have turned presidents in and out; if half the best troops of the country were trained with the tomahawk and half the best journalism of the capital written in picture-writing, if later, by general consent, the chief known as pine in the twilight, was the best living poet, or the chief thin red fox, the ablest living dramatist. if that were realised, the english critic probably would not say anything scornful of red men; or certainly would be sorry he said it. but the extraordinary avowal does mark what was most peculiar in the position. this has not been the common case of misgovernment. it is not merely that the institutions we set up were indefensible; though the curious mark of them is that they were literally indefensible; from wood's halfpence to the irish church establishment. there can be no more excuse for the method used by pitt than for the method used by pigott. but it differs further from ordinary misrule in the vital matter of its object. the coercion was not imposed that the people might live quietly, but that the people might die quietly. and then we sit in an owlish innocence of our sin, and debate whether the irish might conceivably succeed in saving ireland. we, as a matter of fact, have not even failed to save ireland. we have simply failed to destroy her. it is not possible to reverse this judgment or to take away a single count from it. is there, then, anything whatever to be said for the english in the matter? there is: though the english never by any chance say it. nor do the irish say it; though it is in a sense a weakness as well as a defence. one would think the irish had reason to say anything that can be said against the english ruling class, but they have not said, indeed they have hardly discovered, one quite simple fact--that it rules england. they are right in asking that the irish should have a say in the irish government, but they are quite wrong in supposing that the english have any particular say in english government. and i seriously believe i am not deceived by any national bias, when i say that the common englishman would be quite incapable of the cruelties that were committed in his name. but, most important of all, it is the historical fact that there was another england, an england consisting of common englishmen, which not only certainly would have done better, but actually did make some considerable attempt to do better. if anyone asks for the evidence, the answer is that the evidence has been destroyed, or at least deliberately boycotted: but can be found in the unfashionable corners of literature; and, when found, is final. if anyone asks for the great men of such a potential democratic england, the answer is that the great men are labelled small men, or not labelled at all; have been successfully belittled as the emancipation of which they dreamed has dwindled. the greatest of them is now little more than a name; he is criticised to be underrated and not to be understood; but he presented all that alternative and more liberal englishry; and was enormously popular because he presented it. in taking him as the type of it we may tell most shortly the whole of this forgotten tale. and, even when i begin to tell it, i find myself in the presence of that ubiquitous evil which is the subject of this book. it is a fact, and i think it is not a coincidence, that in standing for a moment where this englishman stood, i again find myself confronted by the german soldier. the son of a small surrey farmer, a respectable tory and churchman, ventured to plead against certain extraordinary cruelties being inflicted on englishmen whose hands were tied, by the whips of german superiors; who were then parading in english fields their stiff foreign uniforms and their sanguinary foreign discipline. in the countries from which they came, of course, such torments were the one monotonous means of driving men on to perish in the dead dynastic quarrels of the north; but to poor will cobbett, in his provincial island, knowing little but the low hills and hedges around the little church where he now lies buried, the incident seemed odd--nay, unpleasing. he knew, of course, that there was then flogging in the british army also; but the german standard was notoriously severe in such things, and was something of an acquired taste. added to which he had all sorts of old grandmotherly prejudices about englishmen being punished by englishmen, and notions of that sort. he protested, not only in speech, but actually in print. he was soon made to learn the perils of meddling in the high politics of the high dutch militarists. the fine feelings of the foreign mercenaries were soothed by cobbett being flung into newgate for two years and beggared by a fine of £ . that small incident is a small transparent picture of the holy alliance; of what was really meant by a country, once half liberalised, taking up the cause of the foreign kings. this, and not "the meeting of wellington and blucher," should be engraved as the great scene of the war. from this intemperate fenians should learn that the teutonic mercenaries did not confine themselves solely to torturing irishmen. they were equally ready to torture englishmen: for mercenaries are mostly unprejudiced. to cobbett's eye we were suffering from allies exactly as we should suffer from invaders. boney was a bogey; but the german was a nightmare, a thing actually sitting on top of us. in ireland the alliance meant the ruin of anything and everything irish, from the creed of st. patrick to the mere colour green. but in england also it meant the ruin of anything and everything english, from the habeas corpus act to cobbett. after this affair of the scourging, he wielded his pen like a scourge until he died. this terrible pamphleteer was one of those men who exist to prove the distinction between a biography and a life. from his biographies you will learn that he was a radical who had once been a tory. from his life, if there were one, you would learn that he was always a radical because he was always a tory. few men changed less; it was round him that the politicians like pitt chopped and changed, like fakirs dancing round a sacred rock. his secret is buried with him; it is that he really cared about the english people. he was conservative because he cared for their past, and liberal because he cared for their future. but he was much more than this. he had two forms of moral manhood very rare in our time: he was ready to uproot ancient successes, and he was ready to defy oncoming doom. burke said that few are the partisans of a tyranny that has departed: he might have added that fewer still are the critics of a tyranny that has remained. burke certainly was not one of them. while lashing himself into a lunacy against the french revolution, which only very incidentally destroyed the property of the rich, he never criticised (to do him justice, perhaps never saw) the english revolution, which began with the sack of convents, and ended with the fencing in of enclosures; a revolution which sweepingly and systematically destroyed the property of the poor. while rhetorically putting the englishman in a castle, politically he would not allow him on a common. cobbett, a much more historical thinker, saw the beginning of capitalism in the tudor pillage and deplored it; he saw the triumph of capitalism in the industrial cities and defied it. the paradox he was maintaining really amounted to the assertion that westminster abbey is rather more national than welbeck abbey. the same paradox would have led him to maintain that a warwickshire man had more reason to be proud of stratford-on-avon than of birmingham. he would no more have thought of looking for england in birmingham than of looking for ireland in belfast. the prestige of cobbett's excellent literary style has survived the persecution of his equally excellent opinions. but that style also is underrated through the loss of the real english tradition. more cautious schools have missed the fact that the very genius of the english tongue tends not only to vigour, but specially to violence. the englishman of the leading articles is calm, moderate, and restrained; but then the englishman of the leading articles is a prussian. the mere english consonants are full of cobbett. dr. johnson was our great man of letters when he said "stinks," not when he said "putrefaction." take some common phrase like "raining cats and dogs," and note not only the extravagance of imagery (though that is very shakespearean), but a jagged energy in the very spelling. say "chats" and "chiens" and it is not the same. perhaps the old national genius has survived the urban enslavement most spiritedly in our comic songs, admired by all men of travel and continental culture, by mr. george moore as by mr. belloc. one (to which i am much attached) had a chorus-- "o wind from the south blow mud in the mouth of jane, jane, jane." note, again, not only the tremendous vision of clinging soils carried skywards in the tornado, but also the suitability of the mere sounds. say "bone" and "bouche" for mud and mouth and it is not the same. cobbett was a wind from the south; and if he occasionally seemed to stop his enemies' mouths with mud, it was the real soil of south england. and as his seemingly mad language is very literary, so his seemingly mad meaning is very historical. modern people do not understand him because they do not understand the difference between exaggerating a truth and exaggerating a lie. he did exaggerate, but what he knew, not what he did not know. he only appears paradoxical because he upheld tradition against fashion. a paradox is a fantastic thing that is said once: a fashion is a more fantastic thing that is said a sufficient number of times. i could give numberless examples in cobbett's case, but i will give only one. anyone who finds himself full in the central path of cobbett's fury sometimes has something like a physical shock. no one who has read "the history of the reformation" will ever forget the passage (i forget the precise words) in which he says the mere thought of such a person as cranmer makes the brain reel, and, for an instant, doubt the goodness of god; but that peace and faith flow back into the soul when we remember that he was burned alive. now this is extravagant. it takes the breath away; and it was meant to. but what i wish to point out is that a much more extravagant view of cranmer was, in cobbett's day, the accepted view of cranmer; not as a momentary image, but as an immovable historical monument. thousands of parsons and penmen dutifully set down cranmer among the saints and martyrs; and there are many respectable people who would do so still. this is not an exaggerated truth, but an established lie. cranmer was not such a monstrosity of meanness as cobbett implies; but he was mean. but there is no question of his being less saintly than the parsonages believed; he was not a saint at all; and not very attractive even as a sinner. he was no more a martyr for being burned than crippen for being hanged. cobbett was defeated because the english people was defeated. after the frame-breaking riots, men, as men, were beaten: and machines, as machines, had beaten them. peterloo was as much the defeat of the english as waterloo was the defeat of the french. ireland did not get home rule because england did not get it. cobbett would not forcibly incorporate ireland, least of all the corpse of ireland. but before his defeat cobbett had an enormous following; his "register" was what the serial novels of dickens were afterwards to be. dickens, by the way, inherited the same instinct for abrupt diction, and probably enjoyed writing "gas and gaiters" more than any two other words in his works. but dickens was narrower than cobbett, not by any fault of his own, but because in the intervening epoch of the triumph of scrooge and gradgrind the link with our christian past had been lost, save in the single matter of christmas, which dickens rescued romantically and by a hair's-breadth escape. cobbett was a yeoman; that is, a man free and farming a small estate. by dickens's time, yeomen seemed as antiquated as bowmen. cobbett was mediaeval; that is, he was in almost every way the opposite of what that word means to-day. he was as egalitarian as st. francis, and as independent as robin hood. like that other yeoman in the ballad, he bore in hand a mighty bow; what some of his enemies would have called a long bow. but though he sometimes overshot the mark of truth, he never shot away from it, like froude. his account of that sixteenth century in which the mediaeval civilisation ended, is not more and not less picturesque than froude's: the difference is in the dull detail of truth. that crisis was _not_ the foundling of a strong tudor monarchy, for the monarchy almost immediately perished; it _was_ the founding of a strong class holding all the capital and land, for it holds them to this day. cobbett would have asked nothing better than to bend his mediaeval bow to the cry of "st. george for merry england," for though he pointed to the other and uglier side of the waterloo medal, he was patriotic; and his premonitions were rather against blucher than wellington. but if we take that old war-cry as his final word (and he would have accepted it) we must note how every term in it points away from what the modern plutocrats call either progress or empire. it involves the invocation of saints, the most popular and the most forbidden form of mediævalism. the modern imperialist no more thinks of st. george in england than he thinks of st. john in st. john's wood. it is nationalist in the narrowest sense; and no one knows the beauty and simplicity of the middle ages who has not seen st. george's cross separate, as it was at creçy or flodden, and noticed how much finer a flag it is than the union jack. and the word "merry" bears witness to an england famous for its music and dancing before the coming of the puritans, the last traces of which have been stamped out by a social discipline utterly un-english. not for two years, but for ten decades cobbett has been in prison; and his enemy, the "efficient" foreigner, has walked about in the sunlight, magnificent, and a model for men. i do not think that even the prussians ever boasted about "merry prussia." vi--_hamlet and the danes_ in the one classic and perfect literary product that ever came out of germany--i do not mean "faust," but grimm's fairy tales--there is a gorgeous story about a boy who went through a number of experiences without learning how to shudder. in one of them, i remember, he was sitting by the fireside and a pair of live legs fell down the chimney and walked about the room by themselves. afterwards the rest fell down and joined up; but this was almost an anti-climax. now that is very charming, and full of the best german domesticity. it suggests truly what wild adventures the traveller can find by stopping at home. but it also illustrates in various ways how that great german influence on england, which is the matter of these essays, began in good things and gradually turned to bad. it began as a literary influence, in the lurid tales of hoffmann, the tale of "sintram," and so on; the revisualising of the dark background of forest behind our european cities. that old german darkness was immeasurably livelier than the new german light. the devils of germany were much better than the angels. look at the teutonic pictures of "the three huntsmen" and observe that while the wicked huntsman is effective in his own way, the good huntsman is weak in every way, a sort of sexless woman with a face like a teaspoon. but there is more in these first forest tales, these homely horrors. in the earlier stages they have exactly this salt of salvation, that the boy does _not_ shudder. they are made fearful that he may be fearless, not that he may fear. as long as that limit is kept, the barbaric dreamland is decent; and though individuals like coleridge and de quincey mixed it with worse things (such as opium), they kept that romantic rudiment upon the whole. but the one disadvantage of a forest is that one may lose one's way in it. and the one danger is not that we may meet devils, but that we may worship them. in other words, the danger is one always associated, by the instinct of folk-lore, with forests; it is _enchantment_, or the fixed loss of oneself in some unnatural captivity or spiritual servitude. and in the evolution of germanism, from hoffmann to hauptmann, we do see this growing tendency to take horror seriously, which is diabolism. the german begins to have an eerie abstract sympathy with the force and fear he describes, as distinct from their objective. the german is no longer sympathising with the boy against the goblin, but rather with the goblin against the boy. there goes with it, as always goes with idolatry, a dehumanised seriousness; the men of the forest are already building upon a mountain the empty throne of the superman. now it is just at this point that i for one, and most men who love truth as well as tales, begin to lose interest. i am all for "going out into the world to seek my fortune," but i do not want to find it--and find it is only being chained for ever among the frozen figures of the sieges allees. i do not want to be an idolator, still less an idol. i am all for going to fairyland, but i am also all for coming back. that is, i will admire, but i will not be magnetised, either by mysticism or militarism. i am all for german fantasy, but i will resist german earnestness till i die. i am all for grimm's fairy tales; but if there is such a thing as grimm's law, i would break it, if i knew what it was. i like the prussian's legs (in their beautiful boots) to fall down the chimney and walk about my room. but when he procures a head and begins to talk, i feel a little bored. the germans cannot really be deep because they will not consent to be superficial. they are bewitched by art, and stare at it, and cannot see round it. they will not believe that art is a light and slight thing--a feather, even if it be from an angelic wing. only the slime is at the bottom of a pool; the sky is on the surface. we see this in that very typical process, the germanising of shakespeare. i do not complain of the germans forgetting that shakespeare was an englishman. i complain of their forgetting that shakespeare was a man; that he had moods, that he made mistakes, and, above all, that he knew his art was an art and not an attribute of deity. that is what is the matter with the germans; they cannot "ring fancy's knell"; their knells have no gaiety. the phrase of hamlet about "holding the mirror up to nature" is always quoted by such earnest critics as meaning that art is nothing if not realistic. but it really means (or at least its author really thought) that art is nothing if not artificial. realists, like other barbarians, really _believe_ the mirror; and therefore break the mirror. also they leave out the phrase "as 'twere," which must be read into every remark of shakespeare, and especially every remark of hamlet. what i mean by believing the mirror, and breaking it, can be recorded in one case i remember; in which a realistic critic quoted german authorities to prove that hamlet had a particular psycho-pathological abnormality, which is admittedly nowhere mentioned in the play. the critic was bewitched; he was thinking of hamlet as a real man, with a background behind him three dimensions deep--which does not exist in a looking-glass. "the best in this kind are but shadows." no german commentator has ever made an adequate note on that. nevertheless, shakespeare was an englishman; he was nowhere more english than in his blunders; but he was nowhere more successful than in the description of very english types of character. and if anything is to be said about hamlet, beyond what shakespeare has said about him, i should say that hamlet was an englishman too. he was as much an englishman as he was a gentleman, and he had the very grave weaknesses of both characters. the chief english fault, especially in the nineteenth century, has been lack of decision, not only lack of decision in action, but lack of the equally essential decision in thought--which some call dogma. and in the politics of the last century, this english hamlet, as we shall see, played a great part, or rather refused to play it. there were, then, two elements in the german influence; a sort of pretty playing with terror and a solemn recognition of terrorism. the first pointed to elfland, and the second to--shall we say, prussia. and by that unconscious symbolism with which all this story develops, it was soon to be dramatically tested, by a definite political query, whether what we really respected was the teutonic fantasy or the teutonic fear. the germanisation of england, its transition and turning-point, was well typified by the genius of carlyle. the original charm of germany had been the charm of the child. the teutons were never so great as when they were childish; in their religious art and popular imagery the christ-child is really a child, though the christ is hardly a man. the self-conscious fuss of their pedagogy is half-redeemed by the unconscious grace which called a school not a seed-plot of citizens, but merely a garden of children. all the first and best forest-spirit is infancy, its wonder, its wilfulness, even its still innocent fear. carlyle marks exactly the moment when the german child becomes the spoilt child. the wonder turns to mere mysticism; and mere mysticism always turns to mere immoralism. the wilfulness is no longer liked, but is actually obeyed. the fear becomes a philosophy. panic hardens into pessimism; or else, what is often equally depressing, optimism. carlyle, the most influential english writer of that time, marks all this by the mental interval between his "french revolution" and his "frederick the great." in both he was germanic. carlyle was really as sentimental as goethe; and goethe was really as sentimental as werther. carlyle understood everything about the french revolution, except that it was a french revolution. he could not conceive that cold anger that comes from a love of insulted truth. it seemed to him absurd that a man should die, or do murder, for the first proposition of euclid; should relish an egalitarian state like an equilateral triangle; or should defend the pons asinorum as codes defended the tiber bridge. but anyone who does not understand that does not understand the french revolution--nor, for that matter, the american revolution. "we hold these truths to be self-evident": it was the fanaticism of truism. but though carlyle had no real respect for liberty, he had a real reverence for anarchy. he admired elemental energy. the violence which repelled most men from the revolution was the one thing that attracted him to it. while a whig like macaulay respected the girondists but deplored the mountain, a tory like carlyle rather liked the mountain and quite unduly despised the girondists. this appetite for formless force belongs, of course, to the forests, to germany. but when carlyle got there, there fell upon him a sort of spell which is his tragedy and the english tragedy, and, in no small degree, the german tragedy too. the real romance of the teutons was largely a romance of the southern teutons, with their castles, which are almost literally castles in the air, and their river which is walled with vineyards and rhymes so naturally to wine. but as carlyle's was rootedly a romance of conquest, he had to prove that the thing which conquered in germany was really more poetical than anything else in germany. now the thing that conquered in germany was about the most prosaic thing of which the world ever grew weary. there is a great deal more poetry in brixton than in berlin. stella said that swift could write charmingly about a broom-stick; and poor carlyle had to write romantically about a ramrod. compare him with heine, who had also a detached taste in the mystical grotesques of germany, but who saw what was their enemy: and offered to nail up the prussian eagle like an old crow as a target for the archers of the rhine. its prosaic essence is not proved by the fact that it did not produce poets: it is proved by the more deadly fact that it did. the actual written poetry of frederick the great, for instance, was not even german or barbaric, but simply feeble--and french. thus carlyle became continually gloomier as his fit of the blues deepened into prussian blues; nor can there be any wonder. his philosophy had brought out the result that the prussian was the first of germans, and, therefore, the first of men. no wonder he looked at the rest of us with little hope. but a stronger test was coming both for carlyle and england. prussia, plodding, policing, as materialist as mud, went on solidifying and strengthening after unconquered russia and unconquered england had rescued her where she lay prostrate under napoleon. in this interval the two most important events were the polish national revival, with which russia was half inclined to be sympathetic, but prussia was implacably coercionist; and the positive refusal of the crown of a united germany by the king of prussia, simply because it was constitutionally offered by a free german convention. prussia did not want to lead the germans: she wanted to conquer the germans. and she wanted to conquer other people first. she had already found her brutal, if humorous, embodiment in bismarck; and he began with a scheme full of brutality and not without humour. he took up, or rather pretended to take up, the claim of the prince of augustenberg to duchies which were a quite lawful part of the land of denmark. in support of this small pretender he enlisted two large things, the germanic body called the bund and the austrian empire. it is possibly needless to say that after he had seized the disputed provinces by pure prussian violence, he kicked out the prince of augustenberg, kicked out the german bund, and finally kicked out the austrian empire too, in the sudden campaign of sadowa. he was a good husband and a good father; he did not paint in water colours; and of such is the kingdom of heaven. but the symbolic intensity of the incident was this. the danes expected protection from england; and if there had been any sincerity in the ideal side of our teutonism they ought to have had it. they ought to have had it even by the pedantries of the time, which already talked of latin inferiority: and were never weary of explaining that the country of richelieu could not rule and the country of napoleon could not fight. but if it was necessary for whosoever would be saved to be a teuton, the danes were more teuton than the prussians. if it be a matter of vital importance to be descended from vikings, the danes really were descended from vikings, while the prussians were descended from mongrel slavonic savages. if protestantism be progress, the danes were protestant; while they had attained quite peculiar success and wealth in that small ownership and intensive cultivation which is very commonly a boast of catholic lands. they had in a quite arresting degree what was claimed for the germanics as against latin revolutionism: quiet freedom, quiet prosperity, a simple love of fields and of the sea. but, moreover, by that coincidence which dogs this drama, the english of that victorian epoch had found their freshest impression of the northern spirit of infancy and wonder in the works of a danish man of genius, whose stories and sketches were so popular in england as almost to have become english. good as grimm's fairy tales were, they had been collected and not created by the modern german; they were a museum of things older than any nation, of the dateless age of once-upon-a-time. when the english romantics wanted to find the folk-tale spirit still alive, they found it in the small country of one of those small kings, with whom the folk-tales are almost comically crowded. there they found what we call an original writer, who was nevertheless the image of the origins. they found a whole fairyland in one head and under one nineteenth-century top hat. those of the english who were then children owe to hans andersen more than to any of their own writers, that essential educational emotion which feels that domesticity is not dull but rather fantastic; that sense of the fairyland of furniture, and the travel and adventure of the farmyard. his treatment of inanimate things as animate was not a cold and awkward allegory: it was a true sense of a dumb divinity in things that are. through him a child did feel that the chair he sat on was something like a wooden horse. through him children and the happier kind of men did feel themselves covered by a roof as by the folded wings of some vast domestic fowl; and feel common doors like great mouths that opened to utter welcome. in the story of "the fir tree" he transplanted to england a living bush that can still blossom into candles. and in his tale of "the tin soldier" he uttered the true defence of romantic militarism against the prigs who would forbid it even as a toy for the nursery. he suggested, in the true tradition of the folk-tales, that the dignity of the fighter is not in his largeness but rather in his smallness, in his stiff loyalty and heroic helplessness in the hands of larger and lower things. these things, alas, were an allegory. when prussia, finding her crimes unpunished, afterwards carried them into france as well as denmark, carlyle and his school made some effort to justify their germanism, by pitting what they called the piety and simplicity of germany against what they called the cynicism and ribaldry of france. but nobody could possibly pretend that bismarck was more pious and simple than hans andersen; yet the carlyleans looked on with silence or approval while the innocent toy kingdom was broken like a toy. here again, it is enormously probable that england would have struck upon the right side, if the english people had been the english government. among other coincidences, the danish princess who had married the english heir was something very like a fairy princess to the english crowd. the national poet had hailed her as a daughter of the sea-kings; and she was, and indeed still is, the most popular royal figure in england. but whatever our people may have been like, our politicians were on the very tamest level of timidity and the fear of force to which they have ever sunk. the tin soldier of the danish army and the paper boat of the danish navy, as in the story, were swept away down the great gutter, down that colossal _cloaca_ that leads to the vast cesspool of berlin. why, as a fact, did not england interpose? there were a great many reasons given, but i think they were all various inferences from one reason; indirect results and sometimes quite illogical results, of what we have called the germanisation of england. first, the very insularity on which we insisted was barbaric, in its refusal of a seat in the central senate of the nations. what we called our splendid isolation became a rather ignominious sleeping-partnership with prussia. next, we were largely trained in irresponsibility by our contemporary historians, freeman and green, teaching us to be proud of a possible descent from king arthur's nameless enemies and not from king arthur. king arthur might not be historical, but at least he was legendary. hengist and horsa were not even legendary, for they left no legend. anybody could see what was obligatory on the representative of arthur; he was bound to be chivalrous, that is, to be european. but nobody could imagine what was obligatory on the representative of horsa, unless it were to be horsy. that was perhaps the only part of the anglo-saxon programme that the contemporary english really carried out. then, in the very real decline from cobbett to cobden (that is, from a broad to a narrow manliness and good sense) there had grown up the cult of a very curious kind of peace, to be spread all over the world not by pilgrims, but by pedlars. mystics from the beginning had made vows of peace--but they added to them vows of poverty. vows of poverty were not in the cobdenite's line. then, again, there was the positive praise of prussia, to which steadily worsening case the carlyleans were already committed. but beyond these, there was something else, a spirit which had more infected us as a whole. that spirit was the spirit of hamlet. we gave the grand name of "evolution" to a notion that things do themselves. our wealth, our insularity, our gradual loss of faith, had so dazed us that the old christian england haunted us like a ghost in whom we could not quite believe. an aristocrat like palmerston, loving freedom and hating the upstart despotism, must have looked on at its cold brutality not without that ugly question which hamlet asked himself--am i a coward? it cannot be but i am pigeon-livered and lack gall to make oppression bitter; or 'ere this i should have fatted all the region kites with this slave's offal. we made dumb our anger and our honour; but it has not brought us peace. vii--_the midnight of europe_ among the minor crimes of england may be classed the shallow criticism and easy abandonment of napoleon iii. the victorian english had a very bad habit of being influenced by words and at the same time pretending to despise them. they would build their whole historical philosophy upon two or three titles, and then refuse to get even the titles right. the solid victorian englishman, with his whiskers and his parliamentary vote, was quite content to say that louis napoleon and william of prussia both became emperors--by which he meant autocrats. his whiskers would have bristled with rage and he would have stormed at you for hair-splitting and "lingo," if you had answered that william was german emperor, while napoleon was not french emperor, but only emperor of the french. what could such mere order of the words matter? yet the same victorian would have been even more indignant if he had been asked to be satisfied with an art master, when he had advertised for a master of arts. his irritation would have increased if the art master had promised him a sea-piece and had brought him a piece of the sea; or if, during the decoration of his house, the same aesthetic humourist had undertaken to procure some indian red and had produced a red indian. the englishman would not see that if there was only a verbal difference between the french emperor and the emperor of the french, so, if it came to that, it was a verbal difference between the emperor and the republic, or even between a parliament and no parliament. for him an emperor meant merely despotism; he had not yet learned that a parliament may mean merely oligarchy. he did not know that the english people would soon be made impotent, not by the disfranchising of their constituents, but simply by the silencing of their members; and that the governing class of england did not now depend upon rotten boroughs, but upon rotten representatives. therefore he did not understand bonapartism. he did not understand that french democracy became more democratic, not less, when it turned all france into one constituency which elected one member. he did not understand that many dragged down the republic because it was not republican, but purely senatorial. he was yet to learn how quite corruptly senatorial a great representative assembly can become. yet in england to-day we hear "the decline of parliament" talked about and taken for granted by the best parliamentarians--mr. balfour, for instance--and we hear the one partly french and wholly jacobin historian of the french revolution recommending for the english evil a revival of the power of the crown. it seems that so far from having left louis napoleon far behind in the grey dust of the dead despotisms, it is not at all improbable that our most extreme revolutionary developments may end where louis napoleon began. in other words, the victorian englishman did not understand the words "emperor of the french." the type of title was deliberately chosen to express the idea of an elective and popular origin; as against such a phrase as "the german emperor," which expresses an almost transcendental tribal patriarchate, or such a phrase as "king of prussia," which suggests personal ownership of a whole territory. to treat the _coup d'état_ as unpardonable is to justify riot against despotism, but forbid any riot against aristocracy. yet the idea expressed in "the emperor of the french" is not dead, but rather risen from the dead. it is the idea that while a government may pretend to be a popular government, only a person can be really popular. indeed, the idea is still the crown of american democracy, as it was for a time the crown of french democracy. the very powerful official who makes the choice of that great people for peace or war, might very well be called, not the president of the united states, but the president of the americans. in italy we have seen the king and the mob prevail over the conservatism of the parliament, and in russia the new popular policy sacramentally symbolised by the czar riding at the head of the new armies. but in one place, at least, the actual form of words exists; and the actual form of words has been splendidly justified. one man among the sons of men has been permitted to fulfil a courtly formula with awful and disastrous fidelity. political and geographical ruin have written one last royal title across the sky; the loss of palace and capital and territory have but isolated and made evident the people that has not been lost; not laws but the love of exiles, not soil but the souls of men, still make certain that five true words shall yet be written in the corrupt and fanciful chronicles of mankind: "the king of the belgians." it is a common phrase, recurring constantly in the real if rabid eloquence of victor hugo, that napoleon iii. was a mere ape of napoleon i. that is, that he had, as the politician says, in "l'aiglon," "le petit chapeau, mais pas la tête"; that he was merely a bad imitation. this is extravagantly exaggerative; and those who say it, moreover, often miss the two or three points of resemblance which really exist in the exaggeration. one resemblance there certainly was. in both napoleons it has been suggested that the glory was not so great as it seemed; but in both it can be emphatically added that the eclipse was not so great as it seemed either. both succeeded at first and failed at last. but both succeeded at last, even after the failure. if at this moment we owe thanks to napoleon bonaparte for the armies of united france, we also owe some thanks to louis bonaparte for the armies of united italy. that great movement to a freer and more chivalrous europe which we call to-day the cause of the allies, had its forerunners and first victories before our time; and it not only won at arcola, but also at solferino. men who remembered louis napoleon when he mooned about the blessington _salon_, and was supposed to be almost mentally deficient, used to say he deceived europe twice; once when he made men think him an imbecile, and once when he made them think him a statesman. but he deceived them a third time; when he made them think he was dead; and had done nothing. in spite of the unbridled verse of hugo and the even more unbridled prose of kinglake, napoleon iii. is really and solely discredited in history because of the catastrophe of . hugo hurled any amount of lightning on louis napoleon; but he threw very little light on him. some passages in the "châtiments" are really caricatures carved in eternal marble. they will always be valuable in reminding generations too vague and soft, as were the victorians, of the great truth that hatred is beautiful, when it is hatred of the ugliness of the soul. but most of them could have been written about haman, or heliogabalus, or king john, or queen elizabeth, as much as about poor louis napoleon; they bear no trace of any comprehension of his quite interesting aims, and his quite comprehensible contempt for the fat-souled senatorial politicians. and if a real revolutionist like hugo did not do justice to the revolutionary element in cæsarism, it need hardly be said that a rather primrose league tory like tennyson did not. kinglake's curiously acrid insistence upon the _coup d'état_ is, i fear, only an indulgence in one of the least pleasing pleasures of our national pen and press, and one which afterwards altogether ran away with us over the dreyfus case. it is an unfortunate habit of publicly repenting for other people's sins. if this came easy to an englishman like kinglake, it came, of course, still easier to a german like queen victoria's husband and even to queen victoria herself, who was naturally influenced by him. but in so far as the sensible masses of the english nation took any interest in the matter, it is probable that they sympathised with palmerston, who was as popular as the prince consort was unpopular. the black mark against louis napoleon's name until now, has simply been sedan; and it is our whole purpose to-day to turn sedan into an interlude. if it is not an interlude, it will be the end of the world. but we have sworn to make an end of that ending: warring on until, if only by a purgatory of the nations and the mountainous annihilation of men, the story of the world ends well. there are, as it were, valleys of history quite close to us, but hidden by the closer hills. one, as we have seen, is that fold in the soft surrey hills where cobbett sleeps with his still-born english revolution. another is under that height called the spy of italy, where a new napoleon brought back the golden eagles against the black eagles of austria. yet that french adventure in support of the italian insurrection was very important; we are only beginning to understand its importance. it was a defiance to the german reaction and was a sort of revenge for it, just as the balkan victory was a defiance to the german reaction and was the attempted revenge for it. it is true that the french liberation of italy was incomplete, the problem of the papal states, for instance, being untouched by the peace of villafranca. the volcanic but fruitful spirit of italy had already produced that wonderful, wandering, and almost omnipresent personality whose red shirt was to be a walking flag: garibaldi. and many english liberals sympathised with him and his extremists as against the peace. palmerston called it "the peace that passeth all understanding": but the profanity of that hilarious old heathen was nearer the mark than he knew: there were really present some of those deep things which he did not understand. to quarrel with the pope, but to compromise with him, was an instinct with the bonapartes; an instinct no anglo-saxon could be expected to understand. they knew the truth; that anti-clericalism is not a protestant movement, but a catholic mood. and after all the english liberals could not get their own government to risk what the french government had risked; and napoleon iii. might well have retorted on palmerston, his rival in international liberalism, that half a war was better than no fighting. swinburne called villafranca "the halt before rome," and expressed a rhythmic impatience for the time when the world "shall ring to the roar of the lion proclaiming republican rome." but he might have remembered, after all, that it was not the british lion, that a british poet should have the right to say so imperiously, "let him roar again. let him roar again." it is true that there was no clear call to england from italy, as there certainly was from denmark. the great powers were not bound to help italy to become a nation, as they were bound to support the unquestioned fact that denmark was one. indeed the great italian patriot was to experience both extremes of the english paradox, and, curiously enough, in connection with both the two national and anti-german causes. for italy he gained the support of the english, but not the support of england. not a few of our countrymen followed the red shirt; but not in the red coat. and when he came to england, not to plead the cause of italy but the cause of denmark, the italian found he was more popular with the english than any englishman. he made his way through a forest of salutations, which would willingly have turned itself into a forest of swords. but those who kept the sword kept it sheathed. for the ruling class the valour of the italian hero, like the beauty of the danish princess, was a thing to be admired, that is enjoyed, like a novel--or a newspaper. palmerston was the very type of pacifism, because he was the very type of jingoism. in spirit as restless as garibaldi, he was in practice as cautious as cobden. england had the most prudent aristocracy, but the most reckless democracy in the world. it was, and is, the english contradiction, which has so much misrepresented us, especially to the irish. our national captains were carpet knights; our knights errant were among the dismounted rabble. when an austrian general who had flogged women in the conquered provinces appeared in the london streets, some common draymen off a cart behaved with the direct quixotry of sir lancelot or sir galahad. he had beaten women and they beat him. they regarded themselves simply as avengers of ladies in distress, breaking the bloody whip of a german bully; just as cobbett had sought to break it when it was wielded over the men of england. the boorishness was in the germanic or half-germanic rulers who wore crosses and spurs: the gallantry was in the gutter. english draymen had more chivalry than teuton aristocrats--or english ones. i have dwelt a little on this italian experiment because it lights up louis napoleon as what he really was before the eclipse, a politician--perhaps an unscrupulous politician--but certainly a democratic politician. a power seldom falls being wholly faultless; and it is true that the second empire became contaminated with cosmopolitan spies and swindlers, justly reviled by such democrats as rochefort as well as hugo. but there was no french inefficiency that weighed a hair in the balance compared with the huge and hostile efficiency of prussia; the tall machine that had struck down denmark and austria, and now stood ready to strike again, extinguishing the lamp of the world. there was a hitch before the hammer stroke, and bismarck adjusted it, as with his finger, by a forgery--for he had many minor accomplishments. france fell: and what fell with her was freedom, and what reigned in her stead only tyrants and the ancient terror. the crowning of the first modern kaiser in the very palace of the old french kings was an allegory; like an allegory on those versailles walls. for it was at once the lifting of the old despotic diadem and its descent on the low brow of a barbarian. louis xi. had returned, and not louis ix.; and europe was to know that sceptre on which there is no dove. the instant evidence that europe was in the grip of the savage was as simple as it was sinister. the invaders behaved with an innocent impiety and bestiality that had never been known in those lands since clovis was signed with the cross. to the naked pride of the new men nations simply were not. the struggling populations of two vast provinces were simply carried away like slaves into captivity, as after the sacking of some prehistoric town. france was fined for having pretended to be a nation; and the fine was planned to ruin her forever. under the pressure of such impossible injustice france cried out to the christian nations, one after another, and by name. her last cry ended in a stillness like that which had encircled denmark. one man answered; one who had quarrelled with the french and their emperor; but who knew it was not an emperor that had fallen. garibaldi, not always wise but to his end a hero, took his station, sword in hand, under the darkening sky of christendom, and shared the last fate of france. a curious record remains, in which a german commander testifies to the energy and effect of the last strokes of the wounded lion of aspromonte. but england went away sorrowful, for she had great possessions. viii--_the wrong horse_ in another chapter i mentioned some of the late lord salisbury's remarks with regret, but i trust with respect; for in certain matters he deserved all the respect that can be given to him. his critics said that he "thought aloud"; which is perhaps the noblest thing that can be said of a man. he was jeered at for it by journalists and politicians who had not the capacity to think or the courage to tell their thoughts. and he had one yet finer quality which redeems a hundred lapses of anarchic cynicism. he could change his mind upon the platform: he could repent in public. he could not only think aloud; he could "think better" aloud. and one of the turning-points of europe had come in the hour when he avowed his conversion from the un-christian and un-european policy into which his dexterous oriental master, disraeli, had dragged him; and declared that england had "put her money on the wrong horse." when he said it, he referred to the backing we gave to the turk under a fallacious fear of russia. but i cannot but think that if he had lived much longer, he would have come to feel the same disgust for his long diplomatic support of the turk's great ally in the north. he did not live, as we have lived, to feel that horse run away with us, and rush on through wilder and wilder places, until we knew that we were riding on the nightmare. what was this thing to which we trusted? and how may we most quickly explain its development from a dream to a nightmare, and the hair's-breadth escape by which it did not hurl us to destruction, as it seems to be hurling the turk? it is a certain spirit; and we must not ask for too logical a definition of it, for the people whom it possesses disown logic; and the whole thing is not so much a theory as a confusion of thought. its widest and most elementary character is adumbrated in the word teutonism or pan-germanism; and with this (which was what appeared to win in ) we had better begin. the nature of pan-germanism may be allegorised and abbreviated somewhat thus: the horse asserts that all other creatures are morally bound to sacrifice their interests to his, on the specific ground that he possesses all noble and necessary qualities, and is an end in himself. it is pointed out in answer that when climbing a tree the horse is less graceful than the cat; that lovers and poets seldom urge the horse to make a noise all night like the nightingale; that when submerged for some long time under water, he is less happy than the haddock; and that when he is cut open pearls are less often found in him than in an oyster. he is not content to answer (though, being a muddle-headed horse, he does use this answer also) that having an undivided hoof is more than pearls or oceans or all ascension or song. he reflects for a few years on the subject of cats; and at last discovers in the cat "the characteristic equine quality of caudality, or a tail"; so that cats _are_ horses, and wave on every tree-top the tail which is the equine banner. nightingales are found to have legs, which explains their power of song. haddocks are vertebrates; and therefore are sea-horses. and though the oyster outwardly presents dissimilarities which seem to divide him from the horse, he is by the all-filling nature-might of the same horse-moving energy sustained. now this horse is intellectually the wrong horse. it is not perhaps going too far to say that this horse is a donkey. for it is obviously within even the intellectual resources of a haddock to answer, "but if a haddock is a horse, why should i yield to you any more than you to me? why should that singing horse commonly called the nightingale, or that climbing horse hitherto known as the cat, fall down and worship you because of your horsehood? if all our native faculties are the accomplishments of a horse--why then you are only another horse without any accomplishments." when thus gently reasoned with, the horse flings up his heels, kicks the cat, crushes the oyster, eats the haddock and pursues the nightingale, and that is how the war began. this apologue is not in the least more fantastic than the facts of the teutonic claim. the germans do really say that englishmen are only sea-germans, as our haddocks were only sea-horses. they do really say that the nightingales of tuscany or the pearls of hellas must somehow be german birds or german jewels. they do maintain that the italian renaissance was really the german renaissance, pure germans having italian names when they were painters, as cockneys sometimes have when they are hair-dressers. they suggest that jesus and the great jews were teutonic. one teutonist i read actually explained the fresh energy of the french revolution and the stale privileges of its german enemies by saying that the germanic soul awoke in france and attacked the latin influence in germany. on the advantages of this method i need not dwell: if you are annoyed at jack johnson knocking out an english prize-fighter, you have only to say that it was the whiteness of the black man that won and the blackness of the white man that was beaten. but about the italian renaissance they are less general and will go into detail. they will discover (in their researches into 'istry, as mr. gandish said) that michael angelo's surname was buonarotti; and they will point out that the word "roth" is very like the word "rot." which, in one sense, is true enough. most englishmen will be content to say it is all rot and pass on. it is all of a piece with the preposterous prussian history, which talks, for instance, about the "perfect religious tolerance of the goths"; which is like talking about the legal impartiality of chicken-pox. he will decline to believe that the jews were germans; though he may perhaps have met some germans who were jews. but deeper than any such practical reply, lies the deep inconsistency of the parable. it is simply this; that if teutonism be used for comprehension it cannot be used for conquest. if all intelligent peoples are germans, then prussians are only the least intelligent germans. if the men of flanders are as german as the men of frankfort, we can only say that in saving belgium we are helping the germans who are in the right against the germans who are in the wrong. thus in alsace the conquerors are forced into the comic posture of annexing the people for being german and then persecuting them for being french. the french teutons who built rheims must surrender it to the south german teutons who have partly built cologne; and these in turn surrender cologne to the north german teutons, who never built anything, except the wooden aunt sally of old hindenburg. every teuton must fall on his face before an inferior teuton; until they all find, in the foul marshes towards the baltic, the very lowest of all possible teutons, and worship him--and find he is a slav. so much for pan-germanism. but though teutonism is indefinable, or at least is by the teutons undefined, it is not unreal. a vague but genuine soul does possess all peoples who boast of teutonism; and has possessed ourselves, in so far as we have been touched by that folly. not a race, but rather a religion, the thing exists; and in its sun was at noon. we can most briefly describe it under three heads. the victory of the german arms meant before leipzic, and means now, the overthrow of a certain idea. that idea is the idea of the citizen. this is true in a quite abstract and courteous sense; and is not meant as a loose charge of oppression. its truth is quite compatible with a view that the germans are better governed than the french. in many ways the germans are very well governed. but they might be governed ten thousand times better than they are, or than anybody ever can be, and still be as far as ever from governing. the idea of the citizen is that his individual human nature shall be constantly and creatively active in _altering_ the state. the germans are right in regarding the idea as dangerously revolutionary. every citizen _is_ a revolution. that is, he destroys, devours and adapts his environment to the extent of his own thought and conscience. this is what separates the human social effort from the non-human; the bee creates the honey-comb, but he does not criticise it. the german ruler really does feed and train the german as carefully as a gardener waters a flower. but if the flower suddenly began to water the gardener, he would be much surprised. so in germany the people really are educated; but in france the people educates. the french not only make up the state, but make the state; not only make it, but remake it. in germany the ruler is the artist, always painting the happy german like a portrait; in france the frenchman is the artist, always painting and repainting france like a house. no state of social good that does not mean the citizen _choosing_ good, as well as getting it, has the idea of the citizen at all. to say the germanies are naturally at war with this idea is merely to respect them and take them seriously: otherwise their war on the french revolution would be only an ignorant feud. it is this, to them, risky and fanciful notion of the critical and creative citizen, which in lay prostrate under united germany--under the undivided hoof. nevertheless, when the german says he has or loves freedom, what he says is not false. he means something; and what he means is the second principle, which i may summarise as the irresponsibility of thought. within the iron framework of the fixed state, the german has not only liberty but anarchy. anything can be said although, or rather because, nothing can be done. philosophy is really free. but this practically means only that the prisoner's cell has become the madman's cell: that it is scrawled all over inside with stars and systems, so that it looks like eternity. this is the contradiction remarked by dr. sarolea, in his brilliant book, between the wildness of german theory and the tameness of german practice. the germans _sterilise_ thought, making it active with a wild virginity; which can bear no fruit. but though there are so many mad theories, most of them have one root; and depend upon one assumption. it matters little whether we call it, with the german socialists, "the materialist theory of history"; or, with bismarck, "blood and iron." it can be put most fairly thus: that all _important_ events of history are biological, like a change of pasture or the communism of a pack of wolves. professors are still tearing their hair in the effort to prove somehow that the crusaders were migrating for food like swallows; or that the french revolutionists were somehow only swarming like bees. this works in two ways often accounted opposite; and explains both the german socialist and the junker. for, first, it fits in with teutonic imperialism; making the "blonde beasts" of germania into lions whose nature it is to eat such lambs as the french. the highest success of this notion in europe is marked by praise given to a race famous for its physical firmness and fighting breed, but which has frankly pillaged and scarcely pretended to rule; the turk, whom some tories called "the gentleman of europe." the kaiser paused to adore the crescent on his way to patronise the cross. it was corporately embodied when greece attempted a solitary adventure against turkey and was quickly crushed. that english guns helped to impose the mainly germanic policy of the concert upon crete, cannot be left out of mind while we are making appeals to greece--or considering the crimes of england. but the same principle serves to keep the internal politics of the germans quiet, and prevent socialism being the practical hope or peril it has been in so many other countries. it operates in two ways; first, by a curious fallacy about "the time not being ripe"--as if _time_ could ever be ripe. the same savage superstition from the forests had infected matthew arnold pretty badly when he made a personality out of the zeitgeist--perhaps the only ghost that was ever entirely fabulous. it is tricked by a biological parallel, by which the chicken always comes out of the egg "at the right time." he does not; he comes out when he comes out. the marxian socialist will not strike till the clock strikes; and the clock is made in germany, and never strikes. moreover, the theory of all history as a search for food makes the masses content with having food and physic, but not freedom. the best working model in the matter is the system of compulsory insurance; which was a total failure and dead letter in france but has been, in the german sense, a great success in germany. it treats employed persons as a fixed, separate, and lower caste, who must not themselves dispose of the margin of their small wages. in it was introduced into england by mr. lloyd george, who had studied its operations in germany, and, by the prussian prestige in "social reform," was passed. these three tendencies cohere, or are cohering, in an institution which is not without a great historical basis and not without great modern conveniences. and as france was the standard-bearer of citizenship in , germany is the standard-bearer of this alternative solution in . the institution which our fathers called slavery fits in with, or rather logically flows from, all the three spirits of which i have spoken, and promises great advantages to each of them. it can give the individual worker everything except the power to alter the state--that is, his own status. finality (or what certain eleutheromaniacs would call hopelessness) of status is the soul of slavery--and of compulsory insurance. then again, germany gives the individual exactly the liberty that has always been given to a slave--the liberty to think, the liberty to dream, the liberty to rage; the liberty to indulge in any intellectual hypotheses about the unalterable world and state--such as have always been free to slaves, from the stoical maxims of epictetus to the skylarking fairy tales of uncle remus. and it has been truly urged by all defenders of slavery that, if history has merely a material test, the material condition of the subordinate under slavery tends to be good rather than bad. when i once pointed out how precisely the "model village" of a great employer reproduces the safety and seclusion of an old slave estate, the employer thought it quite enough to answer indignantly that he had provided baths, playing-grounds, a theatre, etc., for his workers. he would probably have thought it odd to hear a planter in south carolina boast that he had provided banjos, hymn-books, and places suitable for the cake-walk. yet the planter must have provided the banjos, for a slave cannot own property. and if this germanic sociology is indeed to prevail among us, i think some of the broad-minded thinkers who concur in its prevalence owe something like an apology to many gallant gentlemen whose graves lie where the last battle was fought in the wilderness; men who had the courage to fight for it, the courage to die for it and, above all, the courage to call it by its name. with the acceptance by england of the german insurance act, i bring this sketch of the past relations of the two countries to an end. i have written this book because i wish, once and for all, to be done with my friend professor whirlwind of prussia, who has long despaired of really defending his own country, and has fallen back upon abusing mine. he has dropped, amid general derision, his attempt to call a thing right when even the chancellor who did it called it wrong. but he has an idea that if he can show that somebody from england somewhere did another wrong, the two wrongs may make a right. against the cry of the roman catholic poles the prussian has never done, or even pretended to do, anything but harden his heart; but he has (such are the lovable inconsistencies of human nature) a warm corner in his heart for the roman catholic irish. he has not a word to say for himself about the campaign in belgium, but he still has many wise, reproachful words to utter about the campaign in south africa. i propose to take those words out of his mouth. i will have nothing to do with the fatuous front-bench pretensions that our governors always govern well, that our statesmen are never whitewashed and never in need of whitewash. the only moral superiority i claim is that of not defending the indefensible. i most earnestly urge my countrymen not to hide behind thin official excuses, which the sister kingdoms and the subject races can easily see through. we can confess that our crimes have been as mountains, and still not be afraid of the present comparison. there may be, in the eyes of some, a risk in dwelling in this dark hour on our failures in the past: i believe profoundly that the risk is all the other way. i believe that the most deadly danger to our arms to-day lies in any whiff of that self-praise, any flavour of that moral cowardice, any glimpse of that impudent and ultimate impenitence, that may make one boer or scot or welshman or irishman or indian feel that he is only smoothing the path for a second prussia. i have passed the great part of my life in criticising and condemning the existing rulers and institutions of my country: i think it is infinitely the most patriotic thing that a man can do. i have no illusions either about our past or our present. _i_ think our whole history in ireland has been a vulgar and ignorant hatred of the crucifix, expressed by a crucifixion. i think the south african war was a dirty work which we did under the whips of moneylenders. i think mitchelstown was a disgrace; i think denshawi was a devilry. yet there is one part of life and history in which i would assert the absolute spotlessness of england. in one department we wear a robe of white and a halo of innocence. long and weary as may be the records of our wickedness, in one direction we have done nothing but good. whoever we may have wronged, we have never wronged germany. again and again we have dragged her from under the just vengeance of her enemies, from the holy anger of maria teresa, from the impatient and contemptuous common sense of napoleon. we have kept a ring fence around the germans while they sacked denmark and dismembered france. and if we had served our god as we have served _their_ kings, there would not be to-day one remnant of them in our path, either to slander or to slay us. ix--_the awakening of england_ in october silent and seemingly uninhabited crags and chasms in the high western region of the balkans echoed and re-echoed with a single shot. it was fired by the hand of a king--real king, who sat listening to his people in front of his own house (for it was hardly a palace), and who, in consequence of his listening to the people, not unfrequently imprisoned the politicians. it is said of him that his great respect for gladstone as the western advocate of balkan freedom was slightly shadowed by the fact that gladstone did not succeed in effecting the bodily capture of jack the ripper. this simple monarch knew that if a malefactor were the terror of the mountain hamlets, his subjects would expect him personally to take arms and pursue the ruffian; and if he refused to do so, would very probably experiment with another king. and the same primitive conception of a king being kept for some kind of purpose, led them also to expect him to lead in a foreign campaign, and it was with his own hand that he fired the first shot of the war which brought down into the dust the ancient empire of the grand turk. his kingdom was little more than the black mountain after which it was named: we commonly refer to it under its italian translation of montenegro. it is worth while to pause for a moment upon his picturesque and peculiar community, because it is perhaps the simplest working model of all that stood in the path of the great germanic social machine i have described in the last chapter--stood in its path and was soon to be very nearly destroyed by its onset. it was a branch of the serbian stock which had climbed into this almost inaccessible eyrie, and thence, for many hundred years, had mocked at the predatory empire of the turks. the serbians in their turn were but one branch of the peasant slavs, millions of whom are spread over russia and subject on many sides to empires with which they have less sympathy; and the slavs again, in the broad features which are important here, are not merely slavonic but simply european. but a particular picture is generally more pointed and intelligible than tendencies which elsewhere are mingled with subtler tendencies; and of this unmixed european simplicity montenegro is an excellent model. moreover, the instance of one small christian state will serve to emphasise that this is not a quarrel between england and germany, but between europe and germany. it is my whole purpose in these pages not to spare my own country where it is open to criticism; and i freely admit that montenegro, morally and politically speaking, is almost as much in advance of england as it is of germany. in montenegro there are no millionaires--and therefore next to no socialists. as to why there are no millionaires, it is a mystery, and best studied among the mysteries of the middle ages. by some of the dark ingenuities of that age of priestcraft a curious thing was discovered--that if you kill every usurer, every forestaller, every adulterater, every user of false weights, every fixer of false boundaries, every land-thief, every water-thief, you afterwards discover by a strange indirect miracle, or disconnected truth from heaven, that you have no millionaires. without dwelling further on this dark matter, we may say that this great gap in the montenegrin experience explains the other great gap--the lack of socialists. the class-conscious proletarian of all lands is curiously absent from this land. the reason (i have sometimes fancied) is that the proletarian is class-conscious, not because he is a proletarian of all lands, but because he is a proletarian with no lands. the poor people in montenegro have lands--not landlords. they have roots; for the peasant is the root of the priest, the poet, and the warrior. and _this_, and not a mere recrimination about acts of violence, is the ground of the age-long balkan bitterness against the turkish conqueror. montenegrins are patriotic for montenegro; but turks are not patriotic for turkey. they never heard of it, in fact. they are bedouins, as homeless as the desert. the "wrong horse" of lord salisbury was an arab steed, only stabled in byzantium. it is hard enough to rule vagabond people, like the gypsies. to be ruled by them is impossible. nevertheless what was called the nineteenth century, and named with a sort of transcendental faith (as in a pythagorean worship of number), was wearing to its close with reaction everywhere, and the turk, the great type of reaction, stronger than ever in the saddle. the most civilised of the christian nations overshadowed by the crescent dared to attack it and was overwhelmed in a catastrophe that seemed as unanswerable as hittin. in england gladstone and gladstonism were dead; and mr. kipling, a less mystical carlyle, was expending a type of praise upon the british army which would have been even more appropriate to the prussian army. the prussian army ruled prussia; prussia ruled germany; germany ruled the concert of europe. she was planting everywhere the appliances of that new servile machinery which was her secret; the absolute identification of national subordination with business employment; so that krupp could count on kaiser and kaiser on krupp. every other commercial traveller was pathetically proud of being both a slave and a spy. the old and the new tyrants had taken hands. the "sack" of the boss was as silent and fatal as the sack of the bosphorus. and the dream of the citizen was at an end. it was under a sky so leaden and on a road so strewn with bones that the little mountain democracy with its patriarchal prince went out, first and before all its friends, on the last and seemingly the most hopeless of the rebellions against the ottoman empire. only one of the omens seemed other than disastrous; and even that was doubtful. for the successful mediterranean attack on tripoli while proving the gallantry of the italians (if that ever needed proving) could be taken in two ways, and was seen by many, and probably most, sincere liberals as a mere extension of the imperialist reaction of bosnia and paardeberg, and not as the promise of newer things. italy, it must be remembered, was still supposed to be the partner of prussia and the hapsburgs. for days that seemed like months the microscopic state seemed to be attempting alone what the crusades had failed to accomplish. and for days europe and the great powers were thunderstruck, again and yet again, by the news of turkish forts falling, turkish cohorts collapsing, the unconquerable crescent going down in blood. the serbians, the bulgarians, the greeks had gathered and risen from their lairs; and men knew that these peasants had done what all the politicians had long despaired of doing, and that the spirit of the first christian emperor was already standing over the city that is named after his name. for germany this quite unexpected rush was a reversal of the whole tide of the world. it was as if the rhine itself had returned from the ocean and retired into the alps. for a long time past every important political process in europe had been produced or permitted by prussia. she had pulled down ministers in france and arrested reforms in russia. her ruler was acclaimed by englishmen like rhodes, and americans like roosevelt, as the great prince of the age. one of the most famous and brilliant of our journalists called him "the lord chief justice of europe." he was the strongest man in christendom; and he had confirmed and consecrated the crescent. and when he had consecrated it a few hill tribes had risen and trampled it like mire. one or two other things about the same time, less important in themselves, struck in the prussian's ear the same new note of warning and doubt. he sought to obtain a small advantage on the north-west coast of africa; and england seemed to show a certain strange stiffness in insisting on its abandonment. in the councils over morocco, england agreed with france with what did not seem altogether an accidental agreement. but we shall not be wrong if we put the crucial point of the german surprise and anger at the attack from the balkans and the fall of adrianople. not only did it menace the key of asia and the whole eastern dream of german commerce; not only did it offer the picture of one army trained by france and victorious, and another army trained by germany and beaten. there was more than the material victory of the creusot over the krupp gun. it was also the victory of the peasant's field over the krupp factory. by this time there was in the north german brain an awful inversion of all the legends and heroic lives that the human race has loved. prussia _hated_ romance. chivalry was not a thing she neglected; it was a thing that tormented her as any bully is tormented by an unanswered challenge. that weird process was completed of which i have spoken on an earlier page, whereby the soul of this strange people was everywhere on the side of the dragon against the knight, of the giant against the hero. anything unexpected--the forlorn hopes, the eleventh-hour inspirations, by which the weak can elude the strong, and which take the hearts of happier men like trumpets--filled the prussian with a cold fury, as of a frustrated fate. the prussian felt as a chicago pork butcher would feel if the pigs not only refused to pass through his machine, but turned into romantic wild boars, raging and rending, calling for the old hunting of princes and fit to be the crests of kings. the prussian saw these things and his mind was made up. he was silent; but he laboured: laboured for three long years without intermission at the making of a military machine that should cut out of the world for ever such romantic accident or random adventure; a machine that should cure the human pigs for ever of any illusion that they had wings. that he did so plot and prepare for an attack that should come from him, anticipating and overwhelming any resistance, is now, even in the documents he has himself published, a fact of common sense. suppose a man sells all his lands except a small yard containing a well; suppose in the division of the effects of an old friend he particularly asks for his razors; suppose when a corded trunk is sent him he sends back the trunk, but keeps the cord. and then suppose we hear that a rival of his has been lassoed with a rope, his throat then cut, apparently with a razor, and his body hidden in a well, we do not call in sherlock holmes to project a preliminary suspicion about the guilty party. in the discussions held by the prussian government with lord haldane and sir edward grey we can now see quite as plainly the meaning of the things that were granted and the things that were withheld, the things that would have satisfied the prussian plotter and the things that did not satisfy him. the german chancellor refused an english promise not to be aggressive and asked instead for an english promise to be neutral. there is no meaning in the distinction, except in the mind of an aggressor. germany proposed a pacific arrangement which forbade england to form a fighting alliance with france, but permitted germany to retain her old fighting alliance with austria. when the hour of war came she used austria, used the old fighting alliance and tried to use the new idea of english neutrality. that is to say, she used the rope, the razor, and the well. but it was either by accident or by individual diplomatic skill that england at the end of the three years even had her own hands free to help in frustrating the german plot. the mass of the english people had no notion of such a plot; and indeed regarded the occasional suggestion of it as absurd. nor did even the people who knew best know very much better. thanks and even apologies are doubtless due to those who in the deepest lull of our sleeping partnership with prussia saw her not as a partner but a potential enemy; such men as mr. blatchford, mr. bart kennedy, or the late emil reich. but there is a distinction to be made. few even of these, with the admirable and indeed almost magical exception of dr. sarolea, saw germany as she was; occupied mainly with europe and only incidentally with england; indeed, in the first stages, not occupied with england at all. even the anti-germans were too insular. even those who saw most of germany's plan saw too much of england's part in it. they saw it almost wholly as a commercial and colonial quarrel; and saw its issue under the image of an invasion of england, which is even now not very probable. this fear of germany was indeed a very german fear of germany. this also conceived the english as sea-germans. it conceived germany as at war with something like itself--practical, prosaic, capitalist, competitive germany, prepared to cut us up in battle as she cut us out in business. the time of our larger vision was not yet, when we should realise that germany was more deeply at war with things quite unlike herself, things from which we also had sadly strayed. then we should remember what we were and see whence we also had come; and far and high upon that mountain from which the crescent was cast down, behold what was everywhere the real enemy of the iron cross--the peasant's cross, which is of wood. even our very slight ripples of panic, therefore, were provincial, and even shallow; and for the most part we were possessed and convinced of peace. that peace was not a noble one. we had indeed reached one of the lowest and flattest levels of all our undulating history; and it must be admitted that the contemptuous calculation with which germany counted on our submission and abstention was not altogether unfounded, though it was, thank god, unfulfilled. the full fruition of our alliances against freedom had come. the meek acceptance of kultur in our books and schools had stiffened what was once a free country with a german formalism and a german fear. by a queer irony, even the same popular writer who had already warned us against the prussians, had sought to preach among the populace a very prussian fatalism, pivoted upon the importance of the charlatan haeckel. the wrestle of the two great parties had long slackened into an embrace. the fact was faintly denied, and a pretence was still made that no pact: existed beyond a common patriotism. but the pretence failed altogether; for it was evident that the leaders on either side, so far from leading in divergent directions, were much closer to each other than to their own followers. the power of these leaders had enormously increased; but the distance between them had diminished, or, rather, disappeared. it was said about , in derision of the foxite rump, that the whig party came down to parliament in a four-wheeler. it might literally be said in that the whig party and the tory party came to parliament in a hansom cab. it was not a case of two towers rising into different roofs or spires, but founded in the same soil. it was rather the case of an arch, of which the foundation-stones on either side might fancy they were two buildings; but the stones nearest the keystone would know there was only one. this "two-handed engine" still stood ready to strike, not, indeed, the other part of itself, but anyone who ventured to deny that it was doing so. we were ruled, as it were, by a wonderland king and queen, who cut off our heads, not for saying they quarrelled but for saying they didn't. the libel law was now used, not to crush lies about private life, but to crush truths about public life. representation had become mere misrepresentation; a maze of loopholes. this was mainly due to the monstrous presence of certain secret moneys, on which alone many men could win the ruinous elections of the age, and which were contributed and distributed with less check or record than is tolerated in the lowest trade or club. only one or two people attacked these funds; nobody defended them. through them the great capitalists had the handle of politics, as of everything else. the poor were struggling hopelessly against rising prices; and their attempts at collective bargaining, by the collective refusal of badly-paid work, were discussed in the press, liberal and tory, as attacks upon the state. and so they were; upon the servile state. such was the condition of england in , when prussia, now at last armed to the teeth and secure of triumph, stood up before the world, and solemnly, like one taking a sacrament, consecrated her campaign with a crime. she entered by a forbidden door, one which she had herself forbidden--marching upon france through neutralised belgium, where every step was on her broken word. her neutralised neighbours resisted, as indeed they, like ourselves, were pledged to do. instantly the whole invasion was lit up with a flame of moral lunacy, that turned the watching nations white who had never known the prussian. the statistics of non-combatants killed and tortured by this time only stun the imagination. but two friends of my own have been in villages sacked by the prussian march. one saw a tabernacle containing the sacrament patiently picked out in pattern by shot after shot. the other saw a rocking-horse and the wooden toys in a nursery laboriously hacked to pieces. those two facts together will be enough to satisfy some of us of the name of the spirit that had passed. and then a strange thing happened. england, that had not in the modern sense any army at all, was justified of all her children. respected institutions and reputations did indeed waver and collapse on many sides: though the chief of the states replied worthily to a bribe from the foreign bully, many other politicians were sufficiently wild and weak, though doubtless patriotic in intention. one was set to restrain the journalists, and had to be restrained himself, for being more sensational than any of them. another scolded the working-classes in the style of an intoxicated temperance lecturer. but england was saved by a forgotten thing--the english. simple men with simple motives, the chief one a hate of injustice which grows simpler the longer we stare at it, came out of their dreary tenements and their tidy shops, their fields and their suburbs and their factories and their rookeries, and asked for the arms of men. in a throng that was at last three million men, the islanders went forth from their island, as simply as the mountaineers had gone forth from their mountain, with their faces to the dawn. x--_the battle of the marne_ the impression produced by the first week of war was that the british contingent had come just in time for the end of the world. or rather, for any sensitive and civilised man, touched by the modern doubt but by the equally modern mysticism, that old theocratic vision fell far short of the sickening terror of the time. for it was a day of judgment in which upon the throne in heaven and above the cherubim, sat not god, but another. the british had been posted at the extreme western end of the allied line in the north. the other end rested on the secure city and fortress of namur; their end rested upon nothing. it is not wholly a sentimental fancy to say that there was something forlorn in the position of that loose end in a strange land, with only the sad fields of northern france between them and the sea. for it was really round that loose end that the foe would probably fling the lasso of his charge; it was here that death might soon be present upon every side. it must be remembered that many critics, including many englishmen, doubted whether a rust had not eaten into this as into other parts of the national life, feared that england had too long neglected both the ethic and the technique of war, and would prove a weak link in the chain. the enemy was absolutely certain that it was so. to these men, standing disconsolately amid the hedgeless plains and poplars, came the news that namur was gone, which was to their captains one of the four corners of the earth. the two armies had touched; and instantly the weaker took an electric shock which told of electric energy, deep into deep germany, battery behind battery of abysmal force. in the instant it was discovered that the enemy was more numerous than they had dreamed. he was actually more numerous even than they discovered. every oncoming horseman doubled as in a drunkard's vision; and they were soon striving without speech in a nightmare of numbers. then all the allied forces at the front were overthrown in the tragic battle of mons; and began that black retreat, in which so many of our young men knew war first and at its worst in this terrible world; and so many never returned. in that blackness began to grow strange emotions, long unfamiliar to our blood. those six dark days are as full of legends as the six centuries of the dark ages. many of these may be exaggerated fancies, one was certainly an avowed fiction, others are quite different from it and more difficult to dissipate into the daylight. but one curious fact remains about them if they were all lies, or even if they were all deliberate works of art. not one of them referred to those close, crowded, and stirring three centuries which are nearest to us, and which alone are covered in this sketch, the centuries during which the teutonic influence had expanded itself over our islands. ghosts were there perhaps, but they were the ghosts of forgotten ancestors. nobody saw cromwell or even wellington; nobody so much as thought about cecil rhodes. things were either seen or said among the british which linked them up, in matters deeper than any alliance, with the french, who spoke of joan of arc in heaven above the fated city; or the russians who dreamed of the mother of god with her hand pointing to the west. they were the visions or the inventions of a mediæval army; and a prose poet was in line with many popular rumours when he told of ghostly archers crying "array, array," as in that long-disbanded yeomanry in which i have fancied cobbett as carrying a bow. other tales, true or only symptomatic, told of one on a great white horse who was not the victor of blenheim or even the black prince, but a faint figure out of far-off martyrologies--st. george. one soldier is asserted to have claimed to identify the saint because he was "on every quid." on the coins, st. george is a roman soldier. but these fancies, if they were fancies, might well seem the last sickly flickerings of an old-world order now finally wounded to the death. that which was coming on, with the whole weight of a new world, was something that had never been numbered among the seven champions of christendom. now, in more doubtful and more hopeful days, it is almost impossible to repicture what was, for those who understood, the gigantic finality of the first german strides. it seemed as if the forces of the ancient valour fell away to right and left; and there opened a grand, smooth granite road right to the gate of paris, down which the great germania moved like a tall, unanswerable sphinx, whose pride could destroy all things and survive them. in her train moved, like moving mountains, cyclopean guns that had never been seen among men, before which walled cities melted like wax, their mouths set insolently upwards as if threatening to besiege the sun. nor is it fantastic to speak so of the new and abnormal armaments; for the soul of germany was really expressed in colossal wheels and cylinders; and her guns were more symbolic than her flags. then and now, and in every place and time, it is to be noted that the german superiority has been in a certain thing and of a certain kind. it is _not_ unity; it is not, in the moral sense, discipline. nothing can be more united in a moral sense than a french, british, or russian regiment. nothing, for that matter, could be more united than a highland clan at killiecrankie or a rush of religious fanatics in the soudan. what such engines, in such size and multiplicity, really meant was this: they meant a type of life naturally intolerable to happier and more healthy-minded men, conducted on a larger scale and consuming larger populations than had ever been known before. they meant cities growing larger than provinces, factories growing larger than cities; they meant the empire of the slum. they meant a degree of detailed repetition and dehumanised division of labour, to which no man born would surrender his brief span in the sunshine, if he could hope to beat his ploughshare into a sword. the nations of the earth were not to surrender to the kaiser; they were to surrender to krupp, his master and theirs; the french, the british, the russians were to surrender to krupp as the germans themselves, after a few swiftly broken strikes, had already surrendered to krupp. through every cogwheel in that incomparable machinery, through every link in that iron and unending chain, ran the mastery and the skill of a certain kind of artist; an artist whose hands are never idle through dreaming or drawn back in disgust or lifted in wonder or in wrath; but sure and tireless in their touch upon the thousand little things that make the invisible machinery of life. that artist was there in triumph; but he had no name. the ancient world called him the slave. from this advancing machine of millions, the slighter array of the allies, and especially the british at their ultimate outpost, saved themselves by a succession of hair's-breadth escapes and what must have seemed to the soldiers the heartrending luck of a mouse before a cat. again and again von kluck's cavalry, supported by artillery and infantry, clawed round the end of the british force, which eluded it as by leaping back again and again. sometimes the pursuer was, so to speak, so much on top of his prey that it could not even give way to him; but had to hit such blows as it could in the hope of checking him for the instant needed for escape. sometimes the oncoming wave was so close that a small individual accident, the capture of one man, would mean the washing out of a whole battalion. for day after day this living death endured. and day after day a certain dark truth began to be revealed, bit by bit, certainly to the incredulous wonder of the prussians, quite possibly to the surprise of the french, and quite as possibly to the surprise of themselves; that there was something singular about the british soldiers. that singular thing may be expressed in a variety of ways; but it would be almost certainly expressed insufficiently by anyone who had not had the moral courage to face the facts about his country in the last decades before the war. it may perhaps be best expressed by saying that some thousands of englishmen were dead: and that england was not. the fortress of maubeuge had gaped, so to speak, offering a refuge for the unresting and tormented retreat; the british generals had refused it and continued to fight a losing fight in the open for the sake of the common plan. at night an enormous multitude of germans had come unexpectedly through the forest and caught a smaller body of the british in landrecies; failed to dislodge them and lost a whole battalion in that battle of the darkness. at the extreme end of the line smith-dorrien's division, who seemed to be nearly caught or cut off, had fought with one gun against four, and so hammered the germans that they were forced to let go their hold; and the british were again free. when the blowing up of a bridge announced that they had crossed the last river, something other than that battered remnant was saved; it was the honour of the thing by which we live. the driven and defeated line stood at last almost under the walls of paris; and the world waited for the doom of the city. the gates seemed to stand open; and the prussian was to ride into it for the third and the last time: for the end of its long epic of liberty and equality was come. and still the very able and very french individual on whom rested the last hope of the seemingly hopeless alliance stood unruffled as a rock, in every angle of his sky-blue jacket and his bulldog figure. he had called his bewildered soldiers back when they had broken the invasion at guise; he had silently digested the responsibility of dragging on the retreat, as in despair, to the last desperate leagues before the capital; and he stood and watched. and even as he watched the whole huge invasion swerved. out through paris and out and around beyond paris, other men in dim blue coats swung out in long lines upon the plain, slowly folding upon von kluck like blue wings. von kluck stood an instant; and then, flinging a few secondary forces to delay the wing that was swinging round on him, dashed across the allies' line at a desperate angle, to smash it in the centre as with a hammer. it was less desperate than it seemed; for he counted, and might well count, on the moral and physical bankruptcy of the british line and the end of the french line immediately in front of him, which for six days and nights he had chased before him like autumn leaves before a whirlwind. not unlike autumn leaves, red-stained, dust-hued, and tattered, they lay there as if swept into a corner. but even as their conquerors wheeled eastwards, their bugles blew the charge; and the english went forward through the wood that is called creçy, and stamped it with their seal for the second time, in the highest moment of all the secular history of man. but it was not now the creçy in which english and french knights had met in a more coloured age, in a battle that was rather a tournament. it was a league of all knights for the remains of all knighthood, of all brotherhood in arms or in arts, against that which is and has been radically unknightly and radically unbrotherly from the beginning. much was to happen after--murder and flaming folly and madness in earth and sea and sky; but all men knew in their hearts that the third prussian thrust had failed, and christendom was delivered once more. the empire of blood and iron rolled slowly back towards the darkness of the northern forests; and the great nations of the west went forward; where side by side as after a long lover's quarrel, went the ensigns of st. denys and st. george. _note on the word "english"_ _the words "england" and "english" as used here require a word of explanation, if only to anticipate the ire of the inevitable scot. to begin with, the word "british" involves a similar awkwardness. i have tried to use it in the one or two cases that referred to such things as military glory and unity: though i am sure i have failed of full consistency in so complex a matter. the difficulty is that this sense of glory and unity, which should certainly cover the scotch, should also cover the irish. and while it is fairly safe to call a scotsman a north briton (despite the just protest of stevenson), it is very unsafe indeed to call an irishman a west briton. but there is a deeper difficulty. i can assure the scot that i say "england," not because i deny scottish nationality, but because i affirm it. and i can say, further, that i could not here include scots in the thesis, simply because i could not include them in the condemnation. this book is a study, not of a disease but rather of a weakness, which has only been predominant in the predominant partner. it would not be true, for instance, to say either of ireland or scotland that the populace lacked a religion; but i do think that british policy as a whole has suffered from the english lack of one, with its inevitable result of plutocracy and class contempt_. proofreaders about ireland by _e. lynn linton._ london: methuen & co., , bury street, w.c. . explanatory. i am conscious that i ought to make some kind of apology for rushing into print on a subject which i do not half know. but i do know just a little more than i did when i was an ardent home ruler, influenced by the seductive charm of sentiment and abstract principle only; and i think that perhaps the process by which my own blindness has been couched may help to clear the vision of others who see as i did. all of us lay-folk are obliged to follow the leaders of those schools in politics, science, or religion, to which our temperament and mental idiosyncracies affiliate us. life is not long enough for us to examine from the beginning upwards all the questions in which we are interested; and it is only by chance that we find ourselves set face to face with the first principles and elemental facts of a cause to which, perhaps, as blind and believing followers of our leaders, we have committed ourselves with the ardour of conviction and the intemperance of ignorance. in this matter of ireland i believed in the accusations of brutality, injustice, and general insolence of tyranny from modern landlords to existing tenants, so constantly made by the home rulers and their organs; and, shocking though the undeniable crimes committed by the campaigners were, they seemed to me the tragic results of that kind of despair which seizes on men who, goaded to madness by oppression, are reduced to masked murder as their sole means of defence--and as, after all, but a sadly natural retaliation. i knew nothing really of lord ashbourne's act; and what i thought i knew was, that it was more a blind than honest legislation, and did no vital good. i thought that home rule would set all things straight, and that the national sentiment was one which ought to find practical expression. i rejoiced over every election that took away one seat from the unionists and added another vote to the home rulers; and i shut my eyes to the dismemberment of our glorious empire and the certainty of civil war in ireland, should the home rule demanded by the parnellites and advocated by the gladstonians become an accomplished fact. in a word i committed the mistakes inevitable to all who take feeling and conviction rather than fact and knowledge for their guides. then i went to ireland; and the scales fell from my eyes. i saw for myself; heard facts i had never known before; and was consequently enlightened as to the true meaning of the agitation and the real condition of the people in their relation to politics, their landlords, and the plan of campaign. the outcome of this visit was two papers which were written for the _new review_--with the editor of whom, however, i stood somewhat in the position of balaam with balak, when, called on to curse the israelites, he was forced by a superior power to bless them. so i with the unionists. the first paper was sent and passed, but it was delayed by editorial difficulties through the critical months of the bye-elections. when published in the december number, owing to the exigencies of space, the backbone--namely the extracts from the land acts, now included in this re-publication--was taken out of it, and my own unsupported statements alone were left. i was sorry for this, as it cut the ground from under my feet and left me in the position of one of those mere impressionists who have already sufficiently darkened counsel and obscured the truth of things. as the same editorial difficulties and exigencies of space would doubtless delay the second paper, like the first, i resolved, by the courteous permission of the editor, to enlarge and publish both in a pamphlet for which i alone should be responsible, and which would bind no editor to even the semblance of endorsement. i, only half-enlightened, write, as has been said, for the wholly blind and ignorantly ardent who, as i did, accept sentiment for fact and feeling for demonstration; who do not look at the solid legal basis on which the present government is dealing with the irish question; who believe all that the home rulers say, and nothing that the unionists demonstrate. i want them to study the plain and indisputable facts of legislation as i have done, when i think they must come to the same conclusions as those which have forced themselves on my own mind--namely, that the home rule desired by the parnellites is not only a delusive impossibility, but is also high treason against the integrity of the empire, and would be a base surrender of our obligations to the irish loyalists; that, whatever the landlords were, they are now more sinned against than sinning; and that in the orderly operation of the land acts now in force, with the stern repression of outrages[a] and punishment of crimes, for which peaceable folk are so largely indebted to mr. balfour, lies the true pacification of this distressed and troubled country. e. lynn linton. about ireland. i. nothing dies so hard as prejudice, unless it be sentiment. indeed, prejudice and sentiment are but different manifestations of the same principle by which men pronounce on things according to individual feeling, independent of facts and free from the restraint of positive knowledge. and on nothing in modern times has so much sentiment been lavished as on the irish question; nowhere has so much passionately generous, but at the same time so much absolutely ignorant, partisanship been displayed as by english sympathisers with the irish peasant. this is scarcely to be wondered at. the picture of a gallant nation ground under the heel of an iron despotism--of an industrious and virtuous peasantry rackrented, despoiled, brutalised, and scarce able to live by their labour that they may supply the vicious wants of oppressive landlords--of unarmed men, together with women and little children, ruthlessly bludgeoned by a brutal police, or shot by a bloodthirsty soldiery for no greater offence than verbal protests against illegal evictions--of a handful of ardent patriots ready to undergo imprisonment and contumely in their struggle against one of the strongest nations in the world for only so much political freedom as is granted to-day by despots themselves--such a picture as this is calculated to excite the sympathies of all generous souls. and it has done so in england, where "home rule" and "justice to ireland" have become the rallying cries of one section of the liberal party, to the disruption and political suicide of the whole body; and where the less knowledge imported into the question the more fervid the advocacy and the louder the demand. it is worth while to state quite quietly and quite plainly how things stand at this present moment. there is no need for hysterics on the one side or the other; and to amend one's views by the testimony of facts is not a dishonest turning of one's coat--if confession of that amendment is a little like the white sheet and lighted taper of a penitent. things are, or they are not. if they are, as will be set down, the inference is plain to anyone not hopelessly blinded by preconceived prejudice. if they are not, let them be authoritatively contradicted on the basis of fact, not sentiment--demonstration, not assertion. in any case it is a gain to obtain material for a truer judgment than heretofore, and thus to be rid of certain mental films by which colours are blurred and perspective is distorted. no one wishes to palliate the crimes of which england has been guilty in ireland. her hand has been heavy, her whip one of braided scorpions, her rule emphatically of blood and iron. but all this is of the past, and the pendulum, not only of public feeling but of legal enactment, threatens to swing too far on the other side. what has been done cannot be undone, but it will not be repeated. we shall never send over another cromwell nor yet another castlereagh; and there is as little good to be got from chafing over past wrongs as there is in lamenting past glories. malachi and his collar of gold--the ancient kings who led forth the red branch knights--state persecution of the catholics--rack-rents and unjust evictions, are all alike swept away into the limbo of things dead and done with. what ireland has to deal with now are the enactments and facts of the day, and to shake off the incubus of retrospection, as a strong man awaking would get rid of a nightmare. nowhere in europe, nor yet in the united states, are tenant-farmers so well protected by law as in ireland; nor is it the fault of england if the acts passed for their benefit have been rendered ineffectual by the agitators who have preferred fighting to orderly development. so long ago as a bill was passed providing that no tenant should be evicted for non-payment of rent unless one year's rent in arrear. (landlord and tenant act, , sec. .) even then, when evicted, he could recover possession within six months by payment of the amount due; when the landlord had to pay him the amount of any profit he had made out of the lands in the interim. the landlord had to pay half the poor rate of the government valuation if a holding was £ or upward, and all the poor rate if it was under £ . by the act of "a yearly tenant disturbed in his holding by the act of the landlord, for causes other than non-payment of rent, and the government valuation of whose holding does not exceed £ per annum, must be paid by his landlord not only full compensation for all improvements made by himself or his predecessors, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste lands, but also as compensation for disturbance, a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent." (land act of , secs. , , and .) under the act of the landlord's power of disturbance was practically abolished--but i think i have read somewhere that even of late years, and with the ballot, certain landlords in england have threatened their tenants with "disturbance" without compensation if their votes were not given to the right colour--while in ireland, even when evicted for non-payment of rent, a yearly tenant must be paid by his landlord "compensation for all improvements, such as unexhausted manures, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land." (sec. .) and when his rent does not exceed £ he must be paid in addition "a sum of money which may amount to seven years' rent if the court decides that the rent is exorbitant." (secs. and .) (_a_) until the contrary is proved, the improvements are presumed to have been made by the tenants. (sec. .) (_b_) the tenant can make his claim for compensation immediately on notice to quit being served, and cannot be evicted until the compensation is paid. (secs. and .) a yearly tenant when voluntarily surrendering his farm must either be paid by the landlord (_a_) compensation for all his improvements, or (_b_) be permitted to sell his improvements to an incoming tenant. (sec. .) in all new tenancies the landlord must pay half the county or grand jury cess if the valuation is £ or upward and the whole of the same cess if the value does not exceed £ . (secs. and .) thus we have under the land act of (i) full payment for all improvements; ( ) compensation for disturbance. the famous land act of gave three additional privileges, ( ) fixity of tenure, by which the tenant remains in possession of the land for ever, subject to periodic revision of the rent. (land act, , sec. .) if the tenant has not had a fair rent fixed, and his landlord proceeds to evict him for non-payment of rent, he can apply to the court to fix the fair rent, and meantime the eviction proceedings will be restrained by the court. (sec. .) ( ) fair rent, by which any yearly tenant may apply to the land commission court (the judges of which were appointed under mr. gladstone's administration) to fix the fair rent of his holding. the application is referred to three persons, one of whom is a lawyer, and the other two inspect and value the farm. _this rent can never again_ be raised by the landlord. (sec. .) ( ) free sale, by which every yearly tenant may, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, sell his tenancy to the highest bidder whenever he desires to leave. (sec. .) (_a_) there is no practical limit to the price he may sell for, and twenty times the amount of the annual rent has frequently been obtained in every province of ireland. (_b_) even if a tenant be evicted, he has the right either to redeem at any time within three months, _or to sell his tenancy within the same period to a purchaser who can likewise redeem_ and thus acquire all the privileges of a tenant. (sec. .) even more important than this is the land purchase act of , commonly called lord ashbourne's act, by which the whole land in ireland is potentially put into the hands of the farmers, and of the working of which much will have to be said before these papers end. this act, in its sections , , and , sets forth this position, briefly stated: if a tenant wishes to buy his holding, and arranges with his landlord as to terms, he can change his position from that of a perpetual rent-payer into that of the payer of an annuity, terminable at the end of forty-nine years--the government supplying him with the entire purchase-money, to be repaid during those forty-nine years at per cent. this annual payment of £ for every £ borrowed covers both principal and interest. thus, if a tenant, already paying a statutory rent of £ , agrees to buy from his landlord at twenty years' purchase (or £ , ) the government will lend him the money, his rent will at once cease, and he will not pay £ , but £ , yearly for forty-nine years, and then become the owner of his holding, free of rent. it is hardly necessary to point out that, as these forty-nine years of payment roll by, the interest of the tenant in his holding increases rapidly in value. (land purchase act, , secs. , , and .) under the land act of , the tenants received the following still greater and always one-sided privileges, (i) by this act leases are allowed to be broken by the tenant, but not by the landlord. all leaseholders whose leases would expire within ninety-nine years after the passing of the act have the option of going into court and getting their contracts broken and a judicial rent fixed. no equivalent power is given to the landlords. (land act of , secs, and .) ( ) the act varies rent already judicially fixed for fifteen years by the land courts in the years , , , , and . (sec. .) ( ) it stays evictions, and allows rent to be paid by instalments. in the case of tenants whose valuation does not exceed £ , the court before which proceedings are being taken for the recovery of _any_ debt due by the tenant is empowered to stay his eviction, and may give him liberty to pay his creditors by instalments, and can extend the time for such payment as it thinks proper. (land act of , sec. .) by these extracts, which do not exhaust the whole of the privileges granted to the irish tenant, it may be seen how exceptionally he has been favoured. nowhere else has such wholesale interference with the obligations of contract, such lavish protection of the tenant, such practical persecution of the landlord been as yet demanded by the one-half of the nation; nor, if demanded, would such partiality have been conceded by the other half. yet, in the face of these various acts, and all they embody, provide for, and deny, our hysterical journal _par excellence_ is not ashamed to publish a wild letter from one of those ramping political women who screech like peacocks before rain, setting forth how ireland could be redeemed by the manufacture of blackberry jam, were it not for the infamous landlords who would at once raise the rent on those tenants who, by industry, had improved their condition. and a dublin paper asserts that anything will be fiction which demonstrates that "ireland is not the home of rackrenters, brutal batonmen, and heartless evictors"; while political agitation is still being carried on by any means that come handiest, and the eviction of tenants who owe five or six years' rent, and will not pay even one to clear off old scores, is treated as an act of brutality for which no quarter should be given. if we were to transfer the whole method of procedure to our own lands and houses in england, perhaps the thing would wear a different aspect from that which it wears now, when surrounded by a halo of false sentiment and convenient forgetfulness. the total want of honesty, of desire for the right thing in this no-rent agitation, is exemplified by the following fact:--when colonel vandeleur's tenants--owing several years' rent, refused to pay anything, and joined the plan of campaign, arbitration was suggested, and sir charles russell was accepted by the landlord as arbitrator. as every one knows, sir charles is an irishman, a catholic, and the "tenants' friend." his award was, as might have been expected, most liberal towards them. here is the result:--"we learn that the non-fulfilment by a number of the tenants of the terms of the award made by sir c. russell is likely to lead to serious difficulties. they refuse to carry out the undertaking which was given on their behalf, having so much bettered the instruction given to them that they insist upon holding a grip of the rent, and not yielding to even the advice of their friends. about thirty of them have not paid the year's rent, which all the plan of campaign tenants were to have paid when the award was made known to them. this is the most conspicuous instance in which arbitration has been tried, and the result is not encouraging, although landlords have been denounced for not at once accepting it instead of seeking to enforce their legal rights by the tribunal appointed by the legislature." with a legal machinery of relief so comprehensive and so favourable to the tenant, it would seem that the plan of campaign, with its cruel and murderous accompaniments, was scarcely needed. if anyone was aggrieved, the courts were open to him; and we have only to read the list of reduced rents to see how those courts protected the tenant and bore heavily on the landlord. also, it would seem to persons of ordinary morality that it would have been more manly and more honest to pay the rents due to the proprietor than to cast the money into the chest of the plan of campaign--that _boite à pierrette_ which, like the sieve of the danaïdes, can never be filled. the home rule agitators have known how to make it appear that they, and they alone, stand between the people and oppression. they have ignored all this orderly legal machinery; and their english sympathisers have not remembered it. nor have those english sympathisers considered the significant fact that this agitation is literally the bread of life to those who have created and still maintain it. many of the home rule irish members of parliament have risen from the lowest ranks of society--from the barefooted peasantry, where their nearest relations are still to be found--into the outward condition of gentlemen living in comparative affluence. it is not being uncharitable, nor going behind motives, to ask, _cui bono?_ for whose advantage is a certain movement carried on?--especially for whose advantage is this anti-rent movement in ireland? for the good of the tenants who, under the pressure put on them by those whom they have agreed to follow, refuse to pay even a fraction of rent hitherto paid to the full, and who are, in consequence, evicted from their farms and deprived of their means of subsistence?--or is it for the good of a handful of men who live by and on the agitation they created and still keep up? do the leaders of any movement whatsoever give a thought to the individual lives sacrificed to the success of the cause? as little as the general regrets the individuals of the rank and file in the battalions he hurls against the enemy. the ruined homes and blighted lives of the thousands who have listened, believed, been coerced to their own despair, have been no more than the numbers of the rank and file to the general who hoped to gain the day by his battalions.[b] the good in this no-rent movement is reaped by the agitators alone; and for them alone have the chestnuts been pulled out of the fire. furthermore, whose hands among the prominent leaders are free from the reflected stain of blood-money? these leaders have counselled a course of action which has been marked all along the line by outrage and murder; and they have lived well and amassed wealth by the course they have counselled. from proletariats in their own persons they have become men of substance and property. these assertions are facts to which names and amounts can be given; and that question, _cui bono_? answers itself. the inference to be drawn is too grave to be set aside; and to plead "charitable judgment" is to plead imbecility. the plain and simple truth is--the protective legislation that was so sorely needed for the peasantry is fast degenerating into injustice and oppression against the landlords. thousands of the smaller landowners have been absolutely beggared; the larger holders have been as ruthlessly ruined. for, while the rents were lowered, the charges on the land, made on the larger basis, were kept to their same value; and the fate of the landlord was sealed. between the hammer and the anvil as he was and is placed, his times have not been pleasant. families who have bought their estates on the faith of government sales and government contracts, and families who have owned theirs for centuries and lived on them, winter and summer--who have been neither absentees nor rack-renters, but have been friendly, hospitable, open-handed after their kind, always ready to give comforts and medicine to the sick and a good-natured measure of relief to the hard pressed--they have now been brought to the ground; and between our own fluid and unstable legislation and the reckless cruelty of the plan of campaign their destruction has been complete. wherever one goes one finds great houses shut up or let for a few summer months to strangers who care nothing for the place and less than nothing for the people. one cannot call this a gain, look at it as one will. nor do the tenantry themselves feel it to be a gain. get their confidence and you will find that they all regret the loss of their own--those jovial, frank, and kindly proprietors who did the best they knew, though perhaps, judged by present scientific knowledge that best was not very good, but who at least knew more than themselves. carrying the thing home to england, we should scarcely say that our country places would be the better for the exodus of all the educated and refined and well-to-do families, with the peasantry and an unmarried clergyman left sole masters of the situation. in the desire of parliament to do justice to the irish peasant, whose condition did once so loudly demand amelioration, justice to the landlord has gone by the board. for we cannot call it justice to make him alone suffer. his rents have been reduced from to per cent. and over, but all the rent charges, mortgages, debts and dues have been retained at their full value. the scheme of reduction does not pass beyond the tiller of the soil, and the landlord is the sole loser.[c] beyond this he suffers from the want of finality in legislation. nothing is left to prove itself, and the tinkering never ends. a fifteen years' bargain under the first land act is broken up under the next as if governmental pledges were lovers' vows. when, on the faith of those pledges, a landlord borrowed money from the board of works for the improvement of his estate, for stone cottages for his tenantry, for fences, drainage, and the like, suddenly his income is still further reduced; but the interest he has to pay for the loan contracted on the broader basis remains the same. which is a kind of thing on all fours with the plan of locking up a debtor so that he cannot work at his trade, while ordering him to pay so much weekly from earnings which the law itself prevents his making. if the sum of misery remains constant in ireland, its distribution has changed hands. the small deposits in the savings-banks have increased to an enormous extent, and in many places where the tenants have for some years refused to pay their rents, but have still kept the land, the women have learned to dress. but the owners of the land--say that they are ladies with no man in the family--have wanted bread, and have been kept from starvation only by surreptitious supplies delivered in the dead darkness of the night. these supplies have of necessity been rare and scanty, for the most honest tenant dared not face the vengeance of the league by openly paying his just due. did not mr. dillon, on august rd, , say, "if there is a man in ireland base enough to back down, to turn his back on the fight now that coercion has passed, i pledge myself in the face of this meeting, that i will denounce him from public platform by name, and i pledge myself to the government that, let that man be whom he may, his life will not be a happy one, either in ireland or across the seas." with such a formidable organisation as this, what individual would have the courage to stand out for abstract justice to a landlord? it would have been, and it has been, standing out for his own destruction. hence, for no fault, no rack-renting, have proprietors--and especially ladies--been treated as mortal enemies by those whom they had always befriended--for no reason whatever but that it was an easy victory for the campaigners to obtain. women, with never a man to defend them, could be more easily manipulated than if they were so many stalwart young fellows, handy in their turn with guns and revolvers, and man for man a match even for captain moonlight. if these ladies dared to evict their non-paying tenants they would be either boycotted or "visited," or perhaps both. besides, who would venture to take the vacant land? and how could a couple of delicate ladies, say, till the ground with their own hands? the old fable of the dog in the manger holds good with these campaigners. those who will not pay prevent others who would; and the hated "landgrabber," denounced from altar and platform alike, is simply an honest and industrious worker, who would make his own living and the landlord's rent out of a bit of land which is lying idle and going to waste. all through the disturbed districts we come upon facts like this--upon the ruin and humiliation of kindly and delicately-nurtured ladies, of which the english public knows nothing; and while it hysterically pities the poor down-trodden peasant and goes in for home rule as the panacea, the wife of a tenant owing five years' rent and refusing to pay one, dresses in costly attire--and the lady proprietor knows penury and hunger; not to speak of the agonies of personal terror endured for months at a stretch. let us, who live in a well-ordered country, realize for a moment the mental condition of those who dwell in the shadow of assassination--women to whom every unusual noise is as the sentence of death, and whose days are days of trembling, and their nights of anguish for the fear of death that encompasses them. is this according to the law of elemental justice? are our sympathies to be confined wholly to one class, and are the sorrows and the wrongs done to another not to count? surely it is time for some of the sentimental fog in which so many of us have been living to be dispelled in favour of the light of truth! here is an instructive little bit on which we would do well to ponder:-- a certain authority gives the following anecdote:--he says that he "has just had a long conversation with one of the leading galway merchants. 'a farmer of this county,' said he, 'told me yesterday that he had let his meadowing at £ an acre. i bought all his barley, and he confessed that on this crop too he had made £ an acre. now the judicial rent of this man's holding is s. the acre. he said, "i have nothing to complain of."' this man was a tenant of lord clanricarde; one of those people who decline to pay a farthing in the way of rent to the lawful owner of the soil. the case we have cited may be an extreme one, but it is generally admitted by those who are acquainted with the facts, and who speak the truth that the rents on the clanricarde property, speaking generally, are low rents, and yet not only is it impossible to collect these rents, but the agent who represents lord clanricarde, and whose only fault is that he tries to do his duty to his employer without unnecessary harshness to the tenantry, dare not go outside his house without an escort of police, and every time he leaves his house, he risks his life. referring to this agent, mr. tener, the correspondent says:-- "no one would think from looking at him that he literally carries his life in his hand, and that if he were not guarded as closely as he is he would be shot in twenty-four hours. he never goes outside the walls of the portumna demesne without an escort of seven policemen--two mounted men in front, two behind, and three upon his car. he, too, as well as the driver, is armed, so the would-be assassins must reckon with nine armed men. in the opinion of those who know the neighbourhood his escort is barely strong enough. he was fired at a few weeks ago, and the horse which he was driving shot dead. the police who were with him on the car were rolled out upon the road, and before they could recover themselves and pursue the moonlighters had escaped.' and this is supposed to be a civilised country, and is a part of the united kingdom! "whereas it seems to us lord clanricarde is to blame is in not living, at any rate for some part of the year, upon his irish property. this nobleman represents one of the most ancient families in ireland. he is the representative of the clanricarde burkes, who have been settled upon this property for years. he draws, or rather drew, a very large income from it, and there can be little question that his presence would encourage and sustain smaller proprietors who are fighting a losing battle in defence of their rights. these proprietors may fairly claim that the leading men of their order should stand by them in the time of trial. unfortunately, this assistance has not been invariably, or even as a rule, rendered by the great irish landowners. it is, indeed, largely because they have failed in their duty that the present troubles have come upon irish landlords as a body. if only in the past the great landowners had lived in ireland and spent at least a portion of the incomes they derived from ireland upon their estates, the present agitation against landlordism would never have reached the point at which it has arrived. the absence of the landlords, and in many cases their refusal to recognise the legitimate claims of their districts upon them, has made it possible for the agitators who have now the ear of the people to bring about that severance of classes, and that embittered feeling of class against class, which is doing ireland more injury at the present time than all the rack-renters put together." those who plead for the landlords who have been so cruelly robbed and ruined are weak-voiced and reticent compared to the loudly crying advocates for the peasantry. english tourists run over for a fortnight to ireland, talk to the jarvies, listen to the peasants themselves, forbear to go near any educated or responsible person with knowledge of the facts and a character to lose, and accept as gospel everything they hear. there is no check and no verification. pat and tim and mike give their accounts of this and that, bedad! and tell their piteous tales of want and oppression. the english tourist swallows it all whole as it comes to him, and writes his account to the sympathetic press, which publishes as gospel stories which have not one word of truth in them. in fact, the term "english tourist" has come to mean the same as _gobemouche_ in france; and clever pat knows well enough that there is not a fly in the whole region of fable which is too large for the brutal saxon to swallow. abject poverty without shoes to its feet, with only a few rags to cover its unwashed nakedness, and an unfurnished mud cabin shared with the pigs and poultry for its sole dwelling-place--abject poverty begs a copper from "his honour" for the love of god and the glory of the blessed virgin, telling meantime a heartrending story of privation and oppression. abject poverty points to all the outward signs and circumstances of its woe; but it forgets the good stone house in which live the son and the son's wife--the dozen or more of cattle grazing free on the mountain side--that bit of fertile land where the very weeds grow into beauty by their luxuriance--and those quiet hundreds hidden away for the sole pleasure of hoarding. and the english tourist takes it all in, and blazes out into wrath against the tyrannous landlord who has reduced an honest citizen to this fearful state of misery; knowing nothing of the craft which is known to all the residents round about, and not willing to believe it were he even told. for the dramatic instinct is strong in human nature, and in these later days there is an ebullient surplusage of sympathy which only desires to find an object. across the bristol channel, the english tourist finds these objects ready-made to his hand; and the question is still further embroiled, and the light of truth still more obscured, that a few impulsive, credulous, and non-judicially-minded young people may find something whereon to excite their emotions, and give vent to them in letters to the newspapers when excited. only the other day a young irishman who has to do with the land question was mistaken for a brutal but credulous saxon by the jarvey who had him in tow. consequently, pat plied his fancied victim with the wildest stories of this man's wrongs and that lone widow's sufferings. when he found out his mistake he laughed and said: "begorra, i thought your honour was an english tourist!" and at a certain trial which took place in cork, the judge put by some absurd statement by saying, half-indignant, half amused: "do you take me for an english tourist?" nevertheless the race will continue so long as there are excitable young persons of either sex whose capacity for swallowing flies is practically unlimited, and an hysterical press to which they can betake themselves. the following authoritative instance of this misplaced sympathy may suffice. the _westminster review_ published a certain article on the olphert estate, among other things. those who have read it know its sensational character. at cork the other day the priest concerned had to confess on oath that only three of the olphert tenants had received relief.[d] in the famous luggacurren evictions the poor dispossessed dupes lost their all at the bidding of the campaigners, on the plea of inability to pay rents voluntarily offered by lord lansdowne to be reduced per cent. after these evictions the lands were let to the "land corporation," which had some short time ago four hundred head of cattle over and above the full rent paid honestly down; but the former holders are living on charity doled out to them by the campaigners, and in huts built for them by the campaigners on the edge of the rich and kindly land which once gave them home and sustenance. how bitterly they curse the evil counsels which led to their destruction only they and the few they dare trust know. take, too, these two authoritative stories. they are of the things one blindly believes and rages against--with what justice the dénouement of the sorry farce, best shows:-- "the correspondents of the _freeman's journal_, in response to the circular some time ago addressed to them continue to supply fictitious and exaggerated statements of events alleged to have happened 'in the country,' nearly every day some example is afforded. one of the latest is a pathetic tale of the 'suicide of a tenant.' it represents that andrew kelly, of cloonlaugh, 'one of the three tenants against whom a.w. sampey, j.p., landlord, obtained ejectments,' became demented from the fear of eviction, and drowned himself in a bog hole in consequence. the account is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. andrew kelly was not a tenant of mr. sampey's, nor had he been for the last five years. his son, it is true, is one of the tenants against whom a decree was obtained, but this did not apparently trouble the father much, as he had been living away from his son for a long time, although he had come to see him a few days before he was drowned. there was no suspicion either of foul play or suicide, and the coroner's jury returned no such verdict as that given in the _freeman_. the veracious correspondent of that journal stated that the jury found that 'andrew kelly came by his death through drowning on the nd october while suffering under temporary insanity brought about by fear of eviction.' the following is the verdict which the coroner's jury actually arrived at:--'we find that andrew kelly's death was caused by suffocation; that he was found dead in the townland of clooncriur, on the th day of october, .' this is the way in which sensational news is manufactured for the purpose of promoting an anti-landlord crusade and prejudicing the owners of property in the eyes of the country." "speaking at newmarch, near barnsley, last month, mr. waddy drew a heartrending picture of the tyranny practised in ireland, and illustrated his theme and moved his audience to the execration of mr. balfour by the artistic recital of a horrible tale. he declared that a little child had been barbarously sentenced by resident magistrates to a month's imprisonment for throwing a stone at a policeman. some hard-headed or hard-hearted yorkshireman, however, would not believe mr. waddy offhand, and challenged him to declare names, place, and date. on the th of november, mr. waddy gave the following particulars in writing. he stated that the magistrates who had imposed the brutal punishment were mr. hill and colonel bowlby, that the case was tried at keenagh on the rd of april, , that the child's name was thomas quin, aged nine, and that the charge was throwing stones at the police. "the clue thus afforded has been followed up. it is grievous that cool and calculating investigation should spoil a pretty story, but here is the truth. "on the th of april, before colonel stewart and colonel bowlby, resident magistrates, thomas quin, aged years, was convicted of using intimidation towards william nutley, in consequence of his having done an act which he had a legal right to do--viz., to evict a labourer, michael fegan, of clearis, who refused to work for him. thomas quin was sentenced to one month's imprisonment. "i am quite sure that mr. waddy will publicly acknowledge that he played upon the feelings of his hearers with a trumped-up tale of woe, but i wonder whether anything will teach the british political tourist that a great number of my countrymen unfortunately feel a genuine delight in hoaxing them. "your obedient servant, "an irish liberal." as for the assertion of poverty and inability to pay, so invariably made to excuse defaulting tenants, i will give these two instances to the contrary. "writing on behalf of mr. balfour to mr. e. bannister, of hyde, cheshire, mr. george wyndham, m.p., recounts a somewhat remarkable circumstance in connection with the position and circumstances of a tenant on lord kenmare's estate who declined to pay his rent on the plea of poverty:--'irish office, nov. , . dear sir,--in reply to your letter of the nd inst., i beg to inform you that i have made careful inquiries into the case of molloy, a tenant on lord kenmare's estate. i find that so far from exaggerating the scope of this incident, you somewhat understate the case. the full particulars were as follow:--the estate bailiffs visited the house of molloy, a tenant who owed £ rent and arrears. they seized his cows, and then called at his home to ask him if he would redeem them by paying the debt. molloy stated that he was willing to pay, but that he had only £ altogether. he handed seven notes to the bailiff, who found that one of them was a £ note, so that the amount was £ instead of £ . on being pressed to pay the balance he admitted that he had a small deposit of £ in the bank, and produced a document which he said was the deposit receipt for this sum. on the bailiff examining this receipt he found it was for £ and not for £ . on being informed of his mistake, molloy took back the £ receipt and produced another, which turned out to be for £ . a further search on his part led to the production of the receipt for £ , with which and £ in notes he paid the rent. you will observe that this tenant, refusing to pay £ , and obliging his landlord to take steps against him, possessed at the time £ , besides having stock on his land.--yours faithfully, george wyndham.'" and i have it on the word of honour of one whose word is his bond, that certain defaulting tenants lately confessed to him that they had in their pockets as much as the value of three years' rent for the two they owed, but that they dared not, for their lives, pay it. they would if they dared, but they dared not. the plea of inability to pay the reduced scale of rent is for the most part simple moonshine; and the terrorism imported into this question comes from the campaigners, not from the landlords, nor yet from the police. if these paid political agitators were silenced, and if the laws already passed were suffered to work by themselves according to their intent, things would speedily settle. but then the agitators would lose their means of subsistence, their social status, and their political importance. as things are these men are ruining the country they affect to defend; while the worst enemies of the peasant are those who call themselves his friends, and the blind-eyed sympathisers who bewail the wrongs he does not suffer and the misery he himself might prevent. all that ireland wants now is rest from political agitation, the orderly development of its resources;--and especially finality in legislation;[e]--so that the one side may know to what it has to trust, and the other may be freed from those illusive dreams and demoralising hopes which destroy the manlier efforts after self-help in the present for that universal amelioration to be found in the coming of the cocklicranes in the future. there is, however, a good work quietly going on which will touch the evil root of things in time, but not in the sense of the home rulers and campaigners. this good work will render it unnecessary to follow the advice of that rough and ready politician who saw no way out of the wood save to "send to hell for oliver cromwell"; also that of the facetious dove who winked as he offered his olive branch:--"shure the best way to pacify oireland is for the queen to marry parnell." a more practicable method than either is silently making headway against the elements of disorder; and in spite of the upsetters and their opposition the rough things will be made smooth, and, the troubled waters will run clear, if only the government of order may be allowed time to do its beneficent work of repression and re-establishment thoroughly and to the roots. ii. in politics, as in nature, beneficent powers work quietly, while destructive agencies sweep across the world with noise and tumult. the fruit tree grows in silence; the tempest which uproots it shakes the earth to its centre. the gradual evolution of society in the development of art, the softening of manners, the equalization of justice, the respect for law, the purity of morals, which are its results and correlatives, comes about as silently as the growth of the tree; but the wars which desolate nations, and the revolutions which destroy in a few months the work of many centuries, are as tumultuous as the tempest and as boisterous as the storm. in ireland at the present moment this rule holds good with surprising accuracy. where the tranquilizing effect of lord ashbourne's act attracts but little attention outside its own immediate sphere, the plan of campaign has everywhere been accompanied with murder, boycotting, outrage, and the loud cries of those who, playing at bowls, have to put up with rubbers. where men who have retained their sense of manly honesty and commercial justice, buy their lands in peace, without asking the world to witness the transaction--those tenants who, having for years refused to pay a reduced rent or any portion of arrears, are at last evicted from the land they do not care to hold as honest men should, make the political welkin ring with their complaints, and call on the nation at large to avenge their wrongs. and the analogy holds good all through. the irish tenant yearns to possess the land he farms. lord ashbourne's act enables him to do this by the benign way of peace, fairness, and self-respect. the plan of campaign, on the other hand, teaches him the destructive methods of dishonesty and violence. the one is a legal, quiet, and equitable arrangement, without personal bitterness, without hysterical shrieking, without wrong-doing to any one. the other is an offence against the common interests of society, and a breach of the law accompanied by crimes against humanity. the one is silent and beneficent; the other noisy, uprooting, and malevolent. but as the powers of growth and development are, in the long run, superior to those of destruction--else all would have gone by the board ages ago--the good done by lord ashbourne's act will be a living force in the national history when the evil wrought by the plan of campaign is dead and done with. by lord ashbourne's act the irish tenant can buy his farm at (an average of) seventeen years' purchase. he borrows the purchase money from the government, paying it back on easy terms, so that in forty-nine years he becomes the absolute owner of the property--paying meantime in interest and gradual diminution of the principal, less than the present rent. the landlord has about £ for every £ he used to have in rent. this act is quietly revolutionizing ireland, redeeming it from agrarian anarchy, and saving the farmer from himself and his friends. thousands and thousands of acres are being constantly sold in all parts of the country, and good prices are freely given for farms whereof the turbulent and discontented tenants professed themselves unable to pay the most moderate rents. large holdings and small alike are bought as gladly as they are sold. those who buy know the capabilities of the land when worked with a will; those who sell prefer a reduced certainty to the greater nominal value, which might vanish altogether under the fiat of the campaigners and the visits of captain moonlight. the irish loyal papers, which no english home ruler ever sees--facts being so inimical to sentiment--these irish papers are full of details respecting these sales. on one estate thirty-seven farmers buy their holdings at prices varying from £ to £ , the average being £ . on another, six farms bring £ , , one fetching £ , . in the west, small farmers are buying where they can. in sligo the macdermott, q.c., has sold farms to forty-two of his tenants for £ , , the prices varying from £ to £ and £ ; and the o'connor don has sold farms in the same county to fifteen tenants for £ , . the number of acres purchased under this act for the three years ending august, , are a trifle over , . the government valuation is £ , , . the net rent is £ , s. d. the purchase-money is £ , , . the average number of years' purchase is . . perhaps the most important of all these sales are those on the egmont estate in the very heart of one of the gravely-disturbed districts. the rent-roll of this estate was £ , a year; and it was estimated that successive landlords had laid out about £ , in improvements--which was just the sum expected to be realized by the sales. all this land has passed into the hands of farmers who, from agitators and no renters have now become proprietors on their own account, with a direct interest in maintaining law and order, and in opposing violence and disorder all round. other important sales have been effected. a hundred and fifty tenants on the drapers' estate in county derry have bought their farms from the london company at a total of £ , . these, with others ( in all), reached a sum total of purchase-money of £ , , as set forth in the _dublin gazette_, of november th, . lord spencer, whose political _volte face_ is one of the wonders of the hour, does not hesitate to say that this act has not been a success. can he give counter figures to those quoted above? and mr. michael davitt does not approve of the sales in general and of those on the egmont estates in especial, "he hates the ashbourne act worse than he hates the idea of an endowed roman catholic university, which is saying a great deal. he hates it because it renders impossible his visionary scheme of land nationalization, but more because it wrests from his hands the weapons of separatist rebellion. and what he openly says, all the more cautious members of his party think. every purchaser under the ashbourne act is a soldier lost to the cause of sedition. more than one of the ringleaders have indeed said this formerly, but of late they have grown more reticent. the parnellite, it has been said, is essentially an opportunist. mr. davitt is hardly a parnellite, but the real parnellite items have discovered that their seats in parliament and their future hopes would be endangered, if they openly fell foul of the act under which so many irish tenants are becoming freeholders. they do not bless the act, but they leave it alone." there is another misstatement that had better be frankly met. the objectors to the land courts say that the applicants are so many and the process is so slow, it is almost useless and worse than heartbreaking to apply for relief. one thing, however, must be remembered--during the interim of application and hearing, a tenant cannot be disturbed in his holding, and if he refuses to pay his rent the landlord cannot evict him. the following correspondence is instructive:-- "braintree, nov. . "sir,--will you be good enough to inform me whether the statement i give below is correct? it was made by an irish lecturer (going about with magic-lantern views) for the purpose of showing how unjustly the irish tenants are treated. the lecturer was mr. j. o'brady, and he was delivering the lecture at braintree on saturday, november :--'there are now , cases awaiting the decision of the land courts to fix a "fair rent" on their holdings, and as only , cases can be heard in one year, do you wonder at the tenants refusing to pay their present rent?' "your faithful servant, "g. thorpe bartram." "the right hon. a.j. balfour, m.p." "irish office, great queen street, nov. . "dear sir,--i have made special inquiry into the subject of your letter of the th inst., and find that on the st of the last month the number of outstanding applications to have fair rents fixed was , , and that the number of cases disposed of in the months of july and august (the latest month for which the figures are made up) was , . you will see, therefore, that the arrear is less than one-half of the amount stated by the separatist lecturer to whom you refer, and the rate of progression in disposing of it is considerably higher than that alleged by him. it may reasonably be hoped also (though the statistics are not yet available) that this rate has since been increased, as several additional sub-commissioners have been appointed to hear the cases. i would observe also that under the provisions of the land act, passed by the present government in , the tenant gets the benefit of the judicial rent from the date of his application, an advantage which he did not possess under mr. gladstone's act. such unavoidable delay as may occur, therefore, does not, under the existing law, involve the serious injury to the tenant implied by the lecturer. i enclose a printed paper, which will give you further information on this subject. in conclusion, i would point out that the suggestion that the agrarian trouble in ireland arises from the difficulty experienced by the tenants in getting judicial rents fixed is not warranted by the facts. take as illustrations the cases of two estates which have lately been prominently before the public--namely, the ponsonby and the olphert. in the former case the landlord is anxious, i believe, to get the tenants to go into court, and offers to give retrospective effect to the decisions, though not bound by law to do so, but under the influence of the agitators the tenants refuse to go into court. in the latter instance judicial rents have long since been fixed in the great majority of cases. "yours faithfully, "arthur james balfour." together with this easy mode of purchase by which the quiet and industrious are profiting, rents are reduced all over the country, though still the home rulers reiterate the old charge of "rack-renting," as if such a thing were the rule. these unscrupulous misstatements, indeed, make half the difficulties of the irish question; for lies stick fast, where disclaimers, proofs, facts, and figures, pass by like dry leaves on the wind. but for all the fact of past extortion the present reductions are not always a proof of over-renting. what mr. buxton says has common sense on the face of it:-- "very serious reductions of rents are being made all through ireland by the land sub-commissioners, who are supposed to be in some extent guided by the appearance of the farms. now it should be remembered that at the interview that took place in london on july rd, between mr. smith-barry and some of his tenants, in reference to that gentleman's support of the evictions on the ponsonby estate, one of the arguments for forgiveness of arrears was that when eviction was threatened 'the tenants gave up their industry,' and 'how could they get the rents out of the land when they were absolutely idle?' to admit such a plea for granting a reduction of rent is most dangerous. tenants have but to neglect their land, get into arrears of rent, and claim large reductions because their farms do not pay. an ignorant, or slovenly, or idle farmer, under such circumstances, is likely to have a lower rent fixed by the sub-commissioners than his more industrious neighbour, and thus a great injustice may be done to both the good farmer and the landlord, the--perhaps cunningly--idle farmer receiving a premium for neglecting his farm. a comparison of the judicial rents with the former rents and the poor law valuation is truly startling, and must lead one to imagine that the system by which so much valuable property is dealt with is most unjust." thus, the famous reductions in county clare, where the abatements granted averaged over per cent., and in some cases exceeded per cent., were not perhaps all a sign of the landlord's iniquity, but also may be taken to show something of the tenant's indifference. poverty is pitiable, truly, and it claims relief from all who believe in the interdependence of a community; but poverty which comes from idleness, unthrift, neglect, and which then falls on others to relieve--these others having to suffer for sins not their own--how about that as a righteous obligation? must i and my children go foodless because my tenants will neither till the land they hold from me, so as to make it yield their own livelihood and that profit over which is my inheritance, nor suffer others to do what they will not? if we are prepared to endorse the famous saying: "la propriété c'est le vol," well and good. meanwhile to spend all our sympathy on men who reduce themselves and others to poverty by idleness and unthrift, seems rather a bad investment of emotion. the old-fashioned saying about workers and eaters had a different ring; and once on a time birds who could sing, and would not, were somehow made. co-incident with these conditions of no rent at all--reduction of rent all round--and the free purchase of land by those who yesterday professed pauperism, is the startling fact that the increase in bank deposits for the half-year of was £ , --in post office savings bank deposits £ , --in trustee savings banks, £ , . mr. mitchell henry, writing to the _times_, says:--"if any one will tell the exact truth as to irish matters at this moment, he must confess that landlords are utterly powerless to coerce their tenants; that the pockets of the tenants themselves are full of money formerly paid in rent; that the price of all kinds of cattle has risen largely; that the last harvest was an excellent one; and that the banks--savings banks, post office banks, and ordinary banks--are richer than they have ever been, whilst the consumption of whisky--that sure barometer of irish prosperity--is increasing beyond all former experience. in addition to this, i venture to say that, with certain local exceptions, the irish peasant is better clothed than any other peasants in the world. the people are sick of agitation and long to be let alone; but they are a people of extraordinary clannishness, and take an intellectual delight in intrigue, especially where the saxon is concerned. british simplicity is wonderful, and the very people who have put on this cupboard love for mr. gladstone and his lieutenants, whom they formerly abused beyond all decent license of abuse, laugh at them as soon as their backs are turned." these savings do not come from the landlords, so many of whom are hopelessly ruined by the combined action of our own legislature and the plan of campaign. of this ruin colonel lloyd has given a very graphic account. alluding to mr. balfour's answer in the house on the st of june, to the question put by mr. macartney on colonel lloyd's letter to the _times_ ( th of june), the colonel repeats his assertions, or rather his accusations against the court. these are:--"first, that the percentage of reductions now being given is the very highest yet made, notwithstanding that prices of agricultural produce and cattle have considerably increased; secondly, that the sub-commissioners have no fixed rule to guide them save one--viz., that existing rents, be they high or low, must be cut down, although they may not have been altered for half a century; thirdly that it was reported the commissioners had instructions to give all-round reductions of per cent.; fourthly, that in the land court the most skilled evidence of value is disregarded, as also the poor law valuation; fifthly, that the sub-commissioners assign no reasons for their decisions; and, sixthly, that the machinery of the court is faulty and unfair in the following instances:--_(a)_ if a landlord appeals and fails, he must pay costs, but if he appeals and succeeds he will not get costs; _(b)_ tenants' costs are taxed by the court behind the landlord's back; _(c)_ their rules are constantly changing without any proper notice to the public; and _(d)_ appeals are accumulating with no prospect of their being disposed of in any reasonable time." colonel lloyd disposes of mr. balfour's denials to these statements, but at too great length to copy. it may be taken for granted here that they are disposed of, and that he proves up to the hilt his case of crying injustice to the landlords--as indeed every fair-minded person who looks honestly into the question, must acknowledge. as one slight corroboration of what he says he adduces the following instances:-- "the following judicial rents were fixed by the assistant-commissioners in the west of ireland:-- poor law judicial tenants' names. old rent. valuation. rent £ s. d. £ s. d. £ s. d. tom regan j. manlon c. kelly j. kenny £ £ £ "the landlord appealed, and the appeals were heard a few days ago by the chief commissioners in roscommon. two skilled valuers were employed, who valued within a few shillings of the government valuation, and in the face of this evidence the decisions of the assistant-commissioners were confirmed. these are not by any means isolated instances. in fact they are the rule in the land court." and he ends by this remarkable assertion:-- "the whole machinery of the court must be remodelled if it is to possess the confidence of the public. as it is at present composed, it is too much subject to political influence and to the clamour of one set of litigants to be independent. there are few of your readers, i believe, who will not admit that it is a very alarming thing to find a court so constituted having the control of millions. the only officials ever connected with the court in which there was any degree of confidence were the court valuers attached to the appeal court. they were men of independence and impartiality, but they were dispensed with in a vain attempt to satisfy mr. parnell. i see by mr. balfour's statement in the house of commons on the th ult. that the chief commissioners are again engaged in framing new rules with regard to appeals. one would think that at the end of eight years they would have had their rules complete, and that an alteration every three months during that period ought to have brought them to perfection. how long is this farce to continue? these are serious complaints against a public body intrusted with the administration of justice. they do not deserve to be lightly passed over, and i am confident that, even should it suit the convenience of the present government to follow the example of their predecessors and ignore them, the english people, with their strong sense of justice, will eventually insist on the unfair treatment and glaring injustice and abuses complained of being set right, and that those who have from political motives and influence been placed in honourable and responsible judicial positions shall give place to impartial men, who will deal out even-handed justice to the landlord as well as to the tenant.--i remain your obedient servant, "jesse lloyd, lieutenant-colonel and j.p., "agent for lord rossmore. "rossmore agency office, monaghan." here, then, is the reverse of the medal. hitherto the outcry has been all for the tenant, and i do not say for a moment that this outcry was not just. it was. the irish peasant has had his wrongs, deep and shameful; but now justice has been done to him so amply that the overflow has gone to the other side. it is time to look at things as they are, and to let well alone. justice to the one has broadened out into persecution of the other, and an irish landlord is for the moment the favourite cock-shy for aggressive legislation. but, as i have said before, prejudice dies hard, and sentimental pity is often only prejudice in a satin cloak. the irish peasant is still assumed to be a helpless victim, the irish landlord a ruffianly tyrant; and a state of things as obsolete as the ogham language itself still rouses active passion as against a living wrong. i go back to that statement in the _pall matt gazette,_ to which i have before alluded, as an instance of the way in which the very froth of prejudice and falsehood is whipped up into active poison by the short and easy way of imagination and assertion. it is a fair sample of all the rest; but these are the things which find credit with those who do not know and do not enquire. advocating the making of blackberry wine as the short cut from poverty to prosperity in ireland, the scheme being parallel to mr. gladstone's famous remedy of jam, this sapient "b.o.n." says:-- "the blackberry harvest would be over in the sunny rhine country before it began in ireland. why should not some practical native, go over from home and see how it is all done? i quite know that any plan for bettering the physical condition of our people is open to the objection that as soon as they seem a little 'comfortable' the landlord would raise the rent in many a case; but perhaps in a still larger number of cases he would now be afraid to do so. and i know, too, that even a blackberry wine industry will not be quite safe till we have home rule; but is not that coming fast?" this mischievous little word is in the very teeth of the fact that rents cannot be raised on any plea whatsoever--certainly not because the tenant makes himself better off by an industry other than his farming--and that the whole machinery of government had been put in motion to protect the land tiller from the land-owner. yet the _pall mall gazette_ is not ashamed to lend itself to this lie on the chance of catching a few fluttering minds and nailing them to the mast of home rule on the false supposition that this means justice to the oppressed tenant and wholesome restraint of the brutal proprietor. professor mahaffy, in a long letter to the _new york independent,_ speaks of the same kind of thing still going on in america--this bolstering up a delusion by statements as far removed from the truth as that of "b.o'n.'s," to which the _pall mall gazette_ gives sanction and circulation. that part of the american press which is under the influence or control of the irish home rulers still goes on talking of the oppression to which the irish tenant is subjected, just as the speeches of the agitators (_vide_ the astounding lies, as well as the appalling nonsense talked, when lady sandhurst and mr. stansfeld were made citizens of dublin, and it was asserted that the government turned tail and fled before these "delegates") teem with analogous assertions wherein not so much as one grain of truth is to be found. let it be again repeated in answer to all these falsehoods:--no tenant can be evicted except for non-payment of one year's rent; that rent can be settled by the courts, and if he has signed an agreement for an excessive payment, his agreement can be broken; and he must be compensated for all the improvements he has made or will swear that he has made. also, he can borrow money from the government at the lowest possible interest, and become the owner of his farm for less yearly payment than his former rent. he, the irish tenant, is the most protected, the most favoured of all leaseholders in europe or america, but the old cries are raised, the old watch-words are repeated, just as if nothing had been done since the days when he was as badly off as the egyptian fellah, and was, in truth, between the devil and the deep sea. let me repeat the legal and actual condition of things as summarized by mr. montagu crackanthorpe, q.c. these six propositions ought to be learned by heart before anyone allows himself to talk of home rule or the irish question:-- . that every yearly tenant of agricultural land valued at less than £ a year can have his rent judicially fixed, and that the existence of arrears of rent creates no statutory obstacle whatever, nor any difficulty in procedure, if he is desirous of availing himself of the acts. . that every such agricultural tenant, whether he has had a fair rent fixed or not, may sell his tenancy to the highest bidder whenever he desires to leave; and that, if he be evicted, he has the right either to redeem within six months, or to sell his tenancy within the same period to a purchaser, who can likewise redeem, and thus acquire all the privileges of the tenant. . that in view of the fall in agricultural produce, the land commission is empowered and directed to vary the rents fixed by the land court during the years to , in accordance with the difference in prices of produce between those years and the years to . . that no tenant in ireland can be evicted by his landlord unless his rent is twelve months in arrear, and that the yearly tenant who is so evicted must be paid full compensation for all improvements not already compensated for by enjoyment, such, for instance, as unexhausted manure, permanent buildings, and reclamation of waste land. he may, it is true, be evicted on title after judgment obtained against him for his rent, and in that case his goods and interest (including his improvements) may be put up to auction by the sheriff. this is a matter which seems to require amendment; but it is to be observed that the same consequences would follow if the judgment creditor were a shopkeeper who had given the tenant credit or the local money-lender or gombeen man. a compulsory sale under these circumstances is not peculiar to landlordism, and it is a method to which landlords seldom resort. . that if a tenant falls into arrear for rent, and becomes liable to eviction, whether on title or not, the court can stay process, if satisfied that his difficulty arises from no fault of his own, and can give him time to pay by instalments. . that if a tenant wishes to buy his holding, and comes to terms with his landlord, he can borrow money from the government at per cent., by the help of which he may change his rent into an annuity, the amount of the annuity being less than the rent, and the burden of the annuity altogether ceasing at the end of forty-nine years. the result by the way of this peasant proprietorship will be twofold. on the one side it will create a greater uniformity of comfort and a larger class of peaceable, self-respecting, law-abiding citizens. on the other it will lower the general standard by doing away with that better class of resident gentry and capitalized landowners, who in their way are guides, teachers and helps to the peasantry. the absence of this better class of resident gentry is one of the misfortunes of french agricultural life and the justification of m. zola; their presence is one of the blessings of england. how will it be in ireland when the exodus is more complete than it is even now, and when the villages and rural districts are left solely to peasant proprietors and a celibate clergy? the romish church has never been famous for teaching those things which make for intellectual enlightenment and social improvement. the difference between the protestant north and the rest of roman catholic ireland, as between the protestant and romish cantons in switzerland; is a truism almost proverbial. and without the little leaven of such influence as the better educated and more enlightened gentry may possess, the irish peasant will be even more superstitious, more blinded by prejudice and ignorance than he is now. as it is, the old landlords are sincerely deplored, and the good they did is as sincerely regretted. those grand old hunting days, now things of the past, still linger in the memory of the men who participated in the fun and had their full share of the crumbs--and the times when a grand seigneur paid a hundred pounds a week in wages alone seem something like glimpses into a railed and fenced off el dorado, which the plan of campaign has closed for ever. so that the sunshine has its shadow, for all the good to be had from the light. it ought to be that peasant proprietorship will make the holder more industrious and a better farmer than he has been as tenant. whether it will or not remains to be seen. as things are--always excepting ulster and the north generally--farming could scarcely be more shameful in its neglect than it is--domestic life could scarcely be more squalid, more savage, more filthy. even rich farmers live like pigs and with their pigs, and the stone house is no better kept than the mud cabin--the forty-acre field no better tilled than the miserable little potato patch. had the farming been better, there would never have been the poverty, the discontent, the agitation by which ireland had been tortured and convulsed. had the men been more industrious, the women cleaner and more deft, the plan of campaign would have failed for want of social nutriment, where now it has been so disastrously triumphant. physical well-being is a great incentive to quiet living--productive industry checks political unrest. those who have something to lose are careful to keep it; and we may be sure that captain moonlight would not risk his skin if he had a good coat to cover it. also there is another aspect in which this land question may be viewed, and ought to be viewed--in reference to the manner in which the irish farmer treats the property by which he lives:--that is the aspect of his duty to the community in his quality of producer for the community. we must all come down to the land as the common property of the human race. parcelled out as it may be--by the mile or the square yard--it is the common mother of all men. we can do without everything else, from lace to marble--from statues to carriages--but food we must have; and the holders of land all the world over are really and rightfully trustees for the race. the irish peasant has no more right to neglect the possibilities of produce than had william rufus, or his modern representative in scotland, to evict villages for the making of a deer forest. the principle of trusteeship in the land holds good with small holders and great alike; but imagine what would be the effect of a law which required so much produce from a given area on an average for so long a period! the principle is of course conceded in the rent, rates and taxes; but a direct application to produce would set the kingdom in a blaze. but in ireland fields of thistles and acres of ragwort, with tall purple spikes of loose strife everywhere, seem to be held as valid crops, fit for food and good at rent-paying. these are to be found at every step from dublin to kerry, and the most unpractised eye can see the waste and neglect and unnecessary squalor of both land and people. as an english farmer said, with indignation: "the land is brutally treated." so it is--idleness, unthrift, and bad farming generally, degrading it far below its possibilities and natural standard of production. cross the channel, and wales looks like a trim garden. go over to france, and you find every yard of soil carefully tilled and cultivated. even in comparatively ramshackle sicily, among the old lava beds of etna, the peasants raise a handful of grain on the top of a rock no bigger than a lady's work-table. in ireland the cultivated portion of a holding is often no bigger relatively than that work-table on an acre of waste. will the tiller, now the owner and no longer only the leaseholder, go back from his evil ways of thriftlessness and neglect, and instead of being content to live just above the line of starvation, will he educate himself up to those artificial wants which only industry can supply? will the women learn to love cleanliness, to regard their men's rags and their children's dirt as their own dishonour, and to understand that womanhood has its share of duties in social and domestic life? will the sense of beauty grow with the sense of proprietorship, and the filth of the present surroundings be replaced by a flower garden before the cottage--a creeper against the wall--a few pots of more delicate blooms in the window? will the taste for variety in garden produce be enlarged, and plots of peas, beans, carrots, artichokes, pot-herbs, and the like, be added to the one monotonous potato-patch, with a few cabbages and roots for the baste, and a strip of oats as the sole cereal attempted? who knows? at present there is not a flower to be seen in the whole of the west, save those which a luxuriant nature herself has sown and planted; and the immediate surroundings of the substantial farm-house, like those of the mud cabin, are filth unmentionable, savage squalor, and bestial neglect. these things are signs of a mental and moral condition that goes deeper than the manifestation. they do not show only want of the sense of beauty--want of the sense even of cleanliness; they show the absence of all the civilizing influences--all the humanizing tendencies of modern society. by this want ireland is made miserable and kept low in the scale of nations. had the race been self-respecting, sturdy, upright, stubbornly industrious, all this savage neglect would have mended itself. being what it is--excitable, imaginative, spasmodic, given over to ideas rather than to facts, and trusting to hercules in the clouds rather than to its own brawny shoulders--this squalor continues and is not dependent on poverty. time alone will show whether changed agrarian conditions will alter it. so far as his power goes, the priest does nothing to touch it. the church uses up its influence for everything but the practical purposes of work-a-day-life. it teaches obediences to its ordinances, but not civic virtues. it encourages boys and girls to marry at an age when they neither understand the responsibilities of life nor can support a family; but in its regard for the sacrament it forgets the pauperization of the nation. it enforces chastity, but it winks at murder; it demands money for masses for the souls of the dead, but it leaves on one side the homes and bodies of the living; it breeds a race of paupers to drag the country lower and lower into the depths of poverty, and thinks it has done a meritorious work, and one that calls for praise because of the paucity of numbers in the percentage of illegitimate births. thus in ireland, where everything is set askew, even morality has its drawbacks, and less individual virtue would be a distinct national gain. the home rule enthusiasts say all that is wanted to remedy these ingrained defects is a parliament; all that is wanted to make irishmen perfect and ireland a paradise is a parliament chosen by the people and sitting in college green. human nature will then be changed, and the lion and the lamb will lie down together. the papist will love the protestant, and the moral of the story about those two scotch presbyterian boys, whose presence at the barrow house national school so seriously disturbed both priest and people, is one that will read quite the other way. all the bitter hatred poured out against england, against protestants, against the law and its administrators, will cease so soon as catholics come to the place of power and the supremacy of england is at an end. the church which burned giordano bruno and is affronted because his memory has been honoured--which placed the quirinale under the ban of the lesser excommunication, and withstood the national impulse towards freedom and unity as represented by garibaldi--the church which has ever been on the side of intolerance and tyranny will suddenly, in ireland under home rule, become beneficent, just, and liberal, and heretics will no longer herd with the goats but will take their place among the sheep. if, as mr. redmond says, it is the duty of irishmen to make the government of england an impossibility, it will then be their pleasure to make her alliance both close and easy. ulster and kerry will march shoulder to shoulder, and leaguers and orangemen will form an unbroken phalanx of orderly and law-abiding citizens. in a word the old dragon will be chained and the millenium will come. the prospect seems too good to be true. were we to follow after it and put the loyal protestant minority into the power of the anti-imperial catholic majority in the hope of seeking peace and ensuing it, we might perchance be like the dog who let fall that piece of meat from between his teeth--losing the substance for shadow. we do better, all things considered, with our present arrangements--trusting to the imperfect operations of human law rather than shooting niagara for the chance of the clear stream at the bottom. the whirligig of time has changed the relative positions of the two great parties in ireland. formerly it was the catholics who desired the abolition of home rule, and the protestants who held by the national parliament. that parliament was exclusively protestant, and the powerful minority ground the helpless majority to the very ground. catholics were persecuted from shore to shore, and all sorts and conditions of protestant bullies and tyrants sent up petitions to forbid the iniquity of catholic trade rivalry. what was then would be now--changing the venue and putting the catholics where the protestants used to be. we do not believe that the "principle of nationality" is the working power of this desire for home rule, as mr. stansfeld asserts--unless indeed the principle of nationality can be stretched so as to cover the self-aggrandizement of a party, the bitterness of religious hatred, and the tyranny of a cruel and coercive combination. the grand and noble name of nationality can scarcely be made so elastic as this. respect for law lies at the very heart of the principle, and the irish home rulers are of all men the most conspicuous for their contempt of law and their bold infraction of the very elementary ordinances of civilized society. as for tyranny, no coercion established by government--not even that proclaimed by mr. gladstone--has been more stringent than the coercion exercised by the plan of campaign. what happened in tipperary only the other day when certain rent-paying tenants, who had been boycotted, did public penance in the following propositions? they offered:--"firstly, to come forward to the subsequent public meeting and express public contrition for having violated their resolution to hold out with the other tenants; secondly, not to pay the next half-year's rent, due on the th of december, but to in future act with the general body of the tenantry; and thirdly, to pay each a pecuniary sum, to be halved between the ponsonby tenants and the smith-barry tipperary tenantry in the fight which is to come on." surely no humiliation was ever greater than this!--no decree of secret council or pitiless vehmgericht were ever more ruthlessly imposed, more servilely obeyed! can we say that the irish are fit to be called freemen, or able to exercise the real functions of nationality, when they can suffer themselves to be hounded like sheep and rated like dogs for the exercise of their own judgment and the performance of their duties as honest men and good citizens? if the mere presence in ireland of lady sandhurst and mr. stansfeld dismayed mr. balfour and scattered his myrmidons as the forces of the evil one fly before the advent of the angels, could they not have used their semi-divine power for these humiliated rent-payers? instead of complacently listening to bunkum--which, if they had had any sense of humour would have made them laugh; any of modesty would have made them blush--could they not have brought their inherited principles of commercial honesty and manly fidelity to an engagement to bear on these irate campaigners, and have reminded them that the very core of liberalism is the right of each man to unrestricted action, provided he does not hurt his neighbour? but home rulers are essentially one-sided in their estimate of tyranny, and things change their names according to the side on which they are ranged. to boycott a man, to mutilate his cattle,[f] to commit outrages on his family, and finally to murder him outright for paying his rent or taking an evicted farm, are all justifiable proceedings of righteous severity. but for a landlord to evict a tenant from the farm for which he will not pay the covenanted rent--will not, but yet could, twice over--is a cowardly, a brutal, a damnable act, for which those slugs from behind a stone-wall are the well-deserved reward. here is an instance of the vengeance sought to be taken by wealthy tenants evicted for non-payment of rent. "lord clanricarde writes to the _times_ to corroborate the statement that an infernal explosive machine had been found in a cottage at woodford, in ireland. his lordship quotes as follows from the account of an eye-witness:-- 'when possession was taken of the sub-tenant's house, no. , there was the usual crowd crowding as close to our party as the police would allow; but it was remarked that on our approach to houses nos. and , close together, and which concealed the infernal machine, the crowd kept well away out of hearing, while the woodford leaders were on a car on the road, but out of danger like the others; but all well in sight of any destruction that might befall the officers of the law. this house, no. , when last examined in june, was found vacant, door not locked, but open, and used as a shelter for cattle. finding it locked now, x. detached the lock, pushed the door open, and he and i and others went inside. the house was empty, but a pile of stones was heaped up in the doorway, some of them had been displaced by the door when opened, and the top of a box in. square was seen embedded in a barrel containing lbs. of 'excellent gunpowder,' a bottle full of sulphuric acid, and other explosives, as well as a number of detonators, and the blade of a knife (apparently) with a spring attached by a coil of string to the door, the machine being so arranged as to be liable to explode in two ways. the expert who examined the machine said that had the sulphuric acid been liberated, as meant, all our party, twenty in all, must have been destroyed, as there were enough explosives to destroy any living thing within yards. neither on that day, nor on the nd (date of sale) did either the tenant or the woodford leaders--r. and k.--utter one word of surprise, much less of abhorrence!' the tenant proceeded against (says lord clanricarde, owed four and a-half years' rent, at £ s. per annum) much below the taxation valuation of £ s., for a mill, with the sole use of the water-power, a valuable privilege, and statute acres, a considerable part of them arable land. he had ten sub-tenants, was reported to make £ per annum from mill and farm, and though he had removed part of his stock, there were still cattle on the land on the day of eviction enough to cover two years' arrears. if he had paid even those two years on account he would have received an abatement, and saved his farm. the judge in dublin who gave the decree against him, gave also costs against him to mark his sense of the tenant's bad conduct." and to think that good, honest, noble-hearted, and sincere englishmen, who in their own persons are law-abiding, just, honourable, and faithful, should uphold a state of things which strikes at the root of all law, all commercial honesty--blinded as they are by the glamour of a generous, unreal, and unworkable sentiment! if only they would go over to ireland to judge for themselves on the basis of facts, not fancies--and to be informed by truths not lies! i know that we cannot all see alike, and that every shield has its two sides. in this matter, on the one side stand earl spencer, now converted to home rule, since his viceroyalty; on the other is the example of mr. forster, who went to ireland an ardent home ruler and came back as strong a unionist. the quaker became a fighting man, and the idealist a practical man, believing in facts as he had seen them and no longer in sentiments he could not realise--in measures grounded on the necessities of good government, and not like so many epiphytes with their roots in the air. let lord spencer bring to this test his late utterances. he goes in now for home rule, and the right of ireland to appoint her own police and judges. he is out of the wood and can hallo; but where would he have been if the irish had appointed their police when he was at the castle?--with lord frederick and mr. burke! and if the judges were appointed by the irish, we should have, in all probability, mr. tim harrington, barrister-at-law, on the bench; and a few years ago mr. tim harrington crumpled up the queen's writ and flung it out of the court house window. and what power over the fortunes of others can be given to men who boycott a railway for political spite?[g] so many things have conspired to make this irish question a gordian-knot which no man can untie, and but few would dare to cut. the past extravagance of the landlords, absenteeism, rack-renting, injustice of all kinds; the past jealousy of england and her over-shadowing all native industries and productions; difference of religion, racial temperament, and the irreconcilable enmity of the conquered towards the conquerors; ignorance and idleness; the morality which marries too early, when the land, which was just enough to support one family, is expected to keep three or four; want of self-respect in the dirt and disorder of domestic life; want of all communal life or amusement, save in heated politics and drink; bogs here, unthrift there, small holdings everywhere--all these things help to complicate a question which passion has already made too difficult for even the most radical kind of statesmanship to adjust. all the panaceas hitherto tried have been found ineffectual. the repeal of catholic disabilities, the establishment of national schools, the disestablishment of the protestant church, the maynooth grant, the various land acts--all have done but little towards the settlement of the question, which, like certain fabulous creatures, has increased in strength and the extensions of its demands by every concession made. the best chance yet offered seems to be in the quiet working of lord ashbourne's act, by which the tenant becomes the owner and the landlord is not despoiled. and certainly the crying need of the moment is legislative finality and political rest. existing machinery is sufficient for all the agrarian ameliorations demanded. to do much more would be to act like children who pluck up their seeds to see how they are growing, leaving nothing sufficient time for development or reproduction. no one would deny such a measure of home rule to ireland as should give her the management of her own internal affairs, in the same manner and degree as our county councils are to manage ours. but this is not the home rule demanded by the leaders of the party. that for which they have taken off their coats means the loss of the country as an integral part of the empire; the oppression and practical annihilation of the protestant section; the opening of the irish ports to all the enemies of england; or the breaking out of civil war in ireland and its reconquest by england. the alternative scheme of federation is for the moment unworkable. but to hand over the whole conduct of irish affairs to the roman catholic majority would be one of those ineffaceable political crimes the greatness of which would be equalled only by the magnitude of its mistake. the language of the indigenous home rulers and their transatlantic sympathisers--as well as the things they have done and are still doing--ought to be warnings sufficiently strong to prevent such an act of folly and wickedness on our part. even our men--men of light and leading like mr. john morley--seem to lose their heads when they approach the irish question and to become as rabid in their accusations as the paid political agitators themselves. i will give these two short extracts, the one from mr. morley's speech at glasgow, and the other from lord powerscourt's temperate and rational commentary:-- "mr. morley says," quotes lord powerscourt, "that the irish people are more backward than the scotch or english, which i venture to doubt, at least as regards intelligence, and gives as the reason:-- "'it is because the landlords, who have been their masters, have rack-rented them, have sunk them in poverty, have plundered their own improvements, have confiscated the fruits of their own industry, have done all that they could to degrade their manhood. that is why they are backward. (cheers.) will anybody deny that the irish landlords are open to this great accusation and indictment? if anybody here is inclined to deny it, let him look at the reductions in rent that have been made since in the land court.' "well, have not rents in england and scotland been reduced quite as much, nay, more, than irish rents since ? and have not the economic causes which have lowered the prices of all farm produce all over europe caused the same depreciation in the value of land in germany or france, for instance, in the same ratio as in ireland? and has not the importation of dead meat from america, australia, or new zealand had something to do with it? "these facts are well known. but to return to the irish landlords. does not every one who is resident in ireland, and therefore conversant with the state of affairs there for the last twenty or thirty years, know that the discontent and uprising against the land system is due to the action of a very few unjust persons, now mostly dead, but whose names are well known to any one who really knows ireland, as i venture to maintain mr. morley does not? the principal actors in the drama could be counted on the fingers of one hand. and mr. morley, _ex uno disce omnes_, accuses the whole of the irish proprietors of these cruel and unjust practices which we should scorn to be guilty of. and he is an ex-cabinet minister, and late chief secretary for ireland for a few months, and a very popular one he was! "he says, again: 'public opinion would have checked the irish landlords in their infatuated policy towards their tenants,' &c. he challenges denial of these charges. well, i deny them most emphatically, and am quite willing to abide by the verdict of the respectable tenants. i throw back in his face the accusation that the irish landlords as a body have rack-rented or plundered their tenants or confiscated their improvements. "far be it from me to taunt the irish population. no, they have been tempted very sorely by prospects being held out to them of getting the land for nothing, and, all things considered, it is wonderful how they have behaved. but mr. morley is like many another politician who comes to ireland for a few months or a few weeks, and goes about the few disturbed districts and listens to all the tales told him by cardrivers and those very clever people who delight in gulling the saxon, and goes back to england, full of all sorts of horrors and crimes alleged to have been perpetrated by landlords, and takes it all as gospel, making no allowance for the great intelligence and inventive genius of his informers, and says, 'oh! i went to the place, and saw it all.' and this he takes to represent the normal state of the whole of ireland, and makes it a justification of the plan of campaign!" take too the irish home rule press, and read the floods of abuse--some spreading out into absolute obscenity--published by the principal papers day after day against all their political opponents, and we can judge of the temper with which the irish home rulers would administer affairs. of their statesmanlike provision--of their patriotism and care for the well-being of the country at large--the local war now ruining tipperary is the negative proof--the damnatory evidence that they are utterly unfit for practical power. governed by hysterical passion, by mad hatred and the desire for revenge, not one of the modern leaders, save mr. parnell, shows the faintest trace of politic self-control or the just estimate of proportions. to spite their opponents they will ruin themselves and their friends, as they have done scores of times, and are doing now in tipperary. history holds up its hands in horror at the french terror--was that worse than the system of murder and boycotting and outrage and terrorism in the disturbed districts in ireland? and would it be a right thing for england to give the supreme power to these masked couthons and robespierres and marats, that they might extend their operations into the now peaceable north, and reproduce in ulster the tragedies of the south and west? mr. parnell puts aside the tyrannous part of the business, and cleverly throws the whole weight of his argument at nottingham into the passionless economic scales. all that the nationalist party desires, he says, "is to be allowed to develope the resources of their own country at their own expense," "without any harm to you (english), without any diminution of your resources, without any risk to your credit, or call upon you," all to be done "at our own expense and out of our own resources." yet mr. parnell in another breath describes ireland as "a lazarus by the wayside"--a country "where unfortunately there is no manufacturing industry." "ex nihilo nihil fit," was a lesson we all learned in our school days. mr. parnell has evidently forgotten his. i will give a commentary on these brave words which is better put than i could put it. to the editor of the "standard." "sir,--people in england, whatever political party they belong to, should glance at what is now going on in the town of tipperary before finally making up their minds to hand over ireland body and soul to the national league. no country town in ireland--i think i may add or in england either--was more prosperous three months ago than tipperary. the centre of a rich and prosperous part of the country, surrounded by splendid land, it had an enormous trade in butter and all agricultural produce, and a large monthly pig and cattle fair was held there. it possessed (i use the past tense advisedly) a number of excellent shops, doing a splendid business, and to the eyes of those who could look back a few years it was making rapid progress in prosperity every year. "all is changed now. many of the shops are closed and deserted, others will follow their example shortly; the butter market has been removed from the town, the cattle fairs have fallen to half their former size. one sees shopkeepers, but a short time back doing capital business, walking about idle in the streets, with their shops closed; armed policemen at every corner are necessary to prevent a savage rabble from committing outrages, and many people avoid going near the town at all. all this is the result of william o'brien's speech in tipperary and the subsequent action of the national league. the town and whole neighbourhood were perfectly quiet till one day mr. o'brien descends on it like an evil spirit, and tells the shopkeepers and surrounding farmers that they are to dictate to their landlords how to act in a case not affecting them at all. for fear, however, of not sufficiently arousing them for the cause of others, he suggests that, in addition to dictating to the landlord what his conduct shall be elsewhere, all his tenants, farmers and shopkeepers alike, shall demand a reduction of per cent, on their own rents. as to the farmers' reduction i will say nothing; if they wished it, they could go into the land court, and if rented too high could get a reduction, retrospectively from the day their application was lodged. the reduction, however, that the shopkeepers were advised--nay, ordered--to ask for must have surprised them more than their landlord. many of them, at their existing rents, had piled up considerable fortunes in a few years; others had enlarged their premises, doubled their business, and thriven in every way; nevertheless, they had to obey. the landlord naturally refused to be dictated to by his tenants in matters not affecting them; he also refused to reduce the rents of men who in a few years had made fortunes, and some of whom were commonly reputed to be worth thousands. legal proceedings were then commenced, and the tenants' interests were put up to auction. some of the most thriving shopkeepers declined to let their tenancies, out of which they had done so well, be sold; others, in fear of personal violence and outrage, not unusual results of disobeying the league, did allow them to be knocked down for nominal sums to the landlord's representative. let lovers of liberty and fair-play watch what followed. all the shopkeepers who bought in their interests were rigorously boycotted; men who had had a large weekly turnover now saw their shops absolutely deserted. plate-glass windows that would not have shamed regent street, were smashed to atoms by hired ruffians of the league, and the shopkeepers themselves and their families had to be protected from the mob by armed police, placed round their houses night and day. all this because they desired to keep their flourishing businesses, instead of sacrificing them in a quarrel not their own. "let us follow still further what happened. the shopkeepers, finding their trade quite gone, for it was almost worth a person's life to go into their shops, watched as they were by paid spies, had to capitulate to the league. an abject apology and a promise to let themselves be evicted next time were the price they had to pay to be allowed in a free country to carry on their trade. ruin faced them both ways. after having the ban of boycotting taken off them, with eviction not far distant, most of them held clearance sales, at tremendous sacrifices, so as to be prepared for moving. one man is reputed to have got rid of seven thousand pounds' worth of goods under these circumstances. of the other division, who allowed their places to be sold, most of them are now evicted. dozens of shop assistants, needlewomen, and others connected with the trade of a thriving town, are thrown out of employment, and a peaceful neighbourhood has been changed into a scene of bloodshed and violence. "i appeal to the english people not to encourage or support a vile system of intimidation and violence, a system which not only pursues and ruins its enemies, but refuses to allow peaceably-inclined people to remain neutral. a case like this should not be one of party politics, but should be looked upon as the cause of all who wish to pursue their lawful vocations peaceably against those who wish to tyrannise by terror over the community at large. "i am, sir, your obedient servant, "foedi foederis adversarius." "december ." my private letters strengthen and confirm every word of this account; and the following letter is again a proof of personal tyranny and political malevolence not reassuring as qualities in the governing power:-- "to the editor of the 'times.' "sir,--i have received a letter from my friend mr. edward phillips, of thurlesbeg house, cashel, and the round, unvarnished tale that he delivers throws more light upon ireland than any amount of the windy rhetoric which is so plentifully displayed on parnellite and gladstonian platforms. mr. phillips writes as follows:-- "'i hold acres from mr. smith-barry at a rent of £ under lease and tenant-right, which, with my improvements, i valued at £ , . the land league have decided, thinking to hurt mr. smith-barry, that all tenants must prepare to give up their farms by allowing themselves to be evicted. they are clearing off everything, and because i refuse to do this, and forfeit my £ , , i am boycotted in the most determined manner. i am refused the commonest necessaries of life, even medicine, and have to get all from a distance. blacksmiths, &c., refuse to work, and labourers have notice to leave, but have not yet done so. "'heretofore people were boycotted for taking farms; i am boycotted for not giving up mine, which i have held for years. a neighbour of mine, an englishman, is undergoing the same treatment, and we alone. we are the only protestant tenants on the cashel estate. the remainder of the tenants, about , are clearing everything off their land, and say they will allow themselves to be evicted.' "i think this requires no comment. public opinion is the best protection against tyranny, and your readers can judge how far the above narrative is consistent with the opinions expressed by mr. parnell and others as to the liberty and toleration which will be accorded to the loyal minority when the land-national league becomes the undisputed government of ireland. "your obedient servant, "r. bagwell." "clonmell, december th." again an important extract:-- "this is mr. parnell's language at nottingham, but would he venture to use the same arguments in this country? would he enumerate clearly to an irish audience the countless advantages they derive from imperial funds and imperial credit, and tell them that the first step to home rule is the sacrifice of all these advantages? our great system of national education is provided out of imperial funds to the extent of about a million a year; so are the various institutions for the encouragement of science and art which adorn dublin and our other large towns. the baltimore school of fishery and other technical training places, the piers and harbours on the irish coast, the system of light railways, and the draining of rivers and reclamation of waste lands, are all supported out of the imperial exchequer. the board of works alone has been the medium of lending almost five millions of money on easy terms under the land improvement acts in the country. nor have the agricultural interests been neglected. for erecting farmhouses alone over £ , has been given, while immense sums have been spent in working the land acts. for drainage over two millions have been lent, and a sum of over one million has been remitted from the debt. a debt of eight and a-half millions appears in the last return as outstanding from the board of irish public works, besides three millions and a-half from the corresponding board in england. in fact, there is not a project enumerated by mr. parnell as necessary, under a new _régime_, to promote the 'nationality of ireland,' which is not at present being helped on by the funds or the credit of the 'alien government.' all these national advantages the supporter of a shadowy home rule bids us give up." if ever there was a case of the spider and the fly in human affairs this mild and perfectly equitable reasoning of mr. parnell is the illustration. how about the djinn crying inside the sealed jar, and the fate of the credulous fisherman who obeys that voice and breaks the seal which solomon the wise set against him? in writing this pamphlet i have not cared for graces of literary style or dramatic strength of composition; and i have largely supported myself by quotations as a proof that i am not a mere impressionist, but have a solid back-ground and a firm foothold for all that i have said. judged by these extracts it would seem that, outside the right of full communal self-government, the cry for home rule is either interested and fictitious--or when sincere--save in certain splendid exceptions, of whom mr. laing is the honoured chief, and the only home ruler who makes me doubt the rightness of my own conversion--it is a mere sentimental impulse shorn of practical power and working capacity. in any case it is a one-sided thing, leaving out of court ulster, the integrity of the empire, and the obligations of historic continuity. it is a cry that has been echoed by violence and murder, by outrage and ruin, and that has in it one overwhelming element of weakness--exaggeration. it is the cry at its best of enthusiasts whose ideas of human life and governmental potentialities are too generous for every-day practice--at its worst but another word for self. for the men who raise it and hound on these poor dupes to their own destruction are men who would be rulers of the country in their own persons, or members of a gladstonian ministry, were the home rule party to come to the front. with neither section does the strength, the glory, the integrity, and the continuance of the empire count; and the honour of england, like the true well-being of ireland, is the last thing thought of by either party. the motto of the one is: "_fiat justitia ruat caelum_"--of the other: "_après moi le déluge._" the one abjures the necessities of statesmanship, the other the self-restraints of patriotism. surely the good, wholesome, working principles of sound government lie with neither, but rather with the steady continuance of things as they are--modified as occasion arises and the needs of the case demand. footnotes: [footnote a: lord hartington's statistics--and lord hartington is a man whose word not his bitterest enemies have dared to question or to doubt--are these: (no coercion) , agrarian crimes. (partial and weak coercion) , " " (vigorous coercion) " " (vigorous coercion) " " ] [footnote b: mr. hurlbert, a roman catholic, an american, and a personal friend of mr. davitt--all which circumstances give a special weight to his testimony, now borne after frequent and lengthened and recent visits to ireland, and after close converse with men of all classes and of all political and religious views, says in his _ireland under coercion_: "an irish gentleman from st. louis brought over a considerable sum of money for the relief of distress in the north-west of ireland, but was induced to entrust it to the league, on the express ground that, the more people were made to feel the pinch of the existing order of things, the better it would be for the revolutionary movement."--_the irish question_, i., . by dr. bryce.] [footnote c: some time after the great famine, the government brought in an act called the encumbered estates act. a judge was appointed to act as auctioneer. the income of the estate was set out in schedule form, and a man purchased that income by competition in open court. he got with his purchase what was supposed to be the best title then known, commonly called "a parliamentary title." if he wanted to sell again, that was enough. many years after the bargain was made by the court, mr. gladstone dropped in and upset it. a friend of mind purchased a guaranteed rental of £ a year, subject to £ annuity, as well as other charges, head rent, &c., &c. now the government may have been said to have pledged its honour to him, speaking by the mouth of a judge in open court, that it was selling him £ a year. surely it was a distinct breach of faith to swoop down on the purchaser, years after, and reduce the £ to £ without reducing the charges also in due proportion, or giving back one-sixth of the purchase money. mr. gladstone and his party say the land was rented too high. does that (if true) get over the dishonesty of selling for £ a year what was really worth only ? such a transaction as that between man and man would be actionable as a fraud. but this excuse is not true, for when any tenant wants to sell his tenant-right he gets a large price for it, far larger than the normal proportion to his rent. when a nation sanctions such absolute dishonesty as this on the part of its prime minister, it is not surprising that the shrewd irish peasant profits by the lesson and improves the example.] [footnote d: the following in reference to the olphert estate evictions under the plan of campaign is from the _freeman's journal_. will mr. spencer when exhibiting his photos, state the facts about this case--which reason and common-sense show to be altogether in the landlord's favour? "mr. spencer, trowbridge, england, arrived in falcarragh to-day, visited the scenes of the late evictions, and took photographs of several of the demolished houses in the townland of drumnatinny. mr. spencer intends, on his return to england, to bring home to the minds of the english people by a series of illustrative lectures, the misery and hardships to which the irish peasantry are subjected."] [footnote e: on this question of further legislation i will quote part of a letter from a correspondent which shows the views of a singularly able, impartial, and fair-minded irishman. "the breaking of leases was another risky thing to do, for it shook all faith in the sovereignty of the law and the finality of its _dicta_. till mr. gladstone made himself the champion of the tenants and the oppressor of the landlords, parliament never dreamed of revising rents paid under leases. mr. gladstone began by breaking these leases when held for a certain term defined by him. but we cannot stop there now. if another land bill is to be brought in by the present government it must, to really and finally settle matters, _break all leases_. if it stops short of this the trouble will crop up again. if a man now with a thirty-nine years' lease can go into the land court, the man with a lease of a hundred years, or a hundred and fifty, or two hundred, should not be shut out. this point cannot be put too strongly to this government. if the thing is to be done let it be done thoroughly, and let every man who holds a lease--no matter for what term--go into the land court, and also purchase under lord ashbourne's act. lord ashbourne's act is the real cure if made to apply all round."] [footnote f: the irish have always been cruel to animals. it is a curious fact that most roman catholic peasants are. in the time of charles i. an act was passed to prevent the irish farmers from ploughing by their oxens' tails. even now they pluck their geese alive.] [footnote g: the boycott against the great northern railway line between carrickmacross and dundalk is now in full swing. it was begun at friday's fair in the former town, intimation having been given to all dealers in cattle and pigs that not an animal was to leave by the great northern line. not a hackney car was permitted to attend the railway station, and commercial travellers had to leave their samples at the station. many of the cattle and pigs purchased at the fair were driven by road to kingscourt, where there is a station of the midland great western company, a local national league branch having published a resolution recommending all goods to be sent and received _viâ_ kingscourt. it has also been resolved to do no business with commercial travellers from belfast, or other parts of the north of ireland, whose goods had been carried over the great northern system. travellers from scotland, england, and dublin are only to be dealt with under guarantees that they do not use the great northern line. boycotting in county waterford. the league's black list. there has been issued by the national league in the county waterford a "list of objectionable persons, with whom it is expected that no true man will have any dealings whatever"--cattle dealers, butter merchants, grain and hay merchants, brokers, and farmers being specially enjoined to refrain from any dealings with them, the farmers being told that they "must carefully avoid" the sale of milk or stock to agents of objectionable persons, and evicted tenants that they "must deem it their strict and imperative duty to follow to the markets all stock and produce reared upon their farms." look, too, at the abuse poured out on all the government leaders and officials. in the _freeman's journal_, of december th, is one of the most disgraceful attacks on mr. balfour ever made by journalism. it reads like a filthy outpour of a yahoo rather than the utterance of a sane and responsible man. are these the minds to govern a great and honest country?] * * * * * +------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation in the original document has | | been preserved. | | | | the cross symbol meaning 'died' is represented with a + | | in this etext. for example: cormac, king and bishop (+ ) | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected. for a | | complete list, please see the end of this document. | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * home university library of modern knowledge no. _editors_: herbert fisher, m.a., f.b.a. prof. gilbert murray, litt.d., ll.d., f.b.a. prof. j. arthur thomson, m.a. prof. william t. brewster, m.a. the home university library of modern knowledge _volumes now ready_ history of war and peace g.h. perris polar exploration dr. w.s. bruce, ll.d., f.r.s.e. the french revolution hilaire belloc, m.p. the stock exchange: a short study of investment and speculation f.w. hirst irish nationality alice stopford green the social movement j. ramsay macdonald, m.p. parliament: its history, constitution, and practice sir courtnay ilbert, k.c.b., k.c.s.i. modern geography marion i. newbigin, d.s.c. (lond.) william shakespeare john masefield the evolution of plants d.h. scott, m.a., ll.d., f.r.s. _volumes ready in july_ the opening-up of africa sir h.h. johnston, g.c.m.g., k.c.b., d.sc., f.z.s. mediÆval europe h.w.c. davis, m.a. mohammedanism d.s. margoliouth, m.a., d.litt. the science of wealth j.a. hobson, m.a. health and disease w. leslie mackenzie, m.d. introduction to mathematics a.n. whitehead, sc.d., f.r.s. the animal world f.w. gamble, d.sc., f.r.s. evolution j. arthur thomson, m.a., and patrick geddes, m.a. liberalism l.t. hobhouse, m.a. crime and insanity dr. c.a. mercier, f.r.c.p., f.r.c.s. *** other volumes in active preparation irish nationality by alice stopford green author of "town life in the fifteenth century" "henry ii," "the making of ireland," etc. [illustration] new york henry holt and company london williams and norgate copyright, , by henry holt and company the university press, cambridge, u.s.a. contents chap. page i the gaels in ireland ii ireland and europe iii the irish mission iv scandinavians in ireland v the first irish revival vi the norman invasion vii the second irish revival viii the taking of the land ix the national faith of the irish x rule of the english parliament xi the rise of a new ireland xii an irish parliament xiii ireland under the union some irish writers on irish history in memory of the irish dead irish nationality chapter i the gaels in ireland ireland lies the last outpost of europe against the vast flood of the atlantic ocean; unlike all other islands it is circled round with mountains, whose precipitous cliffs rising sheer above the water stand as bulwarks thrown up against the immeasurable sea. it is commonly supposed that the fortunes of the island and its civilisation must by nature hang on those of england. neither history nor geography allows this theory. the life of the two countries was widely separated. great britain lay turned to the east; her harbours opened to the sunrising, and her first traffic was across the narrow waters of the channel and the german sea. but ireland had another aspect; her natural harbours swelled with the waves of the atlantic, her outlook was over the ocean, and long before history begins her sailors braved the perils of the gaulish sea. the peoples of britain, celts and english, came to her from the opposite lowland coasts; the people of ireland crossed a wider ocean-track, from northern france to the shores of the bay of biscay. the two islands had a different history; their trade-routes were not the same; they lived apart, and developed apart their civilisations. we do not know when the gaels first entered ireland, coming according to ancient irish legends across the gaulish sea. one invasion followed another, and an old irish tract gives the definite gaelic monarchy as beginning in the fourth century b.c. they drove the earlier peoples, the iberians, from the stupendous stone forts and earthen entrenchments that guarded cliffs and mountain passes. the name of erin recalls the ancient inhabitants, who lived on under the new rulers, more in number than their conquerors. the gaels gave their language and their organisation to the country, while many customs and traditions of the older race lingered on and penetrated the new people. over a thousand years of undisturbed life lay before the gaels, from about b.c. to a.d. the roman empire which overran great britain left ireland outside it. the barbarians who swept over the provinces of the empire and reached to the great roman wall never crossed the irish sea. out of the grouping of the tribes there emerged a division of the island into districts made up of many peoples. each of the provinces later known as ulster, leinster, munster and connacht had its stretch of seaboard and harbours, its lakes and rivers for fishing, its mountain strongholds, its hill pastures, and its share of the rich central plain, where the cattle from the mountains "used to go in their running crowds to the smooth plains of the province, towards their sheds and their full cattle-fields." all met in the middle of the island, at the hill of usnech, where the stone of division still stands. there the high-king held his court, as the chief lord in the confederation of the many states. the rich lands of meath were the high-king's domain. heroic tales celebrate the prehistoric conflicts as of giants by which the peoples fixed the boundaries of their power. they tell of conor mac nessa who began to reign in the year that mark antony and cleopatra died, and of his sister's son cuchulain, the champion of the north, who went out to battle from the vast entrenchments still seen in emain macha near armagh. against him queen maeve gathered at her majestic fort of rathcroghan in roscommon fifteen hundred royal mercenaries and gaulish soldiers--a woman comely and white-faced, with gold yellow hair, her crimson cloak fastened at the breast with a gold pin, and a spear flaming in her hand, as she led her troops across the boyne. the battles of the heroes on the boyne and the fields of louth, the thronged entrenchments that thicken round the gap of the north and the mountain pass from dundalk and newry into the plains of armagh and tyrone, show how the soldiers' line of march was the same from the days of cuchulain to those of william of orange. the story tells how the whole island shared in the great conflict, to the extreme point of munster, where a rival of cuchulain, curoi son of dare, had sent his knights and warriors through all ireland to seek out the greatest stones for his fortress, on a shelf of rock over two thousand feet above the sea near tralee. the dublin museum preserves relics of that heroic time, the trappings of war-chariots and horses, arms and ornaments. amid such conflicts the connacht kings pressed eastward from usnech to tara, and fixed there the centre of irish life. the gaelic conquerors had entered on a wealthy land. irish chroniclers told of a vast antiquity, with a shadowy line of monarchs reaching back, as they boasted, for some two thousand years before christ: they had legends of lakes springing forth in due order; of lowlands cleared of wood, the appearance of rivers, the making of roads and causeways, the first digging of wells: of the making of forts; of invasions and battles and plagues. they told of the smelting of gold near the liffey about b.c. and of the wicklow artificer who made cups and brooches of gold and silver, and silver shields, and golden chains for the necks of kings; and of the discovery of dyes, purple and blue and green, and how the ranks of men were distinguished henceforth by the colour of their raiment. they had traditions of foreign trade--of an artificer drowned while bringing golden ore from spain, and of torques of gold from oversea, and of a lady's hair all ablaze with alpine gold. later researches have in fact shown that irish commerce went back some fifteen hundred years before our era, that it was the most famous gold-producing country of the west, that mines of copper and silver were worked, and that a race of goldsmiths probably carried on the manufacture of bronze and gold on what is now the bog of cullen. some five hundred golden ornaments of old times have been gathered together in the dublin museum in the last eighty years, a scanty remnant of what have been lost or melted down; their weight is five hundred and seventy ounces against a weight of twenty ounces in the british museum from england, scotland, and wales. the earth too was fruitful. the new settlers, who used iron tools instead of bronze, could clear forests and open plains for tillage. agriculture was their pride, and their legends told of stretches of corn so great that deer could shelter in them from the hounds, and nobles and queens drove chariots along their far-reaching lines, while multitudes of reapers were at work cutting the heads of the grain with the little sickles which we may still see in the dublin museum. but to the irish the main interest of the gaels lies in their conception of how to create an enduring state or nation. the tribal system has been much derided as the mark of a savage people, or at least of a race unable to advance beyond political infancy into a real national existence. this was not true of the gaels. their essential idea of a state, and the mode of its government and preservation, was different from that of mediæval europe, but it was not uncivilised. the roman empire stamped on the minds of its subject peoples, and on the teutonic barbarians who became its heirs, the notion of a state as an organisation held together, defended, governed and policed, by a central ruler; while the sovereign was supreme in the domain of force and maintenance of order, whatever lay outside that domain--art, learning, history and the like--were secondary matters which might be left to the people. the essential life of the nation came to be expressed in the will and power of its master. the gaelic idea was a wholly different one. the law with them was the law of the people. they never lost their trust in it. hence they never exalted a central authority, for their law needed no such sanction. while the code was one for the whole race, the administration on the other hand was divided into the widest possible range of self-governing communities, which were bound together in a willing federation. the forces of union were not material but spiritual, and the life of the people consisted not in its military cohesion but in its joint spiritual inheritance--in the union of those who shared the same tradition, the same glorious memory of heroes, the same unquestioned law, and the same pride of literature. such an instinct of national life was neither rude nor contemptible, nor need we despise it because it was opposed to the theory of the middle ages in europe. at the least the irish tribal scheme of government contained as much promise of human virtue and happiness as the feudal scheme which became later the political creed of england, but which was never accepted in ireland. irish history can only be understood by realising this intense national life with its sure basis on the broad self-government of the people. each tribe was supreme within its own borders; it elected its own chief, and could depose him if he acted against law. the land belonged to the whole community, which kept exact pedigrees of the families who had a right to share in the ground for tillage or in the mountain pasturage; and the chief had no power over the soil save as the elected trustee of the people. the privileges of the various chiefs, judges, captains, historians, poets, and so on, were handed down from generation to generation. in all these matters no external power could interfere. the tribe owed to the greater tribe above it nothing but certain fixed dues, such as aid in road-making, in war, in ransom of prisoners and the like. the same right of self-government extended through the whole hierarchy of states up to the ardri or high-king at the head. the "hearth of tara" was the centre of all the gaelic states, and the demesne of the ardri. "this then is my fostermother," said the ancient sage, "the island in which ye are, even ireland, and the familiar knee of this island is the hill on which ye are, namely, tara." there the ardri was crowned at the pillar-post. at tara, "the fort of poets and learned men," the people of all ireland gathered at the beginning of each high-king's reign, and were entertained for seven days and nights--kings and ollaves together round the high-king, warriors and reavers, together, the youths and maidens and the proud foolish folk in the chambers round the doors, while outside was for young men and maidens because their mirth used to entertain them. huge earthen banks still mark the site of the great hall, seven hundred and sixty feet long and ninety feet wide, with seven doors to east and as many more to west; where kings and chiefs sat each under his own shield, in crimson cloaks with gold brooches, with girdles and shoes of gold, and spears with golden sockets and rivets of red bronze. the ardri, supreme lord and arbitrator among them, was surrounded by his councillors--the law-men or brehons, the bards and chroniclers, and the druids, teachers and men of science. he was the representative of the whole national life. but his power rested on the tradition of the people and on the consent of the tribes. he could impose no new law; he could demand no service outside the law. the political bond of union, which seemed so loose, drew all its strength from a body of national tradition, and a universal code of law, which represented as it were the common mind of the people, the spontaneous creation of the race. separate and independent as the tribes were, all accepted the one code which had been fashioned in the course of ages by the genius of the people. the same law was recited in every tribal assembly. the same traditions and genealogies bound the tribes together as having a single heritage of heroic descent and fame. the preservation of their common history was the concern of the whole people. one of the tales pictures their gathering at tara, when before the men of ireland the ancients related their history, and ireland's chief scholars heard and corrected them by the best tradition. "victory and blessings attend you, noble sirs," the men of erin said; "for such instruction it was meet that we should gather ourselves together." and at the reciting of the historic glories of their past, the whole congregation arose up together "for in their eyes it was an augmenting of the spirit and an enlargement of the mind." to preserve this national tradition a learned class was carefully trained. there were schools of lawyers to expound the law; schools of historians to preserve the genealogies, the boundaries of lands, and the rights of classes and families; and schools of poets to recite the traditions of the race. the learned men were paid at first by the gifts of the people, but the chief among them were later endowed with a settled share of the tribe land in perpetuity. so long as the family held the land, they were bound to train up in each generation that one of the household who was most fit to carry on learning, and thus for centuries long lines of distinguished men added fame to their country and drew to its schools students from far and wide. through their work the spirit of the irish found national expression in a code of law which showed not only extraordinarily acute and trained intelligence but a true sense of equity, in a literary language of great richness and of the utmost musical beauty, and in a system of metrical rules for poets shaped with infinite skill. the irish nation had a pride in its language beyond any people in europe outside of the greeks and romans. while each tribe had its schools, these were linked together in a national system. professors of every school were free of the island; it was the warrior's duty to protect them as they moved from court to court. an ancient tale tells how the chiefs of emain near armagh placed sentinels along the gap of the north to turn back every poet who sought to leave the country and to bring on their way with honour every one who sought to enter in. there was no stagnation where competition extended over the whole island. the greatest of the teachers were given the dignity of "professors of all the gaels." learned men in their degrees ranked with kings and chiefs, and high-professors sat by the high-king and shared his honours. the king, said the laws, "could by his mere word decide against every class of persons except those of the two orders of religion and learning, who are of equal value with himself." it is in this exaltation of learning in the national life that we must look for the real significance of irish history--the idea of a society loosely held in a political sense, but bound together in a spiritual union. the assemblies which took place in every province and every petty state were the guarantees of the national civilization. they were periodical exhibitions of everything the people esteemed--democracy, aristocracy, king-craft, literature, tradition, art, commerce, law, sport, religion, display, even rustic buffoonery. the years between one festival and another were spent in serious preparation for the next; a multitude of maxims were drawn up to direct the conduct of the people. so deeply was their importance felt that the irish kept the tradition diligently, and even in the darkest times of their history, down to the seventeenth century, still gathered to "meetings on hills" to exercise their law and hear their learned men. in the time of the roman empire, therefore, the irish looked on themselves as one race, obedient to one law, united in one culture and belonging to one country. their unity is symbolised by the great genealogical compilations in which all the gaels are traced to one ancestry, and in the collections of topographical legends dealing with hundreds of places, where every nook and corner of the island is supposed to be of interest to the whole of ireland. the tribal boundaries were limits to the material power of a chief and to that only: they were no barriers to the national thought or union. the learned man of the clan was the learned man of the gaelic race. by all the higher matters of language and learning, of equity and history, the people of ireland were one. a noble figure told the unity of their land within the circuit of the ocean. the three waves of erin, they said, smote upon the shore with a foreboding roar when danger threatened the island; cleena's wave called to munster at an inlet near cork, while tonn rury at dundrum and tonn tuaithe at the mouth of the bann sounded to the men of ulster. the weaknesses of the irish system are apparent. the numerous small territories were tempted, like larger european states, to raid borders, to snatch land or booty, and to suffer some expense of trained soldiers. candidates for the chiefdom had to show their fitness, and "a young lord's first spoil" was a necessary exploit. there were wild plundering raids in the summer nights; disorders were multiplied. a country divided in government was weakened for purposes of offence, or for joint action in military matters. these evils were genuine, but they have been exaggerated. common action was hindered, not mainly by human contentions, but by the forests and marshes, lakes and rivers in flood that lay over a country heavy with atlantic clouds. riots and forays there were, among a martial race and strong men of hot passions, but ireland was in fact no prominent example of mediæval anarchy or disorder. local feuds were no greater than those which afflicted england down to the norman conquest and long after it; and which marked the life of european states and cities through the middle ages. the professional war bands of fiana that hired themselves out from time to time were controlled and recognised by law, and had their special organisation and rites and rules of war. it has been supposed that in the passion of tribal disputes men mostly perished by murder and battle-slaughter, and the life of every generation was by violence shortened to less than the common average of thirty years. irish genealogies prove on the contrary that the generations must be counted at from thirty-three to thirty-six years: the tale of kings, judges, poets, and householders who died peacefully in an honoured old age, or from some natural accident, outruns the list of sudden murders or deaths in battle. historical evidence moreover shows us a country of widening cornfields, or growing commerce, where wealth was gathered, where art and learning swept like a passion over the people, and schools covered the land. such industries and virtues do not flourish in regions given over to savage strife. and it is significant that irish chiefs who made great wars hired professional soldiers from oversea. if the disorders of the irish system have been magnified its benefits have been forgotten. all irish history proved that the division of the land into separate military districts, where the fighting men knew every foot of ground, and had an intense local patriotism, gave them a power of defence which made conquest by the foreigner impossible; he had first to exterminate the entire people. the same division into administrative districts gave also a singular authority to law. in mediæval states, however excellent were the central codes, they were only put in force just so far as the king had power to compel men to obey, and that power often fell very far short of the nominal boundaries of his kingdom. but in ireland every community and every individual was interested in maintaining the law of the people, the protection of the common folk; nor were its landmarks ever submerged or destroyed. irish land laws, for example, in spite of the changes that gradually covered the land with fenced estates, did actually preserve through all the centuries popular rights--fixity of rates for the land, fixity of tenure, security of improvement, refusal to allow great men to seize forests for their chase: under this people's law no peasant revolt ever arose, nor any rising of the poor against their lords. rights of inheritance, due solemnities of election, were accurately preserved. the authority and continuity of irish law was recognised by wondering englishmen--"they observe and keep such laws and statutes which they make upon hills in their country firm and stable, without breaking them for any favour or reward," said an english judge. "the irish are more fearful to offend the law than the english or any other nation whatsoever." the tribal system had another benefit for irishmen--the diffusion of a high intelligence among the whole people. a varied education, spread over many centres, fertilized the general life. every countryside that administered its own affairs must of needs possess a society rich in all the activities that go to make up a full community--chiefs, doctors, soldiers, judges, historians, poets, artists and craftsmen, skilled herds, tillers of the ground, raisers and trainers of horses, innkeepers, huntsmen, merchants, dyers and weavers and tanners. in some sequestered places in ireland we can still trace the settlements made by irish communities. they built no towns nor needed any in the modern sense. but entrenchments of earth, or "raths," thickly gathered together, mark a site where men lived in close association. roads and paths great and small were maintained according to law, and boats carried travellers along rivers and lakes. so frequent were the journeys of scholars, traders, messengers from tribe to tribe, men gathering to public assemblies, craftsmen, dealers in hides and wool, poets, men and women making their circuit, that there was made in early time a "road-book" or itinerary, perhaps some early form of map, of ireland. this life of opportunity in thickly congregated country societies gave to ireland its wide culture, and the incredible number of scholars and artificers that it poured out over europe with generous ardour. the multitudinous centres of discussion scattered over the island, and the rapid intercourse of all these centres one with another, explain how learning broadened, and how christianity spread over the land like a flood. it was to these country settlements that the irish owed the richness of their civilisation, the generosity of their learning, and the passion of their patriotism. ireland was a land then as now of intense contrasts, where equilibrium was maintained by opposites, not by a perpetual tending towards the middle course. in things political and social the irish showed a conservatism that no intercourse could shake, side by side with eager readiness and great success in grasping the latest progress in arts or commerce. in their literature strikingly modern thoughts jostle against the most primitive crudeness; "vested interests are shameless" was one of their old observations. in ireland the old survived beside the new, and as the new came by free assimilation old and new did not conflict. the balance of opposites gave colour and force to their civilisation, and ireland until the thirteenth century and very largely until the seventeenth century, escaped or survived the successive steam rollings that reduced europe to nearly one common level. in the irish system we may see the shaping of a true democracy--a society in which ever-broadening masses of the people are made intelligent sharers in the national life, and conscious guardians of its tradition. their history is throughout a record of the nobility of that experiment. it would be a mechanical theory of human life which denied to the people of ireland the praise of a true patriotism or the essential spirit of a nation. chapter ii ireland and europe _c._ --_c._ the roman agricola had proposed the conquest of ireland on the ground that it would have a good effect on britain by removing the spectacle of liberty. but there was no roman conquest. the irish remained outside the empire, as free as the men of norway and sweden. they showed that to share in the trade, the culture, and the civilisation of an empire, it is not necessary to be subject to its armies or lie under its police control. while the neighbouring peoples received a civilisation imposed by violence and maintained by compulsion, the irish were free themselves to choose those things which were suited to their circumstances and character, and thus to shape for their people a liberal culture, democratic and national. it is important to observe what it was that tribal ireland chose, and what it rejected. there was frequent trade, for from the first century irish ports were well known to merchants of the empire, sailing across the gaulish sea in wooden ships built to confront atlantic gales, with high poops standing from the water like castles, and great leathern sails--stout hulls steered by the born sailors of the breton coasts or the lands of the loire and garonne. the irish themselves served as sailors and pilots in the ocean traffic, and travelled as merchants, tourists, scholars and pilgrims. trading-ships carried the wine of italy and later of provence, in great tuns in which three men could stand upright, to the eastern and the western coasts, to the shannon and the harbours of down; and probably brought tin to mix with irish copper. ireland sent out great dogs trained for war, wool, hides, all kinds of skins and furs, and perhaps gold and copper. but this material trade was mainly important to the irish for the other wealth that gaul had to give--art, learning, and religion. of art the irish craftsmen took all that gaul possessed--the great decorated trumpets of bronze used in the loire country, the fine enamelling in colours, the late-celtic designs for ornaments of bronze and gold. goldsmiths travelled oversea to bring back bracelets, rings, draughtboards--"one half of its figures are yellow gold, the others are white bronze; its woof is of pearl; it is the wonder of smiths how it was wrought." they borrowed afterwards interlaced ornament for metal work and illuminated manuscripts. in such arts they outdid their teachers; their gold and enamel work has never been surpassed, and in writing and illumination they went beyond the imperial artists of constantinople. their schools throughout the country handed on a great traditional art, not transitory or local, but permanent and national. learning was as freely imported. the latin alphabet came over at a very early time, and knowledge of greek as a living tongue from marseilles and the schools of narbonne. by the same road from marseilles christianity must have come a hundred years or so before the mission of st. patrick--a christianity carrying the traditions and rites and apocalypses of the east. it was from gaul that st. patrick afterwards sailed for his mission to ireland. he came to a land where there were already men of erudition and "rhetoricians" who scoffed at his lack of education. the tribes of ireland, free from barbarian invasions as they had been free from roman armies, developed a culture which was not surpassed in the west or even in italy. and this culture, like the art, was national, spread over the whole land. but while the irish drew to themselves from the empire art, learning, religion, they never adopted anything of roman methods of government in church or state. the roman centralized authority was opposed to their whole habit of thought and genius. they made, therefore, no change in their tribal administration. as early as the second century irishmen had learned from gaulish landowners to divide land into estates marked out with pillar-stones which could be bought and sold, and by a.d. the country was scored with fences, and farms were freely bequeathed by will. but these estates seem still to have been administered according to the common law of the tribe, and not to have followed the methods of roman proprietors throughout the empire. in the same way the foreign learning brought into ireland was taught through the tribal system of schools. lay schools formed by the druids in old time went on as before, where students of law and history and poetry grouped their huts round the dwelling of a famous teacher, and the poor among them begged their bread in the neighbourhood. the monasteries in like manner gathered their scholars within the "rath" or earthen entrenchment, and taught them latin, canon law, and divinity. monastic and lay schools went on side by side, as heirs together of the national tradition and language. the most venerable saints, the highest ecclesiastics, were revered also as guardians of irish history and law, who wrote in irish the national tales as competent scribes and not mere copyists--men who knew all the traditions, used various sources, and shaped their story with the independence of learning. no parallel can be found in any other country to the writing down of national epics in their pagan form many centuries after the country had become christian. in the same way european culture was not allowed to suppress the national language; clerics as well as laymen preserved the native tongue in worship and in hymns, as at clonmacnois where the praises of st. columcille were sung, "some in latin, which was beguiling, some in irish, fair the tale"; and in its famous cemetery, where kings and scholars and pilgrims of all ireland came to lie, there is but one latin inscription among over two hundred inscribed grave slabs that have been saved from the many lost. like the learning and the art, the new worship was adapted to tribal custom. round the little monastic church gathered a group of huts with a common refectory, the whole protected by a great rampart of earth. the plan was familiar to all the irish; every chief's house had such a fence, and every bardic school had its circle of thatched cells where the scholars spent years in study and meditation. monastic "families" which branched off from the first house were grouped under the name of the original founder, in free federal union like that of the clans. as no land could be wholly alienated from the tribe, territory given to the monastery was not exempted from the common law; it was ruled by abbots elected, like kings and judges of the tribe, out of the house which under tribal law had the right of succession; and the monks in some cases had to pay the tribal dues for the land and send out fighting men for the hosting. never was a church so truly national. the words used by the common people were steeped in its imagery. in their dedications the irish took no names of foreign saints, but of their own holy men. st. bridgit became the "mary of the gael." there was scarcely a boundary felt between the divine country and the earthly, so entirely was the spiritual life commingled with the national. a legend told that st. colman one day saw his monks reaping the wheat sorrowfully; it was the day of the celebration of telltown fair, the yearly assembly of all ireland before the high-king: he prayed, and angels came to him at once from heaven and performed three races for the toiling monks after the manner of the national feast. the religion which thus sprang out of the heart of a people and penetrated every part of their national life, shone with a radiant spiritual fervour. the prayers and hymns that survive from the early church are inspired by an exalted devotion, a profound and original piety, which won the veneration of every people who came into touch with the people of ireland. on mountain cliffs, in valleys, by the water-side, on secluded islands, lie ruins of their churches and oratories, small in size though made by masons who could fit and dovetail into one another great stones from ten to seventeen feet in length; the little buildings preserved for centuries some ancient tradition of apostolic measurements, and in their narrow and austere dimensions, and their intimate solemnity, were fitted to the tribal communities and to their unworldly and spiritual worship. an old song tells of a saint building, with a wet cloak about him-- "hand on a stone, hand lifted up, knee bent to set a rock, eyes shedding tears, other lamentation, and mouth praying." piety did not always vanquish the passions of a turbulent age. there were local quarrels and battles. in some hot temporal controversy, in some passionate religious rivalry, a monastic "rath" may have fallen back to its original use as a fort. plunderers fell on a trading centre like clonmacnois, where goods landed from the shannon for transport across country offered a prize. such things have been known in other lands. but it is evident that disturbances were not universal or continuous. the extraordinary work of learning carried out in the monastic lands, the sanctuary given in them for hundreds of years to innumerable scholars not of ireland alone, shows the large peace that must have prevailed on their territories. the national tradition of monastic and lay schools preserved to erin what was lost in the rest of europe, a learned class of laymen. culture was as frequent and honourable in the irish chief or warrior as in the cleric. gaiety and wit were prized. oral tradition told for many centuries of a certain merryman long ago, and yet he was a christian, who could make all men he ever saw laugh however sad they were, so that even his skull on a high stone in the churchyard brought mirth to sorrowful souls. we must remember, too, that by the irish system certain forms of hostility were absolutely shut out. there is not a single instance in irish history of the conflicts between a monastery and its lay dependents which were so frequent on the continent and in england--as, for example, at st. albans, where the monks paved their church with the querns of the townsfolk to compel them to bring their corn to the abbey mill. again, the broad tolerance of the church in ireland never allowed any persecution for religion's sake, and thus shut the door on the worst form of human cruelty. at the invasion of the normans a norman bishop mocked to the archbishop of cashel at the imperfection of a church like the irish which could boast of no martyr. "the irish," answered the archbishop, "have never been accustomed to stretch forth their hands against the saints of god, but now a people is come into this country that is accustomed and knows how to make martyrs. now ireland too will have martyrs." finally, the irish church never became, as in other lands, the servant, the ally, or the master of the state. it was the companion of the people, the heart of the nation. to its honour it never served as the instrument of political dominion, and it never was degraded from first to last by a war of religion. the free tribes of ireland had therefore by some native instinct of democratic life rejected for their country the organisation of the roman state, and had only taken the highest forms of its art, learning, and religion, to enrich their ancient law and tradition: and through their own forms of social life they had made this culture universal among the people, and national. such was the spectacle of liberty which the imperial agricola had feared. chapter iii the irish mission _c._ --_c._ the fall of the roman empire brought to the irish people new dangers and new opportunities. goths and vandals, burgundians and franks, poured west over europe to the atlantic shore, and south across the mediterranean to africa; while the english were pressing northward over great britain, driving back the celts and creating a pagan and teutonic england. once more ireland lay the last unconquered land of the west. the peoples that lay in a circle round the shores of the german ocean were in the thick of human affairs, nations to right and left of them, all europe to expand in. from the time when their warriors fell on the roman empire they rejoiced in a thousand years of uninterrupted war and conquest; and for the thousand years that followed traders, now from this shore of the german sea and now from that, have fought and trafficked over the whole earth. in ireland, on the other hand, we see a race of the bravest warriors that ever fought, who had pushed on over the gaulish sea to the very marge and limit of the world. close at their back now lay the german invaders of britain--a new wave of the human tide always flowing westward. before them stretched the atlantic, darkness and chaos; no boundary known to that sea. even now as we stand to the far westward on the gloomy heights of donegal, where the very grass and trees have a blacker hue, we seem to have entered into a vast antiquity, where it would be little wonder to see in the sombre solitude some strange shape of the primeval world, some huge form of primitive man's imagination. so closely did infinity compass these people round that when the irish sailor--st. brendan or another--launched his coracle on the illimitable waves, in face of the everlasting storm, he might seem to pass over the edge of the earth into the vast eternity where space and time were not. we see the awful fascination of the immeasurable flood in the story of the three irishmen that were washed on the shores of cornwall and carried to king Ælfred. "they came," Ælfred tells us in his chronicle, "in a boat without oars from hibernia, whence they had stolen away because for the love of god they would be on pilgrimage--they recked not where. the boat in which they fared was wrought of three hides and a half, and they took with them enough meat for seven nights." ultimately withdrawn from the material business of the continent nothing again drew back the irish to any share in the affairs of europe save a spiritual call--a call of religion, of learning, or of liberty. the story of the irish mission shows how they answered to such a call. the teutonic invaders stopped at the irish sea. at the fall of the empire, therefore, ireland did not share in the ruin of its civilisation. and while all continental roads were interrupted, traffic from irish ports still passed safely to gaul over the ocean routes. ireland therefore not only preserved her culture unharmed, but the way lay open for her missionaries to carry back to europe the knowledge which she had received from it. in that mission we may see the strength and the spirit of the tribal civilisation. two great leaders of the irish mission were columcille in great britain and columbanus in europe. in all irish history there is no greater figure than st. columcille--statesman and patriot, poet, scholar, and saint. after founding thirty-seven monasteries in ireland, from derry on the northern coast to durrow near the munster border, he crossed the sea in to set up on the bare island of hii or iona a group of reed-thatched huts peopled with irish monks. in that wild debatable land, swept by heathen raids, amid the ruins of christian settlements, began a work equally astonishing from the religious and the political point of view. the heathen picts had marched westward to the sea, destroying the celtic churches. the pagan english had set up in a monarchy in northumbria and the lowlands, threatening alike the picts, the irish or "scot" settlements along the coast, and the celts of strathclyde. against this world of war columcille opposed the idea of a peaceful federation of peoples in the bond of christian piety. he converted the king of the picts at inverness in , and spread irish monasteries from strathspey to the dee, and from the dee to the tay. on the western shores about cantyre he restored the scot settlement from ireland which was later to give its name to scotland, and consecrated as king the irish aidan, ancestor of the kings of scotland and england. he established friendship with the britons of strathclyde. from his cell at iona he dominated the new federation of picts and britons and irish on both sides of the sea--the greatest missionary that ireland ever sent out to proclaim the gathering of peoples in free association through the power of human brotherhood, learning, and religion. for thirty-four years columcille ruled as abbot in iona, the high leader of the celtic world. he watched the wooden ships with great sails that crossed from shore to shore; he talked with mariners sailing south from the orkneys, and others coming north from the loire with their tuns of wine, who told him european tidings, and how a town in istria had been wrecked by earthquake. his large statesmanship, his lofty genius, the passionate and poetic temperament that filled men with awe and reverence, the splendid voice and stately figure that seemed almost miraculous gifts, the power of inspiring love that brought dying men to see his face once more before they fell at his feet in death, give a surpassing dignity and beauty to his life. "he could never spend the space of even one hour without study or prayer or writing, or some other holy occupation ... and still in all these he was beloved by all." "seasons and storms he perceived, he harmonised the moon's race with the branching sun, he was skilful in the course of the sea, he would count the stars of heaven." he desired, one of his poems tells us, "to search all the books that would be good for any soul"; and with his own hand he copied, it is said, three hundred books, sitting with open cell door, where the brethren, one with his butcher's knife, one with his milk pail, stopped to ask a blessing as they passed. after his death the irish monks carried his work over the whole of england. a heathen land lay before them, for the roman missionaries established in by augustine in canterbury, speaking no english and hating "barbarism," made little progress, and after some reverses were practically confined to kent. the first cross of the english borderland was set up in by men from iona on a heather moorland called the heaven-field, by the ramparts of the roman wall. columban monks made a second iona at lindisfarne, with its church of hewn oak thatched with reeds after irish tradition in sign of poverty and lowliness, and with its famous school of art and learning. they taught the english writing, and gave them the letters which were used among them till the norman conquest. labour and learning went hand in hand. from the king's court nobles came, rejoicing to change the brutalities of war for the plough, the forge-hammer, the winnowing fan: waste places were reclaimed, the ports were crowded with boats, and monasteries gave shelter to travellers. for a hundred years wherever the monks of iona passed men ran to be signed by their hand and blessed by their voice. their missionaries wandered on foot over middle england and along the eastern coast and even touched the channel in sussex. in there was only one bishop in the whole of england who was not of irish consecration, and this bishop, agilberct of wessex, was a frenchman who had been trained for years in ireland. the great school of malmesbury in wessex was founded by an irishman, as that of lindisfarne had been in the north. for the first time also ireland became known to englishmen. fleets of ships bore students and pilgrims, who forsook their native land for the sake of divine studies. the irish most willingly received them all, supplying to them without charge food and books and teaching, welcoming them in every school from derry to lismore, making for them a "saxon quarter" in the old university of armagh. under the influence of the irish teachers the spirit of racial bitterness was checked, and a new intercourse sprang up between english, picts, britons, and irish. for a moment it seemed as though the british islands were to be drawn into one peaceful confederation and communion and a common worship bounded only by the ocean. the peace of columcille, the fellowship of learning and of piety, rested on the peoples. columcille had been some dozen years in iona when columbanus (_c._ ) left bangor on the belfast lough, leading twelve irish monks clad in white homespun, with long hair falling on their shoulders, and books hanging from their waists in leathern satchels. they probably sailed in one of the merchant ships trading from the loire. crossing gaul to the vosges columbanus founded his monastery of luxeuil among the ruined heaps of a roman city, once the meeting-place of great highways from italy and france, now left by the barbarians a wilderness for wild beasts. other houses branched out into france and switzerland. finally he founded his monastery of bobio in the apennines, where he died in . a stern ascetic, aflame with religious passion, a finished scholar bringing from ireland a knowledge of latin, greek, and hebrew, of rhetoric, geometry, and poetry, and a fine taste, columbanus battled for twenty years with the vice and ignorance of a half-pagan burgundy. scornful of ease, indifferent to danger, astonished at the apathy of italy as compared with the zeal of ireland in teaching, he argued and denounced with "the freedom of speech which accords with the custom of my country." the passion of his piety so awed the peoples, that for a time it seemed as if the rule of columbanus might outdo that of st. benedict. it was told that in rome gregory the great received him, and as columbanus lay prostrate in the church the pope praised god in his heart for having given such great power to so small a man. instantly the fiery saint, detecting the secret thought, rose from his prayer to repudiate the slight: "brother, he who depreciates the work depreciates the author." for a hundred years before columbanus there had been irish pilgrims and bishops in gaul and italy. but it was his mission that first brought the national patriotism of ireland into conflict with the organisation of rome in europe. christianity had come to ireland from the east--tradition said from st. john, who was then, and is still, held in special veneration by the irish; his flower, st. john's wort, had for them peculiar virtues, and from it came, it was said, the saffron hue as the national colour for their dress. it was a national pride that their date for celebrating easter, and their eastern tonsure from ear to ear, had come to them from st. john. peter loved jesus, they said, but it was john that jesus loved--"the youth john, the foster-son of his own bosom"--"john of the breast." it was with a very passion of loyalty that they clung to a national church which linked them to the beloved apostle, and which was the close bond of their whole race, dear to them as the supreme expression of their temporal and spiritual freedom, now illustrious beyond all others in europe for the roll of its saints and of its scholars, and ennobled by the company of its patriots and the glory of columcille. the tonsure and the easter of columbanus, however, shocked foreign ecclesiastics as contrary to the discipline of rome, and he was required to renounce them. he vehemently protested his loyalty to st. john, to st. columcille, and to the church of his fathers. it was an unequal argument. ireland, he was answered, was a small island in a far corner of the earth: what was its people that they should fight against the whole world. the europe of imperial tradition had lost comprehension of the passion of national loyalty: all that lay outside that tradition was "barbarous," the irish like the saxons or the huns. the battle that was thus opened was the beginning of a new epoch in irish history. st. augustine, first archbishop of canterbury ( ), was ordered ( ) to demand obedience to himself from the celtic churches and the setting aside of their customs. the welsh and the irish refused to submit. augustine had come to them from among the english, who were still pagan, and still fighting for the extermination of the celts, and on his lips were threats of slaughter by their armies to the disobedient. the demand was renewed sixty years later, in a synod at whitby in . by that time christianity had been carried over england by the irish mission; on the other hand, the english were filled with imperial dreams of conquest and supremacy. english kings settled on the roman province began to imitate the glories of rome, to have the roman banner of purple and gold carried before them, to hear the name of "emperor of the whole of britain," and to project the final subjugation to that "empire" of the celt and pictish peoples. the roman organisation fell in with their habits of government and their ambitions. in the synod the tone of imperial contempt made itself heard against those marked out for conquest--celts "rude and barbarous"--"picts and britons, accomplices in obstinacy in those two remote islands of the world." "your father columba," "of rustic simplicity" said the english leader, had "that columba of yours," like peter, the keeping of the keys of heaven? with these first bitter words, with the condemnation of the irish customs, and the sailing away of the irish monks from lindisfarne, discord began to enter in. slowly and with sorrow the irish in the course of sixty years abandoned their traditional customs and adopted the roman easter. but the work of columcille was undone, and the spiritual bond by which the peoples had been united was for ever loosened. english armies marched ravaging over the north, one of them into ireland ( ), "wasting that harmless nation which had always been most friendly to the english, not sparing even churches or monasteries." the gracious peace which had bound the races for a hundred and twenty years was broken, and constant wars again divided picts, scots, britons, and angles. ireland, however, for four hundred years to come still poured out missionaries to europe. they passed through england to northern france and the netherlands; across the gaulish sea and by the loire to middle france; by the rhine and the way of luxeuil they entered switzerland; and westward they reached out to the elbe and the danube, sending missionaries to old saxony, thuringia, bavaria, salzburg and carinthia; southwards they crossed the alps into italy, to lucca, fiesole, rome, the hills of naples, and tarentum. their monasteries formed rest-houses for travellers through france and germany. europe itself was too narrow for their ardour, and they journeyed to jerusalem, settled in carthage, and sailed to the discovery of iceland. no church of any land has so noble a record in the astonishing work of its teachers, as they wandered over the ruined provinces of the empire among the pagan tribes of the invaders. in the highlands they taught the picts to compose hymns in their own tongue; in a monastery founded by them in yorkshire was trained the first english poet in the new england; at st. gall they drew up a latin-german dictionary for the germans of the upper rhine and switzerland, and even devised new german words to express the new ideas of christian civilisation; near florence one of their saints taught the natives how to turn the course of a river. probably in the seventh and eighth centuries no one in western europe spoke greek who was not irish or taught by an irishman. no land ever sent out such impassioned teachers of learning, and charles the great and his successors set them at the head of the chief schools throughout europe. we can only measure the originality of the irish mission by comparing with it the work of other races. roman civilisation had not inured its people to hardship, nor given them any interest in barbarians. when augustine in was sent on the english mission he turned back with loathing, and finally took a year for his journey. in no one could be found in rome to send to canterbury, till in theodore was fetched from syria; he also took a year on his way. but the irish missionaries feared nothing, neither hunger nor weariness nor the outlaws of the woods. their succession never ceased. the death of one apostle was but the coming of another. the english missions again could not compare with the irish. every english missionary from the seventh to the ninth century had been trained under irish teachers or had been for years in ireland, enveloped by the ardour of their fiery enthusiasm; when this powerful influence was set aside english mission work died down for a thousand years or so. the irish missionaries continued without a break for over six hundred years. instead of the irish zeal for the welfare of all peoples whatsoever, the english felt a special call to preach among those "from whom the english race had its origin," and their chief mission was to their own stock in frisia. finally, among teutonic peoples politics went hand in hand with christianity. the teutons were out to conquer, and in the lust of dominion a conqueror might make religion the sign of obedience, and enforce it by fire and water, viper and sword. but the irish had no theory of dominion to push. a score of generations of missionaries were bred up in the tribal communities of ireland, where men believed in voluntary union of men in a high tradition. their method was one of persuasion for spiritual ends alone. the conception of human life that lay behind the tribal government and the tribal church of ireland gave to the irish mission in europe a singular and lofty character. in the broad humanity that was the great distinction of their people persecution had no part. no war of religion stained their faith, and no barbarities to man. chapter iv scandinavians in ireland - for a thousand years no foreign host had settled in erin. but the times of peace were ended. about a.d. the irish suffered their first invasion. the teutonic peoples, triumphant conquerors of the land, had carried their victories over the roman empire to the edge of the seas that guarded ireland. but fresh hordes of warriors were gathering in the north, conquerors of the ocean. the scandinavians had sailed out on "the gulf's enormous abyss, where before their eyes the vanishing bounds of the earth were hidden in gloom." an old english riddle likened the shattering iceberg swinging down from arctic waters to the terror of the pirate's war-ship--the leader on the prow as it plunged through the sea, calling to the land, shouting as he goes, with laughter terrible to the earth, swinging his sharp-edged sword, grim in hate, eager for slaughter, bitter in the battle-work. they came, "great scourers of the seas--a nation desperate in attempting the conquest of other realms." the scandinavian campaigns of the ocean affected ireland as no continental wars for the creation or the destruction of the roman empire had done. during two hundred years their national life, their learning, their civilisation, were threatened by strangers. the social order they had built up was confronted with two new tests--violence from without, and an alien population within the island. we may ask how irish civilisation met the trial. the danes fell on all the shores of england from the forth to the channel, the land of the picts northward, iona and the country of the scots to the west, and bretland of the britons from the clyde to the land's end: in ireland they sailed up every creek, and shouldering their boats marched from river to river and lake to lake into every tribeland, covering the country with their forts, plundering the rich men's raths of their cups and vessels and ornaments of gold, sacking the schools and monasteries and churches, and entering every great king's grave for buried treasure. their heavy iron swords, their armour, their discipline of war, gave them an overwhelming advantage against the irish with, as they said, bodies and necks and gentle heads defended only by fine linen. monks and scholars gathered up their manuscripts and holy ornaments, and fled away for refuge to europe. these wars brought a very different fate to the english and the irish. in england, when the danes had planted a colony on every inlet of the sea (_c._ ), they took horse and rode conquering over the inland plains. they slew every english king and wiped out every english royal house save that of wessex; and in their place set up their own kings in northumbria and east anglia, and made of all middle england a vast "danelaw" a land ruled by danish law, and by confederations of danish towns. at the last wessex itself was conquered, and a danish king ruled over all england ( ). in ireland, on the other hand, the invincible power of the tribal system for defence barred the way of invaders. every foot of land was defended; every tribe fought for its own soil. there could be no subjection of the irish clans except by their extermination. a norwegian leader, thorgils, made one supreme effort at conquest. he fixed his capital at armagh and set up at its shrine the worship of thor, while his wife gave her oracles from the high altar of clonmacnois on the shannon, in the prophetess's cloak set with stones to the hem, the necklace of glass beads, the staff, and the great skin pouch of charms. but in the end thorgils was taken by the king of meath and executed, being cast into loch nair. the danes, who held long and secure possession of england, great part of scotland, and normandy, were never able to occupy permanently any part of ireland more than a day's march from the chief stations of their fleets. through two hundred years of war no irish royal house was destroyed, no kingdom was extinguished, and no national supremacy of the danes replaced the national supremacy of the irish. the long war was one of "confused noise and garments rolled in blood." ireland, whether they could conquer it or not, was of vast importance to the scandinavians as a land of refuge for their fleets. voyagers guided their way by the flights of birds from her shores; the harbours of "the great island" sheltered them; her fields of corn, her cattle driven to the shore for the "strand-hewing," provisioned their crews; her woods gave timber for shipbuilding. norwegians and danes fought furiously for possession of the sea-ports, now against the irish, now against each other. no victory or defeat counted beyond the day among the shifting and multiplying fleets of new marauders that for ever swarmed round the coasts--emigrants who had flung themselves on the sea for freedom's sake to save their old laws and liberties, buccaneers seeking "the spoils of the sea," sea-kings roaming the ocean or gathering for a raid on scotland or on france, stray companies out of work or putting in for a winter's shelter, boats of whale-fishers and walrus-killers, danish hosts driven out of england or of normandy. as "the sea vomited up floods of foreigners into erin so that there was not a point without a fleet," battle swung backwards and forwards between old settlers and new pirates, between norsemen and danes, between both and the irish. but the scandinavians were not only sea-rovers, they were the greatest merchants that northern europe had yet seen. from the time of charles the great to william the conqueror, the whole commerce of the seas was in their hands. eastward they pushed across russia to the black sea, and carried back the wares of asia to the baltic; westward they poured along the coasts of gaul by the narrow seas, or sailed the atlantic from the orkneys and hebrides round the irish coast to the bay of biscay. the new-made empire of charles the great was opening europe once more to a settled life and the possibilities of traffic, and the danish merchants seized the beginnings of the new trade. ireland lay in the very centre of their seaways, with its harbours, its wealth, and its traditional commerce with france. merchants made settlements along the coasts, and planted colonies over the inland country to supply the trade of the ports. they had come to ireland for business, and they wanted peace and not war. they intermarried with the irish, fostered their children, brought their goods, welcomed irish poets into their forts, listening to irish stories and taking new models for their own literature, and in war they joined with their irish neighbours. a race of "gall-gaels," or "foreign irish," grew up, accepted by the irish as of their community. between the two peoples there was respect and good-will. the enterprise of the sea-rovers and the merchant settlers created on irish shores two scandinavian "kingdoms"--kingdoms rather of the sea than of the land. the norsemen set up their moot on the mound over the river liffey (near where the irish parliament house rose in later days), and there created a naval power which reached along the coast from waterford to dundalk. the dublin kingdom was closely connected with the danish kingdom of northumbria, which had its capital at york, and formed the common meeting-ground, the link which united the northmen of scandinavia and the northmen of ireland. a mighty confederation grew up. members of the same house were kings in dublin, in man, and in york. the irish channel swarmed with their fleets. the sea was the common highway which linked the powers together, and the sea was held by fleets of swift long-ships with from ninety to a hundred and fifty rowers or fighting men on board. dublin, the rallying-point of roving marauders, became the centre of a wide-flung war. its harbour, looking east, was the mart of the merchant princes of the baltic trade: there men of iceland and of norway landed with their merchandise or their plunder. "limerick of the swift ships," "limerick of the riveted stones," the kingdom lying on the atlantic was a rival even to dublin; kings of the same house ruled in limerick and the hebrides, and their fleets took the way of the wide ocean; while norse settlements scattered over limerick, kerry and tipperary, organised as irish clans and giving an irish form to their names, maintained the inland trade. other munster harbours were held, some by the danes, some by the irish. the irish were on good terms with the traders. they learned to build the new ships invented by the scandinavians where both oars and sails were used, and traded in their own ports for treasures from oversea, silken raiment and abundance of wine. we read in of irishmen along the cork shores "high in beauty, whose resolve is quiet prosperity," and in of "munster of the great riches," "munster of the swift ships." on the other hand, the irish never ceased from war with the sea-kings. from the time of thorgils, high-kings of tara one after another led the perpetual contest to hold ireland and to possess dublin. they summoned assemblies in north and south of the confederated chiefs. the irish copied not only the scandinavian building of war-ships, but their method of raising a navy by dividing the coast into districts, each of which had to equip and man ten ships, to assemble at the summons for the united war-fleet. every province seems to have had its fleet. the irish, in fact, learned their lesson so well that they were able to undertake the re-conquest of their country, and become leaders of danish and norse troops in war. the spirit of the people rose high. from their victories increased even amid disaster. strong kings arose among them, good organisers and good fighters, and for a hundred years one leader followed hard on another. in , niall, king of tara, celebrated once more the assembly of telltown, and led southern and northern o'neills to the aid of munster against the gentiles, directing the men of leinster in the campaign--a gallant war. murtagh, king of ailech or tirconnell, smote the danes at carlingford and louth in , a year of great danger, and so came victorious to the assembly at telltown. again, in , he defeated the "foreigners" in the north, and they left two hundred and forty heads, and all their wealth of spoils. in he won his famous name, "murtagh of the leather cloaks," from the first midwinter campaign ever known in ireland, "the hosting of the frost," when he led his army from donegal, under shelter of leather cloaks, over lakes and rivers frozen by the mighty frost, round the entire circuit of ireland. some ten years later, cellachan, king of cashel, took up the fight; with his linen-coated soldiers against the mail-clad foreigners, he swept the whole of munster, capturing limerick, cork, cashel and waterford, and joining their danish armies to his own troops; till he closed his campaign by calling out the munster fleet from kinsale to galway bay, six or seven score of them, to meet the danish ships at dundalk. the norsemen used armour, and rough chains of blue iron to grapple the enemies' ships, but the irish sailors, with their "strong enclosures of linen cloth," and tough ropes of hemp to fling over the enemies' prows, came off victorious. according to the saga of his triumph, cellachan called the whole of ireland to share in the struggle for irish freedom, and a fleet from ailech carried off plunder and booty from the hebrides. he was followed by brian boru. "ill luck was it for the danes when brian was born," says the old saga, "when he inflicted not evil on the foreigners in the day time he did it in the next night." from beyond the shannon he led a fierce guerrilla war. left with but fifteen followers alive, sleeping on "hard knotty wet roots," he still refused to yield. "it is not hereditary to us," he said, "to submit." he became king of munster in , drove out the danish king from dublin in , and ruled at last in as ardri of ireland, an old man of sixty or seventy years. in he called out all the fleets of the norsemen of dublin, waterford, wexford, and of the men of munster, and of almost all of the men of erin, such of them as were fit to go to sea, and they levied tribute from saxons and britons as far as the clyde and argyle. a greater struggle still lay before the irish. powerful kings of denmark, in the glory of success, began to think of their imperial destiny; and, to round off their states, proposed to create a scandinavian empire from the slavic shores of the baltic across denmark, norway, england and ireland, to the rim of the atlantic, with london as the capital. king sweyn forkbeard, conqueror of all england, was acknowledged in its king. but the imperial plan was not yet complete. a free irish nation of men who lived, as they said, "on the ridge of the world"--a land of unconquered peoples of the open plains and the mountains and the sea, left the scandinavian empire with a ragged edge out on the line of the atlantic commerce. king cnut sent out his men for the last conquest. a vast host gathered in dublin bay "from all the west of europe," from norway, the baltic islands, the orkneys, iceland, for the landing at clontarf. from sunrise to sunset the battle raged, the hair of the warriors flying in the wind as thick as the sheaves floating in a field of oats. the scandinavian scheme of a northern empire was shattered on that day, when with the evening floodtide the remnant of the broken danish host put to sea. brian boru, his son, and his grandson lay dead. but for a hundred and fifty years to come ireland kept its independence. england was once again, as in the time of the roman dominion, made part of a continental empire. ireland, as in the days of rome, still lay outside the new imperial system. at the end, therefore, of two hundred years of war, the irish emerged with their national life unbroken. irish kingdoms had lived on side by side with danish kingdoms; in spite of the strength of the danish forces, the constant irruptions of new danes, and the business capacity of these fighters and traffickers, it was the irish who were steadily coming again to the top. through all perils they had kept their old order. the high-kings had ruled without a break, and, except in a few years of special calamity, had held the national assemblies of the country at telltown, not far from tara. the tribesmen of the sub-kingdoms, if their ancient place of assembly had been turned into a danish fort, held their meeting in a hidden marsh or wood. thus when cashel was held by the norsemen, the assembly met on a mound that rose in the marshy glen now called glanworth. there cellachan, the rightful heir, in the best of arms and dress, demanded that the nobles should remember justice, while his mother declared his title and recited a poem. and when the champions of munster heard these great words and the speech of the woman, the tribes arose right readily to make cellachan king. they set up his shout of king, and gave thanks to the true magnificent god for having found him. the nobles then came to cellachan and put their hands in his hand, and placed the royal diadem round his head, and their spirits were raised at the grand sight of him. throughout the wars, too, the tribes had not lost the tradition of learning. king Ælfred has recorded the state of england after the danish wars; he could not bethink him of a single one south of the thames who could understand his ritual in english, or translate aught out of latin, and he could hear of very few north of the thames to the humber, and beyond the humber scarce any, "so clean was learning decayed among the english folk." but the irish had never ceased to carry on schools, and train men of distinguished learning. clonmacnois on the shannon, for example, preserved a truly irish culture, and between its sackings trained great scholars whose fame could reach to king Ælfred in wessex, and to charles the great in aachen. the irish clergy still remained unequalled in culture, even in italy. one of them in was the most learned of the latinists of all europe. another, cormac, king and bishop (+ ), was skilled in old-irish literature, latin, greek, hebrew, welsh, anglo-saxon and norse--he might be compared with that other great irishman of his time, john scotus, whom charles the bald had made head of his school. irish teachers had a higher skill than any others in europe in astronomy, geography and philosophy. side by side with monastic schools the lay schools had continued without a break. by the lawyers had produced at least eighteen law-books whose names are known, and a glossary. a lay scholar, probably of the ninth century, compiled the instructions of a king to his son--"learning every art, knowledge of every language, skill in variegated work, pleading with established maxims"--these are the sciences he recommends. the triads, compiled about the same time, count among the ornaments of wisdom, "abundance of knowledge, a number of precedents." irish poets, men and women, were the first in europe to sing of nature--of summer and winter, of the cuckoo with the grey mantle, the blackbird's lay, the red bracken and the long hair of the heather, the talk of the rushes, the green-barked yew-tree which supports the sky, the large green of an oak fronting the storm. they sang of the creation and the crucifixion, when "dear god's elements were afraid"; and of pilgrimage to rome--"the king whom thou seekest here, unless thou bring him with thee thou dost not find"; of the hermit's "shining candles above the pure white scriptures ... and i to be sitting for a while praying god in every place"; of the great fidelities of love--"the flagstone upon which he was wont to pray, she was upon it until she died. her soul went to heaven. and that flagstone was put over her face." they chanted the terror of the time, the fierce riders of the sea in death-conflict with the mounting waves: "bitter is the conflict with the tremendous tempest"--"bitter is the wind to-night. it tosses the ocean's white hair; i do not fear the fierce warriors of norway coursing on the irish sea to-night." and in their own war of deliverance they sang of finn and his fiana on the battlefield, heroes of the irish race. even the craftsmen's schools were still gathered in their raths, preserving from century to century the forms and rules of their art; soon after the battle of clontarf we read of "the chief artificer of ireland." the perfection of their art in enamel and gold work has been the wonder of the old and of the modern world. many influences had come in--oriental, byzantine, scandinavian, french--and the irish took and used them all, but their art still remained gaelic, of their native soil. no jeweller's work was ever more perfect than the ardagh chalice of the ninth or tenth century, of pure celtic art with no trace of danish influence. the metal-workers of munster must have been famous, from the title of "king cellachan of the lovely cups"; and the golden case that enclosed the gospel of columcille in was for its splendour "the chief relic from the western world." the stone-workers, too, carried on their art. there were schools of carvers eminent for skill, such as that of holy island on lough derg. one of the churches of clonmacnois may date from the ninth century, five others from the tenth; finely sculptured gravestones commemorated saints and scholars; and the high-cross, a monolith ten feet high set up as a memorial to king flann about , was carved by an irish artist who was one of the greatest sculptors of northern europe. the temper of the people was shown in their hero-king brian boru, warrior and scholar. his government was with patience, mercy and justice. "king brian thrice forgave all his outlaws the same fault," says a scandinavian saga, "but if they misbehaved themselves oftener, then he let them be judged by the law; and from this one may mark what a king he must have been." "he sent professors and masters to teach wisdom and knowledge, and to buy books beyond the sea and the great ocean, because the writings and books in every church and sanctuary had been destroyed by the plunderers; and brian himself gave the price of learning and the price of books to every one separately who went on this service. many churches were built and repaired by him, bridges and roads were made, the fortresses of munster were strengthened." such was the astonishing vitality of learning and art among the irish. by their social system the intellectual treasures of the race had been distributed among the whole people, and committed to their care. and the irish tribes had proved worthy guardians of the national faith. they had known how to profit by the material skill and knowledge of the danes. irishmen were willing to absorb the foreigners, to marry with them, and even at times to share their wars. they learned from them to build ships, organise naval forces, advance in trade, and live in towns; they used the northern words for the parts of a ship, and the streets of a town. in outward and material civilisation they accepted the latest scandinavian methods, just as in our days the japanese accepted the latest western inventions. but in what the germans call culture--in the ordering of society and law, of life and thought, the irish never abandoned their national loyalty. during two centuries of danish invasions and occupations the gaelic civilisation had not given way an inch to the strangers. chapter v the first irish revival - after the battle of clontarf in the irish had a hundred and fifty years of comparative quiet. "a lively, stirring, ancient and victorious people," they turned to repair their hurts and to build up their national life. throughout the danish wars there had been a growth of industry and riches. no people ever made a successful national rally unless they were on the rising wave of prosperity. it is not misery and degradation that bring success. already ireland was known in france as "that very wealthy country in which there were twelve cities, and wide bishoprics, and a king, and that had its own language, and latin letters." but the position of the gaels was no longer what it had been before the invasions. the "foreigners" called constantly for armed help from their people without, and by political alliances and combinations fostered war among the irish states themselves. nearly a hundred years after clontarf king magnus of norway ( ) led the greatest army that ever marched conquering over ireland. in a dark fen the young giant flamed out a mark for all, with his shining helmet, his golden hair falling long over his red silken coat, his red shield, and laid thereon a golden lion. there he fell by an irish axe. the glory and terror of "magnus of the swift ships," "magnus of the terrible battles," was sung in ireland for half-a-dozen centuries after that last flaring-up of ancient fires. the national life, moreover, was now threatened by the settlement of an alien race, strangers to the irish tradition, strangers to the irish idea of a state, and to their feeling of a church. the sea-kings had created in dublin an open gateway into ireland, a gateway like quebec in canada, that commanded the country and that the country could never again close from within. they had filled the city with scandinavian settlers from the english and welsh coasts--pioneers of english invasion. a wealthy and compact community living on the seaboard, trading with all europe, inclined to the views of their business clients in england and the empire, their influence doubled the strength of the european pressure on ireland as against the gaelic civilisation. to the division of peoples within the irish state the danes added also the first division in the irish church. olaf cuaran, overlord of northmen of dublin and york, had been baptized ( ) in northumberland by the archbishop of canterbury, in presence of the english king. he formed the first converted danes into a part of the english church, so that their bishops were sent to be ordained at canterbury. since the irish in had refused to deal with an archbishop of the english, this was the first foothold canterbury had got in ireland. it was the rending in two of the irish tradition, the degrading of the primacy of armagh, the admission of a foreign power, and the triumph of the english over the gaelic church. in church and state, therefore, the danes had brought the first anti-national element into irish life. the change is marked by a change of name. the danes coined the name "_ire_-land," a form of eriu suited to their own speech; the people they called "irish," leaving the name of "scots" only to the gaels who had crossed the sea into alban. their trading ships carried the words far and wide, and the old name of erin only remained in the speech of the gaels themselves. clontarf, too, had marked ominously the passing of an old age, the beginning of a new. already the peoples round the north sea--normans, germans, english--were sending out traders to take the place of the scandinavians; and the peoples of the south--italians and gauls--were resuming their ancient commerce. we may see the advent of the new men in the names of adventurers that landed with the danes on that low shore at clontarf--the first great drops of the storm--lords from normandy, a frenchman from gaul, and somewhere about that time walter the englishman, a leader of mercenaries from england. in such names we see the heralds of the coming change. the irish were therefore face to face with questions of a new order--how to fuse two wholly different peoples into one community; how to make a united church within a united nation; and how to use foreign influences pouring in on all sides so as to enrich without destroying the national life. here was the work of the next hundred and fifty years. such problems have been solved in other lands by powerful kings at the heads of armies; in ireland it was the work of the whole community of tribes. it is in this effort that we see the immense vitality of the gaelic system the power of its tradition, and the spirit of its people. after brian's death two learned men were set over the government of ireland; a layman, the chief poet, and a devout man, the anchorite of all ireland. "the land was governed like a free state and not like a monarchy by them." the victory of clontarf was celebrated by a renascence of learning. eye-witnesses of that great battle, poets and historians, wrote the chronicle of the danish wars from first to last, and sang the glories of cellachan and of brian boru in the greatness of his life and the majesty of his death. a scholar put into irish from latin the "tale of troy," where the exploits and battle rage of the ancient heroes matched the martial ardour of irish champions, and the same words are used for the fights and armour and ships of the trojan as of the danish wars. another translated from latin a history of the britons, the neighbouring celtic races across the channel. in schools three or four hundred poetic metres were taught. the glories of ancient erin were revived. poets wrote of usnech, of tara, of ailech, of the o'neills on lough swilly in the far north, of brian boru's palace kincora on the shannon, of rath cruachan of connacht. tales of heroes, triumphs of ancient kings, were written in the form in which we now know them, genealogies of the tribes and old hymns of irish saints. clerics and laymen rivalled one another in zeal. in kings' courts, in monasteries, in schools, annals of ireland from the earliest to the latest time were composed. men laboured to satisfy the desire of the irish to possess a complete and brilliant picture of ireland from all antiquity. the most famous among the many writers, one of the most learned men in all europe in wisdom, literature, history, poetry, and science, was flann the layman, teacher of the school of monasterboice, who died in --"slow the bright eyes of his fine head," ran the old song. he made for his pupils synchronisms of the kings of asia and of roman emperors with irish kings, and of the irish high-kings and provincial chiefs and kings of scotland. writings of that time which have escaped destruction, such as the _book of leinster_, remain the most important relics of celtic literature in the world. there was already the beginning of a university in the ancient school of armagh lying on the famous hill where for long ages the royal tombs of the o'neills had been preserved. "the strong burh of tara has died," they said, "while armagh lives filled with learned champions." it now rose to a great position. with its three thousand scholars, famous for its teachers, under its high-ollave gorman who spent twenty-one years of study, from to , in england and france, it became in fact the national university for the irish race in ireland and scotland. it was appointed that every lector in any church in ireland must take there a degree; and in the high-king ruaidhri o'conor gave the first annual grant to maintain a professor at armagh "for all the irish and the scots." a succession of great bishops of armagh laboured to bring about also the organisation of a national church under the government of armagh. from they began to make visitations of the whole country, and take tribute and offerings in sign of the armagh leadership. they journeyed in the old irish fashion on foot, one of them followed by a cow on whose milk he lived, all poor, without servants, without money, wandering among hills and remote hamlets, stopping men on the roadside to talk, praying for them all night by the force only of their piety and the fervour of their spirit drawing all the communities under obedience to the see of patrick, the national saint. in a series of synods from to a fixed number of bishops' sees was marked out, and four archbishoprics representing the four provinces. the danish sees, moreover, were brought into this union, and made part of the irish organisation. thus the power of canterbury in ireland was ended, and a national church set up of irish and danes. dublin, the old scandinavian kingdom, whose prelates for over a hundred years had been consecrated in england ( - ), was the last to hold out against the union of churches, till this strife was healed by st. lorcán ua tuathail, the first irish bishop consecrated in dublin. he carried to that battleground of the peoples all the charity, piety, and asceticism of the irish saint: feeding the poor daily, never himself tasting meat, rising at midnight to pray till dawn, and ever before he slept going out into the graveyard to pray there for the dead; from time to time withdrawing among the wicklow hills to st. kevin's cave at glendalough, a hole in the cliff overhanging the dark lake swept with storm from the mountain-pass, where twice a week bread and water were brought him by a boat and a ladder up the rock. his life was spent in the effort for national peace and union, nor had ireland a truer patriot or wiser statesman. kings and chiefs sat with the clergy in the irish synods, and in the state too there were signs of a true union of the peoples. the danes, gradually absorbed into the irish population, lost the sense of separate nationality. the growing union of the peoples was seen in the increasing power of the ardri. brian's line maintained at cachel the title of "kings of ireland," strengthening their house with danish marriages; they led danish forces and were elected kings of the danes in dublin. but in the twelfth century it was the connacht kings who came to the front, the same race that a thousand years before had spread their power across the shannon to usnech and to tara. turlough o'conor ( - ) was known to henry i of england as "king of ireland"; on a metal cross made for him he is styled "king of erin," and a missal of his time ( ) contains the only prayer yet known for "the king of the irish and his army"--the sign, as we may see, of foreign influences on the irish mind. his son, ruaidhri or rory, was proclaimed ( ) ardri in dublin with greater pomp than any king before him, and held at athboy in meath an assembly of the "men of ireland," archbishops and clergy, princes and nobles, eighteen thousand horsemen from the tribes and provinces, and a thousand danes from dublin--there laws were made for the honour of churches and clergy, the restoring of prey unjustly taken, and the control of tribes and territories, so that a woman might traverse the land in safety; and the vast gathering broke up "in peace and amity, without battle or controversy, or any one complaining of another at that meeting." it is said that rory o'conor's procession when he held the last of the national festivals at telltown was several miles in length. the whole of ireland is covered with the traces of this great national revival. we may still see on islands, along river-valleys, in lonely fields, innumerable ruins of churches built of stone chiselled as finely as man's hand can cut it; and of the lofty round towers and sculptured high crosses that were multiplied over the land after the day of clontarf. the number of the churches has not been counted. it must be astonishing. at first they were built in the "romanesque" style brought from the continent, with plain round arches, as brian boru made them about a.d. ; presently chancels were added, and doors and windows and arches richly carved. these churches were still small, intimate, suited to the worship of the tribal communities; as time went on they were larger and more richly decorated, but always marked with the remembrance of irish tradition and ornament, and signed by irish masons on the stones. there was a wealth of metal work of great splendour, decorated with freedom and boldness of design, with inlaid work and filigree, and settings of stones and enamels and crystal; as we may see in book-shrines, in the crosiers of lismore and cachel and clonmacnois and many others, in the matchless processional cross of cong, in the great shrine of st. manchan with twenty-four figures highly raised on each side in a variety of postures remarkable for the time. it was covered with an embroidery of gold in as good style, say the annals, as a reliquary was ever covered in ireland. irish skill was known abroad. a french hero of romance wore a fine belt of irish leather-work, and a knight of bavaria had from ireland ribbon of gold-lace embroidered with animals in red gold. the vigour of irish life overflowed, indeed, the bounds of the country. cloth from ireland was already sold in england and it was soon to spread over all europe. it is probable that export of corn and provisions had already begun, and of timber, besides hides and wool. and the frequent mention of costly gifts and tributes, and of surprisingly large sums of gold and silver show a country of steadily expanding wealth. from the time of brian boru learned men poured over the continent. pilgrims journeyed to compostella, to rome, or through greece to jordan and jerusalem--composing poems on the way, making discourses in latin, showing their fine art of writing. john, bishop of mecklenburg, preached to the vandals between the elbe and the vistula; marianus "the scot" on his pilgrimage to rome stopped at regensburg on the danube, and founded there a monastery of north irishmen in , to which was soon added a second house for south irishmen. out of these grew the twelve irish convents of germany and austria. an irish abbot was head of a monastery in bulgaria. from time to time the irish came home to collect money for their foundations and went back laden with gold from the kings at home. pope adrian iv ( ) remembered with esteem the irish professor under whom he had studied in paris university. irishmen were chaplains of the emperor conrad iii (+ ) and of his successor frederick barbarossa. strangers "moved by the love of study" still set out "in imitation of their ancestors to visit the land of the irish so wonderfully celebrated for its learning." while the spirit of ireland manifested itself in the shaping of a national university, and of a national church, in the revival of the glories of the ardri, and in vigour of art and learning, there was an outburst too among the common folk of jubilant patriotism. we can hear the passionate voice of the people in the songs and legends, the prophecies of the enduring life of irishmen on irish land, the popular tales that began at this time to run from mouth to mouth. they took to themselves two heroes to be centres of the national hope--finn the champion, leader of the "fiana," the war-bands of old time; and patrick the saint. a multitude of tales suddenly sprang up of the adventures of finn--the warrior worthy of a king, the son of wisdom, the mighty hunter of every mountain and forest in ireland, whose death no minstrel cared to sing. every poet was expected to recite the fame in life of finn and his companions. pedigrees were invented to link him with every great house in ireland, for their greater glory and authority. side by side with finn the people set st. patrick--keeper of ireland against all strangers, guardian of their nation and tradition. it was patrick, they told, who by invincible prayer and fasting at last compelled heaven to grant that outlanders should not for ever inhabit erin; "that the saxons should not dwell in ireland, by consent or perforce, so long as i abide in heaven:" "thou shalt have this," said the outwearied angel. "around thee," was the triumphant irish hope, "on the day of judgment the men of erin shall come to judgment"; for after the twelve thrones of the apostles were set in judæa to judge the tribes of israel, patrick himself should at the end arise and call the people of ireland to be judged by him on a mountain in their own land. as in the old gaelic tradition, so now the people fused in a single emotion the nation and the church. they brought from dusky woods the last gaunt relics of finn's company, sad and dispirited at the falling of the evening clouds, and set them face to face with patrick as he chanted mass on one of their old raths--men twice as tall as the modern folk, with their huge wolf-dogs, men "who were not of our epoch or of one time with the clergy." when patrick hesitated to hear their pagan memories of ireland and its graves, of its men who died for honour, of its war and hunting, its silver bridles and cups of yellow gold, its music and great feastings, lest such recreation of spirit and mind should be to him a destruction of devotion and dereliction of prayer, angels were sent to direct him to give ear to the ancient stories of ireland, and write them down for the joy of companies and nobles of the latter time. "victory and blessing wait on thee, caeilte," said patrick, thus called to the national service; "for the future thy stories and thyself are dear to me"; "grand lore and knowledge is this thou hast uttered to us." "thou too, patrick, hast taught us good things," the warriors responded with courteous dignity. so at all the holy places of ireland, the pillar-stone of ancient usnech, the ruined mounds of tara, great rath-cruachan of connacht, the graves of mighty champions, pagan hero and christian saint sat together to make interchange of history and religion, the teaching of the past and the promise of the future. st. patrick gave his blessing to minstrels and story-tellers and to all craftsmen of ireland--"and to them that profess it be it all happiness." he mounted to the high glen to see the fiana raise their warning signal of heroic chase and hunting. he saw the heavy tears of the last of the heroes till his very breast, his chest was wet. he laid in his bosom the head of the pagan hunter and warrior: "by me to thee," said patrick, "and whatsoever be the place in which god shall lay hand on thee, heaven is assigned." "for thy sake," said the saint, "be thy lord finn mac cumhall taken out of torment, if it be good in the sight of god." in no other country did such a fate befall a missionary coming from strangers--to be taken and clothed upon with the national passion of a people, shaped after the pattern of their spirit, made the keeper of the nation's soul, the guardian of its whole tradition. such legends show how enthusiasm for the common country ran through every hamlet in the land, and touched the poorest as it did the most learned. they show that the social order in ireland after the danish settlements was the triumph of an irish and not a danish civilisation. the national life of the irish, free, democratic, embracing every emotion of the whole people, gentle or simple, was powerful enough to gather into it the strong and freedom-loving rovers of the sea. on all sides, therefore, we see the growth of a people compacted of irish and danes, bound together under the old irish law and social order, with dublin as a centre of the united races, armagh a national university, a single and independent church under an irish primate of armagh and an irish archbishop of dublin, a high-king calling the people together in a succession of national assemblies for the common good of the country. the new union of ireland was being slowly worked out by her political councillors, her great ecclesiastics, her scholars and philosophers, and by the faith of the common people in the glory of their national inheritance. "the bodies and minds of the people were endued with extraordinary abilities of nature," so that art, learning and commerce prospered in their hands. on this fair hope of rising civilisation there fell a new and tremendous trial. chapter vi the norman invasion - after the fall of the danes the normans, conquerors of england, entered on the dominion of the sea--"citizens of the world," they carried their arms and their cunning from the tweed to the mediterranean, from the seine to the euphrates. the spirit of conquest was in the air. every landless man was looking to make his fortune. every baron desired, like his viking forefathers, a land where he could live out of reach of the king's long arm. they had marked out ireland as their natural prey--"a land very rich in plunder, and famed for the good temperature of the air, the fruitfulness of the soil, the pleasant and commodious seats for habitation, and safe and large ports and havens lying open for traffic." norman barons were among the enemy at the battle of clontarf in . the same year that ireland saw the last of the scandinavian sea kings ( ) she saw the first of the norman invaders prying out the country for a kingdom. william rufus ( - ) had fetched from ireland great oaks to roof his hall at westminster, and planned the conquest of an island so desirable. a greater empire-maker, henry ii, lord of a vast seacoast from the forth to the pyrenees, holding both sides of the channel, needed ireland to round off his dominions and give him command of the traffic from his english ports across the irish sea, from his ports of the loire and the garonne over the gaulish sea. the trade was well worth the venture. norman and french barons, with welsh followers, and flemings from pembroke, led the invasion that began in . they were men trained to war, with armour and weapons unknown to the irish. but they owed no small part of their military successes in ireland to a policy of craft. if the irish fought hard to defend the lands they held in civil tenure, the churches had no great strength, and the seizing of a church estate led to no immediate rising out of the country. the settled plan of the normans, therefore, was to descend on defenceless church lands, and turn them into norman strongholds; in reply to complaints, they pleaded that the churches were used by the hostile irish as storing places for their goods. their occupation gave the normans a great military advantage, for once the churches were fortified and garrisoned with norman skill the reduction of the surrounding country became much easier. the irish during this period sometimes plundered church lands, but did not occupy, annex, or fortify them. the invaders meanwhile spread over the country. french and welsh and flemings have left their mark in every part of ireland, by christian names, by names of places and families, and by loan-words taken into irish from the french. the english who came over went chiefly to the towns, many of them to dublin through the bristol trade. henry ii himself crossed in with a great fleet and army to over-awe his too-independent barons as well as the irish, and from the wooden palace set up for him in dublin demanded a general oath of allegiance. the normans took the oath, with some churchmen and half-a-dozen irish chiefs. in henry's view this oath was a confession that the irish knew themselves conquered; and that the chief renounced the tribal system, and handed over the land to the king, so that he as supreme lord of all the soil could allot it to his barons, and demand in return the feudal services common in normandy or in england. no irish chief, however, could have even understood these ideas. he knew nothing of the feudal system, nor of a landlord in the english sense. he had no power to hand the land of the tribe over to any one. he could admit no "conquest," for the seizing of a few towns and forts could not carry the subjection of all the independent chiefdoms. whatever henry's theory might be, the taking of dublin was not the taking of an irish capital: the people had seen its founding as the centre of a foreign kingdom, and their own free life had continued as of old. henry's presence there gave him no lordship: and the independent temper of the irish people was not likely, after their danish experience, to be cowed by two years of war. some cunning explanation of the oath was given to the irish chiefs by the subtle angevin king and his crafty norman counsellors--that war was to cease, that they were to rule as fully and freely as before, and in recognition of the peace to give to henry a formal tribute which implied no dominion. the false display at dublin was a deception both to the king and to the irish. the empty words on either side did not check for a month the lust of conquest nor the passion of defence. one royal object, however, was made good. the oath, claimed under false pretences, yielded under misunderstanding, impossible of fulfilment, was used to confer on the king a technical legal right to ireland; this legal fiction became the basis of the royal claims, and the justification of every later act of violence. another fraud was added by the proclamation of papal bulls, which according to modern research seem to have been mere forgeries. they gave the lordship of the country to henry, and were readily accepted by the invaders and their successors. but they were held of no account among irish annalists and writers, who make no mention of the bulls during the next three hundred years. thus the grounds of the english title to ireland were laid down, and it only remained to make good by the sword the fictions of law and the falsehoods of forgers. according to these ireland had been by the act of the natives and by the will of god conferred on a higher race. kings carved out estates for their nobles. the nobles had to conquer the territories granted them. each conquered tract was to be made into a little england, enclosed within itself, and sharply fenced off from the supposed sea of savagery around it. there was to be no trade with the irish, no intercourse, no relationship, no use of their dress, speech, or laws, no dealings save those of conquest and slaughter. the colonists were to form an english parliament to enact english law. a lieutenant-governor, or his deputy, was set in dublin castle to superintend the conquest and the administration. the fighting garrison was reinforced by the planting of a militant church--bishops and clergy of foreign blood, stout men of war, ready to aid by prayers, excommunications, and the sword. a bishop of waterford being once sent by the lord justice to account to edward i for a battle of the irish in which the king of connacht and two thousand of his men lay dead, explained that "in policy he thought it expedient to wink at one knave cutting off another, and that would save the king's coffers and purchase peace to the land"; whereat the king smiled and bade him return to ireland. the irish were now therefore aliens in their own country. officially they did not exist. their land had been parted out by kings among their barons "till in title they were owners and lords of all, so as nothing was left to be granted to the natives." during centuries of english occupation not a single law was enacted for their relief or benefit. they were refused the protection of english law, shut out from the king's courts and from the king's peace. the people who had carried the peaceful mission of a spiritual religion over england and europe now saw that other mission planted among themselves--a political church bearing the sword of the conqueror, and dealing out anathemas and death in the service of a state which rewarded it with temporal wealth and dominion. the english attack was thus wholly different from that of the danes: it was guided by a fixed purpose, and directed by kings who had a more absolute power, a more compact body of soldiers, and a better filled treasury than any other rulers in europe. dublin, no mere centre now of roving sea-kings, was turned into an impregnable fortress, fed from the sea, and held by a garrison which was supported by the whole strength of england--a fortress unconquerable by any power within ireland--a passage through which the strangers could enter at their ease. the settlers were no longer left to lapse as isolated groups into irish life, but were linked together as a compact garrison under the castle government. the vigilance of westminster never ceased, nor the supply of its treasure, its favoured colonists, and its ablest generals. from henry ii to elizabeth, the aim of the english government was the same. the ground of ireland was to be an immediate holding, "a royal inheritance," of the king. on an issue so sharp and definite no compromise was possible. so long as the irish claimed to hold a foot of their own land the war must continue. it lasted, in fact, for five hundred years, and at no moment was any peace possible to the irish except by entire renunciation of their right to the actual soil of their country. if at times dealings were opened by the english with an irish chief, or a heavy sum taken to allow him to stay on his land, this was no more than a temporary stratagem or a local expedient, and in no way affected the fixed intention to gain the ownership of the soil. out of the first tumult and anarchy of war an ireland emerged which was roughly divided between the two peoples. in ulster, o'neills and o'donnells and other tribes remained, with only a fringe of normans on the coast. o'conors and other irish clans divided connacht, and absorbed into the gaelic life the incoming norman de burghs. the anglo-normans, on the other hand, established themselves powerfully in munster and leinster. but even here--side by side with the great lords of the invasion, earls of ormond, and desmond, and kildare--there remained irish kingdoms and the remnants of old chiefdoms, unconquered, resolute and wealthy--such as the o'briens in the west, maccarthys and o'sullivans in the south, o'conors and o'mores in the middle country, macmurroughs and o'tooles in leinster, and many more. it has been held that all later misfortunes would have been averted if the english without faltering had carried out a complete conquest, and ended the dispute once for all. english kings had, indeed, every temptation to this direct course. the wealth of the country lay spread before them. it was a land abounding in corn and cattle, in fish, in timber; its manufactures were famed over all europe; gold-mines were reported; foreign merchants flocked to its ports, and bankers and money-lenders from the rhineland and lucca, with speculators from provence, were carrying over foreign coin, settling in the towns, and taking land in the country. sovereigns at westminster--harassed with turbulent barons at home and wars abroad--looked to a conquered ireland to supply money for their treasury, soldiers for their armies, provisions for their wars, and estates for their favourites. in haste to reap their full gains they demanded nothing better than a conquest rapid and complete. they certainly cannot be charged with dimness of intention, slackness in effort, or want of resource in dilemmas. it would be hard to imagine any method of domination which was not used--among the varied resources of the army, the church, the lawyers, the money-lenders, the schoolmasters, the castle intriguers and the landlords. the official class in dublin, recruited every few years with uncorrupted blood from england, urged on the war with the dogged persistence of their race. but the conquest of the irish nation was not so simple as it had seemed to anglo-norman speculators. the proposal to take the land out of the hands of an irish people and give it to a foreign king, could only have been carried out by the slaughter of the entire population. no lesser effort could have turned a free tribal ireland into a dependent feudal england. the english kings had made a further mistake. they proposed, like later kings of spain in south america, to exploit ireland for the benefit of the crown and the metropolis, not for the welfare of any class whatever of the inhabitants; the colonists were to be a mere garrison to conquer and hold the land for the king. but the anglo-norman adventurers had gone out to find profit for themselves, not to collect irish wealth for london. their "loyalty" failed under that test. the kings, therefore, found themselves engaged in a double conflict, against the irish and against their own colonists, and were every year more entangled in the difficulties of a policy false from the outset. yet another difficulty disclosed itself. among the colonists a little experience destroyed the english theory of irish "barbarism." the invaders were drawn to their new home not only by its wealth but by its beauty, the variety and gaiety of its social life, the intelligence of its inhabitants, and the attraction of its learning and art. settlers, moreover, could neither live nor till the lands they had seized, nor trade in the seaports, nor find soldiers for their defence, without coming to terms with their irish neighbours. to them the way of wealth lay not in slaughter but in traffic, not in destroying riches but in sharing them. the colonists compromised with "the irish enemy." they took to irish dress and language; they recognised irish land tenure, as alone suited to the country and people, one also that gave them peace with their farmers and cattle-drivers, and kept out of their estates the king's sheriffs and tax-gatherers; they levied troops from their tenants in the irish manner; they employed irishmen in offices of trust; they paid neighbouring tribes for military service--such as to keep roads and passes open for their traders and messengers. "english born in ireland," "degenerate english," were as much feared by the king as the "mere irish." they were not counted "of english birth"; lands were resumed from them, office forbidden them. in every successive generation new men of pure english blood were to be sent over to serve the king's purpose and keep in check the ireland-born. the irish wars, therefore, became exceedingly confused--kings, barons, tribes, all entangled in interminable strife. every chief, surrounded by dangers, was bound to turn his court into a place of arms thronged by men ready to drive back the next attack or start on the next foray. whatever was the burden of military taxation no tribe dared to disarm any more than one of the european countries to-day. the dublin officials, meanwhile, eked out their military force by craft; they created and encouraged civil wars; they called on the danes who had become mingled with the irish to come out from them and resume their danish nationality, as the only means of being allowed protection of law and freedom to trade. to avert the dangers of friendship and peace between races in ireland they became missionaries of disorder, apostles of contention. civil wars within any country exhaust themselves and come to a natural end. but civil wars maintained by a foreign power from without have no conclusion. if any strong leader arose, anglo-norman or irish, the whole force of england was called in, and the ablest commanders fetched over from the french wars, great men of battle and plunder, to fling the province back into weakness and disorder. in england the feudal system had been brought to great perfection--a powerful king, a state organised for common action, with a great military force, a highly organised treasury, a powerful nobility, and a dependent people. the irish tribal system, on the other hand, rested on a people endowed with a wide freedom, guided by an ancient tradition, and themselves the guardians of their law and of their land. they had still to show what strength lay in their spiritual ideal of a nation's life to subdue the minds of their invaders, and to make a stand against their organised force. chapter vii the second irish revival - the first irish revival after the danish wars showed the strength of the ancient gaelic civilisation. the second victory which the genius of the people won over the minds of the new invaders was a more astonishing proof of the vitality of the irish culture, the firm structure of their law, and the cohesion of the people. henry ii in had led an army for "the conquest" of ireland. three hundred years later, when henry vii in turned his thoughts to ireland he found no conquered land. an earthen ditch with a palisade on the top had been raised to protect all that was left of english ireland, called the "pale" from its encircling fence. outside was a country of irish language, dress, and customs. thirty miles west of dublin was "by west of english law." norman lords had married daughters of irish chiefs all over the country, and made combinations and treaties with every province. their children went to be fostered in kindly houses of the irish. into their own palisaded forts, lifted on great mounds of earth, with three-fold entrenchments, came irish poets singing the traditions, the love-songs, the prayers and hymns of the gaels. a norman shrine of gold for st. patrick's tooth shows how the norman lord of athenry had adopted the national saint. many settlers changed their names to an irish form, and taking up the clan system melted into the irish population. irish speech was so universal that a proclamation of henry viii in a dublin parliament had to be translated into irish by the earl of ormond. irish manners had entered also into the town houses of the merchants. foreign traders welcomed "natives" to the seaports, employed them, bought their wares, took them into partnership, married with them, allowed them to plead irish law in their courts--and not only that, but they themselves wore the forbidden irish dress, talked irish with the other townsfolk, and joined in their national festivities and ceremonies and songs. almost to the very gates of dublin, in the centre of what should have been pure english land, the merchants went riding irish fashion, in irish dress, and making merry with their forbidden irish clients. this irish revival has been attributed to a number of causes--to an invasion of edward bruce in , to the "degeneracy" of the normans, to the vice of the irish, to the wars of the roses, to the want of energy of dublin castle, to the over-education of irish people in oxford, to agitation and lawyers. the cause lay far deeper. it lay in the rich national civilisation which the irish genius had built up, strong in its courageous democracy, in its broad sympathies, in its widespread culture, in its freedom, and in its humanities. so long as the irish language preserved to the people their old culture they never failed to absorb into their life every people that came among them. it was only when they lost hold of the tradition of their fathers and their old social order that this great influence fell from them, and strangers no longer yielded to their power. the social fusion of normans and irish was the starting-point of a lively civilisation to which each race brought its share. together they took a brilliant part in the commerce which was broadening over the world. the irish were great travellers; they sailed the adriatic, journeyed in the levant, visited the factories of egypt, explored china, with all the old love of knowledge and infinite curiosity. they were as active and ingenious in business as the normans themselves. besides exporting raw materials, irish-made linen and cloth and cloaks and leather were carried as far as russia and naples; norman lords and irish chieftains alike took in exchange velvets, silks and satins, cloth of gold and embroideries, wines and spices. irish goldsmiths made the rich vessels that adorned the tables both of normans and irish. irish masons built the new churches of continental design, carving at every turn their own traditional irish ornaments. irish scribes illuminated manuscripts which were as much praised in a norman castle as in an irish fort. both peoples used translations into irish made by gaelic scholars from the fashionable latin books of the continent. both races sent students and professors to every university in europe--men recognised of deep knowledge among the most learned men of italy and france. a kind of national education was being worked out. not one of the irish chiefdoms allowed its schools to perish, and to these ancient schools the settlers in the towns added others of their own, to which the irish also in time flocked, so that youths of the two races learned together. as irish was the common language, so latin was the second tongue for cultivated people and for all men of business in their continental trade. the english policy made english the language of traitors to their people, but of no use either for trade or literature. the uplifting of the national ideal was shown in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by a revival of learning like that which followed the danish wars. not one of the hereditary houses of historians, lawyers, poets, physicians, seems to have failed: we find them at work in the mountains of donegal, along the shannon, in lake islands, among the bare rocks of clare, in the plains of meath, in the valleys of munster. in astronomy irishmen were still first in europe. in medicine they had all the science of their age. nearly all our knowledge of irish literature comes from copies of older works made by hundreds of industrious scribes of this period. from time to time assemblies of all the learned men were called together by patriotic chiefs, or by kings rising into high leadership--"coming to tara," as the people said. the old order was maintained in these national festivals. spacious avenues of white houses were made ready for poets, streets of peaked hostels for musicians, straight roads of smooth conical-roofed houses for chroniclers, another avenue for bards and jugglers, and so on; and on the bright surface of the pleasant hills sleeping-booths of woven branches for the companies. from sea to sea scholars and artists gathered to show their skill to the men of ireland; and in these glorious assemblies the people learned anew the wealth of their civilisation, and celebrated with fresh ardour the unity of the irish nation. it was no wonder that in this high fervour of the country the anglo-normans, like the danes and the northumbrians before them, were won to a civilisation so vital and impassioned, so human and gay. but the mixed civilisation found no favour with the government; the "wild irish" and the "degenerate english" were no better than "brute beasts," the english said, abandoned to "filthy customs" and to "a damnable law that was no law, hateful to god and man." every measure was taken to destroy the growing amity of the peoples, not only by embroiling them in war, but by making union of ireland impossible in religion or in education, and by destroying public confidence. the new central organisation of the irish church made it a powerful weapon in english hands. an englishman was at once put in every archbishopric and every principal see, a prelate who was often a castle official as well, deputy, chancellor, justice, treasurer, or the like, or a good soldier--in any case hostile to every irish affection. a national church in the old irish sense disappeared; in the english idea the church was to destroy the nation. higher education was also denied to both races. no irish university could live under the eye of an english primate of armagh, and every attempt of anglo-normans to set up a university for ireland at dublin or drogheda was instantly crushed. to avert general confidence and mutual understanding, an alien class was maintained in the country, who for considerations of wealth, power, a privileged position, betrayed the peace of ireland to the profit of england. no pains, for example, were spared by the kings to conciliate and use so important a house as that of the earls of ormond. for nearly two hundred years, as it happened, the heirs of this house were always minors, held in wardship by the king. english training at his court, visits to london, knighthoods and honours there, high posts in ireland, prospects of new conquests of irish land, a winking of government officials at independent privileges used on their estates by ormond lords--such influences tied each heir in turn to england, and separated them from irish interests--a "loyal" house, said the english--"fair and false as ormond," said the people of ireland. both races suffered under this foreign misrule. both were brayed in the same mortar. both were driven to the demand for home rule. the national movement never flagged for a single generation. never for a moment did the irish cease from the struggle; in the swell and tumult of that tossing sea commanders emerged now in one province, now in another, each to fall back into the darkness while the next pressed on to take his place. an anglo-norman parliament claimed ( ) that ireland was by its constitution separate from the laws and statutes of england, and prayed to have a separate coinage for their land as in the kingdom of england. confederacies of irish and anglo-normans were formed, one following another in endless and hopeless succession. through all civil strife we may plainly see the steady drift of the peoples to a common patriotism. there was panic in england at these ceaseless efforts to restore an irish nation, for "ireland," english statesmen said, "was as good as gone if a wild irish wyrlinge should be chosen there as king." for a time it seemed as if the house of the fitzgeralds, the most powerful house in ireland, might mediate between the peoples whose blood, english and irish, they shared. earl gerald of desmond led a demand for home rule in , and that ireland should not be governed by "needy men sent from england, without knowledge of ireland or its circumstances." earl gerald the rhymer of the same house ( ) was a patriot leader too--a witty and ingenious composer of irish poetry, who excelled all the english and many of the irish in the knowledge of the irish language, poetry, and history, and of other learning. a later earl gerald ( ), foster-son of o'brien and cousin of henry vi, was complimented by the republic of florence, in a letter recalling the florentine origin of the fitzgeralds, for the glory he brought to that city, since its citizens had possessions as far as hungary and greece, and now "through you and yours bear sway even in ibernia, the most remote island of the world." in earl thomas ( ) the irish saw the first "foreigner" to be the martyr of their cause. he had furthered trade of european peoples with irishmen; he had urgently pressed union of the races; he had planned a university for ireland at drogheda (armagh having been long destroyed by the english). as his reward he was beheaded without trial by the earl of worcester famed as "the butcher," who had come over with a claim to some of the desmond lands in cork. his people saw in his death "the ruin of ireland"; they laid his body with bitter lamentations by the atlantic at tralee, where the ocean wind moaning in the caverns still sounds to the peasants as "the desmond's keen." other fitzgeralds, earls of kildare, who had married into every leading irish house, took up in their turn the national cause. garrett mor "the great" ( - ), married to the cousin of henry vii, made close alliances with every irish chief, steadily spread his power over the land, and kept up the family relations with florence; and by his wit, his daring, the gaiety of his battle with slander, fraud, and violence, won great authority. his son garrett inherited and enlarged his great territory. maynooth under him was one of the richest earls' houses of that time. when he rode out in his scarlet cloak he was followed by four hundred irish spearmen. his library was half of irish books; he made his english wife read, write, and speak perfectly the irish tongue; he had for his chief poet an irishman, "full of the grace of god and of learning"; his secretary was employed to write for his library "divers chronicles" of ireland. the irish loved him for his justice, for his piety, and that he put on them no arbitrary tax. by a singular charm of nature he won the hearts of all, wife, son, jailor in london tower, and english lords. his whole policy was union in his country, and ireland for the irish. the lasting argument for self-government as against rule from over-sea was heard in his cry to wolsey and the lords at westminster--"you hear of a case as it were in a dream, and feel not the smart that vexeth us." he attempted to check english interference with private subjects in ireland. he refused to admit that a commission to cardinal wolsey as legate for england gave him authority in ireland. the mark of his genius lay above all in his resolve to close dissensions and to put an end to civil wars. when as deputy he rode out to war against disturbed tribes, his first business was not to fight, but to call an assembly in the irish manner which should decide the quarrel by arbitration according to law. he "made peace," his enemies said, and the nightmare of forced dissension gave way before this new statesmanship of national union. never were the irish "so corrupted by affection" for a lord deputy, never were they so obedient, both from fear and from love, so henry viii was warned. in spite of official intrigues, through all eddying accidents, the steady pressure of the country itself was towards union. the great opportunity had come to weld together the two races in ireland, and to establish a common civilisation by a leader to whom both peoples were perfectly known, whose sympathies were engaged in both, and who as deputy of the english king had won the devoted confidence of the irish people. there was one faction alone which no reason could convert--the alien minority that held interests and possessions in both islands, and openly used england to advance their power and ireland to increase their wealth. they had no country, for neither england nor ireland could be counted such. they knew how to darken ignorance and inflame prejudice in london against their fellow-countrymen in ireland--"the strange savage nature of the people," "savage vile poor persons which never did know or feel wealth or civility," "having no knowledge of the laws of god or of the king," nor any way to know them save through the good offices of these slanderers, apostles of their own virtue. the anti-national minority would have had no strength if left alone to face the growing toleration in ireland. in support from england it found its sole security--and through its aid ireland was flung back into disorder. chapter viii the taking of the land - henry viii, like henry ii, was not concerned to give "civilisation" to ireland. he was concerned to take the land. his reasons were the same. if he possessed the soil in his own right, apart from the english parliament, and commanded its fighting-men and its wealth, he could beat down rebellion in england, smite scotland into obedience, conquer france, and create an empire of bounds unknown--and in time of danger where so sure a shelter for a flying sovereign? claims were again revived to "our rightful inheritance"; quibbles of law once more served for the king's "title to the land"; there was another great day of deception in dublin. henry asked the title of king of ireland instead of lord, and offered to the chiefs in return full security for their lands. for months of subtle preparation his promises were explicit. all cause of offence was carefully taken away. finally a parliament was summoned ( ) of lords carefully bribed and commons carefully packed--the very pattern, in fact, of that which was later called to vote the union. and while they were by order voting the title, the king and council were making arrangements together to render void both sides of the bargain. first the wording of the title was so altered as to take away any value in the "common consent" of parliament, since the king asserted his title to ireland by inheritance and conquest, before and beyond all mandate of the popular will. and secondly it was arranged that henry was under no obligation by negotiations or promises as to the land. for since, by the council's assurance to the king on the day the title was passed, there was no land occupied by any "disobedient" people which was not really the king's property by ancient inheritance or by confiscation, henry might do as he would with his own. royal concessions too must depend on how much revenue could be extracted from them to keep up suitably the title of king--on whether it was judicious to give irishmen titles which they might afterwards plead to be valid--on whether henry would find the promised grants convenient in case he chose later to proceed to "conquest and extermination." parliament was dismissed for thirteen years, henry, in fact, had exactly fulfilled the project of mystification he proposed twenty years before--"to be politically and secretly handled." every trace of irish law and land tenure must finally be abolished so that the soil should lie at the king's will alone, but this was to be done at first by secret and politic measures, here a little and there a little, so that, as he said, the irish lords should as yet conceive no suspicion that they were to be "constrained to live under our law or put from all the lands by them now detained." "politic practices," said henry, would serve till such time as the strength of the irish should be diminished, their leaders taken from them, and division put among themselves so that they join not together. if there had been any truth or consideration for ireland in the royal compact some hope of compromise and conciliation might have opened. but the whole scheme was rooted and grounded in falsehood, and ireland had yet to learn how far sufferings by the quibbles and devices of law might exceed the disasters of open war. chiefs could be ensnared one by one in misleading contracts, practically void. a false claimant could be put on a territory and supported by english soldiers in a civil war, till the actual chief was exiled or yielded the land to the king's ownership. no chief, true or false, had power to give away the people's land, and the king was face to face with an indignant people, who refused to admit an illegal bargain. then came a march of soldiers over the district, hanging, burning, shooting "the rebels," casting the peasants out on the hillsides. there was also the way of "conquest." the whole of the inhabitants were to be exiled, and the countries made vacant and waste for english peopling: the sovereign's rule would be immediate and peremptory over those whom he had thus planted by his sole will, and ireland would be kept subject in a way unknown in england; then "the king might say ireland was clearly won, and after that he would be at little cost and receive great profits, and men and money at pleasure." there would be no such difficulty, henry's advisers said as those of henry ii had said before, to "subdue or exile them as hath been thought," for from the settled lands plantation could be spread into the surrounding territories, and the irishry steadily pushed back into the sea. henceforth it became a fixed policy to "exterminate and exile the country people of the irishry." whether they submitted or not, the king was to "inhabit their country" with english blood. but again as in the twelfth century it was the king and the metropolis that were to profit, not any class of inhabitants of ireland. a series of great confiscations put through an enslaved pale parliament made smooth the way of conquest. an act of for the attainder of the earl of kildare confiscated his estates to the king, that is, the main part of leinster. in the bulk of ulster, as territory of the "traitor" shane o'neill, was declared forfeited in the same way. and in the chief part of munster, the lordship of the "traitor" earl of desmond. another act of forfeited to the crown all ancient claims of english lords to lands which had been granted to them, and afterwards recovered by the original irish owners. another in vested in the king all the lands of the dissolved monasteries. by these various titles given to the crown, it was hard for any acres to slip through unawares, english or irish. an act of moreover reduced all ireland to shire land; in other words, all irish chiefs who had made indentures with the crown were deprived of all the benefits which were included in such indentures, and the brehon or irish law, with all its protection to the poor, was abolished. these laws and confiscations gave to the new sovereigns of the irish the particular advantage that if their subjects should resist the taking of the land, they were legally "rebels," and as such outside the laws of war. it was this new fiction of law that gave the tudor wars their unsurpassed horror. thus began what bacon called the "wild chase on the wild irishmen." the forfeiture of land of the tribe for the crime of a chief was inconceivable in irish law; the claim of the commonalty to unalterable possession of their soil was deeply engraven in the hearts of the people, who stood together to hold their land, believing justice and law to be on their side, and the right of near two thousand years of ordered possession. at a prodigious price, at inconceivable cost of human woe, the purging of the soil from the irish race was begun. such mitigations as the horrors of war allow were forbidden to these "rebels" by legal fiction. torturers and hangmen went out with the soldiers. there was no protection for any soul; the old, the sick, infants, women, scholars; any one of them might be a landholder, or a carrier on of the tradition of the tribal owners, and was in any case a rebel appointed to death. no quarter was allowed, no faith kept, and no truce given. chiefs were made to "draw and carry," to abase them before the tribes. poets and historians were slaughtered and their books and genealogies burned, so that no man "might know his own grandfather" and all irishmen be confounded in the same ignorance and abasement, all glories gone, and all rights lost. the great object of the government was to destroy the whole tradition, wipe out the gaelic memories, and begin a new english life. but even with all legal aids to extermination the land war proved more difficult than the english had expected. it lasted for some seventy years. the irish were inexhaustible in defence, prodigious in courage, and endured hardships that englishmen could not survive. the most powerful governors that england could supply were sent over, and furnished with english armies and stores. fleets held the harbours, and across all the seas from newfoundland to dantzic gathered in provisions for the soldiers. armies fed from the sea-ports chased the irish through the winter months, when the trees were bare and naked and the kine without milk, killing every living thing and burning every granary of corn, so that famine should slay what the sword had lost. out of the woods the famishing irish came creeping on their hands, for their legs would not bear them, speaking like ghosts crying out of their graves, if they found a few water-cresses flocking as to a feast; so that in short space there were none almost left and a most populous and plentiful country suddenly left void of man and beast--a place where no voice was heard in ears save woe and fear and grief, a place where there was no pause for consolation nor appearance of joy on face. thus according to the english king's forecast was "the strength of the irish diminished and their captains taken from them." one great house after another was swept out of irish life. in the great earl of kildare died of a broken heart in the tower at the news that his son had been betrayed by a forged letter into a rising. his five brothers and his son, young silken thomas, captured by a false pledge of safety, were clapped all six of them into the tower and hanged in london. the six outraged corpses at tyburn marked the close of the first and last experiment in which a great ruler, sharing the blood of the two races, practised in the customs of both countries, would have led ireland in a way of peace, and brought about through equal prosperity and order a lasting harmony between the english and irish people. three hundred years later an old blackened pedigree kept in the tower showed against the names of half the fitzgeralds up to that time the words "beheaded" or "attainted"--so terrible were the long efforts to extinguish the talent and subdue the patriotism of that great family. ormond, too, was "to be bridled." it was said his house was in no mood to hand over the "rule and obedience" of south ireland to the king. at a feast at ely house in holborn ( ) the earl and seventeen of his followers lay dead out of thirty-five who had been poisoned. no inquiry was made into that crime. "god called him to his mercy," the irish said of this patriot ormond, "before he could see that day after which doubtless he longed and looked--the restitution of the house of kildare." his son was held fast in london to be brought up, as far as education could do it, an englishman. the third line of the anglo-norman leaders was laid low. the earl of desmond, after twenty-five years of alternate prison and war, saw the chief leaders of his house hanged or slain, before he himself was killed in : and his wretched son, born in the tower, was brought from that prison to be shown to his heart-broken people--stunted in body, enfeebled in mind, half an idiot, a protestant--"the tower earl," "the queen's earl," cried the people. the irish chiefs were also broken by guile and assassination. o'brien was separated from his people by a peerage ( ), an english inauguration without the ancient rites as head of his lands, and an english guard of soldiers ( ). that house played no further part in the irish struggle. the chief warrior of the north and terror of elizabeth's generals was shane o'neill. the deputy sidney devised many plots to poison or kill the man he could not conquer, and at last brought over from scotland hired assassins who accomplished the murder ( ). a map made in the reign of elizabeth marked the place of the crime that relieved england of her greatest fear--"here shane o'neill was slain." after him the struggle of the north to keep their land and independence was maintained by negotiation and by war for forty years, under the leading of the greatest of irish statesmen and generals hugh o'neill earl of tyrone, and the soldier-patriot aedh ruadh o'donnell earl of tirconnell. english intrigue triumphed when red hugh was poisoned by a secret agent ( ) and when by a crafty charge of conspiracy his brother rory o'donnell and hugh o'neill were driven from their country ( ). the flight of the earls marked the destruction by violence of the old gaelic polity--that federation of tribes which had made of their common country the storehouse of europe for learning, the centre of the noblest mission-work that the continent ever knew, the home of arts and industries, the land of a true democracy where men held the faith of a people owning their soil, instructed in their traditions, and themselves guardians of their national life. henry viii had found ireland a land of irish civilisation and law, with a people living by tribal tenure, and two races drawing together to form a new self-governing nation. a hundred years later, when elizabeth and james i had completed his work, all the great leaders, anglo-irish and irish, had disappeared, the people had been half exterminated, alien and hostile planters set in their place, tribal tenure obliterated, every trace of irish law swept clean from the irish statute-book, and an english form of state government effectively established. was this triumph due to the weakness of tribal government and the superior value of the feudal land tenure? how far, in fact, did the irish civilisation invite and lend itself to this destruction? it has been said that it was by irish soldiers that irish liberties were destroyed. the tudors and their councillors were under no such illusions. their fear was that the irish, if they suspected the real intention of the english, would all combine in one war; and in fact when the purpose of the government became clear in ireland an english army of conquest had to be created. "have no dread nor fear," cried red hugh to his irishmen, "of the great numbers of the soldiers of london, nor of the strangeness of their weapons and arms." order after order went out to "weed the bands of irish," to purge the army of all "such dangerous people." soldiers from england and from berwick were brought over at double the pay of the irish. for warmth and comfort they were clothed in irish dress, only distinguished by red crosses on back and breast; and so the sight was seen of english soldiers in irish clothing tearing from irish men and women their irish garments as the forbidden dress of traitors and rebels. some official of elizabeth's time made a list to please the english of a few names of irishmen traitorously slain by other irishmen. there were murderers who had been brought up from childhood in an english house, detached from their own people; others were sent out to save their lives by bringing the head of a "rebel." the temper of the irish people is better seen in the constant fidelity with which the whole people of ulster and of munster sheltered and protected for years o'neill and desmond and many another leader with a heavy price on his head. not the poorest herdsman of the mountains touched the english gold. the military difficulties of the irish, however, were such as to baffle skill and courage. england had been drilled by the kings that conquered her, and by the foreign wars she waged, into a powerful military nation by land and sea. newly discovered gunpowder gave henry vii the force of artillery. henry viii had formed the first powerful fleet. the new-found gold of brazil, the wealth of the spanish main, had made england immensely rich. in this moment of growing strength the whole might of great britain was thrown on ireland, the smaller island. the war, too, had a peculiar animosity; the fury of protestant fanaticism was the cloak for the king's ambition, the resolve of english traders to crush irish competition, the greed of prospective planters. no motive was lacking to increase its violence. ireland, on the other hand, never conquered, and contemplating no conquest on her part, was not organised as an aggressive and military nation. her national spirit was of another type. but whatever had been her organisation it is doubtful whether any device could have saved her from the force of the english invasion. dublin could never be closed from within against enemies coming across the sea. the island was too small to give any means of escape to defeated armies while they were preparing for a new defence. they could not disappear, for example, like the dutch of the cape colony into vast desert regions which gave them shelter while they built up a new state. every fugitive within the circuit of ireland could be presently found and hunted down. the tribal system, too, which the tudor sovereigns found, was no longer in full possession of ireland; the defence was now carried on not by a tribal gaelic people but by a mixed race, half feudal and half tribal by tradition. but it was the old irish inheritance of national freedom which gave to ireland her desperate power of defence, so that it was only after such prodigious efforts of war and plantation that the bodies of her people were subdued, while their minds still remained free and unenslaved. if, moreover, the irish system had disappeared so had the english. as we shall see the battle between the feudal tradition and the tribal tradition in ireland had ended in the violent death of both. chapter ix the national faith of the irish _c._ --_c._ we have seen already two revivals of irish life, when after the danish settlement, and after the norman, the native civilisation triumphed. even now, after confiscations and plantations, the national tradition was still maintained with unswerving fidelity. amid contempt, persecution, proscription, death, the outcast irish cherished their language and poetry, their history and law, with the old pride and devotion. in that supreme and unselfish loyalty to their race they found dignity in humiliation and patience in disaster, and have left, out of the depths of their poverty and sorrow, one of the noblest examples in history. their difficulties were almost inconceivable. the great dispersion had begun of irish deported, exiled, or cast out by emigration. twenty thousand irish were reported in a single island of the west indies in ; thirty thousand were said to be wandering about europe; in four thousand soldiers were transported to flanders for the war of the king of spain. numbers went to seek the education forbidden at home in a multitude of irish colleges founded abroad. they became chancellors of universities, professors, high officials in every european state--a kerry man physician to the king of poland; another kerry man confessor to the queen of portugal and sent by the king on an embassy to louis xiv; a donegal man, o'glacan, physician and privy councillor to the king of france, and a very famed professor of medicine in the universities of toulouse and bologna ( - ); and so on. we may ask whether in the history of the world there was cast out of any country such genius, learning, and industry, as the english flung, as it were, into the sea. with every year the number of exiles grew. "the same to me," wrote one, "are the mountain or ocean, ireland or the west of spain; i have shut and made fast the gates of sorrow over my heart." as for the irish at home, every vestige of their tradition was doomed--their religion was forbidden, and the staff of patrick and cross of columcille destroyed, with every other national relic; their schools were scattered, their learned men hunted down, their books burned; native industries were abolished; the inauguration chairs of their chiefs were broken in pieces, and the law of the race torn up, codes of inheritance, of land tenure, of contract between neighbours or between lord and man. the very image of justice which the race had fashioned for itself was shattered. love of country and every attachment of race and history became a crime, and even irish language and dress were forbidden under penalty of outlawry or excommunication. "no more shall any laugh there," wrote the poet, "or children gambol; music is choked, the irish language chained." the people were wasted by thousands in life and in death. the invaders supposed the degradation of the irish race to be at last completed. "their youth and gentry are destroyed in the rebellion or gone to france," wrote one: "those that are left are destitute of horses, arms and money, capacity and courage. five in six of the irish are poor, insignificant slaves, fit for nothing but to hew wood and draw water." such were the ignorant judgments of the new people, an ignorance shameful and criminal. the irish, meanwhile, at home and in the dispersion, were seeking to save out of the wreck their national traditions. three centres were formed of this new patriotic movement--in rome, in louvain, and in ireland itself. an irish college of franciscans was established in rome ( ) by the efforts of luke wadding, a waterford man, divine of the spanish embassy at rome. the pope granted to the irish the church of st. isidore, patron of madrid, which had been occupied by spanish franciscans. luke wadding, founder and head of the college, was one of the most extraordinary men of his time for his prodigious erudition, the greatest school-man of that age, and an unchanging and impassioned patriot. he prepared the first full edition of the works of the great irish scholastic philosopher duns scotus, with the help of his fellow-countrymen, thomas strange, anthony hickey, john ponce of cork, hugh maccawell of tyrone; and projected a general history of ireland for which materials were being collected in by thomas walsh, archbishop of cashel. the college was for the service of "the whole nation," for all irishmen, no matter from what province, "so long as they be irish." they were bound by rule to speak irish, and an irish book was read during meals. no spot should be more memorable to irishmen than the site of the franciscan college of st. antony of padua at louvain. a small monastery of the frères de charité contains the few pathetic relics that are left of the noble company of irish exiles who gathered there from for mutual comfort and support, and of the patriots and soldiers laid to rest among them--o'neills, o'dohertys, o'donnells, lynches, murphys, and the rest, from every corner of ireland. "here i break off till morning," wrote one who laboured on a collection of irish poems from to , "and i in gloom and grief; and during my life's length unless only that i might have one look at ireland." the fathers had mostly come of the old irish literary clans, and were trained in the traditional learning of their race; such as father o'mulloy, distinguished in his deep knowledge of the later poetic metres, of which he wrote in his latin and irish grammar; or bonaventura o'h'eoghasa, trained among the poets of ireland, who left "her holy hills of beauty" with lamentation to "try another trade" with the louvain brotherhood. steeped in irish lore the franciscans carried on the splendid record of the irish clergy as the twice-beloved guardians of the inheritance of their race. "those fathers," an irish scholar of that day wrote, "stood forward when she (ireland) was reduced to the greatest distress, nay, threatened with certain destruction, and vowed that the memory of the glorious deeds of their ancestors should not be consigned to the same earth that covered the bodies of her children ... that the ancient glory of ireland should not be entombed by the same convulsion which deprived the irish of the lands of their fathers and of all their property." more fortunate than scholars in ireland they had a printing-press; and used it to send out irish grammars, glossaries, catechisms, poems. hugh mac an-bhaird of donegal undertook to compile the _acta sanctorum_, for which a lay-brother, michael o'clery, collected materials in ireland for ten years, and patrick fleming of louth gathered records in europe. at hugh's death, in , the task was taken up by colgan, born at culdaff on the shore of inishowen (+ ). the work of the fathers was in darkness and sorrow. "i am wasting and perishing with grief," wrote hugh bourke to luke wadding, "to see how insensibly nigher and nigher draws the catastrophe which must inflict mortal wounds upon our country." ireland herself, however, remained the chief home of historical learning in the broad national sense. finghin mac carthy riabhach, a munster chief, skilled in old and modern irish, latin, english, and spanish, wrote a history of ireland to the norman invasion in the beautiful hand taught him by irish scribes; it was written while he lay imprisoned in london from to , mad at times through despair. one of a neighbouring race of seafaring chiefs, o'sullivan beare, an emigrant and captain in the spanish navy, published in his indignant recital of the elizabethan wars in ireland. it was in hiding from the president of munster, in the wood of aharlo, that father geoffrey keating made (before ) his irish history down to the norman settlement--written for the masses in clear and winning style, the most popular book perhaps ever written in irish, and copied throughout the country by hundreds of eager hands. in the north meanwhile michael o'clery and his companions, two o'clerys of donegal, two o'maelchonaires of roscommon, and o'duibhgeanain of leitrim, were writing the _annals of the four masters_ ( - ); all of them belonging to hereditary houses of chroniclers. in that time of sorrow, fearing the destruction of every record of his people, o'clery travelled through all ireland to gather up what could be saved, "though it was difficult to collect them to one place." there is still preserved a manuscript by caimhin, abbot of iniscaltra about , which was given to o'clery by the neighbouring mac brodys who had kept it safe for a thousand years. the books were carried to the huts and cottages where the friars of donegal lived round their ruined monastery; from them the workers had food and attendance, while fergal o'gara, a petty chieftain of sligo descended from olioll, king of munster in , gave them a reward for their labours. another o'clery wrote the story of aedh ruadh o'donnell, his prisons and his battles, and the calamity to ireland of his defeat. "then were lost besides nobility and honour, generosity and great deeds, hospitality and goodness, courtesy and noble birth, polish and bravery, strength and courage, valour and constancy, the authority and the sovereignty of the irish of erin to the end of time." in galway a group of scholars laid, in lynch's words, "a secure anchorage" for irish history. dr. john lynch, the famous apologist of the irish, wrote there his historical defence of his people. to spread abroad their history he translated into latin keating's book. for the same purpose his friend, tuileagna o'maelchonaire, a distinguished irish scholar, translated the _annals of ulster_ into english. o'flaherty of moycullen in galway, a man of great learning, wrote on irish antiquities "with exactness, diligence and judgment." "i live," he said, "a banished man within the bounds of my native soil, a spectator of others enriched by my birthright, an object of condoling to my relations and friends, and a condoler of their miseries." his land confiscated ( ), stripped at last of his manuscripts as well as of his other goods, he died in miserable poverty in extreme old age ( ). to galway came also dualtach mac firbis ( - ), of a family that had been time out of mind hereditary historians in north connacht. he learned in one of the old irish schools of law in tipperary latin, english, and greek. amid the horrors of cromwell's wars he carried out a prodigious work on the genealogies of the clans, the greatest, perhaps, that exists in any country; and wrote on their saints, their kings, their writers, on the chronicles and on the laws; in moderate prosperity and in extreme adversity constantly devoted to the preservation of irish history. in his old age he lived, like other irish scholars, a landless sojourner on the estates that had once belonged to his family and race; the last of the hereditary sennachies of ireland he wandered on foot from house to house, every irish door opened to him for his learning after their undying custom, till at the age of eighty-five he was murdered by a crofton when he was resting in a house on his way to dublin. in connacht, too, lived tadhg o'roddy of leitrim, a diligent collector of irish manuscripts, who gathered thirty books of law, and many others of philosophy, poetry, physic, genealogies, mathematics, romances, and history; and defended against the english the character of the old law and civilisation of ireland. it would be long to tell of the workers in all the irish provinces--the lawyers hiding in their bosoms the genealogies and tenures of their clans--the scribes writing annals and genealogies, to be carried, perhaps, when irishmen gathered as for a hurling-match and went out to one of their old places of assembly, there to settle their own matters by their ancient law. no printing-press could be set up among the irish; they were driven back on oral tradition and laborious copying by the pen. thus for about a hundred years keating's _history_ was passed from hand to hand after the old manner in copies made by devoted irish hands (one of them a "farmer"), in leitrim, tipperary, kildare, clare, limerick, kilkenny, all over the country; it was only in that dermot o'conor translated it into english and printed it in dublin. it is amazing how amid the dangers of the time scribes should be found to re-write and re-edit the mass of manuscripts, those that were lost and those that have escaped. the poets were still the leaders of national patriotism. the great "contention of the poets"--"iomarbhagh na bhfiledh"--a battle that lasted for years between the bards of the o'briens and the o'donnells, in which the bards of every part of ireland joined--served to rouse the pride of the irish in their history amid their calamities under james i. the leader of the argument, tadhg mac daire, lord of an estate with a castle as chief poet of thomond, was hurled over a cliff in his old age by a cromwellian soldier with the shout, "say your rann now, little man!" tadhg o'h'uiginn of sligo (+ ), eochaidh o'h'eoghasa of fermanagh, were the greatest among very many. bards whose names have often been forgotten spread the poems of the ossianic cycle, and wrote verses of several kinds into which a new gloom and despair entered-- "though yesterday seemed to me long and ill, yet longer still was this dreary day." the bards were still for a time trained in "the schools"--low thatched buildings shut away by a sheltering wood, where students came for six months of the year. none were admitted who could not read and write, and use a good memory; none but those who had come of a bardic tribe, and of a far district, lest they should be distracted by friends and relations. the scottish gaels and the irish were united as of old in the new literature; irish bards and harpers were as much at home in the highlands and in the isles as in ireland, and the poems of the irish bards were as popular there as in munster. thus the unity of feeling of the whole race was preserved and the bards still remained men who belonged to their country rather than to a clan or territory. but with the exile of the irish chiefs, with the steady ruin of "the schools," poets began to throw aside the old intricate metres and the old words no longer understood, and turned to the people, putting away "dark difficult language" to bring literature to the common folk: there were even translations made for those who were setting their children to learn the english instead of their native tongue. born of an untold suffering, a burst of melody swept over ireland, scores and scores of new and brilliant metres, perhaps the richest attempt to convey music in words ever made by man. in that unfathomed experience, they tell how seeking after erin over all obstacles, they found her fettered and weeping, and for their loyalty she gave them the last gift left to her, the light of poetry. in leinster of the english, "the cemetery of the valorous gael," irish learning had a different story. there it seemed for a moment that it might form a meeting-point between the new race and the old, joining together, as the catholics put it, "our commonwealth men," a people compounded of many nations, some irish by birth and descent, others by descent only, others neither by descent nor by birth but by inhabitation of one soil; but all parts of one body politic, acknowledging one god, conjoined together in allegiance to one and the same sovereign, united in the fruition of the selfsame air, and tied in subsistence upon this our natural soil whereupon we live together. a tiny group of scholars in dublin had begun to study irish history. sir james ware ( - ), born there of an english family, "conceived a great love for his native country and could not bear to see it aspersed by some authors, which put him upon doing it all the justice he could in his writings." he spared no cost in buying valuable manuscripts, kept an irish secretary to translate, and employed for eleven years the great scholar o'flaherty whose help gave to his work its chief value. ussher, archbishop of armagh, also born in dublin, devoted himself to the study of irish antiquities. baron d'aungier, master of the rolls, put into writing every point which he could find in original documents "which for antiquity or singularity might interest this country." the enthusiasm of learning drew together protestant and catholic, anglo-irish and irish. all these men were in communication with luke wadding in rome through thomas strange the franciscan, his intimate friend; they sent their own collections of records to help him in his catholic history of irish saints, "being desirous that wadding's book should see the light," wishing "to help him in his work for ireland," begging to see "the veriest trifle" that he wrote. the noblest english scholar was bishop bedell, who while provost established an irish lecture in trinity college, had the chapter during commons read in irish, and employed a sheridan of cavan to translate the old testament into irish. as bishop he braved the anger of the government by declaring the hardships of the catholic irish, and by circulating a catechism in english and irish. bitterly did ussher reproach him for such a scandal at which the professors of the gospel did all take offence, and for daring to adventure that which his brethren had been "so long abuilding," the destruction of the irish language. the irish alone poured out their love and gratitude to bedell; they protected him in the war of ; the insurgent chieftains fired volleys over his grave paying homage to his piety; "sit anima mea cum bedello!" cried a priest. he showed what one just man, caring for the people and speaking to them in their own tongue, could do in a few years to abolish the divisions of race and religion. the light, however, that had risen in dublin was extinguished. sympathies for the spirit of irishmen in their long history were quenched by the greed for land, the passion of commerce, and the fanaticism of ascendancy and dominion. chapter x rule of the english parliament - the aim which english kings had set before them for the last four hundred years seemed now fulfilled. the land was theirs, and the dominion. but the victory turned to dust and ashes in their hands. the "royal inheritance" of so many hopes had practically disappeared; for if the feudal system which was to give the king the land of ireland had destroyed the tribal system, it was itself dead; decaying and intolerable in england, it could no longer be made to serve in ireland. henry's dream of a royal army from ireland, "a sword and flay" at the king's use against his subjects in great britain, perished; charles i did indeed propose to use the irish fighting-men to smite into obedience england and scotland, but no king of england tried that experiment again. james ii looked to ireland, as in henry's scheme, for a safe place of refuge to fly to in danger; that, again, no king of england tried a second time. as for the king's revenues and profits, the dream of so many centuries, that too vanished: confiscations old and new which the english parliament allowed the crown for irish government left the king none the richer, and after no longer sufficed even for irish expenses. the title of "king of ireland" which henry viii had proclaimed in his own right with such high hopes, bred out of its original deception other deceptions deeper and blacker than the first. the sovereign saw his absolute tyranny gradually taken out of his hands by the parliament and middle class for their own benefit; the rule of the king was passing, the rule of the english parliament had begun. thus past history was as it were wiped out. everything in ireland was to be new. the social order was now neither feudal nor tribal, nor anything known before. other methods had been set up, without custom, tradition, or law behind them. there were two new classes, english planters and irish toilers. no old ties bound them, and no new charities. "from the anglo-irish no man of special sanctity as yet is known to have sprung," observed a gael of that day. ancient patrimony had fallen. the new aristocracy was that of the strong hand and the exploiter's greed. ordinary restraints of civilised societies were not yet born in this pushing commercial throng, where the scum of great britain, broken men or men flying from the law, hastened--"hoping to be without fear of man's justice in a land where there was nothing, or but little as yet, of the fear of god." ireland was left absolutely without guides or representatives. there were no natural leaders of the country among the new men, each fighting for his own hand; the english government permitted none among the irish. england too was being made new, with much turmoil and confusion--an england where kings were yielding to parliaments, and parliaments were being subdued to the rising commercial classes. the idea of a separate royal power and profit had disappeared and instead of it had come the rule and profit of the parliament of england, and of her noble-men, ecclesiastics, and traders in general. this new rule marked the first revolution in the english government of ireland which had happened since henry ii sat in his dublin palace. by the ancient constitution assured by compacts and grants since english laws were first brought into that country, ireland was united to the crown of england as a free and distinct kingdom, with the right of holding parliaments subject only to the king and his privy council; statutes of the english parliament had not force of law there until they had been re-enacted in ireland--which indeed was necessary by the very theory of parliaments, for there were no irish representatives in the english houses. of its mere will the parliament of england now took to itself authority to make laws for ireland in as free and uncontrolled a manner as if no irish parliament existed. the new ruling classes had neither experience nor training. regardless of any legal technicalities they simply usurped a power unlimited and despotic over a confused and shattered ireland. now was seen the full evil of government from over-sea, where before a foreign tribunal, sitting at a distance, ignorant and prejudiced, the subject people had no voice; they could dispute no lie, and could affirm no truth. this despotism grew up regardless of any theory of law or constitution. the intention was unchanged--the taking of all irish land, the rooting out of the old race from the country. adventurers were tempted by irish wealth; what had once been widely diffused among the irish tribes was gathered into the hands of a few aliens, who ruthlessly wasted the land for their own great enrichment. enormous profits fell to planters, who could get three times as much gain from an irish as from an english estate by a fierce exploiting of the natural resources of the island and of its cheap outlawed labour. forests of oak were hastily destroyed for quick profits; woods were cut down for charcoal to smelt the iron which was carried down the rivers in cunning irish boats, and what had cost £ in labour and transport sold at £ in london. the last furnace was put out in kerry when the last wood had been destroyed. where the english adventurer passed he left the land as naked as if a forest fire had swept over the country. for the exploiter's rage, for the waster's madness, more land was constantly needed. three provinces had been largely planted by --one still remained. by a prodigious fraud james i, and after him charles i in violation of his solemn promise, proposed to extirpate the irish from connacht. the maddened people were driven to arms in . the london parliament which had just opened the quarrel with the king which was to end in his beheading, seized their opportunity in ireland. instantly london city, and a house of commons consisting mainly of puritan adventurers, joined in speculations to buy up "traitors' lands," openly sold in london at £ for a thousand acres in ulster or for six hundred in munster, and so on in every province. it was a cheap bargain, the value of forfeited lands being calculated by parliament later at £ , for a thousand acres. the more rebels the more forfeitures, and every device of law and fraud was used to fling the whole people into the war, either in fact or in name, and so destroy the claim of the whole of them to their lands. "wild irishmen," the english said to one another, "had nothing but the human form to show that they were men." letters were forged and printed in england, purporting to give irish news; discountenanced by parliament, they still mark the first experiment to appeal in this way to london on the irish question. parliament did its utmost to make the contest a war of extermination: it ended, in fact, in the death of little less than half the population. the commons' auction of irishmen's lands in , their conduct of a war of distinguished ferocity, these were the acts by which the irish first knew government by an english parliament. the memory of the black curse of cromwell lives among the people. he remains in ireland as the great exemplar of inhuman cruelties, standing amid these scenes of woe with praises to god for such manifest evidence of his inspiration. the speculators got their lands, outcast women and children lay on the wayside devoured by wolves and birds of prey. by order of parliament ( ) over , destitute men, women, and children from twelve years were sold into the service of english planters in virginia and the carolinas. slave-dealers were let loose over the country, and the bristol merchants did good business. with what bitter irony an irishman might contrast the "civilisation" of the english and the "barbarism" of the irish--if we talk, he said, about civility and a civil manner of contract of selling and buying, there is no doubt that the anglo-irish born in cities have had more opportunity to acquire civility than the old irish; but if the question be of civility, of good manners, of liberality, of hospitality, and charity towards all, these virtues dwelt among the irish. kings were restored to carry out the will of parliament. charles ii at their bidding ignored the treaty of his father that the irish who submitted should return to their lands ( ): at the mere appearance of keeping promise to a few hundred catholic landowners out of thousands, the protestant planters sent out their threats of insurrection. a deeper misery was reached when william iii led his army across the boyne and the shannon ( ). in grave danger and difficulty he was glad to win peace by the treaty of limerick, in which the irish were promised the quiet exercise of their religion. the treaty was immediately broken. the english parliament objected to any such encouragement of irish papists, and demanded that no pardons should be given or estates divided save by their advice, and william said no word to uphold the public faith. the pledge of freedom of worship was exchanged for the most infamous set of penal laws ever placed on a statute-book. the breaking of the treaty of limerick, conspicuous among the perfidies to ireland, inaugurated the century of settled rule by the parliament of england ( - ). its first care was to secure to english protestants their revenues in ireland; the planters, one-fourth of the people of ireland, were established as owners of four-fifths of irish soil; and one-half of their estates, the land confiscated under cromwell and william, they held by the despotic grant of the english parliament. this body, having outlawed four thousand irishmen, and seized a million and a half of their acres, proceeded to crush the liberties of its own english settlers by simply issuing statutes for ireland of its sole authority. the acts were as tyrannical in their subject as in their origin. one ( ), which ordered that no catholic should sit in the irish houses, deprived three-fourths of the people of representatives, and left to one-fourth alone the right of citizens. some english judges decided, without and against irish legal opinion, that the privy councils in dublin and london had power to alter irish bills before sending them to the king. "if an angel came from heaven that was a privy councillor i would not trust my liberty with him one moment," said an english member of that time. all liberties were thus rooted out. the planters' rights were overthrown as pitilessly as those of the irish they had expelled. molyneux, member for dublin university, set forth in the "case of ireland." he traced its constitution for five centuries; showed that historically there had never been a "conquest" of ireland, and that all its civil liberties were grounded on compact and charter; and declared that his native land shared the claims of all mankind to justice. "to tax me without consent is little better, if at all, than downright robbing me. i am sure the great patriots of liberty and property, the free people of england, cannot think of such a thing but with abhorrence." "there may be ill consequences," he cried, "if the irish come to think their rights and liberties were taken away, their parliaments rendered nugatory, and their lives and fortunes left to depend on the will of a legislature wherein they are not parties." the "ill consequences" were seen seventy years later when molyneux' book became the text-book of americans in their rising against english rule; and when anglo-irish defenders of their own liberties were driven to make common cause with their irish compatriots--for "no one or more men," said molyneux, "can by nature challenge any right, liberty, or freedom, or any ease in his property, estate, or conscience which all other men have not an equally just claim to." but that day was far off. for the moment the irish parliament deserved and received entire contempt from england. the gentry who had accepted land and power by the arbitrary will of the english house of commons dared not dispute the tyranny that was the warrant of their property: "i hope," was the ironic answer, "the honourable member will not question the validity of his title." with such an argument at hand, the english parliament had no need of circumspection or of soft words. it simply condemned molyneux and his remonstrance, demanded of the king to maintain the subordination of ireland, and to order the journals of its parliaments to be laid before the houses at westminster; and on the same day required of him, since the irish were "dependent on and protected by england in the enjoyment of all they had," to forbid them to continue their woollen trade, but leave it entire to england. in it declared its power at all times to make laws which should bind the people of ireland. thus an english parliament which had fought for its own liberties established a hierarchy of tyranny for ireland: the anglo-irish tied under servitude to england, and the irish chained under an equal bondage to the anglo-irish. as one of the governors of ireland wrote a hundred years later, "i think great britain may still easily manage the protestants, and the protestants the catholics." such was the servile position of english planters. they had made their bargain. to pay the price of wealth and ascendency they sold their own freedom and the rights of their new country. the smaller number, said burke, were placed in power at the expense of the civil liberties and properties of the far greater, and at the expense of the civil liberties of the whole. ireland was now degraded to a subject colony. the government never proposed that englishmen in ireland should be on equal terms with english in england. stringent arrangements were made to keep ireland low. the habeas corpus act was suspended while the english parliament ruled. judges were removable at pleasure. precautions were taken against the growth of "an irish interest." by a variety of devices the parliament of english protestants was debased to a corrupt and ignoble servitude. so deep was their subjection that ireland was held in england to be "no more than a remote part of their dominion, which was not accustomed to figure on the theatre of politics." government by dublin castle was directed in the sole interest of england; the greatest posts in the castle, the law, the church, were given to englishmen, "king-fishers," as the nickname went of the churchmen. "i fear much blame here," said the english premier in , "...if i consent to part with the disposal of these offices which have been so long and so uniformly bestowed upon members of the british parliament." castle officials were expected to have a single view to english interests. in speeches from the throne governors of ireland formally spoke of the irish people, the majority of their subjects, as "the common enemy"; they were scarcely less suspicious of the english protestants; "it is worth turning in your mind," one wrote to pitt, "how the violence of both parties might be turned on this occasion to the advancement of england." one tyranny begot another. irish members, having no liberties to defend, and no country to protect, devoted themselves to the security of their property--its security and increase. all was quiet. there was no fear in ireland of a rising for the pretender. the irish, true to their ancient horror of violence for religion, never made a religious war, and never desired that which was ever repugnant to the irish spirit, temporal ascendency for a spiritual faith. their only prayer was for freedom in worship--that same prayer which irish catholics had presented in the parliament of james i ( ), "indented with sorrow, signed with tears, and delivered in this house of peace and liberty with our disarmed hands." protestants had never cause for fear in ireland on religious grounds. in queen mary's persecution protestants flying from england had taken shelter in ireland among irish catholics, and not a hand was raised against them there. bitter as were the poets against the english exterminators, no irish curse has been found against the protestant for his religion, even through the black time of the penal laws. the parliament, however, began a series of penal laws against irish catholics. they were forbidden the use of their religion, almost every means of livelihood, every right of a citizen, every family affection. their possessions were scattered, education was denied them, when a father died his children were handed over to a protestant guardian. "the law," said the leading judges, "does not suppose any such person to exist as an irish roman catholic." they were only recognised "for repression and punishment." statutes framed to demoralise and debase the people, so as to make them for ever unfit for self-government, pursued the souls of the victims to the second and third generation. in this ferocious violence the law-makers were not moved by fanaticism. their rapacity was not concerned with the religion of the irish, but only with their property and industry. the conversion of a catholic was not greatly desired; so long as there were papists the planters could secure their lands, and use them as slaves, "worse than negroes." laws which would have sounded infamous if directed openly to the seizing of property, took on a sacred character as a religious effort to suppress false doctrine. one-fiftieth part of ireland was all that was left to irish catholics, utterly excluded for ever from the inheritance of their fathers. "one single foot of land there is not left us," rose their lament, "no, not what one may make his bed upon." "see all that are without a bed except the furze of the mountains, the bent of the curragh, and the bog-myrtle beneath their bodies. under frost, under snow, under rain, under blasts of wind, without a morsel to eat but watercress, green grass, sorrel of the mountain, or clover of the hills. och! my pity to see their nobles forsaken!" and yet, in spite of this success, the anglo-irish had made a bad bargain. cut off from their fellow-countrymen, having renounced the right to have a country, the protestant land-hunters were no more respected in england than in ireland. the english parliament did with them as it chose. their subjection tempted the commercial classes. to safeguard their own profits of commerce and industry english traders made statutes to annihilate irish competition. they forbade carrying of cattle or dairy stuff to england, they forbade trade in soap or candles; in cloth, in glass, in linen save of the coarsest kind; the increase of corn was checked; it was proposed to stop irish fisheries. the wool which they might not use at home must be exported to england alone. they might not build ships. from old time ireland had traded across the gaulish sea: her ports had seen the first discoverers of america. but now all her great harbours to the west with its rising american trade were closed: no merchant ship crossing the atlantic was allowed to load at an irish port or to unload. the abundance of harbours, once so full of commerce, were now, said swift, "of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon." in all trade was at a stand, the country bare of money, "want and misery in every face." it was unfortunate, englishmen said, that ireland had been by the act of god doomed to poverty--so isolated in geographical position, so lacking in industrial resources, inhabited by a people so indolent in tillage, and unfitted by their religion to work. meanwhile they successfully pushed their own business in a country which they allowed to make nothing for itself. their manufacturers sent over yearly two millions of their goods, more than to any other country save their american colonies, and took the raw material of ireland, while irish workers were driven out on the hillsides to starve. the planters' parliament looked on in barren helplessness. they had no nation behind them. they could lead no popular resistance. they had no call to public duty. and the english knew it well. ministers heaped up humiliations; they quartered on irish revenues all the pensioners that could not safely be proposed to a free parliament in england--the mistresses of successive kings and their children, german relations of the hanoverians, useful politicians covered by other names, a queen of denmark banished for misconduct, a sardinian ambassador under a false title, a trailing host of englishmen--pensions steadily increasing from £ , to over £ , . some £ , was at last yearly sent over to england for absentees, pensions, government annuities, and the like. a parliament servile and tyrannical could not even pretend to urge on the government that its measures, as a patriot said, should sometimes "diverge towards public utility." it had abandoned all power save that of increasing the sorrows of the people. a double corruption was thus proceeding. the english parliament desired to make the irish houses for ever unfit for self-government. the irish parliament was seeking to perform the same office for the irish people under it. the old race meanwhile, three-fourths of the dwellers in ireland, were brought under consideration of the rulers only as objects of some new rigour or severity. their cry was unheard by an absent and indifferent "conqueror," and the only reform the country ever knew was an increase in the army that maintained the alien rulers and protected their crimes. in neither parliament had the irish any voice. in courts where the law was administered by protestant landlords and their agents, as magistrates, grand juries, bailiffs, lawyers, and the rest--"full of might and injustice, without a word for the irish in the law," as an irish poem said, who would not even write the irish names, but scornfully cried after all of them teig and diarmuid--the ancient tongue of the people and their despised birth left them helpless. once a chief justice in tipperary conducted trials with fairness and humanity: "for about ten miles from clonmel both sides of the road were lined with men, women, and children, who, as he passed along, kneeled down and supplicated heaven to bless him as their protector and guardian angel." the people poured from "this sod of misery" across the sea. in the service of france alone , irish soldiers were reckoned to have died between and . uncounted thousands from north and south sailed to america. irish catholics went there in a constant stream from till . the protestant settlers followed them in the eighteenth century. like the kings of england, the parliament of the english aristocracy and commercial magnates had failed to exploit ireland to their advantage. for a hundred years ( - ) they ruled the irish people with the strictest severity that human ingenuity could devise. a "strong government," purely english, was given its opportunity--prolonged, undisturbed, uncontrolled--to advance "the king's service," the dependency of ireland upon england, and "the comfort or security of any english in it." a multitude of statesmen put their hands to the work. commercial men in england inspired the policy. english clergy were sent over to fill all the higher posts of the church, and were the chief leaders of the secular government. such a power very rarely falls to the rulers in any country. and in the end there was no advantage to any party. some astute individuals heaped up an ignoble wealth, but there was no profit to ireland, to england, or to the empire. the irish people suffered a long agony unmatched, perhaps, in european history. few of the protestant country gentry had established their fortunes; their subservience which debarred them from public duty, their privilege of calling in english soldiers to protect them from the results of every error or crime, had robbed them of any high intelligence in politics or science in their business of land management, and thus doubly impoverished them. england on her part had thrown into the sea from her dominion a greater wealth of talent, industry, and bravery than had ever been exiled from any country in the world: there was not a country in europe, and not an occupation, where irishmen were not in the first rank--as field-marshals, admirals, ambassadors, prime ministers, scholars, physicians, merchants, founders of mining industries, soldiers, and labourers. in exchange for this an incompetent and inferior landed gentry was established in ireland. instead of profit for the government there was plain bankruptcy--"england," it was said, "must now either support this kingdom, or allow her the means of supporting herself." as for the empire, the colonies had been flooded with the men that england had wronged. even the protestant exiles from ulster went to america as "sons of st. patrick." "to shun persecution and designed ruin" by the english government, protestants and catholics had gone, and their money, their arms, the fury of their wrath, were spent in organising the american war. irishmen were at every meeting, every council, every battle. their indignation was a white flame of revolt that consumed every fear and vacillation around it. that long, deep, and bitter experience bore down the temporisers, and sent out men trained in suffering to triumph over every adversity. brigadier-general owen sullivan, born at limerick during the siege, was publicly thanked by washington and by the congress. commodore john barry, a wexford man, "father of the american navy," was washington's commander-in-chief of the naval forces of the states. charles thompson of strabane was secretary of the continental congress. eight irishmen, passionate organisers of the revolt, signed the declaration of independence. after the war an irishman prepared the declaration for publication from jefferson's rough draft; an irishman's son first publicly read it; an irishman first printed and published it. we have seen the uncontrolled rule of english kings and english parliaments. such was the end of their story. there was another experiment yet to be tried. chapter xi the rise of a new ireland - it might have seemed impossible amid such complicated tyrannies to build up a united country. but the most ferocious laws could not wholly destroy the kindly influences of ireland, the essential needs of men, nor the charities of human nature. there grew up too the union of common suffering. once more the people of ireland were being "brayed together in a mortar" to compact them into a single commonwealth. the irish had never lost their power of absorbing new settlers in their country. the cromwellians complained that thousands of the english who came over under elizabeth had "become one with the irish as well in affinity as in idolatry." forty years later these cromwellians planted on irish farms suffered themselves the same change; their children could not speak a word of english and became wholly irish in religion and feeling. seven years after the battle of the boyne the same influence began to turn irish the very soldiers of william. the civilisation, the piety, the charm of irish life told as of old. in the country places, far from the government, kindly friendships grew up between neighbours, and protestants by some device of goodwill would hide a catholic from some atrocious penalty, would save his arms from being confiscated, or his children from being brought up as protestants. the gentry in general spoke irish with the people, and common interests grew up in the land where they lived together. the irish had seen the fires of destruction pass over them, consuming the humanities of their law, the honour of their country, and the relics of their fathers: the cry of their lamentation, said an italian in , was more expressive than any music he had heard of the great masters of the continent. the penal days have left their traces. we may still see in hidden places of the woods some cave or rock where the people gathered in secret to celebrate mass. there remain memorials of irishmen, cast out of their lands, who to mark their final degradation had been driven to the livelihood which the new english held in the utmost contempt--the work of their hands; their dead bodies were carried to the ruined abbeys, and proudly laid in the roofless naves and chancels, under great sculptured slabs bearing the names of once noble families, and deeply carved with the instruments of the dead man's trade, a plough, the tools of a shoemaker or a carpenter or a mason. in a far church in connemara by the atlantic, a burke raised in a sculptured tomb to the first of his race who had come to connacht, the figure in coat of mail and conical helmet finely carved in limestone. monuments lie heaped in burris, looking out on the great ocean; and in all the sacred places of the irish. by their industry and skill in the despised business of handicrafts and commerce the outlaws were fast winning most of the ready money of the country into their hands. it would be a noble achievement, said swift, to abolish the irish language, which prevented "the irish from being tamed." but swift's popularity with the native irish was remarkable, and when he visited cavan he was interested by verses of its poets and wrote an english ballad founded on the plearáca ui ruairc; he helped the rector of anna (belturbet) in his endeavours to have prayers read in irish in the established churches in remote places. the protestant bishops and clergy in general, holding that their first duty was not to minister to the souls of irishmen, but rather as agents of the government to bring irish speech "into entire disuse," refused to learn the only language understood by the people. clergy and officials alike knew nothing whatever of the true life of ireland. now and then there was a rare exception, and the respect which philip skelton showed for the religious convictions of a country-bred maidservant should be remembered. but in general the clergy and all other political agents opposed kindly intercourse of the two races. the fiction of complete irish barbarism was necessary to maintain the protestant ascendency, and in later days to defend it. the whole literature of the irish was therefore cast aside as waste refuse. their race is never mentioned in histories of the eighteenth century save as an indistinct and obscure mass of wretchedness, lawlessness, and ignorance, lying in impenetrable darkness, whence no voice ever arose even of protest or complaint, unless the pains of starvation now and again woke the most miserable from their torpor to some wild outrage, to be repressed by even more savage severity. so fixed and convenient did this lying doctrine prove that it became a truism never challenged. to this day all manuscripts of the later irish times have been rejected from purchase by public funds, to the irrevocable loss of a vast mass of irish material. by steadily neglecting everything written in the native tongue of the country, the protestant planters, one-fourth of the inhabitants, secured to themselves the sole place in the later history of ireland. a false history engendered a false policy, which in the long run held no profit for the empire, england, or ireland. unsuspected by english settlers, the irish tradition was carried across the years of captivity by these exiles in their own land. descendants of literary clans, historians and poets and scribes were to be found in farmhouses, working at the plough and spade. some wrote prose accounts of the late wars, the history of their tribe, the antiquities of their province, annals of ireland, and geography. the greatest of the poets was dáibhí o'bruadair of limerick, a man knowing some english and learned in irish lore, whose poems ( - ) stirred men of the cabins with lessons of their time, the laying down of arms by the irish in , sarsfield and limerick, the breaking of the treaty, the grandsons of kings working with the spade, the poor man perfected in learning, steadfast, well proved in good sense, the chaffering insolence of the new traders, the fashion of men fettering their tongues to speak the mere ghost of rough english, or turning protestant for ease. learned men showed the love of their language in the making of dictionaries and grammars to preserve, now that the great schools were broken up, the learning of the great masters of irish. thus the poet tadhg o'neachtain worked from to at a dictionary. another learned poet and lexicographer, aodh buidh maccurtin, published with conor o'begly in paris a grammar ( ) and a dictionary ( ); in his last edition of the grammar he prayed pardon for "confounding an example of the imperative with the potential mood," which he was caused to do "by the great bother of the brawling company that is round about me in this prison." there were still well-qualified scribes who copied the old heroic stories and circulated them freely all over ireland. there were some who translated religious books from french and latin into irish. "i wish to save," said charles o'conor, "as many as i can of the ancient manuscripts of ireland from the wreck which has overwhelmed everything that once belonged to us." o'conor was of sligo county. his father, like other gentlemen, had been so reduced by confiscation that he had to plough with his own hands. a franciscan sheltered in a peasant's cottage, who knew no english, taught him latin. he attended mass held secretly in a cave. amid such difficulties he gained the best learning of his unhappy time. much of the materials that o'clery had used for his _annals_ had perished in the great troubles, and o'conor began again that endless labour of irish scholars, the saving of the relics of his people's story from final oblivion. it was the passion of his life. he formed an irish library, and copied with his own hand large volumes of extracts from books he could not possess. having obtained o'clery's own manuscript of the _annals_, he had this immense work copied by his own scribe; and another copy made in by hugh o'mulloy, an excellent writer, for his friend dr. o'fergus of dublin. he wrote for the learned, and delighted the peasants round him with the stories of their national history. it is interesting to recall that goldsmith probably knew o'conor, so that the best english of an irishman, and the best learning of an irishman at that time, were thus connected. it was the irish antiquarians and historians who in drew irishmen together into "the catholic committee"--charles o'conor, dr. curry, and wyse of waterford. o'conor by his learning preserved for them the history of their fathers. dr. curry, of a cavan family whose estates had been swept from them in and , had studied as a physician in france, and was eminent in dublin though shut out from every post; he was the first to use his research and literary powers to bring truth out of falsehood in the later irish history, and to justify the irish against the lying accusations concerning the rising of . these learned patriots combined in a movement to win for the irish some recognition before the law and some rights of citizens in their own land. countless poets, meanwhile, poured out in verse the infinite sorrow of the gaels, recalling the days when their land was filled with poet-schools and festivals, and the high hospitality of great irishmen. if a song of hope arose that the race should come to their own again, the voice of irish charity was not wanting--"having the fear of god, be ye full of alms-giving and friendliness, and forgetting nothing do ye according to the commandments, shun ye drunkenness and oaths and cursing, and do not say till death 'god damn' from your mouths." riotous laughter broke out in some; they were all, in fact, professional wits--chief among them eoghan ruadh o'sullivan from kerry, who died in ; a working man who had laboured with plough and spade, and first came into note for helping his employer's son, fresh from a french college, with an explanation of a greek passage. jacobite poems told of the lady erin as a beautiful woman flying from the insults of foreign suitors in search of her real mate--poems of fancy, for the stuarts had lost all hold on ireland. the spirit of the north rang out in a multitude of bards, whose works perished in a century of persecution and destruction. among exiles in connacht manuscripts perished, but old tradition lived on the lips of the peasants, who recited in their cabins the love-songs and religious poems of long centuries past. the people in the bareness of their poverty were nourished with a literature full of wit, imagination, feeling, and dignity. in the poorest hovels there were men skilled in a fine recitation. their common language showed the literary influence, and irish peasants even in our own day have used a vocabulary of some five thousand words, as against about eight hundred words used by peasants in england. even the village dancing at the cross-roads preserved a fine and skilled tradition. families, too, still tried to have "a scholar" in their house, for the old learning's sake. children shut out from all means of education might be seen learning their letters by copying with chalk the inscriptions on their fathers' tombstones. there were few candles, and the scholar read his books by a cabin fire in the light given by throwing upon it twigs and dried furze. manuscripts were carefully treasured, and in days when it was death or ruin to be found with an irish book they were buried in the ground or hidden in the walls. in remote places schools were maintained out of the destitution of the poor; like that one which was kept up for over a hundred years in county waterford, where the people of the surrounding districts supported "poor scholars" free of charge. there were some in kerry, some in clare, where a very remarkable group of poets sprang up. from all parts of ireland students begged their way to "the schools of munster." thus greek and latin still found their way into the labourer's cottage. in county cork, john clairech o'donnell, in remembrance of the ancient assemblies of the bards of all ireland, gathered to his house poets and learned men to recite and contend as in the old days. famous as a poet, he wrote part of a history of ireland, and projected a translation of homer into irish. but he worked in peril, flying for his life more than once before the bard-hunters; in his denunciations the english oppressor stands before us--plentiful his costly living in the high-gabled lighted-up mansion of the irish brian, but tight-closed his door, and his churlishness shut up inside with him, there in an opening between two mountains, until famine clove to the people and bowed them to his will; his gate he never opened to the moan of the starving, "and oh! may heaven of the saints be a red wilderness for james dawson!" the enthusiasm of the irish touched some of the planters. a hereditary chronicler of the o'briens who published in a vindication of the antiquities of ireland got two hundred and thirty-eight subscribers, divided about equally between english and gaelic names. wandering poets sang, as irish poets had done nine hundred years before, even in the houses of the strangers, and found in some of them a kindly friend. o'carolan, the harper and singer, was beloved by both races. a slight inequality in a village field in meath still after a hundred and fifty years recalls to irish peasants the site of the house where he was born, and at his death english and irish, protestant and catholic, gathered in an encampment of tents to do honour to his name. the magic of irish music seems even to have stirred in the landlords' parliament some dim sense of a national boast. an english nobleman coming to the parliament with a welsh harper claimed that in all ireland no such music could be heard. mr. jones of leitrim took up the challenge for an irishman of his county who "had never worn linen or woollen." the commons begged to have the trial in their house before business began, and all assembled to greet the leitrim champion. o'duibhgeanain was of an old literary clan: one of them had shared in making the _annals of the four masters_; he himself was not only a fine harper, but an excellent greek and latin scholar. he came, tall and handsome, looking very noble in his ancient garb made of beaten rushes, with a cloak or plaid of the same stuff, and a high conical cap of the same adorned with many tassels. and the house of commons gave him their verdict. james murphy, a poor bricklayer of cork, who became an architect and studied arabian antiquities in portugal and spain, gives the lament of irish scholars. "you accuse their pastors with illiterature, whilst you adopt the most cruel means of making them ignorant; and their peasantry with untractableness, whilst you deprive them of the means of civilisation. but that is not all; you have deprived them at once of their religion, their liberty, their oak, and their harp, and left them to deplore their fate, not in the strains of their ancestors, but in the sighs of oppression." to the great landlords the act of which had given them wealth was the dawn of irish civilisation. oblivion might cover all the rest, all that was not theirs. they lived in a land some few years old, not more than a man's age might cover. by degrees, however, dwellers in ireland were forced into some concern for its fortunes. swift showed to the protestants the wrongs they endured and the liberties which should be theirs, and flung his scorn on the shameful system of their slavery and their tyranny ( ). lord molesworth urged ( ) freedom of religion, schools of husbandry, relief of the poor from their intolerable burdens, the making parliament into a really representative body. bishop berkeley wrote his famous _querist_--the most searching study of the people's grief and its remedies. gradually the people of ireland were being drawn together. all classes suffered under the laws to abolish irish trade and industry. human charities were strong in men of both sides, and in the country there was a growing movement to unite the more liberal of the landowners, the dissenters of the north, and the catholics, in a common citizenship. it had proved impossible to carry out fully the penal code. no life could have gone on under its monstrous terms. there were not protestants enough to carry on all the business of the country and some "papists" had to be taken at least into the humbler forms of official work. friendly acts between neighbours diminished persecution. "let the legislature befriend us now, and we are theirs forever," was the cry of the munster peasantry, organised under o'driscoll, to the protestant parliament in . such a movement alarmed the government extremely. if, they said, religious distinctions were abolished, the protestants would find themselves secure of their position without british protection, and might they not then form a government more to the taste and wishes of the people--in fact, might not a nation begin again to live in ireland. the whole energy of the government was therefore called out to avert the rise of a united irish people. chapter xii an irish parliament - the movement of conciliation of its peoples that was shaping a new ireland, silent and unrecorded as it was, can only be understood by the astonishing history of the next fifty years, when the spirit of a nation rose again triumphant, and lesser passions fell before the love of country. the protestant gentry, who alone had free entry into public life, were of necessity the chief actors in the recorded story. but in the awakening country they had to reckon with a rising power in the catholic irish. dr. lucas, who in had begun to stir for reform and freedom, had stirred not only the english settlers but the native irish. idolised by the irish people, he raised in his _citizens' journal_ a new national protest. the pamphlet war which followed--where men argued not only on free trade and government, but on ireland itself, on its old and new races, on its irish barbarism, said some, its irish civilisation, said others--spread the idea of a common history of ireland in which all its inhabitants were concerned. in parliament too, though catholics were shut out, yet men of old irish race were to be found--men of catholic families who had accepted protestantism as a means of entering public life, chiefly by way of the law. they had not, save very rarely, put off their patriotic ardour with their old religion; of the middle class, they were braver in their outlook than the small and disheartened catholic aristocracy. if their numbers were few their ability was great, and behind them lay that vast mass of their own people whose blood they shared. it was an irishman who first roused the house of commons to remember that they had a country of their own and an "irish interest"--antony malone. this astonishing orator and parliamentarian invented a patriotic opposition ( ). a great sea in a "storm" men said of him. terror was immediately excited at his irish origin and his national feeling. dublin castle feared that he might mean emancipation from the english legislature, and in truth the constitutional dependency upon england was the object upon which malone's eye was constantly fixed. he raised again the protest of molyneux for a free parliament and constitution. he stirred "the whole nation" for "the last struggle for ireland." they and their children would be slaves, he said, if they yielded to the claim of the government that the english privy council could alter the money bills sent over by the irish parliament, or that the king had the right to apply at his will the surplus funds in the treasury. malone was defeated, but the battle had begun which in thirty years was to give to ireland her first hopes of freedom. a fresh current of thought poured through the house--free trade, free religion, a habeas corpus act, fewer pensions for englishmen, a share in law and government for irishmen, security for judges, and a parliament elected every seven years. successors of malone appeared in the house of commons in --more lawyers, men said, than any one living could remember, or "than appears in any history in this or any other kingdom upon earth." they depended, not on confiscation, but on their own abilities; they owed nothing to government, which gave all the great posts of the bar to englishmen. some freedom of soul was theirs, and manhood for the long struggle. in the issue was clearly set. the english house of commons which had passed the stamp act for the american colonies, argued that it had the right to tax ireland without her consent; and english lawyers laid down the absolute power of parliament to bind ireland by its laws. in ireland lord charlemont and some other peers declared that ireland was a distinct kingdom, with its own legislature and executive under the king. in that same year the patriots demanded that elections should be held every seven years--the first step in ireland towards a true representation, and the first blow to the dominion of an aristocracy. the english government dealt its counter-stroke. the viceroy was ordered to reside in dublin, and by making himself the source of all favours, the giver of all gratifications, to concentrate political influence in the english crown. a system of bribery began beyond all previous dreams; peerages were made by the score; and the first national debt of nearly two millions created in less than thirty years. the landowners who controlled the seats in the commons were reminded that "they held by great britain everything most dear to them, their religion, their pre-eminence, their property, their political power"; that "confiscation is their common title." "the king's business," as the government understood it, lay in "procuring the supplies which the english minister thought fit to ask, and preventing the parliament from examining into the account of previous years." meanwhile misery deepened. in thirty thousand irishmen were seeking their living on the continent, besides the vast numbers flying to america. "the wretches that remained had scarcely the appearance of human creatures." english exports to ireland sank by half-a-million, and england instead of receiving money had to send £ , for the payment of troops there. other dangers had arisen. george washington was made commander-in-chief of the forces for the american war in , and in france recognised american independence. the shores of ireland lay open to attack: the country was drained of troops. bands of volunteers were formed for its protection, protestant troops led by landlords and gentry. in a year , volunteers were enrolled ( ). ireland was no longer unarmed. what was even more important, she was no longer unrepresented. a packed parliament that had obscured the true desires of the country was silenced before the voice of the people. in the sense of a common duty, landlord and tenant, protestant and catholic, were joined; the spirit of tolerance and nationality that had been spreading through the country was openly manifested. in those times of hope and terror men's minds on both sides moved quickly. the collapse of the english system was rapid; the government saw the failure of their army plans with the refusal of the irish to give any more military grants; the failure of their gains from the irish treasury in the near bankruptcy of the irish state, with the burden of its upkeep thrown on england; the failure of the prodigious corruption and buying of the souls of men before the new spirit that swept through the island, the spirit of a nation. "england has sown her laws in dragons' teeth, and they have sprung up in armed men," cried hussey burgh, a worthy irish successor of malone in the house of commons. "it is no longer the parliament of ireland that is to be managed or attended to," wrote the lord-lieutenant. "it is the whole of this country." above all, the war with the colonies brought home to them grattan's prophecy--"what you trample on in europe will sting you in america." the country, through the volunteers, required four main reforms. they asked for justice in the law-courts, and that the habeas corpus act should be restored, and independent judges no longer hold their places at pleasure. they asked that the english commercial laws which had ruined irish industry and sunk the land in poverty and idleness should be abandoned; taught by a long misery, irishmen agreed to buy no manufactures but the work of irish hands, and dublin men compelled members to swear that they should vote for "the good of ireland," a new phrase in politics. a third demand was that the penal laws which divided and broke the strength of ireland should cease. "the irish protestant," cried grattan, "could never be free till the irish catholic had ceased to be a slave." "you are now," said burke, "beginning to have a country." finally a great cry for the independence of their parliament rose in every county and from every class. the demands for the justice of free men, for free trade, free religion, a free nation, were carried by the popular passion into the parliaments of dublin and london. in three years the dublin parliament had freed protestant dissenters from the test act and had repealed the greater part of the penal code; the english commercial code had fallen to the ground; the habeas corpus act was won. in grattan proposed his resolutions declaring that while the two nations were inseparably bound together under one crown, the king, lords, and commons of ireland could alone make laws for ireland. the claim for a free parliament ran through the country--"the epidemic madness," exclaimed the viceroy. but the irish had good reason for their madness. at the first stirring of the national movement in "artful politicians" in england had revived a scheme favourably viewed there--the abolition of an irish parliament and the union of ireland with england. "do not make an union with us, sir," said dr. johnson to an irishman in ; "we should unite with you only to rob you." the threat of the disappearance of ireland as a country quickened anxiety to restore its old parliament. the irish knew too how precarious was all that they had gained. lord north described all past concessions as "resumable at pleasure" by the power that granted them. in presence of these dangers the volunteers called a convention of their body to meet in the church of dungannon on feb. , --to their mind no unfit place for their lofty work. "we know," they said, "our duty to our sovereign and our loyalty; we know our duty to ourselves and are resolved to be free." "as irishmen, as christians, and as protestants" they rejoiced in the relaxation of penal laws and upheld the sacred rights of all to freedom of religion. a week later grattan moved in the house of commons an address to the king--that the people of this country are a free people; that the crown of ireland is an imperial crown; and the kingdom of ireland a distinct kingdom with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof. the battle opened by molyneux a hundred years before was won. the act of , by which the english parliament had justified its usurpation of powers, was repealed ( ). "to set aside all doubts" another act ( ) declared that the right of ireland to be governed solely by the king and the parliament of ireland was now established and ascertained, and should never again be questioned or questionable. on april , , grattan passed through the long ranks of volunteers drawn up before the old parliament house of ireland, to proclaim the victory of his country. "i am now to address a free people. ages have passed away, and this is the first moment in which you could be distinguished by that appellation.... ireland is now a nation. in that character i hail her, and bowing in her august presence, i say _esto perpetua!_" the first act of the emancipated parliament was to vote a grant for twenty thousand sailors for the english navy. that day of a nation's exultation and thanksgiving was brief. the restored parliament entered into a gloomy inheritance--an authority which had been polluted and destroyed--an almost ruined country. the heritage of a tyranny prolonged through centuries was not to be got rid of rapidly. england gave to ireland half a generation for the task. since the days of henry viii the irish parliaments had been shaped and compacted to give to england complete control. the system in this country, wrote the viceroy, did not bear the smallest resemblance to representation. all bills had to go through the privy council, whose secret and overwhelming influence was backed by the privy council in england, the english law officers, and finally the english cabinet. irish proposals were rejected not in parliament, but in these secret councils. the king had a veto in ireland, not in england. the english cabinet, changing with english parties, had the last word on every irish bill. there was no irish cabinet responsible to the irish houses: no ministry resigned, whatever the majority by which it was defeated. nominally elected by about one-fifth of the inhabitants, the commons did not represent even these. a landlords' assembly, there was no catholic in it, and no merchant. even the irish landlords were subdued to english interests: some hundred englishmen, whose main property was in england but who commanded a number of votes for lands in ireland, did constantly override the irish landlords and drag them on in a policy far from serviceable to them. the landlords' men in the commons were accustomed to vote as the castle might direct. in the complete degradation of public life no humiliation or lack of public honour offended them. the number of placemen and pensioners equalled nearly one-half of the whole efficient body: "the price of a seat of parliament," men said, "is as well ascertained as that of the cattle of the field." all these dangers might with time and patience be overcome. an irish body, on irish soil, no matter what its constitution, could not remain aloof from the needs, and blind to the facts, of ireland, like strangers in another land. the good-will of the people abounded; even the poorer farmers showed in a better dress, in cleanliness, in self-respect, how they had been stirred by the dream of freedom, the hope of a country. the connection with england, the dependence on the king, was fully accepted, and ireland prepared to tax herself out of all proportion to her wealth for imperial purposes. the gentry were losing the fears that had possessed them for their properties, and a fair hope was opening for an ireland tolerant, united, educated, and industrious. volunteers, disciplined, sober, and law-abiding, had shown the orderly forces of the country. parliament had awakened to the care of ireland as well as the benefit of england. in a few years it opened "the gates of opulence and knowledge." it abolished the cruelties of the penal laws, and prepared the union of all religions in a common citizenship. it showed admirable knowledge in the method of restoring prosperity to the country, awakening its industrial life, increasing tillage, and opening inland navigation. time was needed to close the springs of corruption and to bring reform to the parliament itself. but the very success of parliament woke fears in england, and alarm in the autocratic government of ireland. jealous of power, ministers set themselves to restore by corruption an absolute authority, and recover by bribery the prerogative that had been lost. the first danger appeared in , in the commercial negotiations with england. to crush the woollen trade england had put duties of over £ a yard on a certain cloth carried from ireland to england, which paid -½d. if brought from england to ireland; and so on for other goods. irish shipping had been reduced to less than a third of that of liverpool alone. pitt's proposal of free trade between the countries was accepted by ireland ( ), but a storm of wrath swept over the british world of business; they refused pitt's explanation that an ireland where all industries had been killed could not compete against the industrial pre-eminence of england; and prepared a new scheme which re-established the ascendency of the british parliament over irish navigation and commerce. this was rejected in ireland as fatal to their constitution. twice again the irish parliament attempted a commercial agreement between the two countries: twice the irish government refused to give it place; a few years later the same ministers urged the union on the ground that no such commercial arrangement existed. the advantages which england possessed and should maintain were explained by the viceroy to pitt in . "is not the very essence of your imperial policy to prevent the interest of ireland clashing and interfering with the interest of england?... have you not crushed her in every point that would interfere with british interest or monopoly by means of her parliament for the last century, till lately?... you know the advantages you reap from ireland.... in return does she cost you one farthing (except the linen monopoly)? do you employ a soldier on her account she does not pay, or a single ship more for the protection of the british commerce than if she was at the bottom of the sea?" the catholic question also awakened the castle fears. the penal laws had failed to diminish the "papists": at the then rate of conversion it would take four thousand years to turn the people into protestants. a nobler idea had arisen throughout ireland. "the question is now," grattan said, "whether we shall be a protestant settlement or an irish nation ... for so long as we exclude catholics from natural liberty and the common rights of man we are not a people." nothing could be more unwelcome to the government. a real union between religious bodies in ireland, they said, would induce irish statesmen to regulate their policy mainly by the public opinion of their own country. to avert this danger they put forth all their strength. "the present frame of irish government is particularly well calculated for our purpose. that frame is a protestant garrison in possession of the land, magistracy, and power of the country; holding that property under the tenure of british power and supremacy, and ready at every instant to crush the rising of the conquered." finally the pressing question of reform, passionately demanded by protestant and catholic for fifteen years, was resisted by the whole might of the castle. "if," wrote the lord-lieutenant to pitt, "as her government became more open and more attentive to the feelings of the irish nation, the difficulty of management had increased, is that a reason for opening the government and making the parliament more subservient to the feelings of the nation at large?" to the misfortune both of ireland and of england the irish government through these years was led by one of the darkest influences known in the evil counsels of its history--the chancellor fitzgibbon, rewarded by england with the title earl of clare. unchecked by criticism, secret in machinations, brutal in speech, and violent in authority, he had known the use of every evil power that still remained as a legacy from the past. by working on the ignorance of the cabinet in london and on the alarms and corruptions of ireland, by using all the secret powers left in his hands through the privy council, by a system of unexampled bribery, he succeeded in paralysing the constitution which it was his business to maintain, and destroying the parliamentary rights which had been nominally conceded. the voice of the nation was silenced by the forbidding of all conventions. in the re-established "frame of government" fitzgibbon was all-powerful. the only english viceroy who resisted him, lord fitzwilliam, was recalled amid the acclamations and lamentations of ireland--all others yielded to his force. government in his hands was the enemy of the people, parliament a mockery, constitutional movements mere vanity. law appeared only as an instrument of oppression; the catholic irish were put out of its protection, the government agents out of its control. the country gentry were alienated and demoralised--left to waste with "their inert property and their inert talents." every reform was refused which might have allayed the fears of the people. religious war was secretly stirred up by the agents of the government and in its interest, setting one part of the country to exterminate the other. distrust and suspicion, arrogance and fear, with their train of calamities for the next hundred years distracted the island. a system of absolute power, maintained by coercion, woke the deep passion of the country. despair of the constitution made men turn to republicanism and agitation in arms. the violent repression of freedom was used at a time when the progress of the human mind had been prodigious, when on all sides men were drinking in the lessons of popular liberties from the republics of america and france. the system of rule inaugurated by fitzgibbon could have only one end--the revolt of a maddened people. warnings and entreaties poured in to the castle. to the very last the gentry pleaded for reform to reassure men drifting in their despair into plots of armed republicanism. every measure to relieve their fears was denied, every measure to heighten them was pursued. violent statesmen in the castle, and officers of their troops, did not fear to express their sense that a rebellion would enable them to make an end of the discontented once for all, and of the irish constitution. the rising was, in fact, at last forced by the horrors which were openly encouraged by the government in - . "every crime, every cruelty, that could be committed by cossacks or calmucks has been transacted here," said general abercromby, sent in as commander-in-chief. he refused the barbarities of martial rule when, as he said, the government's orders might be carried over the whole kingdom by an orderly dragoon, or a writ executed without any difficulty, a few places in the mountains excepted; and demanded the maintenance of law. "the abuses of all kinds i found here can scarcely be believed or enumerated." "he must have lost his senses," wrote clare of the great soldier, and "this scotch beast," as he called him, was forced out of the country as lord fitzwilliam had been. abercromby was succeeded by general lake, who had already shown the ferocity of his temper in his command in ulster, and in a month the rebellion broke out. that appalling tale of terror, despair, and cruelty cannot be told in all its horror. the people, scared into scattered risings, refused protection when their arms were given up, or terms if they surrendered, were without hope; the "pacification" of the government set no limits to atrocities, and the cry of the tortured rose unceasingly day and night. the suppression of the rebellion burned into the irish heart the belief that the english government was their implacable enemy, that the law was their oppressor, and englishmen the haters of their race. the treatment of later years has not yet wiped out of memory that horror. the dark fear that during the rebellion stood over the irish peasant in his cabin has been used to illustrate his credulity and his brutishness. the government cannot be excused by that same plea of fear. clare no doubt held the doctrine of many english governors before him, that ireland could only be kept bound to england by the ruin of its parliament and the corruption of its gentry, the perpetual animosity of its races, and the enslavement of its people. but even in his own day there were men who believed in a nobler statesmanship--in a union of the nations in equal honour and liberties. chapter xiii ireland under the union - the horror of death lay over ireland; cruelty and terror raised to a frenzy; government by martial law; a huge army occupying the country. in that dark time the plan for the union with england, secretly prepared in london, was announced to the irish parliament. it seemed that england had everything to gain by a union. there was one objection. chatham had feared that a hundred irishmen would strengthen the democratic side of the english parliament; others that their eloquence would lengthen and perhaps confuse debates. but it was held that a hundred members would be lost in the british parliament, and that irish doctrines would be sunk in the sea of british common sense. in ireland a union was detested as a conspiracy against its liberties. the parliament at once rejected it; no parliament, it was urged, had a right to pass an act destroying the constitution of ireland, and handing over the dominion to another country, without asking consent of the nation. pitt refused to have anything to say to this jacobin doctrine of the sovereignty of the people--a doctrine he would oppose wherever he encountered it. the union, pitt said, was no proposal to subject ireland to a foreign yoke, but a voluntary association of two great countries seeking their common benefit in one empire. there were progresses of the viceroy, visits of political agents, military warnings, threats of eviction, to induce petitions in its favour; all reforms were refused--the outrageous system of collecting tithes, the disabilities of catholics--so as to keep something to bargain with; , armed men were assembled in ireland. but amid the universal detestation and execration of a union the government dared not risk an election, and proceeded to pack the parliament privately. by official means the commons were purged of sixty-three opponents, and safe men put in, some englishmen, some staff-officers, men without a foot of land in ireland. there were, contrary to one of the new laws, seventy-two place-holders and pensioners in the house. fifty-four peerages were given to buy consciences. the borough-holders were offered -¼ millions to console them for loss in sale of seats. there was a host of minor pensions. threats and disgrace were used to others. large sums were sent from london to bribe the press, and corrupt the wavering with ready money. pitt pledged himself to emancipation. thus in , at the point of the sword, and amid many adjurations to speed from england, the act of union was forced through the most corrupt parliament ever created by a government: it was said that only seven of the majority were unbribed. an act "formed in the british cabinet, unsolicited by the irish nation," "passed in the middle of war, in the centre of a tremendous military force, under the influence of immediate personal danger," was followed, as wise men had warned, by generations of strife. a hundred years of ceaseless agitation, from the first tragedy of robert emmet's abortive rising in , proclaimed the undying opposition of irishmen to a union that from the first lacked all moral sanction. an english parliament, all intermediate power being destroyed, was now confronted with the irish people. of that people it knew nothing, of its national spirit, its conception of government or social life. the history and literature which might reveal the mind of the nation is so neglected that to this day there is no means for its study in the imperial university, nor the capital of empire. the _times_ perceived in "the celtic twilight" a "slovenly old barbarism." peel in his ignorance thought irishmen had good qualities except for "a general confederacy in crime ... a settled and uniform system of guilt, accompanied by horrible and monstrous perjuries such as could not be found in any civilised country." promises were lavished to commend the union. ministers assured ireland of less expenditure and lighter taxation: with vast commerce and manufactures, a rise in the value of land, and a stream of english capital and industry. all contests being referred from the island to great britain--to a body not like the irish influenced by prejudices and passions--ireland would for the first time arrive at national union. the passing over to london of the chief part of irish intelligence and wealth would give to ireland "a power over the executive and general policy of the empire which would far more than compensate her"; and would, in fact, lead to such a union of hearts that presently it would not matter, pitt hoped, whether members for ireland were elected in ireland or in england. ireland would also be placed in "a natural situation," for by union with the empire she would have fourteen to three in favour of her protestant establishment, instead of three to one against it as happened in the country itself; so that protestant ascendency would be for ever assured. the catholics, however, would find in the pure and serene air of the english legislature impartial kindness, and the poor might hope for relief from tithes and the need of supporting their clergy. all irish financiers and patriots contended that the fair words were deceptive, and that the union must bring to ireland immeasurable disaster. any discussion of the union in its effect on ireland lies apart from a discussion of the motives of men who administered the system in the last century. the system itself, wrongly conceived and wrongly enforced, contained the principles of ruin, and no good motives could make it work for the benefit of ireland, or, in the long run, of england. oppressive financial burdens were laid on the irish. each country was for the next twenty years to provide for its own expenditure and debt, and to contribute a sum to the general expenses of the united kingdom, fixed in the proportion of seven and a half parts for great britain and one part for ireland. the debt of ireland had formerly been small; in it was -¼ millions; it had risen to nearly millions by , in great measure through the charges of clare's policy of martial law and bribery. in the next years heavy loans were required for the napoleonic war. when ireland, exhausted by calamity, was unable to pay, loans were raised in england at heavy war-rates and charged to the public debt of ireland. in the irish debt had increased more than fourfold, to nearly millions. no record was made in the books of the exchequer as to what portion of the vast sums raised should in fairness be allotted to ireland; there is no proof that there was any accuracy in the apportionment. the promised lighter taxation ended in a near bankruptcy, and the approach of an appalling famine in . bankruptcy was avoided by uniting the two treasuries to form one national debt--but the burden of ireland remained as oppressive as before. meanwhile the effect of the union had been to depress all irish industries and resources, and in these sixteen years the comparative wealth of ireland had fallen, and the taxes had risen far beyond the rise in england. the people sank yet deeper under their heavy load. the result of their incapacity to pay the amount fixed at the union was, that of all the taxes collected from them for the next fifty-three years, one-third was spent in ireland, and two-thirds were absorbed by england; from to the cost of government in ireland was under millions, while the contributions to the imperial exchequer were millions, so that ireland sent to england more than twice as much as was spent on her. the tribute from ireland to england in the last ninety-three years, over and above the cost of irish administration, has been over millions--a sum which would probably be much increased by a more exact method both of recording the revenue collected from ireland and the "local" and "imperial" charges, so as to give the full irish revenue, and to prevent the debiting to ireland of charges for which she was not really liable. while this heavy ransom was exacted ireland was represented as a beggar, never satisfied, at the gates of england. later, in , gladstone began to carry out the second part of the union scheme, the indiscriminate taxation of the two countries. in a few years he added two and a half millions to irish taxation, at a moment when the country, devastated by famine, was sinking under the loss of its corn trade through the english law, and wasting away by emigration to half its former population. in a financial commission reported that the act of union had laid on ireland a burden she was unable to bear; and that, in spite of the union pledge that the ability of ireland to pay should always be taken into account, she was paying one-eleventh of the tax revenue of the united kingdom while her taxable capacity was one-twentieth or less. while great britain paid less than two shillings in every pound of her taxable surplus, ireland paid about ten shillings in every pound of hers. no relief was given. under this drain of her wealth the poverty or ireland was intensified, material progress was impossible, and one bad season was enough to produce wide distress, and two a state of famine. meanwhile, the cost of administration was wasteful and lavish, fixed on the high prices of the english scale, and vastly more expensive than the cost of a government founded on domestic support and acceptable to the people. the doom of an exhausting poverty was laid on ireland by a rich and extravagant partner, who fixed the expenses for english purposes, called for the money, and kept the books. the union intensified the alien temper of irish government. we may remember the scandal caused lately by the phrase of a great irish administrator that ireland should be governed according to irish ideas. dublin castle, no longer controlled by an irish parliament, entrenched itself more firmly against the people. some well-meaning governors went over to ireland, but the omnipotent castle machine broke their efforts for impartial rule or regard for the opinion of the country. the protestant ascendancy openly reminded the castle that its very existence hung on the orange associations. arms were supplied free from dublin to the orangemen while all catholics were disarmed. the jobbing of the grand juries to enrich themselves out of the poor--the traffic of magistrates who violated their duties and their oaths--these were unchanged. justice was so far forgotten that the presiding judge at the trial of o'connell spoke of the counsel for the accused as "the gentleman on the other side." juries were packed by the sheriffs with protestants, by whom all orangemen were acquitted, all catholics condemned, and the credit of the law lowered for both by a system which made the juryman a tool and the prisoner a victim. it is strange that no honest man should have protested against such a use of his person and his creed. in the case of o'connell the chief justice of england stated that the practice if not remedied must render trial by jury "a mockery, a delusion, and a snare"; but jury-packing with safe men remained the invariable custom till . nothing but evil to ireland followed from carrying her affairs to an english parliament. the government refused the promised emancipation, refused tithe reform. englishmen could not understand irish conditions. the political economy they advocated for their own country had no relation to ireland. the irish members found themselves, as english officials had foretold in advocating the union, a minority wholly without influence. session after session, one complained, measures supported by irish members, which would have been hailed with enthusiasm by an irish parliament, were rejected by the english. session after session measures vehemently resisted by the irish members were forced on a reluctant nation by english majorities. when ireland asked to be governed by the same laws as england, she was told the two countries were different and required different treatment. when she asked for any deviation from the english system, she was told that she must bow to the established laws and customs of great britain. the reports of royal commissions fell dead--such as that which in reported that the sufferings of the irish, borne with exemplary patience, were greater than the people of any other country in europe had to sustain. nothing was done. instead of the impartial calm promised at the union, ireland was made the battle-cry of english parties; and questions that concerned her life or death were important at westminster as they served the exigencies of the government or the opposition. all the dangers of the union were increased by its effect in drawing irish landlords to london. their rents followed them, and the wealth spent by absentees founded no industries at home. a land system brought about by confiscation, and developed by absentees, meant unreclaimed wastes, lands half cultivated, and neglected people. landlords, said an indignant judge of wide experience in a charge to a jury in , should build their tenants houses, and give them at least what they had not as yet, "the comforts of an english sow." to pay rent and taxes in england the toilers raised stores of corn and cattle for export there, from the value of eight million pounds in to seventeen million pounds of food stuffs in , and so on. they grew potatoes to feed themselves. if the price of corn fell prodigiously--as at the end of the napoleonic war, or at the passing of the corn laws in england--the cheaper bread was no help to the peasants, most of whom could never afford to eat it; it only doubled their labour to send out greater shiploads of provisions for the charges due in england. on the other hand, if potatoes rotted, famine swept over the country among its fields of corn and cattle. and when rent failed, summary powers of eviction were given at westminster under english theories for use in ireland alone; "and if anyone would defend his farm it is here denominated rebellion." families were flung on the bogs and mountain sides to live on wild turnips and nettles, to gather chickweed, sorrel, and seaweed, and to sink under the fevers that followed vagrancy, starvation, cold, and above all the broken hearts of men hunted from their homes. in famine time the people to save themselves from death were occasionally compelled to use blood taken from live bullocks, boiled up with a little oatmeal; and the appalling sight was seen of feeble women gliding across the country with their pitchers, actually trampling upon fertility and fatness, to collect in the corner of a grazier's farm for their little portion of blood. five times between and there were famines of lesser degree: but two others, and , were noted as among the half-dozen most terrible recorded in europe and asia during the century. from to over a million lay dead of hunger, while in a year food-stuffs for seventeen million pounds were sent to england. english soldiers guarded from the starving the fields of corn and the waggons that carried it to the ports; herds of cattle were shipped, and skins of asses which had served the famishing for food. new evictions on an enormous scale followed the famine, the clearance of what was then called in the phrase of current english economics "the surplus population," "the overstock tenantry." they died, or fled in hosts to america--ireland pouring out on the one side her great stores or "surplus food," on the other her "surplus people," for whom there was nothing to eat. in the twenty years that followed the men and women who had fled to america sent back some thirteen millions to keep a roof over the heads of the old and the children they had left behind. it was a tribute for the landlords' pockets--a rent which could never have been paid from the land they leased. the loans raised for expenditure on the irish famine were charged by england on the irish taxes for repayment. no irish parliament, no matter what its constitution, could have allowed the country to drift into such irretrievable ruin. o'connell constantly protested that rather than the union he would have the old protestant parliament. "any body would serve if only it is in ireland," cried a leading catholic nationalist in parnell's time; "the protestant synod would do." in the despair of ireland, the way was flung open to public agitation, and to private law which could only wield the weapons of the outlaw. all methods were tried to reach the distant inattention of england. there were savage outbursts of men often starving and homeless, always on the edge of famine--levellers, threshers, and the like; or whiteboys who were in fact a vast trades union for the protection of the irish peasantry, to bring some order and equity into relations of landlord and tenant. peaceful organisation was tried; the catholic association for emancipation founded by o'connell in , an open society into which protestants and catholics alike were welcomed, kept the peace in ireland for five years; outrage ceased with its establishment and revived with its destruction. his association for repeal ( - ) again lifted the people from lawless insurrection to the disciplined enthusiasm of citizens for justice. a young ireland movement ( - ) under honoured names such as thomas davis and john mitchel and gavan duffy and smith o'brien and others with them, sought to destroy sectarian divisions, to spread a new literature, to recover irish history, and to win self-government, land reform, and education for a united people of irish and english, protestant and catholic. the suppression of o'connell's peaceful movement by the government forced on violent counsels; and ended in the rising of smith o'brien as the only means left him of calling attention to the state of the country. the disturbances that followed have left their mark in the loop-holed police barracks that covered ireland. there was a tenant league ( ) and a north and south league. all else failing, a national physical force party was formed; for its name this organization went back to the dawn of irish historic life--to the fiana, those fenian national militia vowed to guard the shores of ireland. the fenians ( ) resisted outrage, checked agrarian crime, and sought to win self-government by preparing for open war. a great constitutionalist and sincere protestant, isaac butt, led a peaceful parliamentary movement for home rule ( - ); after him charles stewart parnell fought in the same cause for fourteen years ( - ) and died with victory almost in sight. michael davitt, following the advice of lalor thirty years before, founded a land league ( ) to be inevitably merged in the wider national issue. wave after wave of agitation passed over the island. the manner of the national struggle changed, peaceful or violent, led by protestant or catholic, by men of english blood or of gaelic, but behind all change lay the fixed purpose of irish self-government. for thirty-five years after the union ireland was ruled for three years out of every four by laws giving extraordinary powers to the government; and in the next fifty years ( - ) there were only three without coercion acts and crime acts. by such contrasts of law in the two countries the union made a deep severance between the islands. in these conflicts there was not now, as there had never been in their history, a religious war on the part of irishmen. the oppressed people were of one creed, and the administration of the other. protestant and catholic had come to mean ejector and ejected, the armed orangeman and the disarmed peasant, the agent-or clergy-magistrate and the broken tenant before his too partial judgment-seat. in all cases where conflicting classes are divided into two creeds, religious incidents will crop up, or will be forced up, to embitter the situation; but the irish struggle was never a religious war. another distinction must be noted. though ireland was driven to the "worst form of civil convulsion, a war for the means of subsistence," there was more irish than the battle for food. those who have seen the piled up graves round the earth where the first irish saints were laid, will know that the irishman, steeped in his national history, had in his heart not his potato plot alone, but the thought of the home of his fathers, and in the phrase of irish saints, "the place of his resurrection." if we consider the state of the poor, and the position of the millions of irishmen who had been long shut out from any share in public affairs, and forbidden to form popular conventions, we must watch with amazement the upspringing under o'connell of the old idea of national self-government. deep in their hearts lay the memory carried down by bards and historians of a nation whose law had been maintained in assemblies of a willing people. in o'connell the irish found a leader who had like themselves inherited the sense of the old irish tradition. to escape english laws against gatherings and conventions of the irish, o'connell's associations had to be almost formless, and perpetually shifting in manner and in name. his methods would have been wholly impossible without a rare intelligence in the peasantry. local gatherings conducted by voluntary groups over the country; conciliation courts where justice was carried out apart from the ordinary courts as a protest against their corruption; monster meetings organised without the slightest disorder; voluntary suppression of crime and outrage--in these we may see not merely an astonishing popular intelligence, but the presence of an ancient tradition. at the first election in which the people resisted the right of landlords to dictate their vote ( ), a procession miles in length streamed into waterford in military array and unbroken tranquillity. they allowed no rioting, and kept their vow of total abstinence from whisky during the election. a like public virtue was shown in the clare election two years later ( ) when , men camped in ennis for a week, with milk and potatoes distributed to them by their priests, all spirits renounced, and the peace not broken once throughout the week. as o'connell drew towards limerick and reached the stone where the broken treaty had been signed, , men sent up their shout of victory at this peaceful redeeming of the violated pledges of . in the repeal meetings two to four hundred thousand men assembled, at tara and other places whose fame was in the heart of every irishman there, and the spirit of the nation was shown by a gravity and order which allowed not a single outrage. national hope and duty stirred the two millions who in the crusade of father mathew took the vow of temperance. in the whole of irish history no time brought such calamity to ireland as the victorian age. "i leave ireland," said one, "like a corpse on the dissecting table." "the celts are gone," said englishmen, seeing the endless and disastrous emigration. "the irish are gone, and gone with a vengeance." that such people should carry their interminable discontent to some far place seemed to end the trouble. "now for the first time these six hundred years," said _the times_, "england has ireland at her mercy, and can deal with her as she pleases." but from this death ireland rose again. thirty years after o'connell parnell took up his work. he used the whole force of the land league founded by davitt to relieve distress and fight for the tenants' rights; but he used the land agitation to strengthen the national movement. he made his meaning clear. what did it matter, he said, who had possession of a few acres, if there was no national spirit to save the country; he would never have taken off his coat for anything less than to make a nation. in his fight he held the people as no other man had done, not even o'connell. the conflict was steeped in passion. in the government asked for an act giving them power to arrest without trial all irishmen suspected of illegal projects--a power beyond all coercion hitherto. o'connell had opposed a coercion act in for nineteen nights; parnell in fought for thirty-two nights. parliament had become the keeper of irish tyrannies, not of her liberties, and its conventional forms were less dear to irishmen than the freedom of which it should be the guardian. he was suspended, with thirty-four irish members, and votes against carried a bill by which over a thousand irishmen were imprisoned at the mere will of the castle, among them parnell himself. the passion of rage reached its extreme height with the publication in _the times_ ( ) of a facsimile letter from parnell, to prove his consent to a paid system of murder and outrage. a special commission found it to be a forgery. with the rejection of gladstone's home rule bills in and , and with the death of parnell ( ), irish nationalists were thrown into different camps as to the means to pursue, but they never faltered in the main purpose. that remains as firm as in the times of o'connell, thomas davis, john o'leary, and parnell, and rises once more to-day as the fixed unchanging demand, while the whole irish people, laying aside agitations and controversies, stand waiting to hear the end. the national movement had another side, the bringing back of the people to the land. the english parliament took up the question under pressure of violent agitation in ireland. by a series of acts the people were assured of fair rents and security from eviction. verdicts of judicial bodies tended to prove that peasants were paying per cent. above the actual value of the land. but the great act of --a work inspired by an irishman's intellect and heart--brought the final solution, enabling the great mass of the tenants to buy their land by instalments. thus the land war of seven hundred years, the war of kings and parliaments and planters, was brought to a dramatic close, and the soil of ireland begins again to belong to her people. there was yet another stirring of the national idea. in its darkest days the country had remained true to the old irish spirit of learning, that fountain of the nation's life. in o'connell's time the "poor scholar" who took his journey to "the munster schools" was sent out with offerings laid on the parish altars by protestants and catholics alike; as he trudged with his bag of books and the fees for the master sewn in the cuff of his coat, he was welcomed in every farm, and given of the best in the famishing hovels: "the lord prosper him, and every one that has the heart set upon the learning." bards and harpers and dancers wandered among the cottages. a famous bard raftery, playing at a dance heard one ask, "who is the musician?" and the blind fiddler answered him: "i am raftery the poet, full of hope and love, with eyes that have no light, with gentleness that has no misery. going west upon my pilgrimage, guided by the light of my heart, feeble and tired, to the end of my road. behold me now, with my face to a wall, a-playing music to empty pockets." unknown scribes still copied piously the national records. a louth schoolmaster could tell all the stars and constellations of heaven under the old irish forms and names. a vision is given to us through a government ordnance survey of the fire of zeal, the hunger of knowledge, among the tillers and the tenants. in a dying farmer in kilkenny repeated several times to his sons his descent back to the wars of and behind that to a king of munster in a.d.--directing the eldest never to forget it. this son took his brother, john o'donovan, ( - ) to study in dublin; in kilkenny farmhouses he learned the old language and history of his race. at the same time another irish boy, eugene o'curry ( - ), of the same old munster stock, working on his father's farm in great poverty, learned from him much knowledge of irish literature and music. the ordnance survey, the first peripatetic university ireland had seen since the wanderings of her ancient scholars, gave to o'donovan and o'curry their opportunity, where they could meet learned men, and use their hereditary knowledge. a mass of material was laid up by their help. passionate interest was shown by the people in the memorials of their ancient life--giants' rings, cairns, and mighty graves, the twenty-nine thousand mounds or moats that have been counted, the raths of their saints and scholars--each with its story living on the lips of the people till the great famine and the death or emigration of the people broke that long tradition of the race. the cry arose that the survey was pandering to the national spirit. it was suddenly closed ( ), the men dismissed, no materials published, the documents locked up in government offices. but for o'donovan and o'curry what prodigies of work remained. once more the death of hope seemed to call out the pieties of the irish scholar for his race, the fury of his intellectual zeal, the passion of his inheritance of learning. in the blackest days perhaps of all irish history o'donovan took up michael o'clery's work of two hundred years before, the annals of the four masters, added to his manuscript the mass of his own learning, and gave to his people this priceless record of their country ( ). among a number of works that cannot be counted here, he made a dictionary which recalls the old pride of irishmen in their language. o'curry brought from his humble training an incredible industry, great stores of ancient lore, and an amazing and delicate skill as a scribe. all modern historians have dug in the mine of these men's work. they open to anglo-irish scholars such as dr. reeves and dr. todd, a new world of irish history. sir samuel ferguson began in to give to readers of english the stories of ireland. george petrie collected irish music through all the west, over a thousand airs, and worked at irish inscriptions and crosses and round towers. lord dunraven studied architecture, and is said to have visited every barony in ireland and nearly every island on the coast. these men were nearly all protestants; they were all patriots. potent irish influences could have stirred a resident gentry and resident parliament with a just pride in the great memorials of an ireland not dead but still living in the people's heart. the failure of the hope was not the least of the evils of the union. the drift of landlords to london had broken a national sympathy between them and the people, which had been steadily growing through the eighteenth century. their sons no longer learned irish, nor heard the songs and stories of the past. the brief tale of the ordnance survey has given us a measure of the intelligence that had been wasted or destroyed by neglect in ireland. archbishop whately proposed to use the new national schools so as to make this destruction systematic, and to put an end to national traditions. the child who knew only irish was given a teacher who knew nothing but english; his history book mentioned ireland _twice_ only--a place conquered by henry ii., and made into an english province by the union. the quotation "this is my own, my native land," was struck out of the reading-book as pernicious, and the irish boy was taught to thank god for being "a happy english child." a connacht peasant lately summed up the story: "i suppose the famine and the national schools took the heart out of the people." in fact famine and emigration made the first great break in the irish tradition that had been the dignity and consolation of the peasantry; the schools completed the ruin. in these, under english influence, the map of ireland has been rolled up, and silence has fallen on her heroes. even out of this deep there came a revival. whitley stokes published his first irish work the year after o'curry's death; and has been followed by a succession of laborious students. through a school of irish learning dublin is becoming a national centre of true irish scholarship, and may hope to be the leader of the world in this great branch of study. the popular irish movement manifested itself in the gaelic league, whose branches now cover all ireland, and which has been the greatest educator of the people since the time of thomas davis. voluntary colleges have sprung up in every province, where earnest students learn the language, history, and music of their country; and on a fine day teacher and scholars gathered in the open air under a hedge recall the ancient irish schools where brehon or chronicler led his pupils under a tree. a new spirit of self-respect, intelligence, and public duty has followed the work of the gaelic league; it has united catholic and protestant, landlord and peasant. and through all creeds and classes a desire has quickened men to serve their country in its social and industrial life; and by agricultural societies, and industrial development societies, to awaken again her trade and manufactures. the story is unfinished. once again we stand at the close of another experiment of england in the government of ireland. each of them has been founded on the idea of english interests; each has lasted about a hundred years--"tudor conquest," plantations, an english parliament, a union parliament. all alike have ended in a disordered finance and a flight of the people from the land. grattan foretold the failure of the union and its cause. "as ireland," he said, "is necessary to great britain, so is complete and perfect liberty necessary to ireland, and both islands must be drawn much closer to a free constitution, that they may be drawn closer to one another." in england we have seen the advance to that freer constitution. the democracy has entered into larger liberties, and has brought new ideals. the growth of that popular life has been greatly advanced by the faith of ireland. ever since irish members helped to carry the reform acts they have been on the side of liberty, humanity, peace, and justice. they have been the most steadfast believers in constitutional law against privilege, and its most unswerving defenders. at westminster they have always stood for human rights, as nobler even than rights of property. what chatham foresaw has come true: the irish in the english parliament have been powerful missionaries of democracy. a freedom-loving ireland has been conquering her conquerors in the best sense. the changes of the last century have deeply affected men's minds. the broadening liberties of england as a free country, the democratic movements that have brought new classes into government, the wider experience of imperial methods, the growing influence of men of good-will, have tended to change her outlook to ireland. in the last generation she has been forced to think more gravely of irish problems. she has pledged her credit to close the land question and create a peasant proprietary. with any knowledge of irish history the religious alarm, the last cry of prejudice, must inevitably disappear. the old notion of ireland as the "property" of england, and of its exploitation for the advantage of england, is falling into the past. a mighty spirit of freedom too has passed over the great colonies and dominions. they since their beginning have given shelter to outlawed irishmen flying from despair at home. they have won their own pride of freedom, and have all formally proclaimed their judgment that ireland should be allowed the right to shape her own government. the united states, who owe so much to irishmen in their battle for independence, and in the labours of their rising prosperity, have supported the cause of ireland for the last hundred years; ever since the first important meeting in new york to express american sympathy with ireland was held in , when president jackson, of irish origin, a protestant, is said to have promised the first thousand dollars to the irish emancipation fund. in ireland itself we see a people that has now been given some first opportunities of self-dependence and discipline under the new conditions of land ownership and of county government. we see too the breaking up of the old solid unionist phalanx, the dying down of ancient fears, the decaying of old habits of dependence on military help from england, and a promise of revival of the large statesmanship that adorned the days of kildare and of grattan. it is singular to reflect that on the side of foreign domination, through seven hundred years of invasion and occupation, not a single man, norman or english, warrior or statesman, has stood out as a hero to leave his name, even in england, on the lips or in the hearts of men. the people who were defending their homes and liberties had their heroes, men of every creed and of every blood, gaelic, norman, english, anglican, catholic, and presbyterian. against the stormy back-ground of those prodigious conflicts, those immeasurable sorrows, those thousand sites consecrated by great deeds, lofty figures emerge whom the people have exalted with the poetry of their souls, and crowned with love and gratitude--the first martyr for ireland of "the foreigners" earl thomas of desmond, the soul of another desmond wailing in the atlantic winds, kildare riding from his tomb on the horse with the silver shoes, bishop bedell, owen roe and hugh o'neill, red hugh o'donnell, sarsfield, lord edward fitzgerald, robert emmett, o'connell, davis, parnell--men of peace and men of war, but all lovers of a free nation. in memory of the long, the hospitable roll of their patriots, in memory of their long fidelities, in memory of their national faith, and of their story of honour and of suffering, the people of ireland once more claim a government of their own in their native land, that shall bind together the whole nation of all that live on irish soil, and create for all a common obligation and a common prosperity. an irish nation of a double race will not fear to look back on irish history. the tradition of that soil, so steeped in human passion, in joy and sorrow, still rises from the earth. it lives in the hearts of men who see in ireland a ground made sacred by the rare intensity of human life over every inch of it, one of the richest possessions that has ever been bequeathed by the people of any land whatever to the successors and inheritors of their name. the tradition of national life created by the irish has ever been a link of fellowship between classes, races, and religions. the natural union approaches of the irish nation--the union of all her children that are born under the breadth of her skies, fed by the fatness of her fields, and nourished by the civilisation of her dead. some irish writers on irish history joyce, p.w.--social history of ancient ireland. vols. . this book gives a general survey of the old irish civilisation, pagan and christian, apart from political history. ferguson, sir samuel.--hibernian nights' entertainments. . these small volumes of stories are interesting as the effort of sir s. ferguson to give to the youth of his time an impression of the heroic character of their history. green, a.s.--the making of ireland and its undoing ( - ). . an attempt is here made to bring together evidence, some of it unused before, of the activity of commerce and manufactures, and of learning, that prevailed in mediaeval ireland, until the destruction of the tudor wars. mitchell, john.--life and times of aodh o'neill. . a small book which gives a vivid picture of a great irish hero, and of the later elizabethan wars. taylor, j.f.--owen roe o'neill. . this small book is the best account of a very great irishman; and gives the causes of the irish insurrection in , and the war to . davis, thomas.--the patriot parliament of . . a brief but important study of this parliament. it illustrates the irish spirit of tolerance in , , and . bagwell, richard.--ireland under the tudors and the stuarts. vols. , . a detailed account is given of the english policy from to , from the point of view of the english settlement, among a people regarded as inferior, devoid of organisation or civilisation. murray, a.e.--commercial relations between england and ireland. . a useful study is made here of the economic condition of ireland from , under the legislation of the english parliament, the irish parliament, and the union parliament. lecky, w.e.h.--history of ireland in the eighteenth century. vols. . the study of the independent parliament in ireland is the most original work of this historian, and a contribution of the utmost importance to irish history. mr. lecky did not make any special study of the catholic peasantry. two centuries of irish history ( - ). introduction by james bryce. . these essays, mostly by irishmen, give in a convenient form the outlines of the history of the time. there is a brief account of o'connell. o'brien, r. barry.--life of charles stewart parnell. . vols. this gives the best account of the struggle for home rule and the land agitation in the last half of the nineteenth century. d'alton, e.a.--history of ireland ( - ). vols. this is the latest complete history of ireland. * * * * * +-----------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : tewnty replaced with twenty | | page : meterical rules replaced with metrical rules | | page : "earthern entrenchment" replaced with | | "earthen entrenchment" | | page : interupted replaced with interrupted | | page : successsive replaced with successive | | page : scupltured replaced with sculptured | | page : "risingp ower" replaced with "rising power" | | | +-----------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * * distributed proofreaders principles of freedom by terence macswiney late lord mayor of cork [illustration: terence macswiney (late lord mayor of cork)] [illustration] to the soldiers of freedom in every land preface it was my intention to publish these articles in book form as soon as possible. i had them typed for the purpose. i had no time for revision save to insert in the typed copy words or lines omitted from the original printed matter. i also made an occasional verbal alteration in the original. one article, however, that on "intellectual freedom," though written in the series in the place in which it now stands, was not printed with them. it is now published for the first time. religion i wish to make a note on the article under this heading to avoid a possible misconception amongst people outside ireland. in ireland there is no religious dissension, but there is religious insincerity. english politicians, to serve the end of dividing ireland, have worked on the religious feelings of the north, suggesting the danger of catholic ascendancy. there is not now, and there never was, any such danger, but our enemies, by raising the cry, sowed discord in the north, with the aim of destroying irish unity. it should be borne in mind that when the republican standard was first raised in the field in ireland, in the rising of , catholics and protestants in the north were united in the cause. belfast was the first home of republicanism in ireland. this is the truth of the matter. the present-day cleavage is an unnatural thing created by ireland's enemies to hold her in subjection and will disappear entirely with political freedom. it has had, however, in our day, one unhappy effect, only for a time fortunately, and this is disappearing. i refer to the rise of hibernianism. the english ruling faction having, for their own political designs, corrupted the orangemen with power and flattery, enabled them to establish an ascendancy not only over ulster, but indirectly by their vote over the south. this becoming intolerable, some sincere but misguided catholics in the north joined the organisation known as the ancient order of hibernians. this was, in effect, a sort of catholic freemasonry to counter the orange freemasonry, but like orangeism, it was a political and not a religious weapon. further, as a political weapon, it extended all through ireland during the last years of the irish parliamentary movement. in cork, for example, it completely controlled the city life for some years, but the rapid rise of the republican movement brought about the equally rapid fall of hibernianism. at the present moment it has as little influence in the public life of cork as sir edward carson himself. the great bulk of its one-time members have joined the republican movement. this demonstrates clearly that anything in the nature of a sectarian movement is essentially repugnant to the irish people. as i have pointed out, the hibernian order, when created, became at once a political weapon, but ireland has discarded that, and other such weapons, for those with which she is carving out the destinies of the republic. for a time, however, hibernianism created an unnatural atmosphere of sectarian rivalry in ireland. that has now happily passed away. at the time, however, of the writing of the article on religion it was at its height, and this fact coloured the writing of the article. on re-reading it and considering the publication of the present work i was inclined to suppress it, but decided that it ought to be included because it bears directly on the evil of materialism in religious bodies, which is a matter of grave concern to every religious community in the world. t. macs. contents chapter i. the basis of freedom ii. separation iii. moral force iv. brothers and enemies v. the secret of strength vi. principle in action vii. loyalty viii. womanhood ix. the frontier x. literature and freedom--the propagandist playwright xi. literature and freedom--art for art's sake xii. religion xiii. intellectual freedom xiv. militarism xv. the empire xvi. resistance in arms--foreword xvii. resistance in arms--the true meaning of law xviii. resistance in arms--objections xix. the bearna baoghail--conclusion +principles of freedom+ chapter i the basis of freedom i why should we fight for freedom? is it not strange, that it has become necessary to ask and answer this question? we have fought our fight for centuries, and contending parties still continue the struggle, but the real significance of the struggle and its true motive force are hardly at all understood, and there is a curious but logical result. men technically on the same side are separated by differences wide and deep, both of ideal and plan of action; while, conversely, men technically opposed have perhaps more in common than we realise in a sense deeper than we understand. ii this is the question i would discuss. i find in practice everywhere in ireland--it is worse out of ireland--the doctrine, "the end justifies the means." one party will denounce another for the use of discreditable tactics, but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby snatch a discreditable victory. so, clear speaking is needed: a fight that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any defeat. i make the point here because we stand for separation from the british empire, and because i have heard it argued that we ought, if we could, make a foreign alliance to crush english power here, even if our foreign allies were engaged in crushing freedom elsewhere. when such a question can be proposed it should be answered, though the time is not ripe to test it. if ireland were to win freedom by helping directly or indirectly to crush another people she would earn the execration she has herself poured out on tyranny for ages. i have come to see it is possible for ireland to win her independence by base methods. it is imperative, therefore, that we should declare ourselves and know where we stand. and i stand by this principle: no physical victory can compensate for spiritual surrender. whatever side denies that is not my side. what, then, is the true basis to our claim to freedom? there are two points of view. the first we have when fresh from school, still in our teens, ready to tilt against everyone and everything, delighting in saying smart things--and able sometimes to say them--talking much and boldly of freedom, but satisfied if the thing sounds bravely. there is the later point of view. we are no longer boys; we have come to review the situation, and take a definite stand in life. we have had years of experience, keen struggles, not a little bitterness, and we are steadied. we feel a heart-beat for deeper things. it is no longer sufficient that they sound bravely; they must ring true. the schoolboy's dream is more of a roman triumph--tramping armies, shouting multitudes, waving banners--all good enough in their way. but the dream of men is for something beyond all this show. if it were not, it could hardly claim a sacrifice. iii a spiritual necessity makes the true significance of our claim to freedom: the material aspect is only a secondary consideration. a man facing life is gifted with certain powers of soul and body. it is of vital importance to himself and the community that he be given a full opportunity to develop his powers, and to fill his place worthily. in a free state he is in the natural environment for full self-development. in an enslaved state it is the reverse. when one country holds another in subjection that other suffers materially and morally. it suffers materially, being a prey for plunder. it suffers morally because of the corrupt influences the bigger nation sets at work to maintain its ascendancy. because of this moral corruption national subjection should be resisted, as a state fostering vice; and as in the case of vice, when we understand it we have no option but to fight. with it we can make no terms. it is the duty of the rightful power to develop the best in its subjects: it is the practice of the usurping power to develop the basest. our history affords many examples. when our rulers visit ireland they bestow favours and titles on the supporters of their regime--but it is always seen that the greatest favours and highest titles are not for the honest adherent of their power--but for him who has betrayed the national cause that he entered public life to support. observe the men who might be respected are passed over for him who ought to be despised. in the corrupt politician there was surely a better nature. a free state would have encouraged and developed it. the usurping state titled him for the use of his baser instincts. such allurement must mean demoralisation. we are none of us angels, and under the best of circumstances find it hard to do worthy things; when all the temptation is to do unworthy things we are demoralised. most of us, happily, will not give ourselves over to the evil influence, but we lose faith in the ideal. we are apathetic. we have powers and let them lie fallow. our minds should be restless for noble and beautiful things; they are hopeless in a land everywhere confined and wasted. in the destruction of spirit entailed lies the deeper significance of our claim to freedom. iv it is a spiritual appeal, then, that primarily moves us. we are urged to action by a beautiful ideal. the motive force must be likewise true and beautiful. it is love of country that inspires us; not hate of the enemy and desire for full satisfaction for the past. pause awhile. we are all irritated now and then by some mawkish interpretation of our motive force that makes it seem a weakly thing, invoked to help us in evading difficulties instead of conquering them. love in any genuine form is strong, vital and warm-blooded. let it not be confused with any flabby substitute. take a parallel case. should we, because of the mawkishness of a "princess novelette," deride the beautiful dream that keeps ages wondering and joyous, that is occasionally caught up in the words of genius, as when shelley sings: "i arise from dreams of thee"? when foolish people make a sacred thing seem silly, let us at least be sane. the man who cries out for the sacred thing but voices a universal need. to exist, the healthy mind must have beautiful things--the rapture of a song, the music of running water, the glory of the sunset and its dreams, and the deeper dreams of the dawn. it is nothing but love of country that rouses us to make our land full-blooded and beautiful where now she is pallid and wasted. this, too, has its deeper significance. v if we want full revenge for the past the best way to get it is to remain as we are. as we are, ireland is a menace to england. we need not debate this--she herself admits it by her continued efforts to pacify us in her own stupid way. would she not ignore us if it were quite safe so to do? on the other hand, if we succeed in our efforts to separate from her, the benefit to england will be second only to our own. this might strike us strangely, but 'tis true, not the less true because the english people could hardly understand or appreciate it now. the military defence of ireland is almost farcical. a free ireland could make it a reality--could make it strong against invasion. this would secure england from attack on our side. no one is, i take it, so foolish as to suppose, being free, we would enter quarrels not our own. we should remain neutral. our common sense would so dictate, our sense of right would so demand. the freedom of a nation carries with it the responsibility that it be no menace to the freedom of another nation. the freedom of all makes for the security of all. if there are tyrannies on earth one nation cannot set things right, but it is still bound so to order its own affairs as to be consistent with universal freedom and friendship. and, again, strange as it may seem, separation from england will alone make for final friendship with england. for no one is so foolish as to wish to be for ever at war with england. it is unthinkable. now the most beautiful motive for freedom is vindicated. our liberty stands to benefit the enemy instead of injuring him. if we want to injure him, we should remain as we are--a menace to him. the opportunity will come, but it would hardly make us happy. this but makes clear a need of the human race. freedom rightly considered is not a mere setting-up of a number of independent units. it makes for harmony among nations and good fellowship on earth. vi i have written carefully that no one may escape the conclusion. it is clear and exacting, but in the issue it is beautiful. we fight for freedom--not for the vanity of the world, not to have a fine conceit of ourselves, not to be as bad--or if we prefer to put it so, as big as our neighbours. the inspiration is drawn from a deeper element of our being. we stifle for self-development individually and as a nation. if we don't go forward we must go down. it is a matter of life and death; it is out soul's salvation. if the whole nation stand for it, we are happy; we shall be grandly victorious. if only a few are faithful found they must be the more steadfast for being but a few. they stand for an individual right that is inalienable. a majority has no right to annul it, and no power to destroy it. tyrannies may persecute, slay, or banish those who defend it; the thing is indestructible. it does not need legions to protect it nor genius to proclaim it, though the poets have always glorified it, and the legions will ultimately acknowledge it. one man alone may vindicate it, and because that one man has never failed it has never died. not, indeed, that ireland has ever been reduced to a single loyal son. she never will be. we have not survived the centuries to be conquered now. but the profound significance of the struggle, of its deep spiritual appeal, of the imperative need for a motive force as lofty and beautiful, of the consciousness that worthy winning of freedom is a labour for human brotherhood; the significance of it all is seen in the obligation it imposes on everyone to be true, the majority notwithstanding. he is called to a grave charge who is called to resist the majority. but he will resist, knowing his victory will lead them to a dearer dream than they had ever known. he will fight for that ideal in obscurity, little heeded--in the open, misunderstood; in humble places, still undaunted; in high places, seizing every vantage point, never crushed, never silent, never despairing, cheering a few comrades with hope for the morrow. and should these few sink in the struggle the greatness of the ideal is proven in the last hour; as they fall their country awakens to their dream, and he who inspired and sustained them is justified; justified against the whole race, he who once stood alone against them. in the hour he falls he is the saviour of his race. chapter ii separation. i when we plead for separation from the british empire as the only basis on which our country can have full development, and on which we can have final peace with england, we find in opponents a variety of attitudes, but one attitude invariably absent--a readiness to discuss the question fairly and refute it, if this can be done. one man will take it superficially and heatedly, assuming it to be, according to his party, a censure on mr. redmond or mr. o'brien. another will take it superficially, but, as he thinks, philosophically, and will dismiss it with a smile. with the followers of mr. redmond or mr. o'brien we can hardly argue at present, but we should not lose heart on their account, for these men move _en masse_. one day the consciousness of the country will be electrified with a great deed or a great sacrifice and the multitude will break from lethargy or prejudice and march with a shout for freedom in a true, a brave, and a beautiful sense. we must work and prepare for that hour. then there is our philosophical friend. i expect him to hear my arguments. when i am done, he may not agree with me on all points; he may not agree with me on any point; but if he come with me, i promise him one thing: this question can no longer be dismissed with a smile. ii our friend's attitude is explained in part by our never having attempted to show that a separatist policy is great and wise. we have held it as a right, have fought for it, have made sacrifices for it, and vowed to have it at any cost; but we have not found for it a definite place in a philosophy of life. superficial though he be, our friend has indicated a need: we must take the question philosophically--but in the great and true sense. it is a truism of philosophy and science that the world is a harmonious whole, and that with the increase of knowledge, laws can be discovered to explain the order and the unity of the universe. accordingly, if we are to justify our own position as separatists, we must show that it will harmonise, unify and develop our national life, that it will restore us to a place among the nations, enable us to fulfil a national destiny, a destiny which, through all our struggles, we ever believe is great, and waiting for us. that must be accepted if we are to get at the truth of the matter. a great doctrine that dominates our lives, that lays down a rigid course of action, that involves self-denial, hard struggles, endurance for years, and possibly death before the goal is reached--any such doctrine must be capable of having its truth demonstrated by the discovery of principles that govern and justify it. otherwise we cannot yield it our allegiance. let us to the examination, then; we shall find it soul-stirring and inspiring. we must be prepared, however, to abandon many deeply-rooted prejudices; if we are unwilling, we must abandon the truth. but we will find courage in moving forward, and will triumph in the end, by keeping in mind at all times that the end of freedom is to realise the salvation and happiness of all peoples, to make the world, and not any selfish corner of it, a more beautiful dwelling-place for men. treated in this light, the question becomes for all earnest men great and arresting. our friend, who may have smiled, will discuss it readily now. yet he may not be convinced; he may point his finger over the wasted land and contrast its weakness with its opponents' strength, and conclude: "your philosophy is beautiful, but only a dream." he is at least impressed; that is a point gained; and we may induce him to come further and further till he adopts the great principle we defend. iii his difficulty now is the common error that a man's work for his country should be based on the assumption that it should bear full effect in his own time. this is most certainly false; for a man's life is counted by years, a nation's by centuries, and as work for the nation should be directed to bringing her to full maturity in the coming time, a man must be prepared to labour for an end that may be realised only in another generation. consider how he disposes his plans for his individual life. his boyhood and youth are directed that his manhood and prime may be the golden age of life, full-blooded and strong-minded, with clear vision and great purpose and high hope, all justified by some definite achievement. a man's prime is great as his earlier years have been well directed and concentrated. in the early years the ground is prepared and the seed sown for the splendid period of full development. so it is with the nation: we must prepare the ground and sow the seed for the rich ripeness of maturity; and bearing in mind that the maturity of the nation will come, not in one generation but after many generations, we must be prepared to work in the knowledge that we prepare for a future that only other generations will enjoy. it does not mean that we shall work in loneliness, cheered by no vision of the promised land; we may even reach the promised land in our time, though we cannot explore all its great wonders: that will be the delight of ages. but some will never survive to celebrate the great victory that will establish our independence; yet they shall not go without reward; for to them will come a vision of soul of the future triumph, an exaltation of soul in the consciousness of labouring for that future, an exultation of soul in the knowledge that once its purpose is grasped, no tyranny can destroy it, that the destiny of our country is assured, and her dominion will endure for ever. let any argument be raised against one such pioneer--he knows this in his heart, and it makes him indomitable, and it is he who is proven to be wise in the end. he judges the past clearly, and through the crust of things he discerns the truth in his own time, and puts his work in true relation to the great experience of life, and he is justified; for ultimately his work opens out, matures, and bears fruit a hundredfold. it may not be in a day, but when his hand falls dead, his glory becomes quickly manifest. he has lived a beautiful life, and has left a beautiful field; he has sacrificed the hour to give service for all time; he has entered the company of the great, and with them he will be remembered for ever. he is the practical man in the true sense. but there is the other self-styled practical man, who thinks all this proceeding foolish, and cries out for the expedient of the hour. has he ever realised the promise of his proposals? no, he is the most inefficient person who has ever walked the earth. but for a saving consideration let him go contemplate the wasted efforts of the opportunist in every generation, and the broken projects scattered through the desert-places of history. iv still one will look out on the grim things of the hour, and hypnotised by the hour will cry: "see the strength of the british empire, see our wasted state; your hope is vain." let him consider this clear truth: peoples endure; empires perish. where are now the empires of antiquity? and the empires of to-day have the seed of dissolution in them. but the peoples that saw the old empires rise and hold sway are represented now in their posterity; the tyrannies they knew are dead and done with. the peoples endured; the empires perished; and the nations of the earth of this day will survive in posterity when the empires that now contend for mastery are gathered into the dust, with all dead, bad things. we shall endure; and the measure of our faith will be the measure of our achievement and of the greatness of our future place. v is it not the dream of earnest men of all parties to have an end to our long war, a peace final and honourable, wherein the soul of the country can rest, revive and express itself; wherein poetry, music and art will pour out in uninterrupted joy, the joy of deliverance, flashing in splendour and superabundant in volume, evidence of long suppression? this is the dream of us all. but who can hope for this final peace while any part of our independence is denied? for, while we are connected in any shape with the british empire the connection implies some dependence; this cannot be gainsaid; and who is so foolish as to expect that there will be no collision with the british parliament, while there is this connection implying dependence on the british empire? if such a one exists he goes against all experience and all history. on either side of the connection will be two interests--the english interest and the irish interest, and they will be always at variance. consider how parties within a single state are at variance, conservatives and radicals, in any country in europe. the proposals of one are always insidious, dangerous or reactionary, as the case may be, in the eyes of the other; and in no case will the parties agree; they will at times even charge each other with treachery; there is never peace. it is the rule of party war. who, then, can hope for peace where into the strife is imported a race difference, where the division is not of party but of people? that is in truth the vain hope. and be it borne in mind the race difference is not due to our predominating gaelic stock, but to the separate countries and to distinct households in the human race. if we were all of english extraction the difference would still exist. there is the historic case of the american states; it is easy to understand. when a man's children come of age, they set up establishments for themselves, and live independently; they are always bound by affection to the parent-home; but if the father try to interfere in the house of a son, and govern it in any detail, there will be strife. it is hardly necessary to labour the point. if all the people in this country were of english extraction and england were to claim on that account that there should be a connection with her, and that it should dominate the people here, there would be strife; and it could have but one end--separation. we would, of whatever extraction, have lived in natural neighbourliness with england, but she chose to trap and harass us, and it will take long generations of goodwill to wipe out some memories. again, and yet again, let there be no confusion of thought as to this final peace; it will never come while there is any formal link of dependence. the spirit of our manhood will always flame up to resent and resist that link. separation and equality may restore ties of friendship; nothing else can: for individual development and general goodwill is the lesson of human life. we can be good neighbours, but most dangerous enemies, and in the coming time our hereditary foe cannot afford to have us on her flank. the present is promising; the future is developing for us: we shall reach the goal. let us see to it that we shall be found worthy. vi that we be found worthy; let this be borne in mind. for it is true that here only is our great danger. if with our freedom to win, our country to open up, our future to develop, we learn no lesson from the mistakes of nations and live no better life than the great powers, we shall have missed a golden opportunity, and shall be one of the failures of history. so far, on superficial judgment, we have been accounted a failure; though the simple maintenance of our fight for centuries has been in itself a splendid triumph. but then only would we have failed in the great sense, when we had got our field and wasted it, as the nations around us waste theirs to-day. we led europe once; let us lead again with a beautiful realisation of freedom; and let us beware of the delusion that is abroad, that we seek nothing more than to be free of restraint, as england, france and germany are to-day; let us beware of the delusion that if we can scramble through anyhow to freedom we can then begin to live worthily, but that in the interval we cannot be too particular. that is the grim shadow that darkens our path, that falls between us and a beautiful human life, and may drive us to that tiger-like existence that makes havoc through the world to-day. let us beware. i do not say we must settle now all disputes, such as capital, labour, and others, but that everyone should realise a duty to be high-minded and honourable in action; to regard his fellow not as a man to be circumvented, but as a brother to be sympathised with and uplifted. neither kingdom, republic, nor commune can regenerate us; it is in the beautiful mind and a great ideal we shall find the charter of our freedom; and this is the philosophy that it is most essential to preach. we must not ignore it now, for how we work to-day will decide how we shall live to-morrow; and if we are not scrupulous in our struggle, we shall not be pure in our future state, i know there are many who are not indifferent to high-minded action, but who live in dread of an exacting code of life, fearing it will harass our movements and make success impossible. let us correct this mistake with the reflection that the time is shaping for us. the power of our country is strengthening; the grip of the enemy is slackening; every extension of local government is a step nearer to independent government; the people are not satisfied with an instalment; their capacity for further power is developed, and they are equipped with weapons to win it. even in our time have we made great advance. let one fact alone make this evident. less than twenty years ago the irish language was despised; to-day the movement to restore it is strong enough to have it made compulsory in the national university. can anyone doubt from this sign of the times alone that the hour points to freedom, and we are on the road to victory? that we shall win our freedom i have no doubt; that we shall use it well i am not so certain, for see how sadly misused it is abroad through the world to-day. that should be our final consideration, and we should make this a resolution--our future history shall be more glorious than that of any contemporary state. we shall look for prosperity, no doubt, but let our enthusiasm be for beautiful living; we shall build up our strength, yet not for conquest, but as a pledge of brotherhood and a defence for the weaker ones of the earth; we shall take pride in our institutions, not only as guaranteeing the stability of the state, but as securing the happiness of the citizens, and we shall lead europe again as we led it of old. we shall rouse the world from a wicked dream of material greed, of tyrannical power, of corrupt and callous politics to the wonder of a regenerated spirit, a new and beautiful dream; and we shall establish our state in a true freedom that will endure for ever. chapter iii moral force i one of the great difficulties in discussing any question of importance in ireland is that words have been twisted from their original and true significance, and if we are to have any effective discussion, we must first make clear the meaning of our terms. love of country is quoted to tolerate every insidious error of weakness, but if it has any meaning it should make men strong-souled and resolute in every crisis. men working for the extension of local government toast "ireland a nation," and extol home rule as independence; but while there is any restraint on us by a neighbouring power, acknowledged superior, there is dependence to that extent. straightway, those who fight for independence shift their ground and plead for absolute independence, but there is no such thing as qualified independence; and when we abandon the simple name to men of half-measures, we prejudice our cause and confuse the issue. then there is the irreconcilable--how is he regarded in the common cry? always an impossible, wild, foolish person, and we frequently resent the name and try to explain his reasonableness instead of exulting in his strength, for the true irreconcilable is the simple lover of the truth. among men fighting for freedom some start up in their plea for liberty, pointing to the prosperity of england, france, and germany, and when we debate the means by which they won their power, we find our friends draw no distinction between true freedom and licentious living; but it would be better to be crushed under the wheels of great powers than to prosper by their example. and so, through every discussion we must make clear the meaning of our terms. there is one i would treat particularly now. of all the terms glibly flung about in every debate not one has been so confused as moral force. ii since the time of o'connell the cry moral force has been used persistently to cover up the weakness of every politician who was afraid or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion has been the consequence. i am not going here to raise old debates over o'connell's memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a patriot. let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless fiasco of clontarf recall for full judgment the o'connell of earlier years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the pioneer. but a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which is overshadowing us to our undoing. for we find men of this time who lack moral courage fighting in the name of moral force, while those who are pre-eminent as men of moral fibre are dismissed with a smile--physical-force men. to make clear the confusion we need only to distinguish moral force from moral weakness. there is the distinction. call it what we will, moral courage, moral strength, moral force; we all recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man unconquerable above every power of brute strength. i call it moral force, which is a good name, and i make the definition: a man of moral force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any consequence. it is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all mad possibilities, filled with a madder hope, and indifferent to any havoc that may ensue. no, but it is a first principle of his, that a true thing is a good thing, and from a good thing rightly pursued can follow no bad consequence. and he faces every possible development with conscience at rest--it may be with trepidation for his own courage in some great ordeal, but for the nobility of the cause and the beauty of the result that must ensue, always with serene faith. and soon the trepidation for himself passes, for a great cause always makes great men, and many who set out in hesitation die heroes. this it is that explains the strange and wonderful buoyancy of men, standing for great ideals, so little understood of others of weaker mould. the soldier of freedom knows he is forward in the battle of truth, he knows his victory will make for a world beautiful, that if he must inflict or endure pain, it is for the regeneration of those who suffer, the emancipation of those in chains, the exaltation of those who die, and the security and happiness of generations yet unborn. for the strength that will support a man through every phase of this struggle a strong and courageous mind is the primary need--in a word, moral force. a man who will be brave only if tramping with a legion will fail in courage if called to stand in the breach alone. and it must be clear to all that till ireland can again summon her banded armies there will be abundant need for men who will stand the single test. 'tis the bravest test, the noblest test, and 'tis the test that offers the surest and greatest victory. for one armed man cannot resist a multitude, nor one army conquer countless legions; but not all the armies of all the empires of earth can crush the spirit of one true man. and that one man will prevail. iii but so much have we felt the need of resisting every slavish tendency that found refuge under the name of moral force, that those of us who would vindicate our manhood cried wildly out again for the physical test; and we cried it long and repeatedly the more we smarted under the meanness of retrograde times. but the time is again inspiring, and the air must now be cleared. we have set up for the final test of the man of unconquerable spirit that test which is the first and last argument of tyranny--recourse to brute strength. we have surrounded with fictitious glory the carnage of the battlefields; we have shouted of wading through our enemies' blood, as if bloody fields were beautiful; we have been contemptuous of peace, as if every war were exhilarating; but, "war is hell," said a famous general in the field. this, of course, is exaggeration, but there is a grim element of truth in the warning that must be kept in mind at all times. if one among us still would resent being asked to forego what he thinks a rightful need of vengeance, let him look into himself. let him consider his feelings on the death of some notorious traitor or criminal; not satisfaction, but awe, is the uppermost feeling in his heart. death sobers us all. but away from death this may be unconvincing; and one may still shout of the glory of floating the ship of freedom in the blood of the enemy. i give him pause. he may still correct his philosophy in view of the horror of a street accident or the brutality of a prize-fight. iv but war must be faced and blood must be shed, not gleefully, but as a terrible necessity, because there are moral horrors worse than any physical horror, because freedom is indispensable for a soul erect, and freedom must be had at any cost of suffering; the soul is greater than the body. this is the justification of war. if hesitating to undertake it means the overthrow of liberty possessed, or the lying passive in slavery already accomplished, then it is the duty of every man to fight if he is standing, or revolt if he is down. and he must make no peace till freedom is assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending of limb from limb. the body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal; and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of life. consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither up a people in a state of slavery. there are the bribes of those in power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and despair--everywhere a land decaying. viciousness, meanness, cowardice, intolerance, every bad thing arises like a weed in the night and blights the land where freedom is dead; and the aspect of that land and the soul of that people become spectacles of disgust, revolting and terrible, terrible for the high things degraded and the great destinies imperilled. it would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in two, and sank it into the ocean. to avert the moral plague of slavery men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those who set more count by the physical consequences cannot by that avert them, for the moral disease is followed by physical wreck--if delayed still inevitable. so, physical force is justified, not _per se_, but as an expression of moral force; where it is unsupported by the higher principle it is evil incarnate. the true antithesis is not between moral force and physical force, but between moral force and moral weakness. that is the fundamental distinction being ignored on all sides. when the time demands and the occasion offers, it is imperative to have recourse to arms, but in that terrible crisis we must preserve our balance. if we leap forward for our enemies' blood, glorifying brute force, we set up the standard of the tyrant and heap up infamy for ourselves; on the other hand, if we hesitate to take the stern action demanded, we fail in strength of soul, and let slip the dogs of war to every extreme of weakness and wildness, to create depravity and horror that will ultimately destroy us. a true soldier of freedom will not hesitate to strike vigorously and strike home, knowing that on his resolution will depend the restoration and defence of liberty. but he will always remember that restraint is the great attribute that separates man from beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will remember that he strikes not at his enemy's life, but at his misdeed, that in destroying the misdeed, he makes not only for his own freedom, but even for his enemy's regeneration. this may be for most of us perhaps too great a dream. but for him who reads into the heart of the question and for the true shaping of his course it will stand; he will never forget, even in the thickest fight, that the enemy of to-day and yesterday may be the genuine comrade of to-morrow. v if it is imperative that we should fix unalterably our guiding principles before we are plunged unprepared into the fight, it is even more urgent we should clear the mind to the truth now, for we have fallen into the dangerous habit of deferring important questions on the plea that the time is not ripe. in a word, we lack moral strength; and so, that virtue that is to safeguard us in time of war is the great virtue that will redeem us in time of servility. it need not be further laboured that in a state enslaved every mean thing flourishes. the admission of it makes clear that in such a state it is more important that every evil be resisted. in a normal condition of liberty many temporary evils may arise; yet they are not dangerous--in the glow of a people's freedom they waste and die as disease dies in the sunlight. but where independence is suppressed and a people degenerate, a little evil is in an atmosphere to grow, and it grows and expands; and evils multiply and destroy. that is why men of high spirit working to regenerate a fallen people must be more insistent to watch every little defect and weak tendency that in a braver time would leave the soul unruffled. that is why every difficulty, once it becomes evident, is ripe for settlement. to evade the issue is to invite disaster. resolution alone will save us in our many dangers. but a plea for policy will be raised to evade a particular and urgent question: "people won't unite on it"; that's one cry. "ignorant people will be led astray"; that's another cry. there is always some excuse ready for evasion. the difficulty is, that every party likes some part of the truth; no party likes it all; but we must have it all, every line of it. we want no popular editions and no philosophic selections--the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. this must be the rule for everything concerning which a man has a public duty and ought to have a public opinion. there is a dangerous tendency gaining ground of slurring over vital things because the settlement of them involves great difficulty, and may involve great danger; but whatever the issue is we must face it. it is a step forward to bring men together on points of agreement, but men come thus together not without a certain amount of suspicion. in a fight for freedom that latent suspicion would become a mastering fear to seize and destroy us. we must allay it now. we must lead men to discuss points of difference with respect, forbearance, and courage, to find a consistent way of life for all that will inspire confidence in all. at present we inspire confidence in no one; it would be fatal to hide the fact. this is a necessary step to bringing matters to a head. we cannot hope to succeed all at once, but we must keep the great aim in view. there will be objections on all sides; from the _blasé_ man of the world, concerned only for his comfort, the mean man of business concerned only for his profits, the man of policy always looking for a middle way, a certain type of religious pessimist who always spies danger in every proposal, and many others. we need not consider the comfort of the first nor the selfishness of the second; but the third and fourth require a word. the man of policy offers me his judgment instead of a clear consideration of the truth. 'tis he who says: "you and i can discuss certain things privately. we are educated; we understand. ignorant people can't understand, and you only make mischief in supposing it. it's not wise." to him i reply: "you are afraid to speak the whole truth; i am afraid to hide it. you are filled with the danger to ignorant people of having out everything; i am filled with the danger to _you_ of suppressing anything. i do not propose to you that you can with the whole truth make ignorant people profound, but i say you must have the whole truth out for your own salvation." here is the danger: we see life within certain limitations, and cannot see the possibly infinite significance of something we would put by. it is of grave importance that we see it rightly, and in the difficulties of the case our only safe course is to take the evidence life offers without prejudice and without fear, and write it down. when the matter is grave, let it be taken with all the mature deliberation and care its gravity demands, but once the evidence is clearly seen, let us for our salvation write it down. for any man to set his petty judgment above the need for setting down the truth is madness; and i refuse to do it. there is our religious pessimist to consider. to him i say i take religion more seriously. i take it not to evade the problems of life, but to solve them. when i tell him to have no fear, this is not my indifference to the issue, but a tribute to the faith that is in me. let us be careful to do the right thing; then fear is inconsistent with faith. nor can i understand the other attitude. two thousand years after the preaching of the sermon on the mount we are to go about whispering to one another what is wise. vi to conclude: now, and in every phase of the coming struggle, the strong mind is a greater need than the strong hand. we must be passionate, but the mind must guide and govern our passion. in the aberrations of the weak mind decrying resistance, let us not lose our balance and defy brute strength. at a later stage we must consider the ethics of resistance to the civil power; the significance of what is written now will be more apparent then. let the cultivation of a brave, high spirit be our great task; it will make of each man's soul an unassailable fortress. armies may fail, but it resists for ever. the body it informs may be crushed; the spirit in passing breathes on other souls, and other hearts are fired to action, and the fight goes on to victory. to the man whose mind is true and resolute ultimate victory is assured. no sophistry can sap his resistance; no weakness can tempt him to savage reprisals. he will neither abandon his heritage nor poison his nature. and in every crisis he is steadfast, in every issue justified. rejoice, then good comrades; our souls are still our own. through the coldness and depression of the time there has lightened a flash of the old fire; the old enthusiasm, warm and passionate, is again stirring us; we are forward to uphold our country's right, to fight for her liberty, and to justify our own generation. we shall conquer. let the enemy count his dreadnoughts and number off his legions--where are now the legions of rome and carthage? and the spirit of freedom they challenged is alive and animating the young nations to-day. hold we our heads high, then, and we shall bear our flag bravely through every fight. persistent, consistent, straightforward and fearless, so shall we discipline the soul to great deeds, and make it indomitable. in the indomitable soul lies the assurance of our ultimate victory. chapter iv brothers and enemies i our enemies are brothers from whom we are estranged. here is the fundamental truth that explains and justifies our hope of re-establishing a real patriotism among all parties in ireland, and a final peace with our ancient enemy of england. it is the view of prejudice that makes of the various sections of our people hopelessly hostile divisions, and raises up a barrier of hate between ireland and england that can never be surmounted. if ireland is to be regenerated, we must have internal unity; if the world is to be regenerated, we must have world-wide unity--not of government, but of brotherhood. to this great end every individual, every nation has a duty; and that the end may not be missed we must continually turn for the correction of our philosophy to reflecting on the common origin of the human race, on the beauty of the world that is the heritage of all, our common hopes and fears, and in the greatest sense the mutual interests of the peoples of the earth. if, unheeding this, any people make their part of the earth ugly with acts of tyranny and baseness, they threaten the security of all; if unconscious of it, a people always high-spirited are plunged into war with a neighbour, now a foe, and yet fight, as their nature compels them, bravely and magnanimously, they but drive their enemy back to the field of a purer life, and, perhaps, to the realisation of a more beautiful existence, a dream to which his stagnant soul steeped in ugliness could never rise. ii on the road to freedom every alliance will be sternly tried. internal friendship will not be made in a day, nor external friendship for many a day, and there will be how many temptations to hold it all a delusion and scatter the few still standing loyally to the flag. we must understand, then, the bond that holds us together on the line of march, and in the teeth of every opposition. nothing but a genuine bond of brotherhood can so unite men, but we hardly seem to realise its truth. when a deep and ardent patriotism requires men of different creeds to come together frankly and in a spirit of comradeship, and when the most earnest of all the creeds do so, others who are colder and less earnest regard this union as a somewhat suspicious alliance; and, if they join in, do so reluctantly. others come not at all; these think our friends labour in a delusion, that it needs but an occasion to start an old fear and drive them apart, to attack one another with ancient bitterness fired with fresh venom. we must combat that idea. let us consider the attitude to one another of three units of the band, who represent the best of the company and should be typical of the whole; one who is a catholic, one who is a protestant, and one who may happen to be neither. the complete philosophy of any one of the three may not be accepted by the other two; the horizon of his hopes may be more or less distant, but that complete philosophy stretches beyond the limit of the sphere, within which they are drawn together to mutual understanding and comradeship, moved by a common hope, a brave purpose and a beautiful dream. the significance of their work may be deeper for one than for another, the origin of the dream and its ultimate aim may be points not held in common; but the beautiful tangible thing that they all now fight for, the purer public and private life, the more honourable dealings between men, the higher ideals for the community and the nation, the grander forbearance, courage and freedom, in all these they are at one. the instinctive recognition of an attack on the ideal is alive and vigilant in all three. the sympathy that binds them is ardent, deep and enduring. observe them come together. note the warm hand grasp, the drawn face of one, a hard-worker; of another, the eye anxious for a brother hard pressed; of the third, the eye glistening for the ideal triumphant; of all the intimate confidence, the mutual encouragement and self-sacrifice, never a note of despair, but always the exultation of the great fight, and the promise of a great victory. this is a finer company than a mere casual alliance; yet it makes the uninspired pause, wondering and questioning. these men are earnest men of different creeds; still they are as intimately bound to one another as if they knelt at the one altar. in the narrow view the creeds should be at one another's throats; here they are marching shoulder to shoulder. how is this? and the one whose creed is the most exacting could, perhaps, give the best reply. he would reply that within the sphere in which they work together the true thing that unites them can be done only the one right way; that instinctively seizing this right way they come together; that this is the line of advance to wider and deeper things that are his inspiration and his life; that if a comrade is roused to action by the nearer task, and labours bravely and rightly for it, he is on the road to widening vistas in his dream that now he may not see. that is what he would say whose vision of life is the widest. all objectors he may not satisfy. that what is life to him may leave his comrade cold is a difficulty; but against the difficulty stand the depth and reality of their comradeship, proven by mutual sacrifice, endurance, and faith, and he never doubts that their bond union will sometime prove to have a wise and beautiful meaning in the annals of god. iii but the men of different creeds who stand firmly and loyally together are a minority. we are faced with the great difficulty of uniting as a whole north and south; and we are faced with the grim fact that many whom we desire to unite are angrily repudiating a like desire, that many are sarcastically noting this, that many are coldly refusing to believe; while through it all the most bitter are emphasising enmity and glorifying it. all these unbelievers keep insisting north and south are natural enemies and must so remain. the situation is further embittered by acts of enmity being practised by both sides to the extreme provocation of the faithful few. their forbearance will be sorely tried, and this is the final test of men. by those who cling to prejudice and abandon self-restraint, extol enmity, and always proceed to the further step--the plea to wipe the enemy out: the counter plea for forbearance is always scorned as the enervating gospel of weakness and despair. though we like to call ourselves christian, we have no desire for--nay even make a jest of--that outstanding christian virtue; yet men not held by christian dogma have joyously surrendered to the sublimity of that divine idea. hear shelley speak: "what nation has the example of the desolation of attica by mardonius and xerxes, or the extinction of the persian empire by alexander of macedon restrained from outrage? was not the pretext for this latter system of spoliation derived immediately from the former? had revenge in this instance any other effect than to increase, instead of diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already existing in the world? the emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward." shelley writes much further on retaliation, which he denounces as "futile superstition." simple violence repels every high and generous thinker. hear one other, mazzini: "what we have to do is not to establish a new order of things by violence. an order of things so established is always tyrannical even when it is better than the old." let us bear this in mind when there is an act of aggression on either side of the boyne. there will not be wanting on the other side a cry for retaliation and "a lesson." we shall receive every provocation to give up and acknowledge ancient bitterness, but then is the time to stand firm, then we shall need to practise the divine forbearance that is the secret of strength. iv but with only a minority standing to the flag we cry out for some hope of final success. men will not fight without result for ever; they ask for some sign of progress, some gleam of the light of victory. happily, searching the skies, our eyes can have their reward. we shall, no doubt, see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and the wrath has lost its sting. men who raged twenty years ago rage now, but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries: they are passive, unimpressed by either side. rightly approached, they may understand and feel the glow of a fine enthusiasm; they are numbered by prejudice, they will become warm, active and daring under an inspiring appeal. remember, and have done with despair. think how you and i found our path step by step of the way: political life was full of conventions that suited our fathers' time, but have faded in the light of our day. we found these conventions unreal and put them by. this was no reflection on our fathers; what they fought for truly is our heritage, and we pay them a tribute in offering it in turn our loyalty inspired by their devotion. but their errors we must rectify; what they left undone we must take up and fulfil. that is the task of every generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. youth recognises this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth. every individual may know this from his own experience, and from it he knows that those who are now voicing old bitter cries are ageing, and will soon pass and leave no successors. not that prejudice will die for ever. each new day will have its own, but that which is now dividing and hampering us will pass. let the memory of its bitterness be an incentive to checking new animosities and keeping the future safe; but in the present let us grasp and keep in our mind that the barrier that sundered our nation must crumble, if only we have faith and persist, undeterred by old bitter cries, for they are dying cries, undepressed by millions apathetic, for it is the great recurring sign of the ideal, that one hour its light will flash through quivering multitudes, and millions will have vision and rouse to regenerate the land. v happily, it is nothing new to plead for brotherhood among irishmen now; unhappily, it is not so generally admitted, nor even recognised, that the same reason that exists for restoring friendly relations among irishmen, exists for the re-establishing of friendship with any outsider--england or another--with whom now or in the future we may be at war. friendliness between neighbours is one of the natural things of life. in the case of individuals how beautifully it shows between two dwellers in the same street or townland. they rejoice together in prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond of unity in their mutual interests. consider, then, the sundering of their friendship by some act of evil on either side. the old friendship is turned to hate. now the proximity that gave intimate pleasure to their comradeship gives as keen an edge to their enmity; they meet one another, cross one another, harass one another at every point. the bitterness that is such a poison to life must be revolting to their best instincts; deep in their hearts must be a yearning for the casting out of hate and the return of old comradeship. still the estranged brothers are at daggers drawn. sometimes the evil done is so great and the bitterness so keen that the old spirit can apparently never be restored; but while there is any hope whatever the true heart will keep it alive deep down, for it must be cherished and kept in mind if the whole beauty of life is to be renewed and preserved for ever. it is so with nations as with individuals. once this is recognised we must be on guard against a new error, which is an old error in new form, the taking of means for end. the end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. no, its message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable; it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. it may be further urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. whatever it removes it will not be their strength. in a war admittedly between brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of bitterness and hate. when, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a deep sense his brother, you do not draw him from the fight, but you give him a new conception of the goal to win and with a great dream inspire him to persevere and reach the goal. vi if, then, beyond individual and national freedom there is this great dream still to be striven for, let us not decry it as something too sublime for earth. it must be our guiding star to lead us rightly as far as we may go. we can travel rightly that part of the road we now tread on only by shaping it true to the great end that ought to inspire us all. we shall have many temptations to swerve aside, but the power of mind that keeps our position clear and firm will react against every destroying influence. in the first stage of the fight for internal unity, when blind bigotry is furiously insisting that we but plan an insidious scheme for the oppression of a minority, our firmness will save us till our conception of the end grow on that minority and convince all of our earnestness. then the dream will inspire them, the flag will claim them, and the first stage in the fight will be won. when internal unity is accomplished, we are within reach of freedom. yes, but cries an objector, "why plead for friendship with england, who will have peace only on condition of her supremacy?" and an answer is needed. if it takes two to make a fight, it also most certainly takes two to make a peace, unless one accepts the position of serf and surrenders. but this we do not fear; we can compel our freedom and we are confident of victory. there is still the step to friendship. many will be baffled by the difficulty, that while we must keep alive our generous instincts, we must be stern and resolute in the fight; while we desire peace we must prosecute war; while we long for comradeship we must be breaking up dangerous alliances: literary, political, trades and social unions formed with england while she is asserting her supremacy must be broken up till they can be reformed on a basis of independence, equality and universal freedom. while we are prosecuting these vigorous measures it may not seem the way to final friendship; but we must persist; independence is first indispensable. here again, however, while insisting among our own ranks on our conception of the end, it will grow on the mind of the enemy. they may put it by at first as a delusion or a snare, but one intimate moment will come when it will light up for them, and a new era is begun. in such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried and friendship reborn. there is one honest fear that our independence would threaten their security: it will yet be replaced by the conviction that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression; the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars will glorify the earth. for this end our enemy must have an ideal as high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right. but if in the gross materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal: while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary england stand forward against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of shakespeare's, a song of shelley's, or a picture of turner's. from the heart of the enemy genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity, and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream survives to light us on the forward path. we must travel that path rightly. we can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. more difficult it will be, but it can be done. that is the great significance and justification of nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to cosmopolitanism. if the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest and inspire the world. if this ultimate dream is still floating far off, in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever. for the good fighter there is always fine recompense; a clear mind, warm blood, quick imagination, grasp of life and joy in action, and at the end of day always an eminence won. yes, and from the height of that eminence will come ringing down to the last doubter a last word: we may reach the mountaintops in aspiring to the stars. chapter v the secret of strength i to win our freedom we must be strong. but what is the secret of strength? it is fundamental to the whole question to understand this rightly, and, once grasped, make it the mainstay of individual existence, which is the foundation of national life. so much has the bodily power of over-riding minorities been made the criterion of absolute power, that to make clear the truth requires patience, insight, and a little mental study. but the end is a great end. it is to reconnoitre the most important battlefield, to discover the dispositions of the enemy, to measure our own resources and forge our strength link by link till we put on the armour of invincibility. ii we have to grasp a distinction, knowledge of which is essential to discerning true strength. it can be clearly seen in the contrast between two certain fighting forces; first, a well-organised army, capably led, marching forward full of hope and buoyancy; second, a remnant of that army after disaster, a mere handful, not swept like their comrades in panic, but with souls set to fight a forlorn hope. let us study the two: in the contrast we shall learn the secret. the courage of the well-organised army is not of so fine a quality as that nerving the few to fight to the last gasp. consider first the army. what is its value as a force? its discipline, its consolidation, the absolute obedience of its units to its officers, with the resulting unity of the whole; added to this is the sense of security in numbers, buoyancy of marching in a compact body, confidence in capable chiefs--all these factors go to the making of the courage and strength of the army. it is because their combination makes for the reliability of the force that discipline is so much valued and enforced, even to the point of death. let us keep this in our mind, that their strength lies in their numbers, concentration, unity, reliance on one another and on their chiefs. a sudden disaster overtakes that army--the death of a great general, the miscarriage of some plan, a surprise attack, any of the chances of war, and the strength of the army is pierced, the discipline shaken, the sense of security gone. there is an instinctive movement to retreat; the habit of discipline keeps it orderly at first; the fear grows; all precaution and restraint are thrown aside--the retreat is a rout, the army a rabble, the end debacle. external discipline in giving them its strength left them without individual resource; internal discipline was ignored. when their combined strength was gone there was individual helplessness and panic. consider, now, a remnant of that army, the members of which have the courage of the finer quality, individually resolute and set on resistance, clearly seeing at once all the possible consequences of their action, yet with that higher quality of soul accepting them without hesitation, pledging all human hopes for one last great hope of snatching victory from defeat, or, if not to save a lost battle, to check an advancing host, rally flying forces, and redeem a campaign. this is the heroic quality. in a crisis, the mind possessed of it does not wait for instructions or to reason a conclusion. it sees definite things, and swift as thought decides. there are flying legions, a flag down, a conquering army, and flight or death--to all eyes these are apparent; but to a brave company between that flight and death there is a gleam of hope, of victory, and for that forlorn hope flight is put by with the acceptance of death in the alternative if they fail. that is the quality to redeem us. because it is witnessed so often in our history we are going to win; not for our prowess in more fortunate war on an even field or with the flowing tide, not for many victories in many lands, but for the sacred places in this our brave land that are memorable for fights that registered the land unconquerable. why a last stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen our backs for another battle. iii we have, then, to develop individual patience, courage, and resolution. once this is borne in mind our work begins. in places there is a dangerous idea that sometime in the future we may be called on to strike a blow for freedom, but in the meantime there is little to do but watch and wait. this is a fatal error; we have to forge our strength in the interval. there is a further mistake that our national work is something apart, that social, business, religious and other concerns have no relation to it, and consequently we set apart a few hours of our leisure for national work, and go about our day as if no nation existed. but the middle of the day has a natural connection with the beginning of the day and the end of the day, and in whatever sphere a man finds himself, his acts must be in relation to and consistent with every other sphere. he will be the best patriot and the best soldier who is the best friend and the best citizen. one cannot be an honest man in one sphere and a rascal in another; and since a citizen to fulfil his duty to his country must be honourable and zealous, he must develop the underlying virtues in private life. he must strengthen the individual character, and to do this he must deal with many things seemingly remote and inconsequential from a national point of view. everything that crosses a man's path in his day's round of little or great moment requires of him an attitude towards it, and the conscious or unconscious shaping of his attitude is determining how he will proceed in other spheres not now in view. suppose the case of a man in business or social life. he has to work with others in a day's routine or fill up with them hours of leisure they enjoy together. consider to what accompaniment the work is often done and with what manner of conversation the leisure is often filled. in a day's routine, where men work together, harmonious relations are necessary; yet what bickerings, contentions, animosities fill many a day over points never worth a thought. you will see two men squabble like cats for the veriest trifle, and then go through days like children, without a word. you will see something similar in social life among men and women equally--petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the converse sense of showing how small and contemptible everything and everyone concerned is. a keen eye notes with some depression the absence from both spheres of a fine manliness, a generous conception of things, a large outlook, that prevents a squabble with a smile, and because of a consciousness of the need for determination in a great fight for a principle, holds in true contempt the trivialities of an hour. for in all the mean little bickerings of life there is involved not a principle, but a petty pride. one has to note these things and decide a line of action. in the abstract the right course seems quite natural and easy, but in fact it is not so. a man finds another act towards him with unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for nothing was at stake. he has lost his temper for nothing. in his heat he may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who might call him a name. he may tell you "he will make so-and-so respect him," but he offends his own self-respect if he cannot consider some things beneath him. one must have a sense of proportion and not elevate every little act of impudence into a challenge of life to be fought over as for life and death. it may be corrected with a little humour or a little disdain, but always with sympathy for the narrow mind whose view of life cannot reach beyond these petty things. yet, to repeat, it is not easy. an irritable temper will be on fire before reason can check it; the process of correction will prove uncomfortable--the reasons will be there, but the feelings in revolt. still, little by little, it is brought under, and in the end the nasty little irritability is killed just like a troublesome nerve; and, by and by, what once provoked a fierce rage becomes a subject for humorous reflection. let no one fear we kill the nerve for the great battle of life; this we but strengthen and make constant. every act of personal discipline is contributing to a subconscious reservoir whence our nobler energies are supplied for ever. and so, little things lead to great; and in an office wrangle or a social squabble there is need for developing those very qualities of judgment, courage, and patience which equip a man for the trials of the battlefield or the ruling of the state. iv we have considered the individual in business and social life. let us now follow him into a political assembly. we find the same conditions prevail. again, men fight bitterly but most frequently for nothing worth a fight; and again those rightly judging the situation must resolve not to be tempted into a wrangle even if their restraint be called by another name. what in a political assembly is often the first thing to note? we begin by the assumption, "this is a practical body of men," the words invariably used to cover the putting by of some great principle that we ought all endorse and uphold. but, first, by one of the many specious reasons now approved, we put the principle by, and before long we are at one another's throats about things involving no principle. it is not necessary to particularise. note any meeting for the same general conditions: a chairman, indecisive, explaining rules of order which he lacks the grit to apply; members ignoring the chair and talking at one another; others calling to order or talking out of time or away from the point; one unconsciously showing the futility of the whole business by asking occasionally what is before the chair, or what the purpose of the meeting. this picture is familiar to us all, and curiously we seem to take it always as the particular freak of a particular time or locality; but it is nothing of the kind. it is the natural and logical result of putting by principle and trying to live away from it. yet, that is what we are doing every day. it means we lack collectively the courage to pursue a thing to its logical conclusion and fight for the truth realised. if we are to be otherwise as a body, it will only be by personal discipline training for the wider and greater field. we must get a proper conception of the great cause we stand for, its magnitude and majesty, and that to be worthy of its service we must have a standard above reproach, have an end of petty proposals and underhand doings, be of brave front, resolute heart, and honourable intent. we must all understand this each in his own mind and shape his actions, each to be found faithful in the test. in fine, if in private life there is need for developing the great virtues requisite for public service, even more is it necessary in public life to develop the courage, patience and wisdom of the soldier and the statesman. v a concrete case will give a clearer grasp of the issue than any abstract reasoning. our history, recent and remote, affords many examples of the abandoning by our public men of a principle, to defend which they entered public life; and our action on such an occasion is invariably the same--to regard the delinquent as simply a traitor, to load him with invective and scorn and brand him for ever. we never see it is not innate wickedness in the man, but a weakness against which he has been untrained and undisciplined, and which leaves him helpless in the first crisis. ireland has recently been incensed by the action of some of her mayors and lord mayors in connection with the english coronation festival; the feeling has been acute in the metropolis. certain things are obvious, but how many see what is below the surface? let me suggest a case and a series of circumstances; the more pointed the case, the more interesting. i will suppose a particular mayor is an old fenian: let us see how for him a web is finely woven, and in the end how securely he is netted. first a mayor is a magistrate, and must take the judicial oath, but the old fenian has taken an oath of allegiance to ireland--clash number one. it is not simply a question of yes or no; there are attendant circumstances. around a public man in place circulates a swarm of interested people, needy friends, meddling politicians, "supporters" generally. the chief magistrate will have influence on the bench which they all wish to invoke now and then, and they all wish to see him there. they don't approve of any principle that stands in the way. they group themselves together as his "supporters," and claiming to have put him into public life, they act as if they had acquired a lease of his soul. not what he knows to be right, but what they believe to be useful, must be done; and before the first day is done the first fight must be made. however, the old fenian has enough of the spirit of old times to come safe through the first round. but the second is close on his heels: dublin castle has been attentive. the mayor, as chief magistrate, has privileges on which the castle now silently closes. there are private and veiled remonstrances by secret officials: "the mayor is acting illegally; he must not do so-and-so; such is the function of a magistrate; he has not taken the oath," etc. all this renewing the fight of the first day, for the castle, too, wants the mayor on the bench to brand him as its own and alienate him from the old flag. it puts on the pressure by suppressing his privileges, weakening his influence, and disappointing his "supporters." all this is silently done. still, the mayor holds fast, but he has not counted on this, and is beginning to be baffled and worried. meanwhile a sort of guerilla attack is being maintained: invitations arrive to garden parties at windsor, lesser functions nearer home, free passages to all the gay festivals, free admissions everywhere, the route indicated, and a gracious request for the presence of the mayor and mayoress. genuine business engagements now save the situation, and the invitations are put by, but our chief citizen is now bewildered. these social missiles are flying in all directions, always gracious and flattering, never challenging and rude--who can withstand them? still he is bewildered, but not yet caught. a new assault is made: the great health crusade battery is called up. here we must all unite, god's english and the wild irish, the fenian and the castleman, the labourer and the lord. surely, we are all against the microbes. there is a great demonstration, their excellencies attend--and the mayor presides. under the banner of the microbe he is caught. it is a great occasion, which their excellencies grace and improve. his excellency is affable with the mayor; her excellency is confidential and gracious with the mayoress--we might have been schoolchildren in the same townland we are so cordial. everything proceeds amid plaudits, and winds up in acclamation. their excellencies depart. great is the no-politics era--you can so quietly spike the guns of many an old politician--and keep him safe. the social amenities do this. their excellencies have gone, but they do not forget. there is a warm word of thanks for recent hospitality. perhaps the mayor has a daughter about to be married, or a son has died; it is remembered, and the cordial congratulation or gracious sympathy comes duly under the great seal. what surly man would resent sympathy? and so, the strength of the old warrior is sapped; the web is woven finely; in its secret net the castle has its man. you who have exercised yourselves in dublin recently over mayoral doings, note all this--not to the making light of any man's surrender, but to the true judging of the event, its deeper significance and danger. whoever fails must be called to account. when a man takes a position of trust, influence, and honour, and, whatever the difficulty, abandons a principle he should hold sacred, he must be held responsible. a battle is an ordeal, and we must be stern with friend and foe. but there is something more sinister than the weakness of the man: remember the net. vi the concrete case makes clear the principle in question. the man whom we have seen go down would have been safe if he had to fight no battle but one he could face with all his true friends, and in the open light of day. having to fight a secret battle was never even considered: threats direct or vague or subtle, blandishments, cajolery, graciousness, patronage, flattery, plausible generalities, attacks indirect and insidious--all coming without pause, secret, silent, tireless. he who is to be proof against this, and above threat or flattery, must have been disciplined with the discipline of a life that trains him for every emergency. you cannot take up such a character like a garment to suit the occasion: it must be developed in private and public by all those daily acts that declare a man's attitude, register his convictions, and form his mind. it gives its own reward at once, even in the day where nothing is apparently at stake; where men scramble furiously over the petty things of life; for he who sees these things at their proper value is unruffled. his composure in all the fury has its own value. but the mind that held him so, by the very act of dismissing something petty, gets a clearer conception of the great things of life; by intuition is at once awake to a hovering and fatal menace to individual or national existence, unseen of the common eye; and in that hour proves, to the confusion of the enemy, clear, vigorous and swift. let us, then, for this great end note what is the secret of strength. not alone to be ready to stand in with a host and march bravely to battle--the discipline that provides for this is great and valuable and must be always observed and practised. this gives, however, only the common courage of the crowd, and can only be trusted on an even field where the chances of war are equal. but when there is a struggle to restore freedom, where from the nature of the case the chances are uneven and the soldiers of liberty are at every disadvantage, then must we seek to adjust the balance by a finer courage and a more enduring strength. the mustering of legions will not suffice. the general reviewing this fine array who would rightly estimate the power he may command, must silently examine the units, to judge of this brave host how large a company can be formed to fight a forlorn hope. if this spirit is in reserve, he is armed against every emergency. if the chances are equal, he will have a splendid victory; if by any of the turns of war his legions are shaken and disaster threatened, there is always a certain rallying-ground where the host can re-form and the field be re-won, and the flag that has seen so many vicissitudes be set at last high and proudly in the light of freedom. chapter vi principle in action i our philosophy is valueless unless we bring it into life. with sufficient ingenuity we might frame theory after theory, and if they could not be put to the test of a work-a-day existence we but add another to the many dead theories that litter the history of philosophy. our principles are not to argue about, or write about, or hold meetings about, but primarily to give us a rule of life. to ignore this is to waste time and energy. to observe and follow it is to take from the clouds something that appeals to us, work it into life, by it interpret the problems to hand, make our choice between opposing standards, and maintain our fidelity to the true one against every opposition and through every fitful though terrible depression; so shall we startle people with its reality, and make for it a disciple or an opponent, but always at once convince the generation that there is a serious work in hand. ii if our philosophy is to be worked into life the first thing naturally is to review the situation. if we are to judge rightly, we must understand the present, draw from the past its lesson, and shape our plans for the future true to the principles that govern and inform every generation. let us survey the past, taking a sufficiently wide view between two points--say ' and our own time--and we see certain definite conditions. great luminous years--' , ' , ' , ' , rise up, witness to a great principle, readiness for sacrifice, unshaken belief in truth, valour and freedom, and a flag that will ultimately prevail. in these years the people had vision, the blood quickened, a living flame swept the land, scorching up hypocrisy, deceit, meanness, and lighting all brave hearts to high hope and achievement--for, the whimperers notwithstanding, it was always achievement to challenge the enemy and stagger his power, though yet his expulsion is delayed. between the glorious years of the living flame there intervened pallid times of depression, where every disease of soul and body crept into the open. true hearts lived, scattered here and there, believing still but disorganised and bewildered--the leaders were stricken down and in their place, obscuring the beauty of life, the grandeur of the past, and our future destiny, came time-servers, flatterers, hypocrites, open traffickers in honour and public decency, fastening their mean authority on the land. these are the two great resting-places in our historic survey: the generation of the living flame and the generation of despair; and it is for us to decide--for the decision rests with us--whether we shall in our time merely mark time or write another luminous chapter in the splendid history of our race. iii let us consider these two generations apart, to understand their distinctive features more clearly for our own guidance. take first the years of vision and the general effort to replant the old flag on our walls. with the first enthusiasts breathing the living flame abroad, the kindling hope, the widening fires, the deepening dream, there grows a consciousness of the greatness of the goal, of the general duty, of the individual responsibility for higher character, steadier work, and purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are weeded out of the individual and national consciousness: there is a realisation of a time come to restore the nation's independence, and with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve. all the excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or futile. the great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made, and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great. whatever concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of its soldiers and in promise of final success. iv let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great fights for freedom. we have known something of these times ourselves, have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us. but what we urgently require to study is the kind of effort--more often the absence of effort--made in such years by those who keep their belief in freedom and feel at times impelled in some way or other to action. they have followed a lost battle, and in the aftermath of defeat they are numbed into despair. they refuse to surrender to the forces of the hour, but they lack the fine faith and enthusiasm of the braver years that challenged these forces at every point and stood or fell by the issue. they lie apathetic till, moved by some particular meanness or treachery, they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic way--generally futile, and then relapse into helplessness again. they lack the vision that inspires every moment, discerns a sure way, and heightens the spirit to battle without ceasing, which is characteristic of the great years. they tacitly accept that theirs is a useless generation, that the enemy is in the ascendant, that they cannot unseat him, and their action, where any is made, is but to show their attitude, never to convince opponents that the battle is again beginning, that this is a bid for freedom, that history will be called on to record their fight and pay tribute to their times. their action has never this great significance. when stung to fitful madness by the boastful votaries of power, their occasional frantic efforts are more as relief to their feelings than destructive to the tyranny in being. let us realise this to the full; and seeing the futility in other years of every pathetic makeshift to annoy or circumvent the enemy, put by futilities and do a great work to justify our time. v we have, then, to consider and decide our immediate attitude to life, where we stand. there are errors to remove. the first is the assumption that we are only required to acknowledge the flag in places, offer it allegiance at certain meetings at certain times that form but a small part of our existence; while we allow ourselves to be dispensed from fidelity to our principles when in other places, where other standards are either explicitly or tacitly recognised. that we must carry our flag everywhere; that there must be no dispensation: these are the cardinal points of our philosophy. life is a great battlefield, and any hour in the day a man's flag may be challenged and he must stand and justify it. an idea you hold as true is not to be professed only where it is proclaimed; it will whisper and you must be its prophet in strange places; it is insistent of all things--you must glory in it or deny it; there is no escaping it, and there is no middle way; wherever your path lies it will cross you and you must choose. beware lest on any plea you put it by. you cannot elect to do nothing; the concourse of circumstances would take you to some side; to do nothing is still to take a side. priest, poet, professor, public man, professional man, business man, tradesman--everyone will be called to answer; in every walk of life the true idea will find the false in conflict and the battle must be fought out there--the battle is lost when we satisfy ourselves with an academic debate in our spare moments. this is a debating club age, and a plea for an ideal is often wasted, taken as a mere point in an argument; but to walk among men fighting passionately for it as a thing believed in, is to make it real, to influence men never reached in other ways; it is to arrest attention, arouse interest and quicken the masses to advance. and wherever the appeal for the flag is calling us the snare of the enemy is in wait. our history so bristles with instances that a particular concrete case need not be cited. we know that priests will get more patronage if they discourage the national idea; that professors will get more emoluments and honours if they can ban it; that public men will receive places and titles if they betray it; that the professional man will be promised more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag. most treacherous and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able, everywhere. it will say, "you have ability; come into the light--only put that by; it keeps you obscure. and what purpose does it serve now? be practical; come." and you may weaken and yield and enter the light for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure, miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. you may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated a fool and a failure, but they who rate you so will not understand that you have won a battle greater than all the triumphs of empires; you will keep alive in your soul true light and enduring beauty; you will hear the music eternally in the heart of the high enthusiast and have vision of ultimate victory that has sustained all the world over the efforts of centuries, that uplifts the individual, consolidates the nation, and leads a wandering race from the desert into the promised land. vi if we are to justify ourselves in our time we must have done with dispensations. many honest men are astray on this point and think attitudes justifiable that are at the root of all our failures. what is the weakness? it is so simple to explain and so easy to understand that one must wonder how we have been ignoring it quietly and generally so long. a man, as we have seen, acknowledges his flag in certain places; in other places it is challenged and he pulls it down. he is dispensed. he believes in his heart, may even write an anonymous letter to the paper, will salute the flag again elsewhere, but he will not carry his flag through every fight and through every day. when a particular crisis arises, which involves our public boards, public men, and business men in action, that requires a decision for or against the nation, he will find it in his place in life not wise to be prominent on his own side, and he is silently absent from his meetings--he gives a subscription but excuses himself from attendance. he satisfies himself with private professions of faith and whispered encouragement to those who fill the gap--words that won't be heard at a distance--and, worst of all, he thinks, because some stake in life may be jeopardised by bolder action, he is justified. the answer is, simply he is not justified. nor should anyone who is prepared to take the risk himself take it on himself to absolve others--nor, least of all, openly preach a milder doctrine to lead others who are timid to the farther goal, believed in at heart. encourage them by all means to practise their principles as far as they go; never restrict yours, or you will find yourself saying things you can't altogether approve; and if you tell a man to do things you can't altogether approve, and keep on telling him, it wears into you, and a thing you once held in abhorrence you come to think of with indifference. you change insensibly. old friends rage at you, and because of it you rage at them--not knowing how you have changed. you dare not let what you believe lie in abeyance or say things inconsistent with it, else to-morrow you'll be puzzled to say what you believe. you will hardly say two things to fit each other. let us have no half policies. our policy must be full, clear, consistent, to satisfy the restless, inquiring minds; when we win all such over, the merely passive people will follow. it should be clear that no man can dispense himself or his fellow from a grave duty; but for all that we have been liberal with our dispensations, and it has left us in confusion and failure. on the understanding that we will be heroes to-morrow, we evade being men to-day. we think of some hazy hour in the future when we may get a call to great things; we realise not that the call is now, that the fight is afoot, that we must take the flag from its hidden resting-place and carry it boldly into life. so near a struggle may touch us with dread; but to dread provoking a fight is to endure without resistance all the consequences of a lost battle--a battle that might have been won. and if we are to be fit for the heroic to-morrow we must arise and be men to-day. vii at times we find ourselves on neutral ground. the exigencies of the struggle involve this; and unfortunately we have in our midst sincere men who do not believe in restoring ireland to her original independence. perhaps, from a tendency to lose our balance at times, it is well to have near by these men whose obvious sincerity may serve as a correcting influence. we have to make them one with us; in the meantime we meet them on neutral ground for some common purpose. yet, we must take our flag everywhere? yes, that is fundamental. what then of the places where men of diverging views meet; do we abjure the flag? by no means. the understanding here is not to force our views on others, but we must keep our principles clear in mind that no hostile view be forced on us. we must see to it that neutrality be observed. one of the pitfalls to be aware of is, that something which on our principles we should not recognise, is assumed as recognised by others because to attack it would be to violate neutrality. but if it may not be resisted, it may not be recognised; this is neutrality; it is to stand on equal terms. and since grave matters divide us--not directly concerned in our national struggle for freedom--let the dangerous idea be banished, that in entering on common ground we decry all opposing beliefs. for men who hold beliefs as vital it would not be creditable to either side to put them easily by. no, we do not ask them to forget themselves, but to respect one another--an entirely greater and more honourable principle. on neutral ground a man is not called on to abjure his flag; rather he and his flag are in sanctuary. viii when we find the national idea touches life at every point, we begin to realise how frequent the call is to defend it without warning. it is not that men directly raise the idea purposely to reject it, but that their habit of life, to which they expect all to conform, is unconsciously assuming that our ruling principle can have no place now or in the future. their assumption that the _status quo_ cannot be changed will be the cause of most collision at first; and we must be quietly ready with the counter-assumption, stand for the old idea and justify it. we must realise, too, that the number of people who have definite, strong, well-developed views against ours are comparatively small. this small number embraces the english government that commands forces, obeying it without reason, and influencing the general mass of people whose general attitude is indecision--adrift with the ruling force. it is this general mass of men we must permeate with the true idea, and give them more decision, more courage, more pride of race, and bring them to prove worthy of the race. they will begin to have confidence in the cause when they begin to see it vindicated amongst them day by day; and that vindication must be our duty. that duty will not be to seek; it will offer itself and we shall have our test. how? consider when men come together for any purpose where different views prevail and general things of no great moment form the subject of debate--suddenly, unconsciously or tentatively, one will raise some idea that may divide the company--say, acknowledging the english crown in ireland, putting by the claim for freedom, in the foolish hope of some material gain. there is much nonsense talked and confusion abroad on this head, and it is quite possible a man, believing in ireland's full claim, will find himself in a large company who ought to stand for ireland, yet who have lost a clear conception of her rights. but he will find that they have no clear conception the other way, either; they are confused and generally pliable; and so, when the challenging idea is introduced, if he is quick and clear with the vital points, he can tear the surface off the many nostrums of the hour and prove them mean, worthless, and degrading; and, doing so, he will be forming the minds about him. he must be ready; that is the great need. understand how a conversation is often turned by a chance word, and how governed by one man who has passionate, well-defined views, while others are cold and undecided. be that one man. you do not know where the circumstances of life will take you; your flag may be directly challenged to your face, and you must reveal yourself. these are things to avoid. be firm, rather than aggressive; but be always quietly prepared for the aggressive man; that is to inspire confidence in the timid. avoid vituperation as a disease, but have your facts clear and ready for friend or foe. whenever, and wherever least expected, a false idea comes wandering forth, put in at once a luminous word or two to clear the air, hearten friends and keep them steady. if you find yourself alone in the midst of opponents, who assume you are with them and expect your co-operation, you put them right with a word. this will arrest them; they will understand where you stand, and that you are ready; and they will generally yield you respect. but whether it involve a fight or not, thus do you declare your attitude. we may conveniently call it--putting up the flag. ix it is well to consider something of the opposition that confronts a man who tries to fill his life with a brave purpose. he will be told it is an illusion; he is a dreamer, a crank, or a fool. and it may serve a purpose to see if our critics are blinded by no illusion, to contrast our folly with their wisdom. here is one pushing by who will not be a fool, as he thinks--he's for the emigrant-ship. ask yourself if the people who go out from the remote places of ireland, quiet-spoken and ruddy-faced, and return after a few years loud-voiced and pallid, have found things exactly as their hope. they protest, yes; but their voice and colour belie them. take the other man who does not emigrate but who has his fling at home, who "knocks around" and tells you to do likewise and be no fool--mark him for your guidance. you will find his leisure is boisterous, but never gay. catch him between whiles off his guard and you will find the deadening lassitude of his life. this votary of pleasure has a burden to carry in whatever walk of life, high or low. on the higher plane he may have a more fastidious club or two, a more epicurean sense of enjoyment, more leisure and more luxury; but the type wherever found is the same. life is an utter burden to him; in his soul is no interest, no inspiration, no energy, and no hope. let him be no object of envy. here a friend pats you on the shoulder: "quite right; be neither an emigrant nor a waster; but be practical; have no illusions; deal with possibilities--who can say what is in the future? we must face these facts." our confident friend lacks a sense of humour. he would put your plan by for its bearing on the future, but he proposes one himself that the future must justify. he tells you circumstances will not be in your favour: he assumes them in his own. but we only claim that our principles will rule the future as they have ruled the past; for the circumstances no man can speak. he calls you a dreamer for your principles, but he can't show, now nor in history, that his exemplars were ever justified. we are all dreamers, then; but some have ugly dreams, while the dreams of others are beautiful worlds, star-lighted and full of music. x let the newborn enthusiast, just come eagerly to the flag, be warned of hours of depression that seize even the most earnest, the boldest and the strongest. our work is the work of men, subject to such vicissitudes as hover around all human enterprise; and every man enrolled must face hard struggles and dark hours. then the depression rushes down like a horrible, cold, dark mist that obscures every beautiful thing and every ray of hope. it may come from many causes: perhaps, a body not too robust, worn down by a tireless mind; perhaps, the memory of long years of effort, seemingly swallowed in oblivion and futility; perhaps contact with men on your own side whose presence there is a puzzle, who have no character and no conception of the grandeur of the cause, and whose mean, petty, underhand jealousies numb you--you who think anyone claiming so fine a flag as ours should be naturally brave, straightforward and generous; perhaps the seemingly overwhelming strength of the enemy, and the listlessness of thousands who would hail freedom with rapture, but who now stand aloof in despair--and along with all this and intensifying it, the voice of our self-complacent practical friend, who has but sarcasm for a high impulse, and for an immutable principle the latest expedient of the hour. through such an experience must the soldier of freedom live. but as surely as such an hour comes, there comes also a star to break the darkened sky; let those who feel the battle-weariness at times remember. when in places there may be but one or two to fight, it may seem of no avail; still let them be true and their numbers will be multiplied: love of truth is infectious. when progress is arrested, don't brood on what is, but on what was once achieved, what has since survived, and what we may yet achieve. if some have grown lax and temporise a little, with more firmness on your part mingle a little sympathy for them. it is harder to live a consistent life than die a brave death. most men of generous instincts would rouse all their courage to a supreme moment and die for the cause; but to rise to that supreme moment frequently and without warning is the burden of life for the cause; and it is because of its exhausting strain and exacting demands that so many men have failed. we must get men to realise that to live is as daring as to die. but confusion has been made in our time by the glib phrase: "you are not asked now to die for ireland, but to live for her," without insisting that the life shall aim at the ideal, the brave and the true. to slip apologetically through existence is not life. if such a mean philosophy went abroad, we would soon find the land a place of shivering creatures, without the capacity to live or the courage to die--calamity, surely. all these circumstances make for the hour of depression; and it may well be in such an hour, amid apathy and treachery, cold friends and active enemies, with worn-down frame and baffled mind, you, pleading for the old cause, may feel your voice is indeed a voice crying in the wilderness; and it may serve till the blood warms again and the imagination recover its glow, to think how a voice, that cried in the wilderness thousands of years ago, is potent and inspiring now, where the voice of the "practical" man sends no whisper across the waste of years. xi what, then, to conclude, must be our decision? to take our philosophy into life. when we do that generally, in a deep and significant sense our war of independence will have begun. let there be no deferring a duty to a more convenient future. it is as possible that an opening for freedom may be thrust on us, as that we shall be required to organise a formal war with the usual movements of armies; in our assumptions for the second, let us not be guilty of the fatal error of overlooking the first. as in other spheres, so in politics we have our conventions; and how little they may be proven has been lately seen, when england went through a war of debate,[footnote: debate over house of lords.] largely unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all, suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of invasion, all england stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil war;[footnote: the railway strike.] and all ireland, when the moment of possible freedom was given, when england might have been hardly able to save herself, much less to hold us--ireland, thinking and working in old grooves, lay helpless. let us draw the moral. we cannot tell what unsuspected development may spring on us from the future, but we can always be prepared by understanding that the vital hour is the hour at hand. let the brave choice now be made, and let the life around be governed by it; let every man stand to his colours and strike his flag to none; then shall we recover ground in all directions, and our time shall be recorded, not with the deadening but with the luminous years. in all the vicissitudes of the fight, let us not be distracted by the meanness of the mere time-server nor the treachery of the enemy, but be collected and cool; and remembering the many who are not with us from honest motives or unsuspected fears, live to show our belief beautiful and true and, in the eternal sense, practical. then shall those who are worth convincing be held, and our difference may reduce itself to what is possible; then will they come to realise that he who maintains a great faith unshaken will make more things possible than the opportunist of the hour; then will they understand how much more is possible than they had ever dared to dream: they will have a vision of the goal; and with that vision will be born a steady enthusiasm, a clear purpose, and a resolute soul. the regeneration of the land will be no longer a distant dream but a shaping reality; the living flame will sweep through all hearts again; and ireland will enter her last battle for freedom to emerge and reassume her place among the nations of the earth. chapter vii loyalty i to be loyal to his cause is the finest tribute that can be paid to any man. and since loyalty to the irish cause has been the great virtue of irishmen through all history, it is time to have some clear thinking as to who are the irish rebels and who the true men. when a stupid government, grasping our reverence for fidelity, tried to ban our heroes by calling them felons, it was natural we should rejoin by writing "the felons of our land" and heap ridicule on their purpose. but once this end was achieved we should have reverted to the normal attitude and written up as the true irish loyalists, brian the great, and shane the proud, the valiant owen roe and the peerless tone, mitchel and davis--irreconcilables all. when men revolt against an established evil it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. we do not extol a rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake. let us be clear on this point, or when we shall have re-established our freedom after centuries of effort it shall be open to every knave and traitor to challenge our independence and plot to readmit the enemy. loyalty is the fine attribute of the fine nature; the word has been misused and maligned in ireland: let us restore it to its rightful honour by remembering it to be the virtue of our heroes of all time. in considering it from this view-point we shall find occasion to touch on delicate positions that have often baffled and worried us--the asserting of our rights while using the machinery of the government that denies them, the burning question of consistency, our attitude towards the political adventurer on one hand, and towards the honest man of half-measures on the other. loyalty involves all this. and it shows that the man who revolts to win freedom is the same as he who dies to defend it. he does not change his face and nature with the changing times. he is loyal always and most wonderfully lovable, because in the darkest times, when banned as wild, wicked and rebelly, he is loyal still as from the beginning, and will be to the end. yes, tone is the true irish loyalist, and every aider and abettor of the enemy a rebel to ireland and the irish race. ii when you insist on examining the question in the light of first principles your opportunist opponent at once feels the weakness of his position and always turns the point on your consistency. it is well, then, in advance to understand the relative value and importance of argument as argument in the statement of any case. a body of principles is primarily of value, not as affording a case that can be argued with ingenuity, but as enshrining one great principle that shines through and informs the rest, that illumines the mind of the individual, that warms, clarifies and invigorates--that, so to speak, puts the mind in focus, gets the facts of existence into perspective, and gives the individual everything in its right place and true proportion. it brings a man to the point where he does not dispute but believes. he has been wandering about cold and irresolute, tasting all philosophies, or none, and drinking deep despair. he does not understand the want in his soul while he has been looking for some panacea for its cure till the great light streams on him, and instead of receiving something he finds himself. that is it. there is a power of vision latent in us, clouded by error; the true philosophy dissipates the cloud and leaves the vision clear, wonderful and inspiring. he who acquired that vision is impervious to argument--it is not that he despises argument; on the contrary, he always uses it to its full strength. but he has had awakened within him something which the mere logician can never deduce, and that mysterious something is the explanation of his transformed life. he was a doubter, a falterer, a failure; he has become a believer, a fighter, a conqueror. you miss his significance completely when you take him for a theorist. the theorist propounds a view to which he must convert the world; the philosopher has a rule of life to immediately put into practice. his spirit flashes with a swiftness that can be encircled by no theory. it is his glory to have over and above a new penetrating argument in the mind--a new and wonderful vitality in the blood. the unbeliever, near by, still muddled by his cold theories, will argue and debate till his intellect is in a tangle. he fails to see that a man of intellectual agility might frame a theory and argue it out ably, and then suddenly turn over and with equal dexterity argue the other side. do we not have set debates with speakers appointed on each side? that is dialectic--a trick of the mind. but philosophy is the wine of the spirit. the capacity then to argue the point is not the justification of a philosophy. that justification must be found in the virtue of the philosophy that gives its believer vision and grasp of life as a whole, that warms and quickens his heart and makes him in spirit buoyant, beautiful, wise and daring. iii let us come now to that burning question of consistency. "very well, you won't acknowledge the english crown. why then use english coins and stamps? you don't recognise the parliament at westminster. why then recognise the county councils created by bill at westminster? why avail of all the local government machinery?"--and so forth. the argument is a familiar one, and the answer is simple. though no guns are thundering now, ireland is virtually in a state of war. we are fighting to recover independence. the enemy has had to relax somewhat in the exigencies of the struggle and to concede all these positions of local government and enterprise now in question. we take these posts as places conceded in the fight and avail of them to strengthen, develop and uplift the country and prepare her to carry the last post. surely this is adequate. on a field of battle it is always to the credit of a general to capture an enemy's post and use it for the final victory. it is a sign of the battle's progress, and tells the distant watchers on the hills how the fight is faring and who is going to win. there would be consternation away from the field only if word should come that the soldiers had gone into the tents of the enemy, acknowledging him and accepting his flag. that is the point to question. there can be no defence for the occupying of any post conceded by the enemy. it may be held for or against ireland; any man accepting it and surrendering his flag to hold it stands condemned thereby. that is clear. yet it may be objected that such a clear choice is not put to most of those undertaking the local government of ireland, that few are conscious of such an issue and few governed by it. it is true. but for all that the machinery of local government is clearly under popular control, and as clearly worked for an immediate good, preparing for a greater end. men unaware of it are unconsciously working for the general development of the country and recovering her old power and influence. those conscious of the deeper issue enter every position to further that development and make the end obvious when the alien government--finding those powers conceded to sap further resistance are on the contrary used to conquer wider fields--endeavours to force the popular government back to the purposes of an old and failing tyranny. that is the nature of the struggle now. at periods the enemy tries to stem the movement, and then the fight becomes general and keen around a certain position. in our time there were the land leagues, the land war, fights for home rule, universities, irish; and these fights ended in land acts, local government acts, university acts, and the conceding of pride of place to the native language in university life. every position gained is a step forward; it is accepted as such, and so is justified. for anyone who grasps the serious purpose of recovering ireland's independence all along the line, the suggestion that we should abandon all machinery of local government and enterprise--because they are "government positions"--to men definitely attached to the alien garrison is so foolish as not to be even entertained. when our attitude is questioned let it be made clear. that is the final answer to the man who challenges our consistency: we are carrying the trenches of the enemy. iv even while dismissing a false idea of consistency we have to make clear another view still remote from the general mind. if we are to have an effective army of freedom we must enrol only men who have a clear conception of the goal, a readiness to yield full allegiance, and a determination to fight always so as to reflect honour on the flag. the importance of this will be felt only when we come to deal with concrete cases. while human nature is what it is we will have always on the outskirts of every movement a certain type of political adventurer who is ready to transfer his allegiance from one party to another according as he thinks the time serves. he has no principle but to be always with the ascendant party, and to succeed in that aim he is ready to court and betray every party in turn. as a result, he is a character well known to all. the honest man who has been following the wrong path, and after earnest inquiry comes to the flag, we readily distinguish. but it is fatal to any enterprise where the adventurer is enlisted and where his influence is allowed to dominate. it may seem strange that such men are given entry to great movements: the explanation is found in the desire of pioneers to make converts at once and convince the unconverted by the confidence of growing numbers. we ignore the danger to our growing strength when the adventurer comes along, loud in protest of his support--he is always affable and plausible, and is received as a "man of experience"; and in our anxiety for further strength we are apt to admit him without reserve. but we must make sure of our man. we must keep in mind that an alliance with the adventurer is more dangerous than his opposition; and we must remember the general public, typified by the man in the street whom we wish to convince, is quietly studying us, attracted perhaps by our principles and coming nearer to examine. if he knows nothing else, he knows the unprincipled man, and when he sees such in our ranks and councils he will not wait to argue or ask questions; he will go away and remain away. the extent to which men are ruled by the old adage, "show me your company and i'll tell you what you are," is more widespread than we think. moreover, consistency in a fine sense is involved in our decision. we fight for freedom, not for the hope of material profit or comfort, but because every fine instinct of manhood demands that man be free, and life beautiful and brave, and surely in such a splendid battle to have as allies mean, crafty profit-seekers would be amazing. let us be loyal in the deep sense, and let us not be afraid of being few at first. an earnest band is more effective than a discreditable multitude. that band will increase in numbers and strength till it becomes the nucleus of an army that will be invincible. v the fine sense of consistency that keeps us clear of the adventurer decides also our attitude to the well-meaning man of half-measures. he says separation from england is not possible now and suggests some alternative, if not home rule, grattan's parliament, or leaving it an open question. in the general view this seems sensible, and we are tempted to make an alliance based on such a ground; and the alliance is made. what ensues? men come together who believe in complete freedom, others who believe in partial freedom that may lead to complete freedom, and others who are satisfied with partial freedom as an end. before long the alliance ends in a deadlock. the man of the most far-reaching view knows that every immediate action taken must be consistent with the wider view and the farther goal, if that goal is to be attained; and he finds that his ultimate principle is frequently involved in some action proposed for the moment. when such a moment comes he must be loyal to his flag and to a principle that if not generally acknowledged is an abiding rule with him; but his allies refuse to be bound by a principle that is an unwritten law for him because the law is not written down for them. this is the root of the trouble. the friends, thinking to work together for some common purpose, find the unsettled issue intrudes, and a debate ensues that leads to angry words, recriminations, bad feeling and disruption. the alliance based on half measures has not fulfilled its own purpose, but it has sown suspicion between the honest men whom it brought together; that is no good result from the practical proposal. there is an inference: men who are conscious of a clear complete demand should form their own plans, equally full of care and resolution, and go ahead on their own account. but we hear a plaintive cry abroad: "oh, another split; that's irishmen all over--can never unite," etc. we will not turn aside for the plaintive people; but let it be understood there can be an independent co-operation, where of use, with those honest men who will not go the whole way. that independent co-operation can serve the full purpose of the binding alliance that has proved fatal. above all, let there be no charge of bad faith against the earnest man who chooses other ways than ours; it is altogether indefensible because we disagree with him to call his motives in question. often he is as earnest as we are; often has given longer and greater service, and only qualifies his own attitude in anxiety to meet others. to this we cannot assent, but to charge him with bad faith is flagrantly unjust and always calamitous. in getting rid of the deadlock we have too often fallen to furiously fighting with one another. let us bear this in mind, and concern ourselves more with the common enemy; but let not the hands of the men in the vanguard be tied by alien king, constitution, or parliament. all the conditions grow more definite and seem, perhaps, too exacting; remember the greatness of the enterprise. suppose in the building of a mighty edifice the architect at any point were careless or slurred over a difficulty, trusting to luck to bring it right, how the whole building would go awry, and what a mighty collapse would follow. let us stick to our colours and have no fear. when all these principles have been combined into one consistent whole, a light will flash over the land and the old spirit will be reborn; the mean will be purged of their meanness, the timid heartened with a fine courage, and the fearless will be justified: the land will be awake, militant, and marching to victory. vi this is, surely, the fine view of loyalty. let us write it on our banners and proclaim it to the world. it is consistent, _honourable_, fearless and immutable. what is said here to-day with enthusiasm, exactness and care, will stand without emendation or enlargement, if in a temporary reverse we are called to stand in the dock to-morrow; or if, finely purged in the battle of freedom, we come through our last fight with splendid triumph, our loyalty is there still, shining like a great sun, the same beautiful, unchanging thing that has lighted us through every struggle--perhaps now to guide us in framing a constitution and giving to a world, distracted by kings, presidents and theorists, a new polity for nations. a waverer, half-caught between the light, half fearful with an old fear, pleads: "this is too much--we are men, not angels." precisely, we are not angels; and because of our human weakness, our erring minds, our sudden passions, the most confident of us may at any moment find himself in the mud. what, then, will uplift him if he has been a waverer in principle as well as in fact? he is helpless, disgraced and undone. let him know in time we do not set up fine principles in a fine conceit that we can easily live up to them, but in the full consciousness that we cannot possibly live away from them. that is the bed-rock truth. when the man of finer faith by any slip comes to the earth, he has to uplift him a staff that never fails, and to guide him a principle that strengthens him for another fight, to go forth, in a sense alexander never dreamed of, to conquer new worlds. 'tis the faith that is in him, and the flag he serves, that make a man worthy; and the meanest may be with the highest if he be true and give good service. let us put by then the broken reed and the craft of little minds, and give us for our saving hope the banner of the angels and the loyalty of gods and men. chapter viii womanhood "and another said: i have married a wife and therefore i cannot come." yes, and we have been satisfied always to blame the wife, without noticing the man who is fond of his comfort first of all, who slips quietly away to enjoy a quiet smoke and a quiet glass in some quiet nook--always securing his escape by the readiest excuse. we are coming now to consider the aspect of the question that touches our sincere manhood; but let no one think we overlook that mean type of man who evades every call to duty on the comfortable plea: "i have married a wife." i when the mere man approaches the woman to study her, we can imagine the fair ones getting together and nudging one another in keen amusement as to what this seer is going to say. it is often sufficiently amusing when the clumsy male approaches her with self-satisfied air, thinking he has the secret of her mysterious being. i have no intention here of entering a rival search for the secret. but we can, perhaps, startle the gay ones from merriment to gravity by stating the simple fact that every man stands in some relationship to woman, either as son, brother, or husband; and if it be admitted that there is to be a fight to-morrow, then there are some things to be settled to-day. how is the woman training for to-morrow? how, then, will the man stand by that very binding relationship? will clinging arms hold him back or proud ones wave him on? will he have, in place of a comrade in the fight, a burden; or will the battle that has too often separated them but give them closer bonds of union and more intimate knowledge of the wonderful thing that is life? ii i wish to concentrate on one heroic example of irish womanhood that should serve as a model to this generation; and i do not mean to dwell on much that would require detailed examination. but some points should be indicated. for example, the awakening consciousness of our womanhood is troubling itself rightly over the woman's place in the community, is concentrating on the type delineated in "the doll's house," and is agitating for a more honourable and dignified place. we applaud the pioneers thus fighting for their honour and dignity: but let them not make the mistake of assuming the men are wholly responsible for "the doll's house," and the women would come out if they could. we have noticed the man who prefers his ease to any troubling duty: he has his mate in the woman who prefers to be wooed with trinkets, chocolates, and the theatre to a more beautiful way of life, that would give her a nobler place but more strenuous conditions. again, the man is not always the lord of the house. he is as often, if not more frequently, its slave. then there are the conventions of life. in place of a fine sense of courtesy prevailing between man and woman, which would recognise with the woman's finer sensibility a fine self-reliance, and with the man's greater strength a fine gentleness, we have a false code of manners, by which the woman is to be taken about, petted and treated generally as the useless being she often is; while the man becomes an effeminate creature that but cumbers the earth. fine courtesy and fine comradeship go together. but we have allowed a standard to gain recognition that is a danger alike to the dignity of our womanhood and the virility of our manhood. it is for us who are men to labour for a finer spirit in our manhood: we cannot throw the blame for any weakness over on external conditions. the woman is in the same position. she must understand that greater than the need of the suffrage is the more urgent need of making her fellow-woman spirited and self-reliant, ready rather to anticipate a danger than to evade it. when she is thus trained, not all the men of all the nations can deny her recognition and equality. iii for the battle of to-morrow then there is a preliminary fight to-day. the woman must come to this point, too. in life there is frequently so much meanness, a man is often called to acknowledge some degrading standard or fight for the very recognition of manhood, and the woman must stand in with him or help to pull him down. let her understand this and her duty is present and urgent. the man so often wavers on the verge of the right path, the woman often decides him. if she is nobler than he, as is frequently the case, she can lift him to her level; if she is meaner, as she often is, she as surely drags him down. when they are both equal in spirit and nobility of nature, how the world is filled with a glory that should assure us, if nothing else could, of the truth of the almighty god and a beautiful eternity to explain the origin and destiny of their wonderful existence. they are indispensable to each other: if they stand apart, neither can realise in its fulness the beauty and glory of life. let the man and woman see this, and let them know in the day that is at hand, how the challenge may come from some petty authority of the time that rules not by its integrity but by its favourites. we are cursed with such authority, and many a one drives about in luxury because he is obsequious to it: he prefers to be a parasite and to live in splendour than be a man and live in straits. he has what bernard shaw so aptly calls "the soul of a servant." if we are to prepare for a braver future, let us fight this evil thing; if we are to put by national servitude, let us begin by driving out individual obsequiousness. this is our training ground for to-morrow. let the woman realise this, and at least as many women as men will prefer privation with self-respect to comfort with contempt. let us, then, in the name of our common nature, ask those who have her training in hand, to teach the woman to despise the man of menial soul and to loathe the luxury that is his price. iv i wish to come to the heroic type of irish womanhood. when we need to hearten ourselves or others for a great enterprise, we instinctively turn to the examples of heroes and heroines who, in similar difficulties to ours, have entered the fight bravely, and issued heroically, leaving us a splendid heritage of fidelity and achievement. it is little to our credit that our heroes are so little known. it is less to our credit that our heroines are hardly known at all; and when we praise or sing of one our selection is not always the happiest. how often in the concert-hall or drawing-room do we get emotional when someone sings in tremulous tones, "she is far from the land." there is a feeling for poetry in our lives, a feeling that patriotism will not have it, a melting pity for the love that went to wreck, a sympathy for ourselves and everybody and everything--a relaxing of all the nerves in a wave of sentiment. this emotion is of the enervating order. there is no sweep of strong fire through the blood, no tightening grip on life, no set resolve to stand to the flag and see the battle through. it is well, then, a generation that has heard from a thousand platforms, in plaintive notes, of sarah curran and her love should turn to the braver and more beautiful model of her who was the wife of tone. v when we think of the qualities that are distinctive of the woman, we have in mind a finer gentleness, sensibility, sympathy and tenderness; and when we have these qualities intensified in any woman, and with them combined the endurance, courage and daring that are taken as the manly virtues, we have a woman of the heroic type. of such a type was the wife of tone. we can speak her praise without fear, for she was put to the test in every way, and in every way found marvellously true. for her devotion to, and encouragement of, her great husband in his great work, she would have won our high praise, even if, when he was stricken down and she was bereft of his wonderful love and buoyant spirits, she had proved forgetful of his work and the glory of his name. but she was bereft, and she was then found most marvellously true. her devotion to tone, while he was living and fighting, might be explained by the woman's passionate attachment to the man she loved. it is the woman's tenderness that is most evident in these early years, but there is shining evidence of the fortitude that showed her true nobility in the darker after-years. it was no ordinary love that bound them, and reading the record of their lives this stands out clear and beautiful. tone, whom we know as patient organiser, tenacious fighter, far-seeing thinker, indomitable spirit--a born leader of men--writes to his wife with the passionate simplicity of an enraptured child: "i doat upon you and the babes." and his letters end thus: "kiss the babies for me ten thousand times. god almighty for ever bless you, my dearest life and soul." (this from the "french atheist." i hope his traducers are heartily ashamed of themselves.) nor is it strange. when, in the beginning of his enterprise, he is in america, preparing to go to france on his great mission, he is troubled by the thought of his defenceless ones. in the crisis how does his wife act? does she wind clinging arms around him, telling him with tears, of their children and his early vows, and beseeching him to think of his love and forget his country? no; let the diary speak: "my wife especially, whose courage and whose zeal for my honour and interests were not in the least abated by all her past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our children stand for a moment in the way of my engagements to our friends and my duty to my country, adding that she would answer for our family during my absence, and that the same providence which had so often, as it were, miraculously preserved us, would, she was confident, not desert us now." it is the unmistakable accent of the woman. she is quivering as she sends him forth, but the spirit in her eyes would put a trembling man to shame--a spirit that her peerless husband matched but no man could surpass. her fortitude was to be more terribly tried in the terrible after-time, when the cause went down in disaster and tone had to answer with his life. no tribute could be so eloquent as the letter he wrote to her when the last moment had come and his doom was pronounced: "adieu, dearest love, i find it impossible to finish this letter. give my love to mary; and, above all, remember you are now the only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can give of your affection for me will be to preserve yourself for their education. god almighty bless you all." that letter is like stephens' speech from the dock, eloquent for what is left unsaid. there is no wailing for her, least of all for himself, not that their devoted souls were not on the rack: "as no words can express what i feel for you and our children, i shall not attempt it; complaint of any kind would be beneath your courage and mine"--but their souls, that were destined to suffer, came sublimely through the ordeal. when tone left his children as a trust to his wife, he knew from the intimacy of their union what we learn from the after-event, how that trust might be placed and how faithfully it would be fulfilled. what a tribute from man to wife! how that trust was fulfilled is in evidence in every step of the following years. remembering tone's son who survived to write the memoirs was a child at his father's death, his simple tribute written in manhood is eloquent in the extreme: "i was brought up by my surviving parent in all the principles and in all the feelings of my father"--of itself it would suffice. but we can follow the years between and find moving evidence of the fulfilment of the trust. we see her devotion to her children and her proud care to preserve their independence and her own. she puts by patronage, having a higher title as the widow of a general of france; and she wins the respect of the great ones of france under the republic and the empire. lucien buonaparte, a year after tone's death, pleaded before the council of five hundred, in warm and eloquent praise: "if the services of tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your feelings, i might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that noble woman who, on the tomb of her husband and her brother, mingles with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of ireland. i would attempt to give you an expression of that irish spirit which is blended in her countenance with the expression of her grief. such were those women of sparta, who, on the return of their countrymen from the battle, when with anxious looks they ran over the ranks and missed amongst them their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed, 'he died for his country; he died for the republic.'" when the republic fell, and in the upheaval her rights were ignored, she went to the emperor napoleon in person and, recalling the services of tone, sought naturalization for her son to secure his career in the army; and to the wonder of all near by, the emperor heard her with marked respect and immediately granted her request. she sought only this for her surviving son. she had seen two children die--there was moving pathos in the daughter's death--and now she was standing by the last. never was child guarded more faithfully or sent more proudly on his path in life. one should read the memoirs to understand, and pause frequently to consider: how she promised her husband bravely in the beginning that she would answer for their children, and how, in what she afterwards styled the hyperbole of grief, she was called to fulfil to the letter, and was found faithful, with an unexampled strength and devotion; how she saw two children struck down by a fatal disease, and how she drew the surviving son back to health by her watchful care to send him on his college and military career with loving pride; how, when a minister of france, irritated at her putting by his patronage, roughly told her he could not "take the emperor by the collar to place mr. tone"--she went to the emperor in person, with dignity but without fear, and won his respect; how the suggestion of the mean-minded that her demand was a pecuniary one, drew from her the proud boast that in all her misfortunes she had never learned to hold out her hand; how through all her misfortunes we watch her with wonderful dignity, delicacy, courage, and devotion quick to see what her trust demanded and never failing to answer the call, till her task is done, and we see her on the morning when her son sets out on the path she had prepared, the same quivering woman, who had sent her husband with words of comfort to his duty, now, after all the years of trial, sending her son as proudly on his path. it is their first parting. let her own words speak: "hitherto i had not allowed myself even to feel that my william was my own and my only child; i considered only that tone's son was confided to me; but in that moment nature resumed her rights. i sat in a field: the road was long and white before me and no object on it but my child.... i could not think; but all i had ever suffered seemed before and around me at that moment, and i wished so intensely to close my eyes for ever, that i wondered it did not happen. the transitions of the mind are very extraordinary. as i sat in that state, unable to think of the necessity of returning home, a little lark rushed up from the grass beside me; it whirled over my head and hovered in the air singing such a beautiful, cheering, and, as it sounded to me, approving note, that it roused me. i felt in my heart as if tone had sent it to me. i returned to my solitary home." it is a picture to move us, to think of the devoted woman there in the sunshine, bent down in the grass, utterly alone, till the lark, sweeping heavenward in song, seems to give a message of gentle comfort from her husband's watching spirit. our emotion now is of no enervating order. we are proud of our land and her people; our nerves are firm and set; our hearts cry out for action; we are not weeping, but burning for the cause. how little we know of this heroic woman. we are in some ways familiar with tone, his high character, his genial open nature, his daring, his patience, his farsightedness, his judgment--in spirit tireless and indomitable: a man peerless among his fellows. but he had yet one compeer; there was one nature that matched his to depth and height of its greatness--that nature was a woman's, and the woman was wolfe tone's wife. vi it is well this heroic example of our womanhood should be before not only our womanhood but our manhood. it should show us all that patriotism does not destroy the finer feelings, but rather calls them forth and gives them wider play. we have been too used to thinking that the qualities of love and tenderness are no virtues for a soldier, that they will sap his resolution and destroy his work; but our movements fail always when they fail to be human. until we mature and the poetry in life is wakening, we are ready to act by a theory; but when nature asserts herself the hard theorist fails to hold us. let us remember and be human. we have been saying in effect, if not in so many words: "for ireland's sake, don't fall in love"--we might as well say: "for ireland's sake, don't let your blood circulate." it is impossible--even if it were possible it would be hateful. the man and woman have a great and beautiful destiny to fulfil together: to substitute for it an unnatural way of life that can claim neither the seclusion of the cloister nor the dominion of the world is neither beautiful nor great. we have cause for gratitude in the example before us. the woman can learn from it how she may equal the bravest man; and the man should learn to let his wife and children suffer rather than make of them willing slaves and cowards. for there are some earnest men who are ready to suffer themselves but cannot endure the suffering of those they love, and a mistaken family tenderness binds and drags them down. no one, surely, can hold it better to carefully put away every duty that may entail hardship on wife and child, for then the wife is, instead of a comrade, a burden, and the child becomes a degenerate creature, creeping between heaven and earth, afraid to hold his head erect, and unable to fulfil his duty to god or man. let no man be afraid that those he loves may be tried in the fire; but let him, to the best of his strength, show them how to stand the ordeal, and then trust to the greatness of the truth and the virtue of a loyal nature to bring each one forth in triumph, and he and they may have in the issue undreamed of recompense. for the battle that tries them will discover finer chords not yet touched in their intercourse; finer sympathies, susceptibilities, gentleness and strength; a deeper insight into life and a wider outlook on the world, making in fine a wonderful blend of wisdom, tenderness and courage that gives them to realise that life, with all its faults, struggles, and pain is still and for ever great and beautiful. chapter ix the frontier i our frontier is twofold, the language and the sea. for the majesty of our encircling waters we have no need to raise a plea, but to give god thanks for setting so certain a seal on our individual existence and giving us in the spreading horizon of the ocean some symbol of our illimitable destiny. for the language there is something still to be said; there are some ideas gaining currency that should be challenged--the cold denial of some that the unqualified name irish be given to the literature of irishman that is passionate with irish enthusiasm and loyalty to ireland, yet from the exigencies of the time had to be written in english; the view not only assumed but asserted by some of the gael that the gall may be recognised only if he take second place; the aloofness of many of the gall, not troubling to understand their rights and duties; the ignoring on both sides of the fine significance of the name irishman, of a spirit of patriotism and a deep-lying basis of authority and justice that will give stability to the state and secure its future against any upheaval that from the unrest of the time would seem to threaten the world. ii consider first the literature of irishmen in english. from the attitude commonly taken on the question of literary values, it is clear that the primary significance of expression in writing is often lost. what is said, and the purpose for which it is said, take precedence of the medium through which it is said. but from our national awakening to the significance of the medium so long ignored we have grown so excited that we frequently forget the greater significance of the thing. the utterance of the man is of first importance, and, where his utterance has weight, the vital need is to secure it through some medium, the medium becoming important when one more than another is found to have a wider and more intimate appeal; and then we do well to become insistent for a particular medium when it is in anxiety for full delivery of the writer's thought and a wide knowledge of its truth. but we are losing sight of this natural order of things. it is well, then, the unconvinced gall should hear why he should accept the irish language; not simply to defer to the gael, but to quicken the mind and defend the territory of what is now the common country of the gael and gall. davis caught up the great significance of the language when he said: "tis a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or river." the language is at once our frontier and our first fortress, and behind it all irishmen should stand, not because a particular branch of our people evolved it, but because it is the common heritage of all. one who has a knowledge of irish can easily get evidence of its quickening power on the irish mind. travel in an irish-speaking district and hail one of its old people in english, and you get in response a dull "good-day, sir." salute him in irish and you touch a secret spring. the dull eyes light up, the face is all animation, the body alert, and for a dull "good-day," you get warm benedictions, lively sallies, and after you, as you pass on your road, a flood of rich and racy irish comes pouring down the wind. that is the secret power of the language. it makes the old men proud of their youth and gives to the young quickened faculties, an awakened imagination and a world to conquer. this is no exaggeration. it is not always obvious, because we do not touch the secret spring nor wander near the magic. but the truth is there to find for him who cares to search. you discover behind the dullness of a provincial town a bright centre of interest, and when you study the circle you know that here is some wonderful thing: priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers, tradesmen, clerks--all drawn together, young and old, both sexes, all enthusiasts. sometimes a priest is teaching a smith, sometimes the smith is teaching the priest: for a moment at least we have unconsciously levelled barriers and there is jubilation in the natural life re-born. out of that quickened life and consciousness rises a vivid imagination with a rush of thought and a power of expression that gives the nation a new literature. that is the justification of the language. it awakens and draws to expression minds that would otherwise be blank. it is not that the revelation of davis is of less value than we think, but that through the medium of irish other revelations will be won that would otherwise be lost. again, in subtle ways we cannot wholly understand, it gives the irish mind a defence against every other mind, taking in comradeship whatever good the others have to offer, while retaining its own power and place. the irish mind can do itself justice only in irish. but still some ardent and faithful spirits broke through every difficulty of time and circumstance and found expression in english, and we have the treasures of davis, mitchel, and mangan; yet, the majority remained cold, and now, to quicken the mass, we turn to the old language. but this is not to decry what was won in other fields. in the widening future that beckons to us, we shall, if anything, give greater praise to these good fighters and enthusiasts, who in darker years, even with the language of the enemy, resisted his march and held the gap for ireland. iii on this ground the gael and gall stand on footing of equality. that is the point many on both sides miss and we need to emphasise it. some irishmen not of gaelic stock speak of irish as foreign to them, and would maintain english in the principal place now and in the future. we do well then to make clear to such a one that he is asked to adopt the language for ireland's sake as a nation and for his own sake as a citizen. if he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he prefers english civilisation he should go back to england. there only can he develop on english lines. an irishman in ireland with an english mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither ireland nor england in any good sense, and both ireland and england disown him. so the irishman of other than gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not accepting something disagreeable as inevitable, but claiming a right by birth and citizenship, joining the fine army of the nation for a brave adventurous future, full of fine possibility and guaranteed by a fine comradeship--owning a land not of flattery and favouritism, but of freedom and manhood. this saving ideal has been often obscured by our sundering class names. this is why we would substitute as common for all the fine name of irishman. iv but in asking all parties to accept the common name of irishman, we find a fear rather suggested than declared--that men may be asked in this name to put by something they hold as a great principle of life; that catholic, protestant and dissenter will all be asked to find agreement in a fourth alternative, in which they will not submit to one another but will all equally belie themselves. there is such a hidden fear, and we should have it out and dispose of it. the best men of all parties will have no truck with this and they are right. but on what ground, then, shall we find agreement, the recognition of which irish citizenship implies? on this, that the man of whatever sincere principles, religious or civic, counts among his great duties his duty as citizen; and he defends his creed because he believes it to be a safe guide to the fulfilling of all duties, this including. when, therefore, we ask him to stand in as irish citizen, it is not that he is to abandon in one iota his sincere principles, but that he is to give us proof of his sincerity. he tells us his creed requires him to be a good citizen: we give him a fine field in which he can be to us a fine example. v in further consideration of this we should put by the thought of finding a mere working agreement. there is a deep-lying basis of authority and justice to seek, which it should be our highest aim to discover. modern governments concede justice to those who can compel justice--even the democracy requires that you be strong enough to formulate a claim and sustain it; but this is the way of tyranny. a perfect government should seek, while careful to develop its stronger forces and keep them in perfect balance, to consider also the claims of those less powerful but not less true. a government that over-rides the weak because it is safe, is a tyranny, and tyranny is in seed in the democratic governments of our time. we must consider this well, for it is pressing and grave; and we must get men to come together as citizens to defend the rights as well of the unit which is unsupported as of the party that commands great power. so shall we give steadiness and fervour to our growing strength by balancing it with truth and justice: so shall we found a government that excesses cannot undermine nor tyranny destroy. vi we have to consider, in conclusion, the unrest in the world, the war of parties and classes, and the need of judging the tendencies of the time to set our steps aright. with the wars and rumours of wars that threaten the great nations from without and the wild upheavals that threaten them within, it would be foolish to hide from ourselves the drift of events. we must decide our attitude; and if it is too much to hope that we may keep clear of the upheavals, we should aim at strengthening ourselves against the coming crash. we cannot set the world right, but we can go a long way to setting things in our own land right, by making through a common patriotism a united people. what if we are held up occasionally by the cold cries shot at every high aim--"dreamer--utopia"; cry this in return: no vision of the dreamer can be more wild than the frantic make-shifts of the great powers to vie in armaments with one another or repress internal revolts. consider england in the late strike that paralysed her. it was only suspended by a step that merely deferred the struggle; the strife is again threatening. all the powers are so threatened and their efforts to defer the hour are equally feverish and fruitless; for the hour is pressing and may flash on the world when 'tis least prepared. let who will deride us, but let us prepare. we may not guide our steps with the certainty of prophets, nor hope by our beautiful schemes to make a perfect state; but we can only come near to perfection in the light of a perfect ideal, and however far below it we may remain, we can at least, under its inspiration, reach an existence rational and human: our justification for a brave effort lies in that the governments of this time are neither one nor the other. he who thinks ireland's struggle to express her own mind, to give utterance to her own tongue, to stand behind her own frontier, is but a sentiment will be surprised to find it leads him to this point. herein is the justification and the strength of the movement. men are deriding things around them, of the significance of which they have not the remotest idea. ireland is calling her children to a common banner, to the defence of her frontier, to the building up of a national life, harmonious and beautiful--a conception of citizenship, from which a right is conceded, not because it can be compelled, but because it is just: to the foundation of a state that will by its defence of the least powerful prove all powerful, that will be strong because true, beautiful because free, full of the music of her olden speech and caught by the magic of her encircling sea. chapter x literature and freedom--the propagandist playwright i a nation's literature is an index to its mind. if the nation has its freedom to win, from its literature may we learn if it is passionately in earnest in the fight, or if it is half-hearted, or if it cares not at all. whatever state prevails, passionate men can pour their passion through literature to the nation's soul and make it burn and move and fight. for this reason it is of transcendent importance to the cause. literature is the shrine of freedom, its fortress, its banner, its charter. in its great temple patriots worship; from it soldiers go forth, wave its challenge, and fight, and conquering, write the charter of their country. its great power is contested by none; rather, all recognise it, and many and violent are the disputes as to its right use and purpose. i propose to consider two of the disputants--the propagandist playwright and the art-for-art's-sake artist, since they raise issues that are our concern. it is curious that two so violently opposed should be so nearly alike in error: they are both afraid of life. the propagandist is all for one side; the artist afraid of every side. the one lacks imagination; the other lacks heart; they are both wide of the truth. the service of the truth requires them to pursue one course; in their dispute they swerve from that course, one to right, one to left. because they leave the path on opposite sides, they do not see how much alike is their error; but that they do both leave the path is my point, and it is well we should consider it. it would be difficult to deal with both sides at once; so i will consider the propagandist first. what i have to charge against him is that his work is insincere, that he is afraid to do justice to the other side, that he makes ridicule of our exemplars, that he helps to keep the _poseur_ in being; and to conclude, that only by a saving sense of humour can we find our way back to the truth. ii when we judge literature we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may have written in perfect good faith. that is a necessary distinction to keep in mind. if you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are distinct, and it needs to be emphasised, for sincere men are making these propagandist plays, of which the manifest and glaring untruth is working mischief to the national mind. a type of such a play is familiar enough in these days when we like to ridicule the west briton. we are served up puppets representing the shoneen with a lisp set over against the patriot who says all the proper things suitable to the occasion. now, such a play serves no good purpose, but it has a certain bad effect. it does not give a true interpretation of life; it enlightens no one; but it flatters the prejudices of people who profess things for which they have no zeal. that is the root of the mischief. many of us will readily profess a principle for which we will not as readily suffer, but when the pinch comes and we are asked to do service for the flag, we cover our unwillingness by calling the man on the other side names. where such a spirit prevails there can be no national awakening. if we put a play before the people, it must be with a hope of arresting attention, striking their imagination, giving them a grip of reality, and filling them with a joy in life. now, the propagandist play does none of these things; it has neither joy nor reality; its characters are puppets and ridiculous; they are essentially caricatures. this is supposed to convert the unbeliever; but the intelligent unbeliever coming to it is either bored or irritated by its extravagant absurdity, and if he admits our sincerity, it is only at the expense of our intelligence. iii a propagandist play for a political end is even more mischievous--at least lovers of freedom have more cause for protest. it makes our heroes ridiculous. no man of imagination can stand these impossible persons of the play who "walk on" eternally talking of ireland. our heroes were men; these are _poseurs_. get to understand davis, tone, or any of our great ones, and you will find them human, gay, and lovable. "were you ever in love, davis?" asked one of his wondering admirers, and prompt and natural came the reply: "i'm never out of it." we swear by tone for his manly virtues; we love him because we say to ourselves: "what a fine fellow for a holiday." a friend of mitchel's travelling with him once through a storm, was astonished to find him suddenly burst out into a fine recitation, which he delivered with fine effect. he was joyous in spirit. for their buoyancy we love them all, and because of it we emulate them. we are influenced, not by the man who always wants to preach a sermon at us, but by the one with whom we go for a holiday. our history-makers were great, joyous men, of fine spirit, fine imagination, fine sensibility, and fine humour. they loved life; they loved their fellow man; they loved all the beautiful, brave things of earth. when you know them you can picture them scaling high mountains and singing from the summits, or boating on fine rivers in the sunlight, or walking about in the dawn, to the music of creation, evolving the philosophy of revolutions and building beautiful worlds. you get no hint of this from the absurd propagandist play, yet this is what the heart of man craves. when he does not get it, he cannot explain what he wants; but he knows what he does not want, and he goes away and keeps his distance. the play has missed fire, and the playwright and his hero are ridiculous. let us understand one thing: if we want to make men dutiful we must make them joyous. iv it is because we must talk of grave things that we must preserve our gaiety; otherwise we could not preserve our balance. by some freak of nature, the average man strikes attitudes as readily as the average boy whistles. we know how the _poseur_ works mischief to every cause, and we can see the _poseur_ on every side. in politics, he has made the platform contemptible, which is a danger to the nation, needing the right use of platform; in literature--well, we all know bourgeois, but who has done justice to the artist who gets on a platform to talk about the bourgeois?--in religion, the _poseur_ is more likely to make agnostics than all the rationalist press; and the agnostic _poseur_ in turn is very funny. now all these are an affliction, a collection of absurdities of which we must cure the nation. if we cannot cure the nation of absurdity we cannot set her free. let it be our rule to combine gaiety with gravity and we will acquire a saving sense of proportion. only the solemn man is dull; the serious man has a natural fund of gaiety: we need only be natural to bring back joy to serious endeavour. then we shall begin to move. let us remember a revolution will surely fail when its leaders have no sense of humour. v but our humour will not be a saving humour unless it is of high order. a great humorist is as rare as a great poet or a great philosopher. though ours may not be great we must keep it in the line of greatness. remember, great humour must be made out of ourselves rather than out of others. the fine humorist is delightfully courteous; the commonplace wit, invariably insulting. we must keep two things in mind, that in laughter at our own folly is the beginning of wisdom; and the keenest wit is pure fun, never coarse fun. we start a laugh at others by getting an infallible laugh at ourselves. the commonplace wit arranges incidents to make someone he dislikes ridiculous; his attitude is the attitude of the superior person. he is nearly always--often unintentionally--offensive; he repels the public sometimes in irritation, sometimes in amusement, for they often see point in his joke, but see a greater joke in him, and they are often laughing, not at his joke, but at himself. let us for our salvation avoid the attitude of the superior person. don't make sport of others--make it of yourself. ridicule of your neighbour must be largely speculation; of the comedy in yourself there can be no doubt. when you get the essential humour out of yourself, you get the infallible touch, and you arrest and attract everyone. you are not the superior person. in effect, you slap your neighbour on the back and say, "we're all in the same boat; let us enjoy the joke"; and you find he will come to you with glistening eye. he may feel a little foolish at first--you are poking his ribs; but you cannot help it--having given him the way to poke your own. by your merry honesty he knows you for a safe comrade, and he comes with relief and confidence--we like to talk about ourselves. he will be equally frank with yourself; you will tell one another secrets; you will reach the heart of man. that is what we need. we must get the heart-beat into literature. then will it quiver and dance and weep and sing. then we are in the line of greatness. vi it is because we need the truth that we object to the propagandist playwright. only in a rare case does he avoid being partial; and when he is impartial he is cold and unconvincing. he gives us argument instead of emotion; but emotion is the language of the heart. he does not touch the heart; he tries to touch the mind: he is a pamphleteer and out of place. he fails, and his failure has damaged his cause, for it leaves us to feel that the cause is as cold as his play; but when the cause is a great one it is always vital, warm and passionate. it is for the sake of the cause we ask that a play be made by a sincere man-of-letters, who will give us not propagandist literature nor art-for-art's-sake, but the throbbing heart of man. the great dramatist will have the great qualities needed, sensibility, sympathy, insight, imagination, and courage. the special pleader and the _poseur_ lack all these things, and they make themselves and their work foolish. let us stand for the truth, not pruning it for the occasion. the man who is afraid to face life is not competent to lead anyone, to speak for anyone, or to interpret anything: he inspires no confidence. the one to rouse us must be passionate, and his passion will win us heart and soul. when from some terribly intense moment, he turns with a merry laugh, only the fool will take him as laughing at his cause; the general instinct will see him detecting an attitude, tripping it up, and making us all merry and natural again. in that moment we shall spring up astonished, enthusiastic, exultant--here is one inspired; we shall enter a passionate brotherhood, no cold disputes now--the smouldering fire along the land shall quicken to a blaze, history shall be again in the making. we shall be caught in the living flame. chapter xi literature and freedom--art for art's sake i art for art's sake has come to have a meaning which must be challenged, but yet it can be used in a sense that is both high and sacred. if a gifted writer take literature as a great vocation and determine to use his talents faithfully and well, without reference to fee or reward; if prosperity cannot seduce him to the misuse of his genius, then we give him our high praise. let it still not be forgotten that the labourer is worthy of his hire. but if the hire is not forthcoming, and he knowing it, yet says in his heart, "the work must still be done"; and if he does it loyally and bravely, despite the present coldness of the world, doing the good work for the love of the work and all beautiful things; and if with this meaning he take "art for art's sake" as his battle-cry, then we repeat it is used in a sense both high and sacred. ii but there are artists abroad whose chief glory seems to be to deny that they have convictions--that is, convictions about the passionate things of life that rouse and move their generation. now that they should not be special pleaders is an obvious duty, but unless they have a passionate feeling for the vital things that move men, heart and soul, they cannot interpret the heart and soul of passionate men, and their work must be for ever cold. when literature is not passionate it does not touch the spirit to lift and spread its wings and soar to finer air. that is the great want about all the clever books now being turned out--they often give us excitement; they never give us ecstasy. then there is an obvious feeling of something lacking which men try to make up with art; and they produce work faultless in form and fastidious in phrase, but still it lacks the touch of fire that would lift it from common things to greatness. iii if we are to apply art to great work we must distinguish art from artifice. we find the two well contrasted in synge's "riders to the sea" and his "playboy." the first was written straight from the heart. we feel synge must have followed those people carrying the dead body, and touched to the quick by the _caoine_, passed the touch on to us, for in the lyric swell of the close we get the true emotion. here alone is he in the line of greatness. this gripped his heart and he wrote out of himself. but in the other work of his it was otherwise. he has put his method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote around other people. it is characteristic of the art of our time. let it be called art if the critics will, but it is not life. iv no, it is not life. but there is so much talk just now of getting "down to fundamentals," of the poetry of the tramp "walking the world," and the rest of it, that it would be well if we _did get_ down to fundamentals; and this is one thing fundamental--the tramp is a deserter from life. he evades the troubled field where great causes are fought; he shuns the battle because of the wounds and the sacrifice; he has no heart for high conflict and victory. let him under the cover of darkness but secure his share of the spoils and the world may go to wreck. yes, he is the meanest of things--a deserter. on the field of battle he would be shot. if we let him desert the field of life, go his way and walk the world, let us not at least hail him as a hero. the repertory theatre is the nursery of this particular art-cult, and 'twould relieve some of us to talk freely about it. the repertory theatre has already become fashionable, and is quite rapidly become a nuisance. men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake, for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock the bourgeois. a certain type of artist delights in shocking the bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. in passing, one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for things for which they ought to die. but he likes the bourgeois to think him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis mostly very sorry stuff. sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us flippancy for fun. and we feel a terrible need for getting back to a standard, worthy and true. great work can be made only for the love of work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and beautiful. with the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by his own tragedy; the novelist should be interested in his own story; the poet should make his song for the love of the song and his comedy for the fun of the thing. vi we naturally think of the abbey theatre when we speak of these things, and as the abbey work has certainly suffered from overpraise we may correct it by comparison with shakespeare. before the abbey we were so used to triviality that when clever and artistic work appeared we at once hailed it great. we _did_ get one or two great things, a fact to note with hearty pleasure and pride. but the rest was merely clever; and now that we are getting nothing great we must insist, and keep on insisting, that 'tis merely clever. but let us remember that value of the word great. let it be kept for such names as shakespeare and molière; and lesser men may be called brilliant, talented or able--anything you will but great. consider the scenes from the supreme plays of shakespeare and compare with them the innumerable plays now coming forth and note a vital difference. these give us excitement, where shakespeare gave us vision. we may be reminded of shakespeare's duels and brawls and battles and blood; his generation revelled in excitement. yes, they craved it, and he gave it to them, but shot through with wonder, subtlety, ecstasy; and his splendid creations, like mighty worlds, keep us wondering for ever. we must get back that supreme note of blended music and wonder, that makes the spirit beautiful and tempts it to soar, till it rise over common things and mere commotion, spreading its wings for the finer air where reason faints and falls to earth. vii a dramatist cannot make a great play out of little people. his chief characters at least must be great of heart and soul--the great hearts that fight great causes. when such are caught, in the inevitable struggle of affections and duties and the general clash of life their passionate spirits send up all the elements that make great literature. the writer who cannot enter into their battles and espouse their cause cannot give utterance to their hearts; and we don't want what he thinks about them; we want what they think about themselves. he who is in passionate sympathy with them feels their emotion and writing from the heart does great things. the artist who is in mortal dread of being thought a politician or suspected of motives cannot feel, and will as surely fail, as the one who sits down to play the rôle of politician disguised as play-right. that is what the artist has got to see; and he has got to see that while the irish revolution for centuries has attracted the greatest hearts and brains of ireland, for him carefully to avoid it is to avoid the line of greatness. for a propagandist to sit down to give it utterance would be as if a handy-man were to set out to build a cathedral. the revolution does not need to be argued; it justifies itself--all we need is to give it utterance--give it utterance once greatly. then the writer may proceed to give utterance to every good thing under the sun. but our artists are making, and will continue to make, only second-class literature, for they are afraid of the revolution, and it is all over our best of life; they are afraid of that life. but to enter the arena of greatness they must give it a voice. that is the vocation of the poet. viii yes, and the poet will be unlike you, gentlemen of the fastidious phrase. he will not be careless of form, but the passion that is in him will make simple words burn and live; never will he in the mode of the time go wide of the truth to make a picturesque phrase; his mind rapt on the thing will fix on the true word; his heart warm with the battle will fashion more beautiful forms than you, o detached and dainty artist; his soul full of music and adventure will scale those heights it is your fate to dream of but not your fortune to possess. yet, you, too, might possess them would you but step with him into the press of adventurous legions, and make articulate the dream of men, and make splendid their triumph. he is the prophet of to-morrow, though you deny him to-day. he is not like to you, supercilious and aloof--he would have you for a passionate brother, would raise your spirit in ecstasy, flood your mind with thought, and touch your lips with fire. because of his sensitiveness he knows every mood and every heart and gives a voice and a song to all. you might know him for a good comrade, where freedom is to win or to hold, over in the van or the breach; able to deal good blows and take them in the fine manner, a fine fighter; not with darkened brow crying, "an eye for an eye"--for who _could_ give him blow for blow or match his deed with a deed?--but one of open front and open hand who will count it happiness to have made for a victory he may not live to enjoy, as ready to die in its splendour as he had been to live through the darkness before the dawn; remembering with soldier tenderness the comrades of old battles, forgetting the malice of old enemies; a high example of the magnanimous spirit, happily not yet unknown on earth; with fine generosity and noble fire, full of that great love the common cry can never make other than humanising and beautiful, not without a gleam of humour more than half divine, he will pass, leaving to the foe that hated him heartily equally with the friend that loved him well, the wonder of his thought and the rapture of his melody. chapter xii religion i it ought to be laid down as a first principle that grave questions which have divided us in the past, and divide us still with much bitterness, should not be thrust aside and kept out of view in the hope of harmony. where the attitude is such, the hope is vain. they should be approached with courage in the hope of creating mutual respect and an honourable solution for all. religion is such a question. to the majority of men this touches their most intimate life. because of their jealous regard for that intimate part of themselves they are prepared for bitter hostilities with anyone who will assail it; and because of the unmeasured bitterness of assaults on all sides we have come to count it a virtue to bring together in societies labelled non-sectarian, men who have been violently opposed on this issue. it will be readily allowed that to bring men together anyhow, even suspiciously, is somewhat of an advance, when we keep in mind how angrily they have quarrelled. but 'tis not to our credit that in any assembly a particular name hardly dare be mentioned; and it must be realised that, whatever purpose it may serve in lesser undertakings, in the great fight for freedom no such attitude will suffice. no grave question can be settled by ignoring it. since it is our duty to make the war of independence a reality and a success, we must invoke a contest that will as surely rouse every latent passion and give every latent suspicion an occasion and a field. that is the danger ahead. we must anticipate that danger, meet and destroy it. perhaps at this suggestion most of us will at once get restive. some may say with irritation: why raise this matter? others on the other side may prepare forthwith to dig up the hatchet. is not the attitude on both sides evidence of the danger? does anyone suppose we can start a fight for freedom without making that danger a grimmer reality? who can claim it a wise policy merely for the moment to dodge it? for that is what we do. let us have courage and face it. at what i have to say let no man take offence or fright--it commits no one to anything. it is written to try and make opponents understand and respect one another, not to set them at one another, least of all to make them "liberal," that is, lax and contemptible, ready to explain everything away. we want primarily the man who is prepared to fight his ground, but who is big enough in heart and mind to respect opponents who will also fight theirs. in the integrity and courage of both sides is the guarantee of the independence of both. that should be our guiding thought. but as on this question most people abandon all tolerance, it is quite possible what may be written will satisfy none; still, it may serve the purpose of making a need apparent. to repeat, we must face the question. but whoever elects to start it, should approach the issue with sympathy and forbearance. these are as necessary as courage and resolution; yet, since many often sacrifice firmness to sympathy, others will take the opposite line of riding roughshod over everyone, a harshness that confirms the weakling in his weakness. to note all this is but to note the difficulty; and if what is now written fails in its appeal, it need only be said to walk unerringly here would require the insight of a prophet and the balance of an angel. ii what everyone should take as a fair demand is that all men should be sincere in their professions, and that we should justify ourselves by the consistency of our own lives rather than by the wickedness of our neighbours: which is nothing new. it is our trouble that we must emphasise obvious duties. to approach the question frankly with no matter what good faith will lead to much heart-burning, perhaps, to no little bitterness; but if we realise that all sides are about equally to blame, we may induce an earnestness that may lead to better things. it is in that hope i write. catholics and protestants, instead of saying to one another the things with which we are familiar, should look to their own houses; and if in this age of fashionable agnosticism, they should conclude that the general enemy is the atheist, socialist, and the syndicalist, they should still be reminded to look to their own houses; and if the agnostic take this to justify himself, he should be reminded he has never done anything to justify himself. it may seem a curious way for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to justify their words by their deeds. the request is not unreasonable and it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men. the world will be a better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life. iii a development that would require a treatise in itself i will but touch on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave concern--the growing materialism of religious bodies. on all sides self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs, equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth. a protestant of standing writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a catholic of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting campaign is disgraceful to both. when religion ceases to represent to us something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from it. "where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." "no man can serve god and mammon." the modern rejoinder is familiar: "we must live." this, our generation is not likely to forget. the grave concern is that well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all higher considerations for the "equal division of emoluments." let us as citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal. it would be a mistake to overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed by plausible reasons to this growing evil. it is misguided enthusiasm. there is a divine authority that warns us all: "be zealous for the better gifts." iv i wish to examine the attitude of the average christian to the agnostic. "the world is falling away from religion," he will cry when depressed, without thinking how much he himself may be a contributing cause. let him study it in this light. what is his attitude? when he comes to speak of the tendency of the age he will indulge in vague generalities about atheism, socialism, irreligion, and the rest; always the cause is outside of him, and against him; he is not part of it. i ask him to pass by the atheist awhile and take what may be of more concern. there is a type of catholic and protestant who has as little genuine religion in him as any infidel, who does not deny the letter of the law, but who does not observe its spirit, whose only use for the letter is to criticise and harass adversaries. observe the high use he has for liberty--drinking, card-playing, gambling, luxury; he has no place in his life for any worthy deeds, nay, only scorn for such. still he passes for orthodox. if he is a catholic, he secures that by putting in an appearance at mass on sundays. his mind is not there; he arrives late and goes early. his protestant fellow in his private judgment finds more scope: "let the women go listen to the parson." this is the sort of saying gives him such a conceit of himself. we have the type on both sides, so all can see it. now it is not in the way of the pharisee we come to note them, but to note that, strange as it may appear, either or both together will come to applaud the denouncing of the atheist. we gather such into our religious societies, and flatter them that they are adherents of religion and the bulwark of the faith, and they forthwith anathematise the atheist with great gusto. the one so anathematised is often as worthless as themselves with a conceit to despise priest and parson alike. but it sometimes happens he is a fine character who has no religion as most of us understand it, but who has yet a fine spiritual fervour, ready to fight and make sacrifices for a national or social principle that he believes will make for better things, a man of integrity and worth whom the best of men may be glad to hold as a friend. yet we find in the condition to which we have drifted such a one may be pilloried by wasters, gamblers, rioters, a crew that are the curse of every community. we lash the atheist and the age but give little heed to the insincerity and cant of those we do not refuse to call our own. what an example for the man anathematised. he sees the vice and meanness of those we allow to pass for orthodox, and when he sees also the complacency of the better part, he is unconvinced. we praise the sweetness of the healing waters of christ-like charity, but despite our gospel he never gets it, never. we give him execration, injustice; if we let him go with a word, it is never a gentle word, but a bitter epithet; and we wonder he is estranged, when he sees our amazing composure in an amazing welter of hypocrisy and deceit. there is, of course, the better side, the many thousands of catholics and protestants who sincerely aim at better things. but what has to be admitted is that most sincerely religious people adopt to the man of no established religion the same attitude as does the hypocrite: they join in the general cry. they should look to their own houses; they should purge the temple of the money-lender and the knave; they should see that their field gives good harvest; they should remember that not to the atheist only but to the orthodox was it written: "every tree therefore that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire." v there is a word to be said to the man for whom was invented the curious name agnostic. i'm concerned only with him who is sincere and high-minded. let us pass the flippant critics of things they do not understand. but all sincere men are comrades in a deep and fine sense. what the honest unbeliever has to keep in mind is that the darker side is but one side. if he stands studying a crowd of the orthodox and finds therein the drunkard, the gambler, the sensualist; and if he says bitter things of the value of religion and gets in return the clerical fiat of one who is more a politician than a priest; and if he rejoins contemptuously, "this is fit for women and children," let him be reminded that he can also study the other side if he care. if he has the instinct of a fighter he must know every army has in its trail the camp-follower and the vulture, but when the battle is set and the danger is imminent, only the true soldier stands his ground. because some who are of poor spirit are in high place, let him not forget the old spirit still exists. not only the women but the best intellects of men still keep the old traditions. newman and pascal, dante and milton, erigena and aquinas, are all dead, but in our time even they have had followers not too far off. in the same spirit gilbert chesterton found wonder at a wooden post, and francis thompson, in his divine wandering, troubled the gold gateways of the stars. let our friend before he frames his final judgment pause here. he may well be baffled by many anomalies of the time, his eye may rest on the meaner horde, his ear be filled with the arrogance of some unworthy successor of paul; and if he says: "why permit these things?" he may be told there are some alive in this generation who will question all such things, and who, however hard it go with them, have no fear for the final victory. vi perhaps the conventional christian and conventional non-christian may rest a moment to consider the reality. between the bitter believer and the exasperated unbeliever, christianity is being turned from a practice to a polemic, and if we are to recall the old spirit we must recall the old earnestness and simplicity of the early martyrs. we do not hear that they called nero an atheist, but we do hear that they went singing to the arena. by their example we may recover the spirit of song, and have done with invective. if we find music and joyousness in the old conception, it is not in the fashion of the time to explain it away in some "new theology," for he to whom it is not a fashion, but a vital thing, keeps his anchor by tradition. to him it is the shining light away in the mists of antiquity; it is the strong sun over the living world; it is the pillar of fire over the widening seas and worlds of the unknown; it is the expanse of infinity. when he is lost in its mystery he adverts to the wonder about him, for all that is wonderful is touched with it, and all that is lovely is its expression. it is in the breath of the wind, pure and bracing from the mountain top. it is in the song of the lark holding his musical revel in the sunlight. it is in the ecstasy of a spring morning. it is in the glory of all beautiful things. when it has entered and purified his spirit, his heart goes out to the persecuted in all ages and countries. none will he reject. "i am not come to call the just but sinners." he remembers those words, and his great charity encompasses not only the persecuted orthodox, but the persecuted heretics and infidels. vii i will not say if such an endeavour as i suggest can have an immediate success. but i think it will be a step forward if we get sincere men on one side to understand the sincerity of the other side; and if in matters of religion and speculation, where there is so much difficulty and there is likely to be so much conflict of opinion, there should be no constraint, but rather the finest charity and forbearance; then the orthodox would be concerned with practising their faith rather than in harassing the infidel, and the infidel would receive a more useful lesson than the ill-considered tirades he despises. he may remain still unconvinced, but he will give over his contempt. this question of religion is one on which men will differ, and differing, ultimately they will fight if we find no better way. we must remember while freedom is to win we are facing a national struggle, and if we are threatened within by a civil war of creeds it may undo us. that is why we must face the question. that is why i think utter frankness in these grave matters is of grave urgency. if we approach them in the right spirit we need have no fear--for at heart the most of men are susceptible to high appeals. what we need is courage and intensity; it is gabbling about surface things makes the bitterness. if in truth we safeguard the right of every man as we are bound to do we shall win the confidence of all, and we may hope for a braver and better future, wherein some light of the primal beauty may wander again over earth as in the beginning it dawned on chaos when the spirit of god first moved over the waters. chapter xiii intellectual freedom i it will probably cause surprise if i say there is, possibly, more intellectual freedom in ireland than elsewhere in europe. but i do not mean by intellectual freedom conventional free-thought, which is, perhaps, as far as any superstition from true freedom of the mind. the point may not be admitted but its consideration will clear the air, and help to dispose of some objections hindering that spiritual freedom, fundamental to all liberty. ii i have no intention here of in any way criticising the doctrine of free-thought, but one so named cannot be ignored when we consider intellectual freedom. this, then, has to be borne in mind when speaking of free-thought, that while it allows you latitude of opinion in many things, it will not allow you freedom in all things, in, for example, revealed religion. i only mention this to show that on both sides of such burning questions you have disputants dogmatic. a dogmatic "yes" meets an equally dogmatic "no." the dogmas differ and it is not part of our business here to discuss them: but to come to a clear conception of the matter in hand, it must be kept in mind, that if you, notwithstanding, freely of your own accord, accept belief in certain doctrines, the freethinkers will for that deny you freedom. and the freethinkers are right in that they are dogmatic. (but this they themselves appear to overlook.) freedom is absolutely dogmatic. it is fundamentally false that freedom implies no attachment to any belief, no being bound by any law, "as free as the wind," as the saying goes, for the wind is not free. simple indeterminism is not liberty. iii we must, then, find the true conception of intellectual freedom. it is the freedom of the individual to follow his star and reach his goal. that star binds him down to certain lines and his freedom is in exact proportion to his fidelity to the lines. the seeming paradox may be puzzling: a concrete example will make it clear. suppose a man, shipwrecked, finds himself at sea in an open boat, without his bearings or a rudder. he is at the mercy of the wind and wave, without freedom, helpless. but give him his bearings and a helm, and at once he recovers his course; he finds his position and can strike the path to freedom. he is at perfect liberty to scuttle his boat, drive it on the rocks or do any other irrational thing; but if he would have freedom, he must follow his star. iv this leads us to track a certain error that has confused modern debate. a man in assumed impartiality tells you he will stand away from his own viewpoint and consider a case from yours. now, if he does honestly hold by his own view and thinks he can put it by and judge from his opponent's, he is deceiving both himself and his opponent. he can do so _apparently,_ but, whatever assumption is made, he is governed subconsciously by his own firm conviction. his belief is around him like an atmosphere; it goes with him wherever he goes; he can only stand free of it by altogether abandoning it. if his case is such that he can come absolutely to the other side to view it uninfluenced by his own, then he has abandoned his own. he is like a man in a boat who has thrown over rudder and bearings: he may be moved by any current: he is adrift. if he is to recover the old ground, he must win it as something he never had. but if instead of this he does at heart hold by his own view, he should give over the deception that he is uninfluenced by it in framing judgment. it is psychologically impossible. let the man understand it as a duty to himself to be just to others, and to substitute this principle for his spurious impartiality. this is the frank and straightforward course. while he is under his own star, he is moving in its light: he has, if unconsciously, his hand on the helm: he judges all currents scrupulously and exactly, but always from his own place at the wheel and with his own eyes. to abandon one or the other is to betray his trust, or in good faith and ignorance to cast it off till it is gone, perhaps, too far to recover. v if we so understand intellectual freedom, in what does its denial consist? in this: around every set of principles guiding men, there grows up a corresponding set of prejudices that with the majority in practice often supersede the principles; and these prejudices with the march of time assume such proportions, gather such power, both by the numbers of their adherents and the authority of many supporting them, that for a man of spirit, knowing them to be evil and urgent of resistance, there is needed a vigour and freedom of mind that but few understand and even fewer appreciate or encourage. the prejudices that grow around a man's principles are like weeds and poison in his garden: they blight his flowers, trees and fruit; and he must go forth with fire and sword and strong unsparing hand to root out the evil things. he will find with his courage and strength are needed passion and patience and dogged persistence. for men defend a prejudice with bitter venom altogether unlike the fire that quickens the fighter for freedom; and the destroyer of the evil may find himself assailed by an astonishing combination--charged with bad faith or treachery or vanity or sheer perversity, in proportion as those who dislike his principles deny his good faith; or those who profess them, because of his vigour and candour denounce him for an enemy within the fold. but for all that he should stand fast. if he has the courage so to do, he gives a fine example of intellectual freedom. vi it will serve us to consider some prejudices, free-thinking and religious. first the free-thinker. he has a prejudice very hard to kill. if i believe in the beginning what bernard shaw has found out thus late in the day, that priests are not as bad as they are painted, the free-thinker would deny me intellectual freedom. the fact of my right to think the matter out and come to that conclusion would count for nothing. on the other hand, if i were known to have professed a certain faith and to have abandoned it, he would acclaim that as casting off mental slavery. this is hopelessly confusing. if a man has ceased to hold a certain belief he deserves no credit for courage in saying so openly. if he thinks what he once believed, or is supposed to have believed, has no vitality, surely he can have no reason for being afraid of it, and to speak of dangerous consequences from it to him, can be _for him_ at least only a bogey. his simple denial is, then, no mark of courage. courage is a positive thing. yet he may well have that courage. suppose him in taking his stand to have taken up some social faith that for him has promise of better things. he will find his new creed surrounded by its own swarm of prejudices, and if he refuse to worship every fetish of the free-thinker, declaring that this stands to him for a certain definite, beautiful thing, and fighting for it, he will find himself denied and scouted by his new friends. he may find himself often in company with some supposed enemies. he will surely need in his sincere attitude to life a freedom of mind that is not a name merely but a positive virtue that demands of him more than denunciation of obscurantism, the recognition of a personal duty and the justification of personal works. vii the religious prejudice will be no less hard to kill. indiscriminate denunciation of unbelievers as wicked men serves no good purpose and leads nowhere. there are wicked men on all sides. our standard must be one that will distinguish the sincere men on all sides; and our loyalty to our particular creeds must be shown in our lives and labours, not in the reviling of the infidel. we are justified in casting out the hypocrite from every camp, and when we come to this task we can be sure only of the hypocrites in our own; and we should lay it as an injunction on all bodies to purge themselves. the burden will be laid on all--not one surely of which men can complain--that they shall prove their principles in action and lay their prejudices by. christians might well find exemplars in the early martyrs, those who for their principles went so readily to the lions. one may anticipate the complacent rejoinder: "this is not so exacting an age; men are not asked to die for religion now"--and one may in turn reply, that, perhaps our age may not be without occasion for such high service, but that we may be unwilling to go to the lions. our time has its own trial--by no means unexacting let me tell you--but we quietly slip it by: it is much easier to revile the infidel. this as a test of loyalty should be pinned: we shall shut up thereby the hypocrite. and the earnest man, more conscious of his own burden, will be more sympathetic, generous and just, and will come to be more logical and to see what newman well remarked, that one who asks questions shows he has no belief and in asking may be but on the road to one. if to ask a question is to express a doubt, it is no less, perhaps, to seek a way out of it. "what better can he do than inquire, if he is in doubt?" asks newman. "not to inquire is in his case to be satisfied with disbelief." we should, acting in this light, instead of denouncing the questioner, answer his question freely and frankly, encourage him to ask others and put him one or two by the way. men meeting in this manner may still remain on opposite sides, but there will be formed between them a bond of sympathy that mutual sincerity can never fail to establish. this is freedom, and a fine beautiful thing, surely worth a fine effort. what we have grown accustomed to, the bitterness, the recriminations, the persecutions and retaliations, are all the evil weeds of prejudice, growing around our principles and choking them. they are so far a denial of principle, a proof of mental slavery. our freedom will attest to faith: "where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty." viii this, in conclusion, is the root of the matter: to claim freedom and to allow it in like measure; rather than to deny, to urge men to follow their beliefs: only thus can they find salvation. to constrain a man to profess what we profess is worse than delusion: should he give lip service to what he does not hold at heart, 'twere for him deceitful and for us dangerous. where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. if his creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it, and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the inconsistency. this is the only course for honourable men and no man should object. to repeat, it puts an equal burden on all--the onus of justifying the faith that is in them. life is a divine adventure and he whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest. god does not hold his honours for the timid: the man who buried his talent, fearing to lose it, was cast into exterior darkness. he who will step forward fearlessly will be justified. "all things are possible to him who believeth." many on both sides may be surprised to find suddenly proposed as a test to both sides the readiness to adventure bravely on the sea of life. the free-thinker may be astonished to hear, not that he goes too far, but does not go far enough. he may gasp at the test, but it is in effect the test and the only true one. the man who does not believe he is to be blotted out when his body ceases to breathe, who holds all history for his heritage and the wide present for his battle-ground, believes also the future is no repellent void but a widening and alluring world. if in his travel he is scrupulous in detail, it is in the spirit of the mariner who will neither court a ship-wreck nor be denied his adventure. he cannot deny to others the right to hesitate and halt by the way, but his spirit asks no less than the eternal and the infinite. yes, but many good religious people are not used to seeing the issue in this light, and those who make a trade of fanning old bitterness will still ply their bitter trade, crying that anarchists, atheists, heretics, infidels, all outcasts and wicked men, are all rampant for our destruction. it may be disputed, but, admitting it, one may ask: is there no place among christian people for those distinctive virtues on which we base the superiority of our religion? when the need is greatest, should the practice be less urgent? it is not evident that the free-thinker is obliged by any of his principles to give better example. it is evident the christian is so obliged. why is he found wanting? if human weakness were pleaded, one could understand. it is against the making a virtue of it lies the protest. how many noble things there are in our philosophies, and how little practised. no violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a bloodless and beautiful revolution. we are in the desert truly and a long way from the promised land. but we must get to the higher ground and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic, there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "fear not; only believe." chapter xiv militarism i to defend or recover freedom men must be always ready for the appeal to arms. here is a principle that has been vindicated through all history and needs vindication now. but in our time the question of rightful war has been crossed by the evil of militarism, and in our assertion of the principle, that in the last resort freemen must have recourse to the sword, we find ourselves crossed by the anti-militarist campaign. we must dispose of this confusing element before we can come to the ethics of war. of the evil of militarism there can be no question, but a careful study of some anti-militaristic literature discloses very different motives for the campaign. i propose to lay some of the motives bare and let the reader judge whether there may not be an insidious plot on foot to make a deal between the big nations to crush the little ones. for this purpose i will consider two books on the question, one by mr. norman angell, "the great illusion," and one by m. jacques novikow, "war and its alleged benefits." in the work of mr. angell the reader will find the suggestion of the deal, while in the work of m. novikow is given a clear and honest statement of the anti-militarist position, with which we can all heartily agree. those of us who would assert our freedom should understand the right anti-militarist position, because in its exponents we shall find allies at many points. but with mr. angell's book it is otherwise. these points emerge: the basis of morality is self-interest; the great powers have nothing to gain by destroying one another, they should agree to police and exploit the territory of the "backward races"; if the statesmen take a different view from the financiers, the financiers can bring pressure to bear on the statesmen by their international organisation; the capitalist has no country. well, our comment is, the patriot has a country, and when he wakens to the new danger, he may spoil the capitalist dream, and this book of mr. angell's may in a sense other than that the author intended be appropriately named "the great illusion." ii the limits of this essay do not admit of detailed examination of the book named. what i propose to do is make characteristic extracts sufficiently full to let the reader form judgment. as we are only concerned for the present with the danger i mention, i take particular notice of mr. angell's book, and i refer the reader for further study to the original. but the charge of taking an accidental line from its context cannot be made here, as the extracts are numerous, the tendency of all alike, and more of the same nature can be found. i divide the extracts into three groups, which i name: . the ethics of the case. . the power of money. . the deal. where italics are used they are mine. . the ethics of the case.--"the real basis of social morality is self-interest." ("the great illusion," rd ed., p. .) "have we not abundant evidence, indeed, that the passion of patriotism, as divorced from material interest, is being modified by the pressure of material interest?" (p. .) "piracy was magnificent, doubtless, but it was not business." (speaking of the old vikings, p. .) "the pacifist propaganda has failed largely because it has not put (and proven) the plea of interest as distinct from the moral plea." (p. .) . the power of money.--"the complexity of modern finance makes new york dependent on london, london upon paris, paris upon berlin, to a greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history." (p. .) "it would be a miracle if already at this point the whole influence of british finance were not thrown against the action of the british government." (on the assumed british capture of hamburg, p. ). "the most absolute despots cannot command money." (p. .) "with reference to capital, it may almost be said that it is organised so naturally internationally that _formal organisation is not necessary_." (p. .) . the deal.--"france has benefited by the conquest of algeria, england by that of india, because in each case the arms were employed not, properly speaking, for conquest at all, but _for police purposes_." (p. .) "while even the wildest pan-german has never cast his eyes in the direction of canada, he has cast them, and does cast them, in the direction of asia minor.... _germany may need to police asia minor_." (pp. , .) "_it is much more to our interest to have an orderly and organised asia minor under german tutelage than to have an unorganised and disorderly one which should be independent_." (p. .) "sir harry johnston, in the 'nineteenth century' for december, , comes a great deal nearer to touching the real kernel of the problem.... he adds that the best informed germans used this language to him: '_you know that we ought to make common cause in our dealings with backward races of the world_!'" the quotations speak for themselves. note the policing of the "backward races." the colonies are not in favour. mr. angell writes: "what in the name of common sense is the advantage of conquering them if the only policy is to let them do as they like?" (p. .) south africa occasions bitter reflections: "the present government of the transvaal is in the hands of the boer party." (p. .) and he warns germany, that, supposing she wishes to conquer south africa, "she would learn that the policy that great britain has adopted was not adopted by philanthropy, but in the hard school of bitter experience." (p. .) we believe him, and we may have to teach a lesson or two in the same school. it may be noted in passing mr. angell gives ireland the honour of a reference. in reply to a critic of the _morning post_, who wrote thus: "it is the sublime quality of human nature that every great nation has produced citizens ready to sacrifice themselves rather than submit to external force attempting to dictate to them a conception other than their own of what is right." (p. .) mr. angell replied: "one is, of course, surprised to see the foregoing in the _morning post_; the concluding phrase would justify the present agitation in india, or in egypt, or in ireland against british, rule." (p. .) comment is needless. the reading and re-reading of this book forces the conclusion as to its sinister design. once that design is exposed its danger recedes. there is one at least of the "backward races" that may not be sufficiently alive to self-interest, but may for all that upset the capitalist table and scatter the deal by what ruskin described in another context as "the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul." iii we must not fail to distinguish the worth of the best type of anti-militarist and to value the truth of his statement. it is curious to find mr. angell writing an introduction to m. novikow's book, for m. novikow's position is, in our point of view, quite different. he does not draw the fine distinction of policing the "backward races." rather, he defends the bengalis. suppose their rights had never been violated, he says: "they would have held their heads higher; they would have been proud and dignified, and perhaps might have taken for their motto, _dieu et mon droit_." ("war and its alleged benefits," p. .) he can be ironical and he can be warm. later, he writes; "the french (and all other people) should vindicate their rights with their last drop of blood; so what i write does not refer to those who defend their rights, but to those who violate the rights of others." (note p. .) he does not put by the moral plea, but says: "political servitude develops the greatest defects in the subjugated peoples." (p. .) and he pays his tribute to those who die for a noble cause: "my warmest sympathy goes out to those noble victims who preferred death to disgrace." (p. .) this is the true attitude and one to admire; and any writer worthy of esteem who writes for peace never fails to take the same stand. emerson, in his essay on "war," makes a fine appeal for peace, but he writes: "if peace is sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the luxurious or the timid, it is a sham and the peace will be base. war is better, and the peace will be broken." and elsewhere on "politics," he writes: "a nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can easily confound the arithmetic of the statists and achieve extravagant actions out of all proportions to their means." yes, and by our unanimity for freedom we mean to prove it true. chapter xv the empire i with the immediate promise of home rule many strange apologists for the empire have stepped into the sun. perhaps it is well--we may find ourselves soon more directly than heretofore struggling with the empire. so far the fight has been confused. imperialists fighting for home rule obscured the fact that they were _not_ fighting the empire. now home rule is likely to come, and it will serve at least the good purpose of clearing the air and setting the issue definitely between the nation and the empire. we shall have our say for the nation, but as even now many things, false and hypocritical, are being urged on behalf of the empire, it will serve us to examine the imperial creed and show its tyranny, cruelty, hypocrisy, and expose the danger of giving it any pretext whatever for aggression. for the empire, as we know it and deal with it, is a bad thing in itself, and we must not only get free of it and not be again trapped by it, but must rather give hope and encouragement to every nation fighting the same fight all the world over. ii one candid writer, machiavelli, has put the imperial creed into a book, the examination of which will--for those willing to see--clear the air of illusion. now, we are conscious that defenders of the empire profess to be shocked by the wickedness of machiavelli's utterance--we shall hear macaulay later--but this shocked attitude won't delude us. let those who have not read machiavelli's book, "the prince," consider carefully the extracts given below and see exactly how they fit the english occupation of ireland, and understand thoroughly that the empire is a thing, bad in itself, utterly wicked, to be resisted everywhere, fought without ceasing, renounced with fervour and without qualification, as we have been taught from the cradle to renounce the devil with all his works and pomps. consider first the invasion. machiavelli speaks:--"the common method in such cases is this. as soon as a foreign potentate enters into a province those who are weaker or disobliged join themselves with him out of emulation and animosity to those who are above them, insomuch that in respect to those inferior lords no pains are to be omitted that may gain them; and when gained, they will readily and unanimously fall into one mass with the state that is conquered. only the conqueror is to take special care that they grow not too strong, nor be entrusted with too much authority, and then he can easily with his own forces and their assistance keep down the greatness of his neighbours, and make himself absolute arbiter in that province." here is the old maxim, "divide and conquer." to gain an entry some pretence is advisable. machiavelli speaks with approval of a certain potentate who always made religion a pretence. having entered a vigorous policy must be pursued. we read--"he who usurps the government of any state is to execute and put in practice all the cruelties which he thinks material at once." cromwell rises before us. "a prince," says machiavelli, "is not to regard the scandal of being cruel if thereby he keeps his subjects in their allegiance." "for," he is cautioned, "whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself; because whenever the citizens are disposed to revolt they betake themselves, of course, to that blessed name of liberty, and the laws of their ancestors, which no length of time nor kind usage whatever will be able to eradicate." an alternative to utter destruction is flattery and indulgence. "men are either to be flattered and indulged or utterly destroyed." we think of the titles and the bribes. again, "a town that has been anciently free cannot more easily be kept in subjection than by employing its own citizens." we think of the place-hunter, the king's visit, the "loyal" address. to make the conquest secure we read: "when a prince conquers a new state and annexes it as a member to his old, then it is necessary your subjects be disarmed, all but such as appeared for you in the conquest, and they are to be mollified by degrees and brought into such a condition of laziness and effeminacy that in time your whole strength may devolve upon your own natural militia." we think of the arms acts and our weakened people. but while one-half is disarmed and the other half bribed, with neither need the conqueror keep faith. we read: "a prince who is wise and prudent cannot, or ought not, to keep his parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice and the causes for which he promised removed." this is made very clear to prevent any mistake. "it is of great consequence to disguise your inclination and play the hypocrite well." we think of the broken treaty and countless other breaches of faith. it is, of course, well to seem honourable, but machiavelli cautions: "it is honourable to seem mild, and merciful, and courteous, and religious, and sincere, and indeed to be so, provided your mind be so rectified and prepared, that you can act quite contrary upon occasion." should anyone hesitate at all this let him hear: "he is not to concern himself if run under the infamy of those vices, without which his dominion was not to be preserved." thus far the philosophy of machiavelli. the imperialist out to "civilise the barbarians" is, of course, shocked by such wickedness; but we are beginning to open our eyes to the wickedness and hypocrisy of both. to us this book reads as if a shrewd observer of the english occupation in ireland had noted the attending features and based these principles thereon. we have reason to be grateful to machiavelli for his exposition. his advice to the prince, in effect, lays bare the marauders of his age and helps us to expose the empire in our own. iii there is a lesson to be learnt from the fact that this book of machiavelli's, written four centuries ago in italy, is so apt here to-day. we must take this exposition as the creed of empire and have no truck with the empire. it may be argued that the old arts will be no longer practised on us. let the new supporters of the empire know that by the new alliance they should practise these arts on other people, which would be infamy. we are not going to hold other people down; we are going to encourage them to stand up. if it means a further fight we have plenty of stimulus still. our oppression has been doubly bitter for having been mean. the tyranny of a strong mind makes us rage, but the tyranny of a mean one is altogether insufferable. the cruelty of a cromwell can be forgotten more easily than the cant of a macaulay. when we read certain lines we go into a blaze, and that fire will burn till it has burnt every opposition out. in his essay on milton, macaulay having written much bombast on the english revolution, introduces this characteristic sentiment: "one part of the empire there was, so unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to our happiness and its slavery to our freedom." for insolence this would be hard to beat. let it be noted well. it is the philosophy of the "predominant partner." if he had thanked god for having our throats to cut, and cut them with loud gratitude like cromwell, a later generation would be incensed. but this other attitude is the gall in the cup. macaulay is, of course, shocked by machiavelli's "prince." in his essay on machiavelli we read: "it is indeed scarcely possible for any person not well acquainted with the history and literature of italy to read without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought so much obloquy on the name of machiavelli. such a display of wickedness, naked, yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved of men." but, later, in the same essay, is a valuable sidelight. he writes of machiavelli as a man "whose only fault was that, having adopted some of the maxims then generally received, he arranged them most luminously and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer." here we have the truth, of course not so intended, but evident: machiavelli's crime is not for the sentiments he entertained but for writing them down luminously and forcibly--in other words, for giving the show away. think of macaulay's "horror and amazement," and read this further in the same essay: "every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so useless as a general maxim. if it be very moral and very true it may serve for a copy to a charity boy." so the very moral and the very true are not for the statesman but for the charity-boy. this perhaps may be defended as irony; hardly, but even so, in such irony the character appears as plainly as in volumes of solemn rant. to us it stands out clearly as the characteristic attitude of the english government. the english people are used to it, practise it, and will put up with it; but the irish people never were, are not now, and never will be used to it; and we won't put up with it. we get calm as old atrocities recede into history, but to repeat the old cant, above all to try and sustain such now, sets all the old fire blazing--blazing with a fierceness that will end only with the british connection. iv not many of us in ireland will be deceived by macaulay, but there is danger in an occasional note of writers, such as bernard shaw and stuart mill. our instinct often saves us by natural repugnance from the hypocrite, when we may be confused by some sentiment of a sincere man, not foreseeing its tendency. when an aggressive power looks for an opening for aggression it first looks for a pretext, and our danger lies in men's readiness to give it the pretext. such a sentiment as this from mill--on "liberty"--gives the required opening: "despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement"; or this from shaw's preface to the home rule edition of "john bull's other island": "i am prepared to steam-roll tibet if tibet persist in refusing me my international rights." now, it is within our right to enforce a principle within our own territory, but to force it on other people, called for the occasion "barbarians," is quite another thing. shaw may get wrathful, and genuinely so, over the denshawai horror, and expose it nakedly and vividly as he did in his first edition of "john bull's other island," preface for politicians; but the aggressors are undisturbed as long as he gives them pretexts with his "steam-roll tibet" phrase. and when he says further that he is prepared to co-operate with france, italy, russia, germany and england in morocco, tripoli, siberia and africa to civilise these places, not only are his denunciations of denshawai horrors of no avail--except to draw tears after the event--but he cannot co-operate in the civilising process without practising the cruelty; and perhaps in their privacy the empire-makers may smile when shaw writes of empire with evident earnestness as "a name that every man who has ever felt the sacredness of his own native soil to him, and thus learnt to regard that feeling in other men as something holy and inviolable, spits out of his mouth with enormous contempt." when, further, in his "representative government" mill tells the english people--a thing about which shaw has no illusions--that they are "the power which of all in existence best understands liberty, and, whatever may have been its errors in the past, has attained to more of conscience and moral principle in its dealing with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as possible or recognise as desirable"--they not only go forward to civilise the barbarians by denshawai horrors, but they do so unctuously in the true macaulayan style. we feel a natural wrath at all this, not unmingled with amusement and amazement. in studying the question we read much that rouses anger and contempt, but one must laugh out heartily in coming to this gem of mill's, uttered with all mill's solemnity: "place-hunting is a form of ambition to which the english, considered nationally, are almost strangers." when the sincerest expression of the english mind can produce this we need to have our wits about us; and when, as just now, so much nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, is being poured abroad about the empire, we need to pause, carefully consider all these things, and be on our guard. v in conclusion, we may add our own word to the talk of the hour--the politicians on home rule. it should raise a smile to hear so often the prophecy that ireland will be loyal to the empire when she gets home rule. we are surprised that any irishman could be so foolish, though, no doubt, many englishmen are so simple as to believe it. history and experience alike deny it. possibly the home rule chiefs realise their active service is now limited to a decade or two, and assume home rule may be the limit for that time, and speak only for that time; but at the end of that time our generation will be vigorous and combative, and if we cannot come into our own before then, we shall be ready then. we need say for the moment no more than this--the limit of the old generation is not the limit of ours. if anyone doubt the further step to take let him consider our history, recent and remote. the old effort to subdue or exterminate us having failed, the new effort to conciliate us began. minor concessions led to the bigger question of the land. one land act led to another till the people came by their own. home rule, first to be killed by resolute government, was next to be killed by kindness, and local government came. local government made home rule inevitable; and now home rule is at hand and we come to the last step. anyone who reads the history of ireland, who understands anything of progress, who can draw any lesson from experience, must realise that the advent of home rule marks the beginning of the end. chapter xvi resistance in arms--foreword i the discussion of freedom leads inevitably to the discussion of an appeal to arms. if proving the truth and justice of a people's claim were sufficient there would be little tyranny in the world, but a tyrannical power is deaf to the appeal of truth--it cannot be moved by argument, and must be met by force. the discussion of the ethics of revolt is, then, inevitable. ii the ubiquitous pseudo-practical man, petulant and critical, will at once arise: "what is the use of discussing arms in ireland? if anyone wanted to fight it would be impossible, and no one wants to fight. what prevents ye going out to begin?" such peevish criticism is anything but practical, and one may ignore it; but it suggests the many who would earnestly wish to settle our long war with a swift, conclusive fight, yet who feel it no longer practical. keeping to the practical issue, we must bear in mind a few things. though ireland has often fought at odds, and could do so again, it is not just now a question of ireland poorly equipped standing up to england invincible. england will never again have such an easy battle. the point now to emphasise is this--by remaining passive and letting ourselves drift we drift into the conflict that involves england. we must fight for her or get clear of her. there can be no neutrality while bound to her; so a military policy is an eminently practical question. moreover, it is an urgent one: to stand in with england in any danger that threatens her will be at least as dangerous as a bold bid to break away from her. one thing above all, conditions have changed in a startling manner; england is threatened within as without; there are labour complications of all kinds of which no one can foresee the end, while as a result of another complication we find the prime minister of england going about as carefully protected as the czar of russia.[footnote: the militant suffragette agitation.] the unrest of the times is apt to be even bewildering. england is not alone in her troubles--all the great powers are likewise; and it is at least as likely for any one of them to be paralysed by an internal war as to be prepared to wage an external one. this stands put clearly--we cannot go away from the turmoil and sit down undisturbed; we must stand in and fight for our own hand or the hand of someone else. let us prepare and stand for our own. however it be, no one can deny that in all the present upheavals it is at least practical to discuss the ethics of revolt. iii we can count on a minority who will see wisdom in such a discussion; it must be our aim to make the discussion effective. we must be patient as well as resolute. we are apt to get impatient and by hasty denunciation drive off many who are wavering and may be won. these are held back, perhaps, by some scruple or nervousness, and by a fine breath of the truth and a natural discipline may yet be made our truest soldiers. emerson, in his address at the dedication of the soldiers' monument, concord, made touching reference in some such in the american civil war. he told of one youth he knew who feared he was a coward, and yet accustomed himself to danger, by forcing himself to go and meet it. "he enlisted in new york," says emerson, "went out to the field, and died early." and his comment for us should be eloquent. "it is from this temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been formed." the pains we are at to make men physically fit we must take likewise to make them mentally fit. we are minutely careful in physical training, drill regulations and the rest, which is right, for thus we turn a mob into an army and helplessness into strength. let us be minutely careful, too, with the untried minds--timid, anxious, sensitive in matters of conscience; like him emerson spoke of, they may be found yet in the foremost fighting line, but we must have patience in pleading with them. here above all must we keep our balance, must we come down with sympathy to every particular. it is surely evident that it is essential to give the care we lavish on the body with equal fulness to the mind. iv at the heart of the question we will be met by the religious objection to revolt. here all scruples, timidity, wavering, will concentrate; and here is our chief difficulty to face. the right to war is invariably allowed to independent states. the right to rebel, even with just cause, is not by any means invariably allowed to subject nations. it has been and is denied to us in ireland. we must answer objectors line by line, leading them, where it serves, step by step to our conclusions; but this is not to make freedom a mere matter of logic--it is something more. when it comes to war we shall frequently give, not our promises, but our conclusions. this much must be allowed, however, that, as far as logic will carry, our position must be perfectly sound; yet, be it borne in mind, our cause reaches above mere reasoning--mere logic does not enshrine the mysterious touch of fire that is our life. so, when we argue with opponents we undertake to give them as good as or better than they can give, but we stake our cause on the something that is more. on this ground i argue not in general on the right of war, but in particular on the right of revolt; not how it may touch other people elsewhere ignoring how it touches us here in ireland. a large treatise could be written on the general question, but to avoid seeming academic i will confine myself as far as possible to the side that is our concern. for obvious reasons i propose to speak as to how it affects catholics, and let them and others know what some catholic writers of authority have said on the matter. one thing has to be carefully made clear. it is seen in the following quotation from an eminent catholic authority writing in ireland in the middle of the last century, dr. murray, of maynooth: "the church has issued no definition whatever on the question--has left it open. many theologians have written on it; the great majority, however (so far as i have been able to examine them), pass it over in silence." (_essays chiefly theological_, vol. ). this has to be kept in mind. theologians have written, some on one side and some on the other, but the church has left it open. i need not labour the point why it is useful to quote catholic authorities in particular, since in ireland an army representative of the people would be largely catholic, and much former difficulty arose from catholics in ireland meeting with opposition from some catholic authorities. it may be seen the position is delicate as well as difficult, and in writing a preliminary note one point should be emphasised. we must not evade a difficulty because it is delicate and dangerous, and we must not temporise. in a physical contest on the field of battle it is allowable to use tactics and strategy, to retreat as well as advance, to have recourse to a ruse as well as open attack; but _in matters of principle there can be no tactics, there is one straightforward course to follow, and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end_. chapter xvii resistance in arms--the true meaning of law i when we stand up to question false authority we should first make our footing firm by showing we understand true authority and uphold it. let us be clear then as to the meaning of the word law. it may be defined; an ordinance of reason, the aim of which is the public good and promulgated by the ruling power. let us cite a few authorities. "a human law bears the character of law so far as it is in conformity with right reason; and in that point of view it is manifestly derived from the eternal law." (_aquinas ethicus,_ vol. , p. .) writing of laws that are unjust either in respect to end, author or form, st. thomas says: "such proceedings are rather acts of violence than laws; because st. augustine says: 'a law that is not just goes for no law at all.'" (_aquinas ethicus_, vol. , p. .) "the fundamental idea of all law," writes balmez, "is that it be in accordance with reason, that it be an emanation from reason, an application of reason to society" (_european civilisation_, chap. ). in the same chapter balmez quotes st. thomas with approval: "the kingdom is not made for the king, but the king for the kingdom"; and he goes on to the natural inference: "that all governments have been established for the good of society, and that this alone should be the compass to guide those who are in command, whatever be the form of government." it is likewise the view of mill, in _representative government_, that the well-being of the governed is the sole object of government. it was the view of plato before the christian era: his ideal city should be established, "that the whole city might be in the happiest condition." (_the republic_, book .) calderwood writes: "political government can be legitimately constructed only on condition of the acknowledgment of natural obligations and rights as inviolable." (_handbook of modern philosophy, applied ethics_, sec. .) here all schools and all times are in agreement. till these conditions are fulfilled for us we are at war. when an independent and genuine irish government is established we shall yield it a full and hearty allegiance: the law shall then be in repute. we do not stand now to deny the idea of authority, but to say that the wrong people are in authority, the wrong flag is over us. ii "we must overthrow the arguments that might be employed against us by the advocates of blind submission to any power that happens to be established," writes balmez, on resistance to _de facto_ governments. (_european civilisation_, chap. .) we could not be more explicit than the famous spanish theologian. to such arguments let the following stand out from his long and emphatic reply:--"illegitimate authority is no authority at all; the idea of power involves the idea of right, without which it is mere physical power, that is force." he writes further: "the conqueror, who, by mere force of arms, has subdued a nation, does not thereby acquire a right to its possession; the government, which by gross iniquities has despoiled entire classes of citizens, exacted undue contributions, abolished legitimate rights, cannot justify its acts by the simple fact of its having sufficient strength to execute these iniquities." there is much that is equally clear and definite. what extravagant things can be said on the other side by people in high places we know too well. balmez in the same book and chapter gives an excellent example and an excellent reply: "don felix amat, archbishop of palmyra, in the posthumous work entitled _idea of the church militant_, makes use of these words: 'jesus christ, by his plain and expressive answer, _render to cæsar the things that are cæsar's_, has sufficiently established that the mere fact of a government's existence is sufficient for enforcing the obedience of subjects to it....' his work was forbidden at rome," is balmez' expressive comment, and he continues, "and whatever may have been the motives for such a prohibition, we may rest assured that, in the case of a book advocating such doctrines, every man who is jealous of his rights might acquiesce in the decree of the sacred congregation." so much for _de facto_ government. it is usurpation; by being consummated it does not become legitimate. when its decrees are not resisted, it does not mean we accept them in principle--nor can we even pretend to accept them--but that the hour to resist has not yet come. it is the strategy of war. iii we stand on the ground that the english government in ireland is founded in usurpation and as such deny its authority. but if it be argued, assuming it as ireland's case, that a usurped authority, gradually acquiesced in by the people, ultimately becomes the same as legitimate, the reply is still clear. for ourselves we meet the assumption with a simple denial, appealing to irish history for evidence that we never acquiesced in the english usurpation. but to those who are not satisfied with this simple denial, we can point out that even an authority, originally founded legitimately, may be resisted when abusing its power to the ruin of the commonwealth. we still stand on the ground that the english government is founded in usurpation, but we can dispose of all objections by proving the extremer case. this is the case dr. murray, already quoted, discusses. "the question," he writes, "is about resistance to an established and legitimate government which abuses its power." (_essays, chiefly theological_, vol. .) he continues: "the common opinion of a large number of our theologians, then, is that it is lawful to resist by force, and if necessary to depose, the sovereign ruler or rulers, in the extreme--the very extreme--case wherein the following conditions are found united: " . the tyranny must be excessive--intolerable. " . the tyranny must be manifest, manifest to men of good sense and right feeling. " . the evils inflicted by the tyrant must be greater than those which would ensue from resisting and deposing him. " . there must be no other available way of getting rid of the tyranny except by recurring to the extreme course. " . there must be a moral certainty of success. " . the revolution must be one conducted or approved by the community at large ... the refusal of a small party in the state to join with the overwhelming mass of their countrymen would not render the resistance of the latter unlawful." (_essays, chiefly theological_; see also rickaby, _moral philosophy_, chap. , sec. .) some of these conditions are drawn out at much length by dr. murray. i give what is outstanding. how easily they could fit irish conditions must strike anyone. i think it might fairly be said that our leaders generally would, if asked to lay down conditions for a rising, have framed some more stringent than these. it might be said, in truth, of some of them that they seem to wait for more than a moral certainty of success, an absolute certainty, that can never be looked for in war. iv when a government through its own iniquity ceases to exist, we must, to establish a new government on a true and just basis, go back to the origin of civil authority. no one argues now for the divine right of kings, but in studying the old controversy we get light on the subject of government that is of all time. to the conception that kings held their power immediately from god, "suarez boldly opposed the thesis of the initial sovereignty of the people; from whose consent, therefore, all civil authority immediately sprang. so also, in opposition to melanchthon's theory of governmental omnipotence, suarez _a fortiori_ admitted the right of the people to depose those princes who would have shown themselves unworthy of the trust reposed in them." (de wulf, _history of medieval philosophy,_ third edition, p. .) suarez' refutation of the anglican theory, described by hallam as clear, brief, and dispassionate, has won general admiration. hallam quotes him to the discredit of the english divines: "for this power, by its very nature, belongs to no one man but to a multitude of men. this is a certain conclusion, being common to all our authorities, as we find by st. thomas, by the civil laws, and by the great canonists and casuists; all of whom agree that the prince has that power of law-giving which the people have given him. and the reason is evident, since all men are born equal, and consequently no one has a political jurisdiction over another, nor any dominion; nor can we give any reason from the nature of the thing why one man should govern another rather than the contrary." (hallam--_literature of europe_, vol. , chap. .) dr. murray, in the essay already quoted, speaks of sir james mackintosh as the ablest protestant writer who refuted the anglican theory, which mackintosh speaks of as "the extravagance of thus representing obedience as the only duty without an exception." dr. murray concludes his own essay on _resistance to the supreme civil power_ by a long passage from mackintosh, the weight and wisdom of which he praises. the greater part of the passage is devoted to the difficulties even of success and emphasising the terrible evils of failure. in what has already been written here i have been at pains rather to lay bare all possible evils than to hide them. but when revolt has become necessary and inevitable, then the conclusion of the passage dr. murray quotes should be endorsed by all: "an insurrection rendered necessary by oppression, and warranted by a reasonable probability of a happy termination, is an act of public virtue, always environed with so much peril as to merit admiration." yes, and given the happy termination, the right and responsibility of establishing a new government rest with the body of the people. v we come, then, to this conclusion, that government is just only when rightfully established and for the public good; that usurpation not only may but ought to be resisted; that an authority originally legitimate once it becomes habitually tyrannical may be resisted and deposed; and that when from abuse or tyranny a particular government ceases to exist, we have to re-establish a true one. it is sometimes carelessly said, "liberty comes from anarchy," but this is a very dangerous doctrine. it would be nearer truth to say from anarchy inevitably comes tyranny. men receive a despot to quell a mob. but when a people, determined and disciplined, resolve to have neither despotism nor anarchy but freedom, then they act in the light of the natural law. it is well put in the doctrine of st. thomas, as given by turner in his _history of philosophy_ (chap. ): "the redress to which the subjects of a tyrant have a just right must be sought, not by an individual, but by an authority temporarily constituted by the people and acting according to law." yes, and when wild and foolish people talk hysterically of our defiance of all authority, let us calmly show we best understand the basis of authority--which is truth, and most highly reverence its presiding spirit--which is liberty. chapter xviii resistance in arms--objections i having stated the case for resistance, it will serve us to consider some objections. many inquiring minds may be made happy by a clear view of the doctrine, till some clever opponent holds them up with remarks on prudence, possibly sensible, or remarks on revolutionists, most probably wild, with, perhaps, the authority of a great name, or unfailing refuge in the concrete. it is curious that while often noticed how men, trying to evade a concrete issue, take refuge in the abstract, it is not noticed that men, trying to avoid acknowledging the truth of some principle, take refuge in the concrete. a living and pressing difficulty, though transient, looms larger than any historical fact or coming danger. seeing this, we may restore confidence to a baffled mind, by helping it to distinguish the contingent from the permanent. thus, by disposing of objections, we make our ground secure. ii to the name of prudence the most imprudent people frequently appeal. those whose one effort is to evade difficulties, who to cover their weakness plead patience, would be well advised to consider how men passionately in earnest, enraged by these evasions, pour their scorn on patience as a thing to shun. the plea does not succeed; it only for the moment damages the prestige of a great name. patience is not a virtue of the weak but of the strong. an objector says: "of course, all this is right in the abstract, but consider the frightful abuses in practice," and some apt replies spring to mind. dr. murray, writing on "mental reservation," in his _essays, chiefly theological_, speaks thus: "but it is no objection to any principle of morals to say that unscrupulous men will abuse it, or that, if publicly preached to such and such an audience or in such and such circumstances, it will lead to mischief." this is admirable, to which the objector can only give some helpless repetitions. with balmez, we reply: "but in recommending prudence to the people let us not disguise it under false doctrines--let us beware of calming the exasperation of misfortune by circulating errors subversive of all governments, of all society." (_european civilisation_, chap. .) of men who shrink from investigating such questions, balmez wrote: "i may be permitted to observe that their prudence is quite thrown away, that their foresight and precaution are of no avail. whether they investigate these questions or not, they _are_ investigated, agitated and decided, in a manner that we must deplore." (ibid. chap. .) take with this turner on france under the old _régime_ and the many and serious grievances of the people: "the church, whose duty it was to inculcate justice and forbearance, was identified, in the minds of the people, with the monarchy which they feared and detested." (_history of philosophy_, chap. .) the moral is that when injustice and evil are rampant, let us have no palliation, no weakness disguising itself as a virtue. what we cannot at once resist, we can always repudiate. to ignore these things is the worst form of imprudence--an imprudence which we, for our part at least, take the occasion here heartily to disclaim. iii there is so much ill-considered use of the word revolutionist, we should bear in mind it is a strictly relative term. if the freedom of a people is overthrown by treachery and violence, and oppression practised on their once thriving land, that is a revolution, and a bad revolution. if, with tyranny enthroned and a land wasting under oppression, the people rise and by their native courage, resource and patience re-establish in their original independence a just government, that is a revolution, and a good revolution. the revolutionist is to be judged by his motives, methods and ends; and, when found true, his insurrection, in the words of mackintosh, is "an act of public virtue." it is the restoration of, truth to its place of honour among men. iv balmez mentions bossuet as apparently one who denies the right here maintained; and we may with profit read some things bossuet has said in another context, yet which touches closely what is our concern. writing of _les empires_, thus bossuet: "les révolutions des empires sont réglées par la providence, et servent à humilier les princes." this is hardly calculated to deter us from a bid for freedom; and if we go on to read what he has written further under this heading, we get testimony to the hardihood and love of freedom and country that distinguished early greece and rome in language of eloquence that might inflame any people to liberty. of undegenerate greece, free and invincible: "mais ce que la grece avait de plus grand était une politique ferme et prévoyante, qui savait abandonner, hasarder et défendre, ce qu'il fallait; et, ce qui est plus grand encore, un courage que l'amour de la liberté et celui de la patrie rendaient invincible." of undegenerate rome, her liberty: "la liberté leur était donc un trésor qu'ils préferoient à toutes les richesses de l'univers." again: "la maxime fondamentale de la république était de regarder la liberté comme une chose inséparable du nom roman." and her constancy: "voila de fruit glorieux de la patience romaine. des peuples qui s'enhardissaient et se fortifiaient par leurs malheurs avaient bien raison de croire qu'on sauvait tout pourvu qu'on ne perdit pas l'esperance." and again: "parmi eux, dans les états les plus tristes, jamais les faibles conseils n'ont été seulement écoutés." the reading of such a fine tribute to the glory of ancient liberties is not likely to diminish our desire for freedom; rather, to add to the natural stimulus found in our own splendid traditions, the further stimulus of this thought that must whisper to us: "persevere and conquer, and to-morrow our finest opponent will be our finest panegyrist when the battle has been fought and won." v in conclusion, in the concrete this simple fact will suffice: we have established immutable principles; the concrete circumstances are contingent and vary. it is admirably put in the following passage: "the historical and sociological sciences, so carefully cultivated in modern times, have proved to evidence that social conditions _vary_ with the epoch and the country, that they are the resultant of quite a number of fluctuating influences, and that, accordingly, the science of natural right should not merely establish _immutable_ principles bearing on the moral end of man, but should likewise deal with the _contingent_ circumstances accompanying the application of those principles." (de wulf, _scholasticism, old and new_, part , chap. , sec. .) yes, and if we apply principles to-morrow, it is not with the conditions of to-day we must deal, but "with the contingent circumstances accompanying the application of those principles." let that be emphasised. the conditions of twenty years ago are vastly changed to-day; and how altered the conditions of to-morrow can be, how astonishing can be the change in the short span of twenty years, let this fact prove. ireland in ' was prostrate after a successful starvation and an unsuccessful rising--to all appearances this time hopelessly crushed; yet within twenty years another rising was planned that shook english government in ireland to its foundations. let us bear in mind this further from de wulf: "sociology, understood in the wider and larger sense, is transforming the methods of the science of natural right." in view of that transformation he is wise who looks to to-morrow. what de wulf concludes we may well endorse, when he asks us to take facts as they are brought to light and study "each question on its merits, in the light of these facts and not merely in its present setting but as presented in the pages of history." it can be fairly said of those who have always stood for the separation of ireland from the british empire, that they alone have always appealed to historical evidence, have always regarded the conditions of the moment as transient, have always discussed possible future contingencies. the men who temporised were always hypnotised by the conditions of the hour. but in the life-story of a nation stretching over thousands of years, the british occupation is a contingent circumstance, and the immutable principle is the liberty of the irish people. chapter xix the bearna baoghail--conclusion i but when principles have been proved and objections answered, there are still some last words to say for some who stand apart--the men who held the breach. for, they do stand apart, not in error but in constancy; not in doubt of the truth but its incarnation; not average men of the multitude for whom human laws are made, who must have moral certainty of success, who must have the immediate allegiance of the people. for it is the distinguishing glory of our prophets and our soldiers of the forlorn hope, that the defeats of common men were for them but incentives to further battle; and when they held out against the prejudices of their time, they were not standing in some new conceit, but most often by prophetic insight fighting for a forgotten truth of yesterday, catching in their souls to light them forward, the hidden glory of to-morrow. they knew to be theirs by anticipation the general allegiance without which lesser men cannot proceed. they knew they stood for the truth, against which nothing can prevail, and if they had to endure struggle, suffering and pain, they had the finer knowledge born of these things, a knowledge to which the best of men ever win--that if it is a good thing to live, it is a good thing also to die. not that they despised life or lightly threw it away; for none better than they knew its grandeur, none more than they gloried in its beauty, none were so happily full as they of its music; but they knew, too, the value of this deep truth, with the final loss of which earth must perish: the man who is afraid to die is not fit to live. and the knowledge for them stamped out earth's oldest fear, winning for life its highest ecstasy. yes, and when one or more of them had to stand in the darkest generation and endure all penalties to the extreme penalty, they knew for all that they had had the best of life and did not count it a terrible thing if called by a little to anticipate death. they had still the finest appreciation of the finer attributes of comradeship and love; but it is part of the mystery of their happiness and success, that they were ready to go on to the end, not looking for the suffrage of the living nor the monuments of the dead. yes, and when finally the re-awakened people by their better instincts, their discipline, patriotism and fervour, will have massed into armies, and marched to freedom, they will know in the greatest hour of triumph that the success of their conquering arms was made possible by those who held the breach. ii when, happily, we can fall back on the eloquence of the world's greatest orator, we turn with gratitude to the greatest tribute ever spoken to the memory of those men to whom the world owes most. demosthenes, in the finest height of his finest oration, vindicates the men of every age and nation who fight the forlorn hope. he was arraigned by his rival, �schines, for having counselled the athenians to pursue a course that ended in defeat, and he replies thus: "if, then, the results had been foreknown to all--not even then should the commonwealth have abandoned her design, if she had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity. as it is, she appears to have failed in her enterprise, a thing to which all mankind are liable, if the deity so wills it." and he asks the athenians: "why, had we resigned without a struggle that which our ancestors encountered every danger to win, who would not have spit upon you?" and he asks them further to consider strangers, visiting their city, sunk in such degradation, "especially when in former times our country had never preferred an ignominious security to the battle for honour." and he rises from the thought to this proud boast: "none could at any period of time persuade the commonwealth to attach herself in secure subjection to the powerful and unjust; through every age has she persevered in a perilous struggle for precedency and honour and glory." and he tells them, appealing to the memory of themistocles, how they honoured most their ancestors who acted in such a spirit: "yes; the athenians of that day looked not for an orator or a general, who might help them to a pleasant servitude: they scorned to live if it could not be with freedom." and he pays them, his listeners, a tribute: "what i declare is, that such principles are your own; i show that before my time such was the spirit of the commonwealth." from one eloquent height to another he proceeds, till, challenging �schines for arraigning him, thus counselling the people, he rises to this great level: "but, never, never can you have done wrong, o athenians, in undertaking the battle for the freedom and safety of all: i swear it by your forefathers--those that met the peril at marathon, those that took the field at platæa, those in the sea-fight at salamis, and those at artimesium, and many other brave men who repose in the public monuments, all of whom alike, as being worthy of the same honour, the country buried, �schines, not only the successful and victorious." we did not need this fine eloquence to assure us of the greatness of our o'neills and our tones, our o'donnells and our mitchels, but it so quickens the spirit and warms the blood to read it, it so touches--by the admiration won from ancient and modern times--an enduring principle of the human heart--the capacity to appreciate a great deed and rise over every physical defeat--that we know in the persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable triumph. yes; and in such light we turn to read what ruskin called the greatest inscription ever written, that which herodotus tells us was raised over the spartans, who fell at thermopylæ, and which mitchel's biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise mitchel's life: "stranger, tell thou the lacedemonians that we are lying here, having obeyed their words." and the biographer of mitchel is right in holding that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a message not of defeat but of victory. iii yes; and in paying a fitting tribute to those great men who are our exemplars, it would be fitting also, in conclusion, to remember ourselves as the inheritors of a great tradition; and it would well become us not only to show the splendour of the banner that is handed on to us, but to show that this banner _we_, too, are worthy to bear. for, how often it shall be victorious and how high it shall be planted, will depend on the conception we have of its supreme greatness, the knowledge that it can be fought for in all times and places, the conviction that we may, when least we expect, be challenged to deny it; and that by our bearing we may bring it new credit and glory or drag it low in repute. we do well, i say, to remember these things. for in our time it has grown the fashion to praise the men of former times but to deny their ideal of independence; and we who live in that ideal, and in it breathe the old spirit, and preach it and fight for it and prophesy for it an ultimate and complete victory--we are young men, foolish and unpractical. and what should be our reply? a reply in keeping with the flag, its history and its destiny. let them, who deride or pity us, see we despise or pity their standards, and let them know by our works--lest by our election they misunderstand--that we are not without ability in a freer time to contest with them the highest places--avoiding the boast, not for an affected sense of modesty but for a saving sense of humour. for in all the vanities of this time that make life and literature choke with absurdities, pretensions and humbug, let us have no new folly. let us with the old high confidence blend the old high courtesy of the gaedheal. let us grow big with our cause. shall we honour the flag we bear by a mean, apologetic front? no! wherever it is down, lift it; wherever it is challenged, wave it; wherever it is high, salute it; wherever it is victorious, glorify and exult in it. at all times and forever be for it proud, passionate, persistent, jubilant, defiant; stirring hidden memories, kindling old fires, wakening the finer instincts of men, till all are one in the old spirit, the spirit that will not admit defeat, that has been voiced by thousands, that is noblest in emmet's one line, setting the time for his epitaph: "_when_ my country"--not _if_--but "_when_ my country takes her place among the nations of the earth." it is no hypothesis; it is a certainty. there have been in every generation, and are in our own, men dull of apprehension and cold of heart, who could not believe this, but we believe it, we live in it: _we know it_. yes, we know it, as emmet knew it, and as it shall be seen to-morrow; and when the historian of to-morrow, seeing it accomplished, will write its history, he will not note the end with surprise. rather will he marvel at the soul in constancy, rivalling the best traditions of undegenerate greece and rome, holding through disasters, persecutions, suffering, and not less through the seductions of milder but meaner times, seeing through all shining clearly the goal: he will record it all, and, still marvelling, come to the issue that dauntless spirit has reached, proud and happy; but he will write of that issue--_liberty; inevitable_: in two words to epitomise the history of a people that is without a parallel in the annals of the world. irish history and the irish question by goldwin smith author of "the united kingdom" "the united states" new york mcclure, phillips & co. copyright by goldwin smith, . published, november, , n. preface a long summer was spent by me in that loveliest of all parks, the phoenix, as the guest of edward cardwell, then chief secretary and real head of the irish government. under cardwell's roof the irish question was fully discussed by able men, robert lowe among the number. but i had a still greater advantage in constant and lasting intercourse with such friends as lord chancellor o'hagan, sir alexander macdonald, the head of the education department, and other leading irish liberals of the moderate school, ardent patriots and thoroughgoing reformers though opposed to violence and disruption. to the teachings of these men in dealing with the irish question, i have always looked back for my best guidance. i did what i could generally to acquaint myself with the country and its people. i had the opportunity of seeing something of maynooth as the guest of its excellent principal in that day. at that time there was rather a lull in the agrarian war, but religious antagonism was still marked. the fruit of my studies was a little book entitled "irish history and irish character," in which i tried to show that the sources of ireland's sorrows were to be found in natural circumstance and historical accident as much as in the crimes or follies of man in recent times. upon that text i preached in favour of charity and reconciliation. i am told that a chord was touched at the time. but my essay has long been superseded and buried out of sight by the important works, historical and political, which the controversy has since produced, as well as by the forty eventful years which have elapsed since its publication. the subject, however, has retained all its interest, and my confidence in the wisdom of my irish friends and instructors has remained the same, or rather has been strengthened by the course of events. i was in ireland again a good many years afterwards in connection with the meeting of the social science association, and was the guest of lord o'hagan. the parnellite movement was then in full activity; american fenianism was at work; and the soil heaved with insurrection. my friend w. e. forster was the secretary, and, much against his own inclination, was administering measures of repression, the only alternative to which appeared to be the abdication of the government. on this occasion i was unlucky enough to draw upon myself a thunderbolt hurled through the _times_, but evidently from the skies, by hinting in a public speech that the phoenix park was as worthy to be the occasional residence of royalty as osborne or balmoral. a happy change, attended apparently with the best effects, has now come in that august quarter. it is needless to say that this essay does not pretend to be a history of ireland. it is an attempt to trace the general course of the history as it leads up to the present situation. the works published in recent years to which i have been chiefly indebted are: joyce's "social history of ancient ireland," richie's "short history of the irish people," bagwell's "ireland under the tudors," froude's "the english in ireland," lecky's "leaders of public opinion in ireland," together with the special chapters on ireland in his general history, ingram's "two chapters of irish history" and "history of the irish union," ball's "irish legislative systems," t. p. o'connor's "the parnell movement," and sir horace plunkett's "ireland in the twentieth century," with the comments on it by father o'riordan. to mr. bagwell's "ireland under the tudors" i am specially indebted for his narrative of the tudor wars. to mr. t. p. o'connor i am specially indebted for the most vivid accounts of the famine and of the evictions, as well as for an improved insight into the parnell movement and of the doings which preceded it. of part of those doings i was myself in some measure a witness, through my social connections with a circle of english politicians who were inclining to an irish alliance. the annals of the tudor wars are horrible and heartrending. but history cannot drop the veil over them. they long left their evil traces on irish character and sentiment, explaining and extenuating some terrible things which ensued. nor, in truth, have they become obsolete as warnings to us in general of the acts into which civilized nations may be betrayed when they make wars of conquest on those whom they deem barbarians. it seemed that a brief account of the recent land legislation for ireland might be useful to readers of an essay of this kind. i append one which has been prepared for me by my friend, mr. hugh j. mccann, b.l., of the dublin bar. its author is in no way committed to any opinion expressed in the other part of the work. contents page i from early times to edward i ( ) ii edward i to henry vii ( - ) iii henry viii to mary ( - ) iv elizabeth to james i ( - ) v james i ( - ) vi charles i to the protectorate ( - ) vii the restoration ( ) viii the revolution ( ) ix the penal code ( - ) x anne to the revolution of ( - ) xi the revolution of and the rebellion of xii union ( ) xiii daniel o'connell ( - ) xiv gladstone ( - ) xv the present state of the question account of the irish land code by hugh j. mccann, b.l., of the irish bar. irish history and the irish question i of all histories the history of ireland is the saddest. for nearly seven centuries it was a course of strife between races, bloodshed, massacre, misgovernment, civil war, oppression, and misery. hardly even now have the troubles of ireland come to a close, either for herself or for her partner. unrest still reigns in her and, embodied in her parliamentary delegation, harasses the parliament and distracts the councils of great britain. the theatre of this tragedy is a large island lying beside one nearly three times larger, which cuts it off from the continent of europe, while on the other side it fronts the wide ocean. the climate is for the most part too wet for wheat. the pasture is very rich. ireland seems by nature to be a grazing country, and a country of large farms; tillage and small farms have been enforced by the redundance of rural population consequent on the destruction of urban industries. in coal and minerals ireland is poor, while the sister island abounds in them, and in its swarming factories and mines furnishes a first-rate market for the produce of irish pastures; so that the two islands are commercial supplements of each other. the progress of pastoral countries, political and general, as they have little city life, is slow. with beauty ireland is well endowed. the interior is flat, with large peat bogs and brimming rivers. but the coast is mountainous and romantic. the western coast especially, where the atlantic rolls into deep inlets, has a pensive charm which, when troubles end and settled peace reigns, may attract the villa as they do the wanderer now. in early times the island was densely clothed with woods, which, with the broad and bridgeless rivers, operated like the mountain barriers of the scottish highlands in perpetuating the division of clans, with their patriarchal system, their rivalries, and their feuds, thus precluding the growth of a nation. in ireland there was no natural centre of dominion. interest of every kind seems to enjoin the union of the islands. but in the age of conquest the weaker island was pretty sure to be marked as a prey of the stronger, while the difficulties of access, the channel, broad in the days of primitive navigation, and the welsh mountains, combined with the internal barriers of forest and river and with the naturally wild habits of the people, portended that the conquest would be difficult and that the agony would be long. such was the mould of destiny. the people of ireland when history opens were celts, kinsmen of the primitive races of gaul and britain, remnants of which are left in wales and in the highlands of scotland. their language was of that family, while cognate words connect it with the general aryan stock. there are traces of a succession of immigrations. too much, no doubt, has been made of the influence of race. yet the teuton is a teuton and the celt is a celt. the celt in his native state has everywhere shown himself lively, social, communicative, impulsive, prone to laughter and to tears, wanting, compared with the teuton, in depth of character, in steadiness and perseverance. he is inclined rather to personal rule or leadership than to a constitutional polity. his poet is not shakespeare or milton, but tom moore, a light minstrel of laughter and tears. his political leader is o'connell, a boanerges of passionate declamation. in war he is impetuous, as was the gaul who charged at allia and the highlander who charged at killiecrankie and prestonpans. his taste as well as his manual skill in decoration is shown by the brilliant collection of gold ornaments in the celtic museum at dublin, as well as in stone carvings and such a paragon of illuminated missals as the book of kells. but it is greater than his aptitude for high art, that art which treats the human form, in which he has not shone. his religious tendency, the outcome of his general character, is either to catholicism with its fervid faith, its mysteries, and its ceremonial, as in ireland; or to the enthusiastic forms of protestantism, as in the highlands and in wales. anglicanism, a sober cult with a balanced creed, suits him not. it was a cruel decree of destiny that the larger island from which the conqueror would come was peopled by the teuton, so that to the usual evils of conquest was added that of a difference of character inherent in race. the primitive organization of the irish celts was tribal, the underlying idea being kinship, real or reputed. the ruler with paternal authority was the chief of the tribe. to avert strife his tanist, or successor, was elected in his lifetime. in a community of reputed kinsmen there could be no aristocracy of birth; but there seems to have been a plutocracy, whose riches in that pastoral country consisted of cattle, which formed the measure of wealth and command of which made poorer clansmen their retainers. under these were the freemen of the tribe. under the freemen again were the unfree, wanderers or captives taken in war or slaves from the english slave-market. the unfree appear to have been the only tillers of the soil. thus tillage was marked with a bar sinister from its birth. the tribal law was a mystical and largely fanciful craft or tradition in the keeping of the brehons, or judges, a hereditary order who, though revered as arbiters, were without power of enforcing their judgments. like primitive law in general, it lacked the idea of public wrong. it treated crime as a private injury, to be compounded by fine. the land was the common property of the tribe, to which it nominally reverted on the demise of the holder, though it may be assumed that the chiefs at all events had practically land of their own and that the tendency in this, as in other cases, was to private ownership. what the religion was is not certainly known. probably it was the same as that of the celts of great britain and gaul, druidism, wild, orgiastic, and perhaps sanguinary. but there seem to be no remains clearly druidic in ireland. life was pastoral, roving, probably bellicose. it appears that women required to be restrained from taking part in war. the characteristic garb of the tribesman was a loose saffron mantle, which served as his dress by day, his coverlet by night. his favourite weapons, often used, were an axe and a dart. he drew, it seems, a bow weak compared with the long-bow of england. the gentler side of his character was shown in his passionate love of the harp and the reverence in which he held the harper, and which was extended to the bard, whose rude lays saluted the intellectual dawn and whom we find in later times feared as an author of lampoons. among his favourite amusements was chess. knowledge of the peculiar system of the irish, political and legal, is of more consequence because the opposite system, that of constitutional government and feudal ownership, having presented itself to him as that of alien masters and oppressors, tribal peculiarities and sentiments lingered long. the idea of tribal ownership perhaps was a few generations ago still faintly present in agrarian agitation. nor has the general character of the tribesman long been, if it yet is, extinct. tribal feuds were until lately represented in the strange faction fights of the caravats and shanavests, the two-year-olds and three-year-olds, the annual fight of factions for a legendary stone, and the encounters between bodies of the peasantry at irish fairs. perhaps another feature of character traceable to tribalism may be the gregarious habit of irishmen contrasted with the englishman's isolation and love of his private home. connected apparently with the tribal sentiment were the strange customs of fosterage and gossipred. fosterage consisted in putting out the child to be reared by a tribesman who became its foster-father. gossipred, a christian addition, was a spiritual kinship formed at the font. both relations had extraordinary force. there were, of course, tribal wars. there were leagues or dominations of powerful tribes which left their traces in the division of the island into four or five provinces, once petty kingships. there was a supreme kingship, the seat of which, sacred in irish tradition and legend, was the hill of tara; but it was probably only when common danger compelled a union of forces that this kingship became a real power. the features of the country, combined with the character of the tribal organization based on kinship, not on citizenship, would prolong the tribal divisions and prevent union. nor had nature anywhere fixed a central seat of command. only when opposed to an invader and struggling against him for the land did celtic ireland form for the time a united people; even then it could hardly be called a nation. the roman conqueror looked, but came not. it might have been better for ireland if he had come. yet, when he retired, he would probably have left the romanized provincial, here as in britain, too unwarlike to hold his own against the next invader. a conqueror of a different kind came. he came in the person, not of a roman general, but, if the tradition is true, of a slave. by the preaching of st. patrick, according to the common belief, ireland was added to the kingdom of christ. the conversion was rapid and probably superficial, the chief of the tribe carrying the tribe over with him, as ethelbert of kent and other english kinglets carried over their people, rather to a new religious allegiance than to a new faith. within the roman empire the centres of the church had been the cities. cities were the seats of its bishoprics. the models of its organization were urban. but in ireland there were no cities. the episcopate was irregular and weak, denoting rank rather than authority or jurisdiction. the life of the church was monastic and missionary. the weird round towers, believed to have been places of refuge for its ministers and their sacred vessels, as well as bell-towers, speak of a life surrounded by barbarism and rapine as well as threatened by the heathen and devastating northmen. partly perhaps owing to its comparative isolation and detachment at home, the irish clergy was fired with a marvellous and almost preternatural zeal for the propagation of the gospel abroad. it crossed the sea to iona, the sacred isle, still to religious memory sacred, from which the light of the gospel shone to the wild islesmen and to the rovers of the northern sea. irish missionaries preached to heathen germany, colliding there, it seems, with a more regular episcopate. they played a part in the conversion of britain not less important than that of the missionaries of rome, before whose authority, however, the irish church in the person of aidan was at last compelled to retire, the decisive struggle taking place on the mode of celebrating easter. in ireland itself there arose in connection with the church a precocious and romantic passion for learning which founded primitive universities. its memory lingers in the melancholy ruins of clonmacnoise. this was the delusive brightness of a brief day, to be followed by the darkness of a long night. the church of ireland seems in its origin to have been national and neither child nor vassal of rome. its theology must have been independent if scotus erigena was its son. but rome gradually cast her spell, in time she extended her authority, over it. its heads looked to her as the central support of the interests of their order and as their protectress against the rude encroachments of the native chiefs. norman archbishops of canterbury served as transmitters of the influence. still, the irish church was not in roman eyes perfectly regular. tithes were not paid, nor was the rule of consanguinity observed, or the rite of baptism administered in strict accordance with the ordinances of rome. christianity did not kill the brood of a lively superstition, the fairy, the banshee, the spectre, charms, amulets, prophecies, wild legends, which in the times of gloom that followed strengthened their hold upon irish imagination. hostile invasion came first in the form of the northmen, whose piracy and rapine extended to ireland as well as to gaul and britain. piracy and rapine we call them now, but to the northmen they seemed no more criminal than to us seems hunting or fishing. the chief objects of the invader's attack were the monasteries, at once treasuries of church wealth and hateful to the people of odin. ruthlessly the northman slew and burned. his fleet made him ubiquitous and baffled defence, union for which there was not at first among the tribes. common danger at last enforced it. a national leader arose in the person of brian boru, who was for ireland the military, though not the political, saviour that alfred was for england. at the great battle of clontarf, the host over which the danish raven flew was totally overthrown, and ireland was redeemed from its ravages. the dane, however, did not wholly depart. exchanging the rover for the trader, he founded a set of little maritime commonwealths at dublin, wexford, waterford, and limerick, germs on a small scale and in a rude way of municipal as well as commercial life. but a conqueror, more fell and more tenacious than the dane, was at hand. in a little fleet of welsh vessels ran into the bay of bannow. from it landed a band of mail-clad soldiery, men trained to war, with a corps of archers. they were normans from wales under the leadership of the anglo-norman rover fitzstephen, and were the precursors of a larger body which presently followed, under richard strigul, earl of pembroke, from the strength of his arm surnamed strongbow. dermot, an irish chief, expelled for his tyranny, had brought these invaders on his country as the instruments of his revenge. henry ii. had, by giving letters of marque, sanctioned the enterprise, the fruits of which he intended to reap. early in his reign the king had obtained from pope adrian iv., an englishman by birth, a bull authorizing him to take possession of ireland, which with other islands the bull declared of right to be an appanage of the holy see. here, as in the case of william's invasion of england, the papacy used norman conquest as the instrument of its own aggrandizement. the authenticity of the bull is disputed by irish patriotism, but in vain. no one questions the share of the papacy in the norman conquest of england. with the aid of his norman allies, to whom the irishman with his naked valour was as the mexican to the spaniard, dermot prevailed and glutted his revenge by plucking from the triumphal pyramid of hostile heads that of his chief enemy and tearing it with his teeth. but in this case, as in that of the alliance of cortez with the tlascalans, the ally had conquered for himself. declining to be dislodged, he proceeded to establish himself and to organize a norman principality. now the jealousy of the english king was aroused. he saw an independent anglo-norman kingdom on the point of being founded by strongbow in ireland. he published the papal bull, came over to ireland in his power, and held his court at dublin in a palace of wickerwork run up in native style for the occasion, where the irish chiefs bowed their heads, but not their hearts, before him. he organized a feudal principality with himself as lord, but having the pope as its suzerain, and tributary to the papacy. he formally introduced the organization of a feudal kingdom. he held at cashel a synod like that held by william the conqueror at winchester for the purpose of reforming, that is thoroughly romanizing, the church of ireland. irregularities respecting infant baptism and the matrimonial table of consanguinity were set right. the payment of tithes, that paramount duty of piety, was enjoined. rome was installed in full authority, thus in ireland, as in england, receiving from her norman liegemen her share of their prize. with this pious offering to the papacy in his hand, henry departed to meet his responsibility for the slaying of becket. he was presently succeeded for a short time in ireland by his hopeful boy, john, whose personal behaviour was an earnest of the future tenour of his reign. afterward, as king, john paid ireland another flying visit in which, besides pouncing on an enemy, he seems to have made a fleeting attempt to regulate the government. henry, had he not been called away by the storm following the death of becket, might have left things in better shape, but nothing could make up for the permanent absence of the king. two antagonistic systems henceforth confronted each other. on one side was the feudal system, with its hierarchy of land-owners, from lord-paramount to tenant-paravail; its individual ownership of land; its hereditary succession and primogeniture; its feudal perquisites, relief, wardship, and marriage; its tribute of military service; the loyalty to the grantor of the fief which was its pervading and sustaining spirit; its knighthood and its chivalry; its great council of barons and baronial bishops; its feudal courts of justice and officers of state; all however highly rude and imperfect. on the other side was tribalism, with its tie of original kinship instead of territorial subordination; its tanistry; its brehon law. but the feudal system in ireland lacked the keystone of its arch. it was destitute of its regulating and controlling power, the king. a royal justiciar could not fill the part. from the outset the bane of the principality was delegated rule. ireland was a separate realm, though attached to the crown of england. it had a parliament of its own, which followed that of england in its development, being at first a unicameral council of magnates, lay and clerical; but after the legislation of edward i. a bicameral assembly with a lower house formed of representatives of counties and boroughs, whose consent would be formally necessary to taxation. representatives of ireland were at first called to edward's parliament at westminster, but the inconvenience seems to have been found too great. weak, however, was the parliament of the colony compared with that of the imperial country. if the lords ever showed force, the making of a house of commons was not there. the representation, as well as the proceedings and the records, appears to have been very irregular. nothing worthy of the name of parliamentary government seems ever to have prevailed. among those who signed the great charter was the archbishop of dublin; but of chartered rights ireland was not the scene. there is no appearance of a separate grant of subsidies by the clerical estate. the clergy, it seems, were represented by their proctors in the lower house, as by the bishops and abbots in the upper house. the parliament appears to have been generally a tool in the hands of the deputy. the irregularity of its composition seems to have extended to its meetings. from the first the relation between the feudal realm and that of the tribes was border war. they were alien to each other in race, language, and social habits, as well as in political institutions. the norman could not subdue the celt, the celt could not oust the norman. the conquest of england by william of normandy had been complete, and had given birth to a national aristocracy, which in time blended with the conquered race and united with it in extorting the great charter. the norman colony in ireland was left to its feeble resources, and to a divided command, while the monarchy was far away over sea, was squandering its forces in french fields, and could not even project a complete conquest. besides, there were the difficulties which the country, with its broad rivers, its bogs, its mountains and forests, opposed to the heavy cavalry of the anglo-norman. there was the mobility of a pastoral people, presenting no cities or centres of any kind for attack, driving its cattle to the woods on the approach of the invader, and eluding his pursuit like birds of the air. thus the anglo-norman colony failed to become a dominion and presently dwindled to a pale. between the pale and the celt incessant war was waged with the usual atrocity of struggles between the half-civilized and the savage. fusion there could be none. there was not the bond of human brotherhood or that of a common tongue. on neither side was the murder of the other race a crime. never was there a more inauspicious baptism of a nation. anglo-norman and celt, feudalist and tribesman, alike were catholics. a common religion might have been a bond, a common clergy might have been a mediating power. but race and language prevailed over religion. the churches, though outwardly of the same faith, remained inwardly separate, and not only separate but hostile to each other, the clergy on both sides sharing the spirit and the atrocities of race enmity and frontier war. the church of the tribes was still very rough and irregular. the norman on his part was devout. he was a founder of monasteries, thereby discharging his conscience of a load not seldom heavy. whatever of religious life and activity there was in the pale seems to have been monastic. our glimpses of the secular clergy show that they were secular indeed. among them not neglect of duty only but criminality appears to have been rife. in the little commercial towns of danish foundation on the coast which had been taken over by the norman, life was probably rather more civilized; but they were too diminutive to exert any influence beyond their gates. galway in time became the port of an active trade with spain which is supposed to have left a spanish trace on its architecture and a spanish strain in the blood of its people. ii it was not likely that the colony, in the state in which it was, would gain by emigration from england. it was probably losing by depletion. english kings drew soldiers from it for their wars. there being no university or means of education, youths who wanted to study went to oxford, where, though they were not native irish, they seem to have played in academical brawls the part which native irish might have played. thus the colony was emptied of its intellect. fiefs by feudal rule of descent passed to absentees and to women, weakening its military force. in every way the life-blood of the english and feudal settlement was being continually withdrawn. of the kings of england, richard i. was away on crusade, john and henry iii. were wrestling with rebellion at home. the thoughts of edward i. were turned to ireland; but his energies were absorbed by scotland, wales, and gascony. he too drew soldiers from ireland. the anglo-norman element, however, was united, while inveterate disunion reigned among the native tribes. it was occupying the posts of vantage with the castles characteristic of its military rule. it seems to have been rather gaining ground when the island was invaded by edward bruce, the brother of robert, who, emulous of his brother's success in scotland, came over on the invitation of irish tribes to carve out a kingdom for himself. bruce gained successes and committed great ravages, but was at length met at dundalk by the anglo-norman army under john de bermingham, overthrown, and slain. he had estranged his irish allies. according to one of their chroniclers, the day on which he was slain was the happiest of days for the irish people. the irish appeal to the pope against english misrule on this occasion is in form a national manifesto, but was probably less than national in its source. still bruce's invasion seems to have dealt the norman colony a heavy blow and thrown back into the hands of the native tribes districts which it had conquered and over which its settlements had spread. degeneration set in amongst its people. they took to the strange native custom of fosterage, to the irishman's saffron mantle and his long moustache, to his weapons, to his mode of riding, even to his language, and countenanced license by confusing the brehon with the feudal law. a strange compound of feudalism with tribalism ensued, in the shape of mongrel chieftaincies, henceforth the predominant powers. english barons doffed their baronial character, donned that of the tribal chief, and made themselves independent lords of wide domains peopled by native irish. it seems that they retained the norman instinct of command. many of them changed their anglo-norman for irish names; bourke, o'neill, o'brien, o'connor. they kept in their pay troops of bravos, gallowglasses and kernes. their rule seems to have combined the extortions of the feudal lord with those of the native chiefs. bonaught was a tax imposed by a chief for the support of his mercenaries. sorohen was an obligation on lands to support the chief with his train one day in a quarter or one in a fortnight. coshery was a chief's right to sponge upon his vassals with as many followers as he pleased. cuddies, or night suppers, were due by lands upon which the chief might quarter himself and his train for four days four times a year. shragh and mart were yearly exactions in money and kine, apparently imposed at will. but worst of all was coyne and livery, horse-meat and man-meat taken at will. this, it seems, was not an irish but an anglo-norman invention introduced at first as the means of coping with edward bruce, but, like the income tax, perpetuated when the special need was past. the chiefs deemed themselves independent princes, renouncing openly or practically allegiance to the english crown. it is with these potentates and the forces which their restless and rebellious ambition could command that the crown henceforth in its struggle with the irish difficulty has to deal. had they been united, they might have prevailed; but they were always at feud with each other, while policy, though not loyalty, led some of them to side with the crown. of the septs, the three most powerful were the geraldines of the north, close to dublin, the head of which became afterward earl of kildare; the geraldines of the south in munster, the head of which became earl of desmond; and the butlers, also in the south, whose head became the earl of ormonde. the o'neills in ulster were another powerful sept. the butlers, less hibernized than their rivals, were almost always on the side of the crown. to put a stop to degeneration and restore order in the pale by the talismanic influence of royalty, edward iii. sent over his son lionel, duke of clarence. under the duke's influence the irish parliament passed the statute of kilkenny, drawing a sharp line of division between the two races; declaring marriage, fosterage, gossipred, and even concubinage with the irish high treason; pronouncing the same penalties against supplying horses and armour to irishmen or furnishing them with provisions in time of war; commanding englishmen to speak english, to bear english names only, and to ride and dress in the english fashion; providing for the arming of the colony against irish enemies; separating in every way the native irishman from the englishman and even forbidding the admission of irish priests to livings in the english church or to the english monasteries. there are severe regulations against the entertainment of irish story-tellers and bards. an article declaring the english born in ireland and in england to be equal and forbidding them to call each other english hobbe or irish dog on pain of a year's imprisonment and a fine at the king's pleasure shows that there was a social division in the colony on that line. the statute betrays despair of a fusion of races or of a subjection of the whole island to english rule and law. at the same time it seems to restrain english aggression and decree peace between the races. piqued, we are told, by a taunt of his impotence as lord of ireland which stung his pride, richard ii. twice came over to ireland with a large army. his armies were wrecked by the difficulties of the country and the passionate weakness of their commander. from his second visit richard was recalled by the knell of his own doom. the pale was drawn into the troubles of the roses. before the outbreak the duke of york had come over to ireland as vicegerent, won the heart of the people, asserted the independence of the irish parliament, and seemed disposed to make himself king. he had been recalled by the civil war, but he had left behind him a yorkist party which adhered to the white rose after bosworth, recognized the two pretenders, lambert simnel and perkin warbeck, and fought for the lost cause by the side of martin schwartz and his german hackbut-men at stoke. the anglo-norman colony or "pale" was now at its nadir. much of its manhood had been drawn away by the kings to their scottish and french wars. it was reduced to a circle of two counties and a half round dublin, defended by a ditch. had the chiefs of tribes been unanimous, it would almost certainly have been destroyed. but the chiefs of tribes were very far from being unanimous, and thanks to their dissensions strongbow in his tomb at christ church still slept undisturbed on the field of his victory. in the pale itself reigned corruption, disorder, and misrule. "there is no land in all this world that has more liberty in vices than ireland and less liberty in virtue." such, as reported to henry viii., was the internal condition of the colony; and the description extended in its full force to the church. the hostility of the pale to the red rose probably combined with distractions at home in leading henry vii. to try the policy of winning the great irish chiefs to allegiance by marks of confidence and honour and of governing ireland through them. he tried it with the earl of kildare, the head of the great geraldine clan, saying, as the story went, when he was told that all ireland could not govern that man, "then that man shall govern all ireland." kildare, deported to england as a suspected traitor, but there winning favour and confidence by the artful address in which his kind were seldom wanting, was sent back to ireland as lord deputy. the policy had a show of success. kildare as deputy harried the lands of his own enemies and reported execution done on the enemies of the crown. he gained one signal victory of that kind. but the attempt to employ restless and lawless ambition as the regular mainstay of orderly government could not be a permanent success. the sept of butler alone was true to the crown. the next reign saw kildare's son and successor as deputy in the tower, and his grandson, silken thomas, raising a madcap rebellion which was made impious by the murder of an archbishop. the execution of silken thomas and his five uncles closed the experiment of governing ireland through that house. there was left one boy whom faithful guardians carried abroad and to whom the heart of the sept still turned. to make an end of the aspirations to independent nationality which had budded under the duke of york, and bring irish legislation completely under the control of the crown, the lord deputy poynings caused to be carried through the parliament of the pale the pair of acts which bore his name, subjecting irish legislation to the control of the english council. the first act ordained that in future no parliament should be held in ireland "but at such season as the king's lieutenant-in-council there first do certify the king under the great seal of that land the causes and considerations, and all such acts as then seemeth should pass in the said parliament." should the king in council approve, the irish parliament was to be summoned under the great seal of england and not otherwise. the second act provided that all public statutes "late made within the realm of england" should be in force in ireland. this it was decided applied to all english acts prior to the tenth year of henry vii. ireland was thus practically turned from a separate principality into a political dependency of england. the work of poynings was long afterwards completed by the act of george i. affirming the right of the british parliament to legislate for ireland. iii during the early part of the reign of henry viii. the policy of the english government was a continuation of that of henry vii. it was a policy of conciliation and of ruling through the great irish chiefs, the heads of the butlers, the geraldines, and the o'neills, who were gratified by the bestowal of english titles of nobility, with flattering marks of confidence, and by a change in the tenure of their land from tribal to feudal, which invested them with full ownership. the irish chief and the feudal baron of the pale now sat in parliament together for the first and last time. there appears to have been an inclination on the part of the crown to favour the native irish, it being still remembered perhaps that the anglo-irish had supported the yorkist pretenders. the king himself penned a sage and benevolent manifesto, in the shape of a despatch to the lord deputy surrey, on the blessings of civilization. the policy of conciliation was in fact necessary as well as laudable; for the king, plunged by his diplomacy into continental embroilments and lavishing his father's hoard on a field of the cloth of gold, had not the means of subduing ireland. it would have been vain to look in those days for the philosophy which could make allowance for a diversity of national ideas and habits. the o'neill, upon his elevation to the earldom of tyrone, is required with his heirs to forsake the name of o'neill, to use english habits and the english language. the age, however, was one of growing light. education was a passion of the hour. a decree in favour of the establishment of a system of free schools in ireland went forth. unhappily it remained a decree. no homilies, no peerages, no flatteries or marks of confidence could permanently avail to quiet the intractable ambition of the great chiefs. they took the titles, which tickled their vanity; but they preferred the state of a chieftain with his gallowglasses and with his despotic power over the sept to that of a baron under royal rule, with feudal restraints and obligations. they were always at feud with each other, waging private war and ravaging each others' territories with the ruthlessness of the most cruel invader. murders among them were frequent. conspiracies were always on foot. thus the catastrophe of the house of kildare ended what may be called the early tudor policy of native government and conciliation. the policy of conquest with colonization in its train prevailed once more. the instrument of that policy was to be a line of english deputies; able men on the whole and zealous in the public service, but generally incapable of understanding any national character or any institutions but their own. a deputy had also to contend with desperate difficulties, utter insufficiency of military force, an empty exchequer, a service full of jobbery and corruption, hostile intrigue both at dublin and in the court at home. the line was opened by skeffington, a good though somewhat decrepit soldier, before whose artillery fell the redoubtable native fortress of maynooth. the crown had now a new and formidable force upon its side in the cannon, which it alone could afford to maintain. in ireland as elsewhere the end of the feudal fortress had come. at the same time there were forfeited to the crown great tracts of land held by absentees, the feudal principle still prevailing and military service being still a condition of the ownership of land. the crown thereby became a landowner on a vast scale, with the means of planting settlements in all the districts under its power. thus a wide field was opened for crown colonization. but now comes an event most momentous in itself and fraught with future woe to ireland. henry viii., enraged at the refusal of the pope to let him put away his wife and marry another woman, breaks with the papacy, carries his kingdom out of its dominion, declares himself supreme head of a national church, dissolves the monasteries, seizes their estates, and half reforms the church in a protestant sense, breaking the worshipped images, closing the shrines, expurgating the liturgy, and licensing the translation of the bible. he seizes into his own hands under the mask of a _congé d'élire_ the appointments to the bishoprics. wavering to the last in opinion between catholicism and protestantism according as the party of the old or that of the new aristocracy prevailed in his councils, he in the upshot practically ranges his kingdom on the protestant side in the grand struggle that was to come between the catholic and the protestant powers. in ireland there was one religion but there were two churches: that of the pale and that of the native irish; divided from each other, not by doctrine or ritual, but by race and language, practically treating each other as not within the pale of christendom, hardly within the pale of humanity. no irishman could be admitted to church preferment or to a monastery in the pale. nor did the churches ever act together as one church. both were in a most miserable condition. the edifices were in ruins, the services were unperformed. monasteries however abounded. they were the refuge of the peaceful in that world of strife and blood. that some of them were on a large scale stately ruins prove. it is surmised that they may have been wealthy, if not in lands, in orchards, fish-ponds, mills, or the labour which seems to have been sheltered within their ample walls. like the english monasteries, they impropriated the tithes of parishes, thus helping to kill the parochial system. the character of the clergy was still scandalously low, not seldom criminal. among the people religion was almost dead; the remnant of it, as well as the remnant of education, was kept alive by the poor franciscan friars. in neither church was there the making of martyrs. in the little maritime towns there was more religion, as well as something more like civilization. but in this as in other respects their influence was confined to their own gates. there was no opposition in the irish parliament to the change of the king's title from _dominus_ to _rex_, whereby the sovereignty of the pope was cancelled, to any article in the king's assumption of autocratic power over the church, or to his taking to himself the appointment of bishops. a show of resistance made by the proctors of the clergy in the house of commons was promptly met by their extrusion. nor was there the slightest unwillingness on the part of any lord or chief to take his share of the plunder of the monasteries, which, as in england, were suppressed, with confiscation of revenue and goods, including the impropriated tithes of parishes which they had served. a plea put in by the deputy on behalf of six friaries in consideration of their special services to education and their hospitality was not heard. the iconoclastic part of the revolution, attacking the material objects of popular worship, relics, wonder-working images, and venerated shrines, seems to have encountered some natural resistance, and it appears that the government failed to put an end to pilgrimages, which were the religious pleasure-trips of the people. the leader of the reform movement, and specially of iconoclasm, in ireland, under henry viii., was archbishop browne, a fervid but apparently not discreet man. he had a rather restive coadjutor in bishop staples. no counterpart of cranmer, latimer, or ridley appeared. the members of the council of edward vi., being men of the new official aristocracy, opposed to the old houses, attached themselves to the party of movement in religion. in england they completed the work of confiscation, carried iconoclasm a step farther, and made protestant reforms in the religious system, the last in conjunction with foreign reformers. their policy in ireland was the same. they sent over the prayer-book of edward. but the effect appears to have been small. the way had not been prepared by the advent of lutheranism or by the use of translations of the bible. besides, there was no religious feeling on which it could act. the deputy st. leger was a shrewd man of the world, who, while he was ready to put the law in force, disliked all religious agitation. "tut, tut," he said to the earnest reformer, "your religious matters will spoil all." the way of the new liturgy was effectually blocked by the erse language, and no missionary effort appears to have been made. the military policy of edward's government had a very able though rather grim representative in bellingham, if he had only been backed by a sufficient force. but the foreign complications of england being what they were, no sufficient force could ever be sent. the system of regular hostings against the natives is now on foot. bellingham having stormed a position, there ensues a butchery of wood kerne, the equal of which bellingham supposed there had never been. "such," the deputy says, "was the great goodness of god to deliver them into our hands." puritanism with its ruthlessness is making its appearance in the lists, on one side, while on the other side enters its mortal foe the jesuit. the government incurred deserved hatred in ireland as in england by carrying to further lengths the debasement of the coin which had been the disgraceful shift of the spendthrift henry viii. a petition sent to the king upon the subject, in setting forth the folly of debasement, stated with an accuracy remarkable for the time the function of the precious metals as a medium of exchange. wholesale fraud on the part of government was not likely to help the cause of the reformation. beyond the english pale the change of religion never reached the people. antagonism of religion was henceforth added to estrangement of race. protestantism was to be the religion of the conqueror; catholicism was to be the religion of the conquered. the pope became a rival in sovereignty to the king of england, claiming the allegiance at once of piety and patriotism. instead of the torpid clergy of the old native church, now came upon the scene active emissaries of rome with the jesuit, master of intrigue, at their head, to do the joint work of propagandism and rebellion. presently will appear the crusading soldiery of catholic spain. with mary comes an interlude of reaction. the sovereignty was not restored to the pope. grantees of abbey lands in ireland, as in england, catholics though they might be, held fast their prey. but the old ritual was for a time legally revived, and the hand of iconoclasm was stayed. protestantism was rabbled; but smithfield fires, the martyr's spirit being absent, there were none. a story is told of an envoy sent by mary to ireland with a warrant of persecution, whose commission a clever protestant woman, in whose house he put up by the way, stole and replaced by a pack of cards, so that when the deputy opened the wallet at the council board nothing came forth but the pack of cards with the knave of clubs uppermost. iv thus the day of the elizabethan era which dawned so brightly upon england came on in heavy clouds for the unhappy dependency. the religious compromise which it brought to england was adapted by the english statesmen who framed it to the religious condition and temperament of their own people. to the condition and temperament of the irish people there was no such adaptation. to the catholic lords of the pale the elizabethan religion was alien; to the native celts it was not only alien, but utterly abhorrent. it presented itself, not as the religion of ireland, but as the religion of the conqueror. the ecclesiastical polity comprised in the act of uniformity and the thirty-nine articles was, however, formally extended to ireland, and the crown resumed the powers which it had assumed in the time of henry viii. or his son, including the appointment of bishops, in this case without the veil, retained in england, of the _congé d'élire_. in the dependency as in england, the state assumed supreme power of religious legislation, overriding and almost treating as null the authority of the ecclesiastical convocation. propagation of the anglican liturgy beyond the pale continued to be blocked by the language. burleigh and the other statesmen of elizabeth's council could not fail to turn their minds to the irish problem, enhanced as its gravity had been by the progress of religious revolution in europe and the danger of a conflict with the catholic powers. trinity college is a noble monument of their policy. in ireland, as in england, they restored the coin, though the benefits of that wise measure were offset by protectionist enactments carried in the parliament of the pale, which bore the usual fruits. they sent commissioners of inquiry to give them more trustworthy information than they could get from the despatches of the deputies or the tattling intriguers of the pale. they formed a plan for the institution of provincial presidencies to lengthen the arm of government and form local centres of civilization, which, had it taken effect, might have been the best solution of the problem. but the necessary means of giving effect to any policy failed them. churches and schools, which were named by a reformer at the time as the indispensable instruments of civilization, could in the case of ireland be named only in mockery. an ordinance for the general establishment of schools more than once went forth, but an ordinance still it remained. the pale, reduced as it was in extent and weakly defended, was in itself a nest of misrule, jobbery, and corruption. nothing could have been done without a military force in the hands of the central government sufficient to enforce law and order. such a force the counsellors of elizabeth had no means of maintaining. continental war drew heavily on the exchequer. the queen was unwisely parsimonious. she was seized with spasms of frugality. militia on the spot of any value there was none. the service was very unpopular in england, and the men enlisted or pressed for it as soldiers were apt to be of the falstaffian kind, better at preying on the people for whose protection they were sent and at indulging in the general license of the camp than at facing the perils and hardships of "hostings" in the irish wilds. their pay was almost always in arrears. the service was not inviting. "the deputy, according to his commission, marched into the north. but, alas, he neither found france to travel in nor frenchmen to fight withal. there were no glorious towns to load the soldiers home with spoils, nor pleasant vineyards to refresh them with wine. here were no plentiful markets to supply the salary of the army if they wanted, or stood in need; here were no cities of refuge, nor places of garrison to retire into, in the times of danger and extremity of weather; here were no musters ordered, no lieutenants of shires to raise new armies; here was no supplement of men or provisions, especially of irish against irish; nor any one promise kept according to his expectation; here were, in plain terms, bogs and woods to be in, fogs and mists to trouble you, grass and fern to welcome your horses and corrupt and putrefy your bodies; here was killing of kine and eating fresh beef, to breed diseases; here was oats without bread, and fire without food; here were smoky cabins and nasty holes; here were bogs on the tops of mountains, and few passages, but over marshes, or through strange places; here was retiring into fastnesses, glens, and no fighting, but when they pleased themselves; here was ground enough to bury your people in being dead, but no place to please them while alive; here you might spend what you brought with you, but be assured there was no hopes of relief; here was room for all your losses, but scarce a castle to receive your spoil and treasure. to conclude: here was all glory and virtue buried in obscurity and oblivion, and not so much as a glimmering hope that how valiantly soever a man demeaned himself it should be registered or remembered." the deputies sent in command might do their best according to their lights. they generally did. but the lights of all of them were not the same, and the web of penelope woven by one was always in danger of being unwoven by his successor. one of them only, sussex, was large-minded enough to think of acknowledging the brehon law, reducing it to a system, and making it a bridge across which the irish might pass to legal civilization. all the deputies had to contend more or less with local opposition and intrigue. the consequences to ireland of this policy of government by deputies were disastrous. the presence of royalty might have had some effect on the irish heart. it could hardly have failed, at all events, to reveal the real state of things. but it was never tried. elizabeth, protestant by circumstance and profession, catholic in her real leanings, hating nothing so much as a puritan, unless it were a clergyman's wife, and an autocrat to the core, had no desire of breaking with the papacy or with spain. but when a pope excommunicated and deposed her, the die was cast. ireland was drawn into the european war between catholicism and protestantism which was also that between despotism and freedom; she became a point of military danger in a national and religious struggle for life or death. there is now an end of the policy of conciliation or of colonization with a civilizing object. the policy henceforth is that of conquest, and when resistance is obstinate, of extermination. the reign was filled with successive wars between the english and the natives, the first slightly, the last two more deeply, identified on the side of the natives with papal suzerainty and the catholic cause. the first was that with shane o'neill, elective head of the great ulster sept of o'neill and pretender to the royal earldom of tyrone. the tribal headship was unquestionably elective; to the earldom shane's claim was doubtful, the question being partly one between the english and the brehon law. it was presently settled by the murder of shane's rival. shane was, in fact admitted himself to be, a barbarian, brutal, drunken, and cruel, all in a high degree. he made his prisoners wear an iron collar fastened by a short chain to gyves on their ankles so that they could neither stand nor lie. at the same time he was able, crafty, and daring. he made himself supreme in ulster, baffled the english in war, and was so formidable that the lord deputy sussex, once at least, if not more than once, attempted to get rid of him by assassination. he intrigued with philip of spain. at another time he coquetted with the queen's government and paid a visit to the court, where he and his gallowglasses, with their axes, their irish heads of hair and moustaches, their wide-sleeved saffron shirts, short tunics, and shaggy cloaks of fur or frieze, produced a sensation among the courtiers. master of dissimulation, shane fell on his knees before the queen and confessed his rebellion in the irish language "with howling." returning to ulster, he recommenced the game there, plundering and burning, slaying man, woman, and child. he was at last stabbed in a brawl with the scottish raiders with whom he had intrigued. these marauding immigrants from the scottish highlands and isles were now a formidable addition to the elements in the cauldron of irish anarchy and ruin. shane was an irish leader of the thoroughly celtic type. perhaps the next, though in a widely different guise and sphere, may be said to have been daniel o'connell. as a mover of disturbance on a large scale there succeeded james fitzmaurice, kinsman of the earl of desmond, the head of the southern sept of geraldines. fitzmaurice, whether from conviction or policy, gave rebellion a more religious character and connected it with rome and madrid, which he visited on missions of intrigue. in this work he had a compeer in stukely, an adventurer of the kind then common, who also intrigued with the catholic powers. if their aim was an irish crown on a catholic head, it came to nothing. but fitzmaurice brought with him to ireland a regular proclamation from the pope, and had made formidable headway in his appeal to the forces of disorder when he was killed. the leadership of the movement passed to the earl of desmond, who with a little aid from spain raised in munster a rebellion on a large scale. he was a feeble though respectable leader, and his rising in the end bore no fruits but a renewal of slaughter and devastation. the aid of rome and spain promised to the irish catholics was long in coming. ever tardy and vacillating was the mind of the spanish king. but at the time of desmond's rebellion the aid came. in concert with the insurgent irish a force of italians and spaniards landed and established itself in a fortalice at smerwick. the deputy at that time was lord grey, a puritan most pronounced and militant, the artegal, the knight of justice, in spenser's "faerie queene," bent on the overthrow of the false duessa and the extermination of her brood. he invested smerwick. the irish allies of the invader failed to relieve the place, and the garrison was compelled to surrender at discretion. grey then butchered the whole of them in cold blood. raleigh, as the officer in command, it is to be feared directed the slaughter. alva or parma would have done the same, and elizabeth in approving incurred no special infamy. the poor irish in this rebellion showed that fidelity to a chief which was one of their small stock of political virtues. they afterwards showed their love of legend, of melancholy legend especially, by telling that desmond's ghost, mounted on a phantom steed with silver shoes, rose at night from the water on the bank of which he had been slain, and fancying that in the moaning of the wind they heard the desmond howl. the attainder of the earl of desmond was followed by the sweeping confiscation of a vast tract of land to the crown, on the assumption that as the domain of an earl it had been a fief and the property of its lord; whereas under native law and according to native ideas it was the property of the tribe. spenser was one of the grantees of the crown and settlers on the conquered land. he had been the secretary of lord grey. the author of the "faerie queene" thus encountered the religion of the false duessa, his hatred of which was not likely to be diminished when he was afterwards by a great outbreak of insurrection ejected from his grant. now along the dangerous western coast of ireland were driven in dire distress a number of great ships of war, with the troops and much of the power and chivalry of a mighty kingdom on board. these were the miserable remnants of the invincible armada. about a score of the ships were cast ashore or wrecked. the crews for the most part perished. on one strand of less than five miles in length were counted above eleven hundred corpses cast up by the sea. on two miles of strand in sligo there lay wrecked timber enough to build five first-rate ships, besides mighty great boats, cables and other cordage, and masts of extraordinary size. of those who struggled to land, many were killed by the english, not a few by the native irish, who stripped and robbed those whom they did not kill, skipping and capering at the sight of such glorious plunder. the armada had come to liberate the native irish from the heretical yoke; but love of plunder overcame in their simple souls regard for a political and ecclesiastical alliance, their appreciation of which, perhaps, had never been very clear. one spaniard, cuellar, after being stripped and narrowly escaping with his life, spent some time in an irish cabin, and has left his notes on native irish life and character, valuable as those of a neutral. "the habit of those savages," he says, "is to live like brutes in the mountains, which are very rugged in the part of ireland where we were lost. they dwell in thatched cabins. the men are well made, with good features, and as active as deer. they eat but one meal, and that late at night, oatcake and butter being their usual food. they drink sour milk because they have nothing else, for they use no water, though they have the best in the world. at feasts it is their custom to eat half-cooked meat without bread or salt. their dress matches themselves--tight breeches, and short hose jackets of very coarse texture; over all they wear blankets, and their hair comes over their eyes. they are great walkers and stand much work, and by continually fighting they keep the queen's english soldiers out of their country, which is nothing but bogs for forty miles either way. their great delight is robbing one another, so that no day passes without fighting, for whenever the people of one hamlet know that those of another possess cattle or other goods, they immediately make a night attack and kill each other. when the english garrisons find out who has lifted the most cattle, they come down on them, and they have but to retire to the mountains with their wives and herds, having no houses or furniture to lose. they sleep on the ground upon rushes full of water and ice. most of the women are very pretty, but badly got up, for they wear only a shift and a mantle, and a great linen cloth on the head, rolled over the brow. they are great workers and housewives in their way. these people call themselves christians, and say mass. they follow the rule of the roman church, but most of their churches, monasteries, and hermitages are dismantled by the english soldiers, and by their local partisans, who are as bad as themselves. in short there is no order nor justice in the country, and every one does that which is right in his own eyes." "savages" cuellar calls the natives; what but savages could they be when not only had all the means of civilization been withheld from them, but they were hunted like beasts of prey? that the women are "great workers and housewives in their way" is a redeeming feature in the picture. the whole land, english and irish alike, was a wreck. the secretary of a lord deputy reports that the people had no conscience, but committed crimes freely; that they even changed wives among themselves; that bridges were falling down, churches roofless; there were no charities, no schools; law was jobbery, and the judicial bench was filled with ignorance; every lord hated the restraints of law and made himself an irish chief; and disorders were as great among english soldiers as among irish kernes. the third rebellion, and the most formidable of all, was that of the earl of tyrone, head of the o'neills of ulster. it stirred the general forces of revolt, national and religious, beyond ulster, in connaught and elsewhere. tyrone gave his movement distinctly the character of a holy war, and received aid from spain. unlike desmond, he was an able leader. he gained a victory over the english at the yellow ford which filled dublin with panic. to put him down, elizabeth sent her favourite essex, with forces greater than her parsimony allowed to an ordinary deputy. essex went forth with great pomp and amidst high expectations. but he totally lacked steadiness of character and policy. he failed and went home to run mad courses and die on the scaffold, faintly recalling the irish history of richard ii. essex was succeeded by mountjoy, able, iron-willed, and ruthless, who made it a war of extermination and devastation. the spaniards brought tardy aid to their irish allies. they landed in force at kinsale, and for a moment the fortune of war seemed to waver, but it soon inclined again to the side of the deputy and england. the force of the rebellion was broken, and tyrone was compelled to surrender. of all the wars waged by a half-civilized on a barbarous and despised race, these wars waged by the english on the irish seem to have been about the most hideous. no quarter was given by the invader to man, woman, or child. the butchering of women and children is repeatedly and brutally avowed. nothing can be more horrible than the cool satisfaction with which commanders report their massacres. "i was never," said captain woodhouse, "so weary with killing of men, for i protest to god for as fast as i could i did but hough and paunch them." "the number of their fighting men slain and drowned that day," says another commander, "were estimated and numbered to be fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred, besides boys, women, churls, and children, which could not be so few as many more and upwards." over and over again massacres of people of both sexes and all ages are reported with similar coolness. another ruffian seems to have put to death children who were held as hostages. mountjoy especially used famine deliberately as his instrument of war, and with signal effect. after his work, multitudes lay dead in the ditches of towns and other waste places, with their mouths coloured green by eating docks and nettles. children were seen eating their mother's corpse. old women, we are told, lit fires in the woods and ate the children who came to warm themselves. not only were horses killed and eaten, but cats and dogs, hawks and kites. the wolves, driven by hunger from the woods, killed the enfeebled people. the dead lay unburied or half-buried, the survivors not having strength to dig graves, and dogs ate the remains. it must be said that the native irish not only retaliated these cruelties on the english whenever they could, but committed them on each other. edward butler, for example, invades arra, the district of another clan, harries the country far and wide, breaks open the churches to which the frightened women had fled in the vain hope of sanctuary, and gives the region up for forty-eight hours to plunder and rape, sparing neither age nor condition. the lately gathered corn is destroyed, and famine stares the whole population in the face. the raid is presently repeated, the cattle are driven off, and a house full of women and children is given to the flames. in the english settlement of munster, overrun by the native irish, english children are taken from their nurses' breasts and dashed against walls; an englishman's heart is plucked out in his wife's presence, and she is forced to lend an apron to wipe the murderer's fingers. of the english fugitives who flocked into youghal some had lost their tongues and noses. irish tenants and servants that yesterday fed in the settlers' houses were conspicuous by their cruelty. what was called law was almost as murderous as war. men were hanged at assizes by scores, and these massacres were reported by the deputy with satisfaction as gratifying proof of the increased influence of public justice. a bishop witnesses them with complacency. respect for human life must have perished. such was the training which in the formative period of national character the celtic irish received, and which must be borne in mind when we come to atrocities committed by them at a not very much later period. at the same time we do not see the back of destiny's cards. the subjugation of barbarous clans by a foreign conqueror, himself half-civilized, was horrible. would a series of tribal wars among the clans themselves have been less horrible? when strongbow landed there had been hardly any sign of permanent union or of the foundation of a settled polity. nor afterwards does there appear to have been any attempt or tendency of the kind. tyrone, on his submission, had been restored to rank and great part of his estate. but he, as well as his confederate, the o'donnell, created earl of tyrconnell, afterwards finding themselves objects of aversion and suspicion, fled the country. their flight and the suppression of a futile outbreak of tribal insurrection under another o'donnell finished the work. the whole island was now conquered, but the heart of the people, as presently appeared, was very far from being won. the hold of the papacy and the catholic church upon their liegemen had been growing stronger under the long struggle and was not impaired by its close. it formed henceforth a religious substitute for nationality. v ireland, conquered, now became shire land, at least in contemplation of law. the law of england, in the eyes of its professors the consummation of human wisdom, ousted the brehon law. the feudal system of land tenure supplanted the tribal system. freehold and leasehold, primogeniture and entail, took the place of tribal ownership and tanistry. justice was henceforth to be administered in english courts, and judges were to go circuit as in england. the change at first seemed to be well received. perhaps novelty itself impressed. an english chief justice, going circuit through the newly anglicized districts, could complacently report that multitudes had flocked to his court; whence he drew the cheerful inference that the irish after all, like other men, loved justice. so they did, and do; but it was not the justice of the king's bench and coke. nor did they love its administration by an alien conqueror. it was probably curiosity as much as confidence that drew them to the court of chief justice davies; so the event proved. the whole machinery of government, as well as the law and the judiciary, was at the same time assimilated, formally at least, to the english model. the corporate towns received new charters. the place of the military deputy was taken by the head of a civil government with his officials. unhappily the ecclesiastical polity of england, with its tests and its recusancy law, compelling attendance at the services of the state church, was at the same time thrust upon people to whom it was in itself and in its associations abhorrent. under elizabeth there had been a politic laxity. now fines for recusancy are exacted. intolerance of catholic dissent from the royal religion could not fail to be increased by the gunpowder plot. james i., with all his pedantry, his absurdities, and his stuffed breeches, was not without something of the largeness of mind which culture generally imparts. he could understand bacon. his irish policy, evidently inspired by bacon, was colonization, plantation as it then was called. for this there was ample room on the forfeited lands of tyrone and other attainted chiefs, so far as legal ownership in the contemplation of english law was concerned. but the attainders of the chiefs had not cleared the lands of the members of their septs, in whose minds tribal ownership was rooted. this was the weak point of the transplantation policy, as in the sequel tragically appeared. extensive grants, however, were made to a colony formed by english and scottish settlers, undertakers as they were called. of scottish settlers there had before been not a few. the city of london invested largely in the enterprise. thus was formed in ulster, and in ulster has continued to exist to the present time, a sort of protestant pale. bacon's philosophic eye ranges complacently over the prospect of a people of barbarous manners "brought to give over and discontinue their customs of revenge and blood and of dissolute life and of theft and rapine, and to give ear to the wisdom of laws and governments; whereupon immediately followeth the cutting of stones for building and habitation, and of trees for the seats of houses, orchards, enclosures, and the like." beyond doubt this settlement was an improvement in material respects. nor, though the new settlers might domineer, was their domination likely to be more oppressive and insolent than that of the native chief, with his gallowglasses and his coyne and livery. the tribal ownership of land had probably become almost a fiction, the chief treating the land as his own. little, therefore, was actually lost in that way by the tribesman, while there was an end of coyne and livery and the other extortions of the chiefs. on the other hand the chief, however oppressive, was nominally one of the tribe and a kinsman, and the land was still tribal in the fancy of the sept. the tribesman was not liable to eviction. nor was improvement in agriculture or even in advancement of law and order likely to be so fascinating to the native irish, especially to gallowglasses and kernes, as to bacon. the adventurers were apt to be of a sordid class, ravenous, close-fisted, little likely to make themselves beloved. the eagles of enterprise spread their wings for the spanish main; the vultures swooped upon ireland. the medley of brehon law and english law, with the variety of titles, some by forfeiture for treason, others by ancient grants from the crown, formed an element in which the art of the predatory pettifogger had full play. by legal chicane, the chicane of an alien law, many an irish naboth may have been dispossessed. there was, moreover, the antagonism of religion, greatly intensified by the long struggle in which the natives, fighting for independence, had looked up to rome for support and been fired at heart by the active zeal of her missionaries. the government meant well. it sent over an able lord deputy in the person of chichester, who did his best for healing and improvement. in improvement he was somewhat hasty and procrustean. he might have done better had he only imbibed bacon's spirit of philosophic toleration, and not fancied that for irish barbarism protestantism of the anglican type was the sovereign cure. bacon, as one of his three specifics for the recovery of the hearts of the people, had recommended a toleration, partial and temporary at least, of the catholic religion, which was to be combined "with the sending over of some good preachers, especially of that sort which are vehement and zealous persuaders and not scholastical, to be resident in principal towns." the government issued a politic manifesto, promising to all native irish of the poorer class equal protection and complete immunity from any oppressive claims of chiefs. but let the government charm as wisely as it might, it could not charm away the difference of race, language, and character, the antagonism of religion, the memories of the long and murderous struggle, the ravenous cupidity and overbearing attitude of the alien adventurer, the anguish of the native who saw the stranger in possession of his land. james called a parliament for all ireland, catholic as well as protestant. it was packed for the crown, which created boroughs for that purpose. still, it was something more like a national assembly than ireland had ever seen or in fact was destined again to see. the elections to it were fiercely contested between the races and religions. its first sitting was characteristic. there was a division on the election of a speaker. one party went out into the lobby. in its absence the other party seated its man in the chair. the party which had gone out, returning and finding what had been done, seated their man in the other man's lap. the importance of this parliament, however, is extolled by sir john davies, and one act, at all events, stands to its credit. it repealed the statute of kilkenny and all other laws recognizing and perpetuating distinctions of race, declaring that their cause had ceased, since the inhabitants of the kingdom without distinction were henceforth under the protection of the crown, and the best way of settling peace was to allow their intercourse and intermarriage so that they might grow into one nation. there was a transient ray of sunlight on the dark scene. efforts were made to improve trinity college, and learning shone forth in the person of usher. vi there was still in ireland a mine charged with the wrath of the dispossessed added to the hatred of race and religion, the religious hatred being the more deadly because, the protestants of ireland being calvinist, the antagonism was extreme. the match was applied to the mine by the outbreak of revolution in england under charles i. strafford, having passed from the ranks of patriotism to the place left vacant by the death of buckingham in the councils of the king, came with his dark look of command as viceroy to play the part of beneficent despot in ireland, and at the same time to raise an army there for his master. the part of despot he played to perfection, making the irish parliament the tool of his will, applying to it and to the government in general his own and laud's high royalist policy of thorough. the part of beneficent despot he played to a considerable extent. he set his heel on the rapacity of the adventurers, compelling the chief of them, the earl of cork, to disgorge. he enforced order and put down piracy, which in the general disorder had become rife. he fostered the cultivation of flax and the linen trade, though he paid blackmail to english protectionism by prohibiting the woollen manufacture. he did his best to reform the state church, which he found sunk in torpor, sinecurism, and simony, while its edifices were ruins and piggeries. unluckily he was a strict anglican, whereas the only protestantism in ireland which had life in it was the calvinistic protestantism represented by usher. he made a mortal enemy by turning the sumptuous monument of lady cork off the place of the high altar. but to find means of raising an army for his king he had to resort to violent measures. he dragooned the parliament into granting extraordinary supplies. the king had pledged himself in the form of "graces" to respect and quiet titles to large tracts of land. these graces strafford thrust aside. by legal chicane and intimidation of juries he, in defiance of the king's plighted word, confiscated a great part of the land of connaught. a legal raid of the crown on the estates which the city of london had purchased in ulster made the lord deputy another formidable enemy. he added to the number by trampling on the pride of men of rank and influence. strafford had formed his army. that he intended it as a support to the arbitrary government of charles is beyond question; his betrayal of that intention by some loose words uttered in council formed the most damaging piece of evidence against him; and though the army broke up on his departure, fears of it continued to haunt the english mind and to intensify english feeling against the irish. the irish parliament joined in the impeachment of the man who had trampled on it, and when strafford pleaded in defence of his arbitrary measures, that ireland was a conquered country, pym's retort was, "they were a conquered nation! there cannot be a word more pregnant or fruitful in treason than that word is. there are few nations in the world that have not been conquered, and no doubt but the conqueror may give what law he pleases to those that are conquered; but if the succeeding pacts and agreements do not limit and restrain that right, what people can be secure? england hath been conquered, and wales hath been conquered, and by this reason will be in no better case than ireland. if the king by the right of a conqueror gives laws to his people, shall not the people by the same reason be restored to the right of the conquered to recover their liberty if they can?" revolution was in the air. it stirred the heart of the catholic cowering under the penal law, who saw the foot of his arch-enemy the puritan on the steps of power. it stirred still more the heart of the disinherited native, especially on the forfeited domain of tyrone. one of those great popular conspiracies of which the irish have the gift was formed under the leadership of phelim o'neill, who ranked among his countrymen as head of the great sept of o'neill, and cherished ancestral traditions of vast domains and princely power. with phelim o'neill was a better man, roger moore, one of the disinherited, a deadly enemy of england. the rebellion posed as royalist, declaring for the king against the puritan and revolutionary parliament; its aims were ireland for the irish, and catholicism as the irish religion. phelim o'neill was not a man to restrain from crime. but the people, once launched in insurrection, were probably beyond control. they rose upon the english settlers in ulster, drove them from their homes, and massacred some thousands with the usual cruelty, women and children taking part in the fiendish work. many were stripped naked and exposed to perish in the cold. dublin was full of shivering and famished fugitives. the capital itself narrowly escaped through fortunate betrayal of the plot, such as in an irish conspiracy seldom fails. it was natural that panic should exaggerate the number murdered, as it was that panic and superstition together should see the spectres of the english who had been drowned by the rebels at portadown. the effect upon the english, above all upon the puritan mind, was like that of the sepoy mutiny and the massacre of cawnpore. ruthless retaliation followed. where the protestants got the upper hand, irish men, women, and children were butchered without mercy. thenceforth the irishman was to the puritan a wild beast or worse. all irishmen who landed in england to fight for the king, with the women who followed their camps, were put to the sword. an irishwoman left behind by a munster regiment at the siege of lyme was torn to pieces by the women of the place. the english parliament at once, being short of money, passed, to provide for the irish war, an act confiscating in advance two and a half millions of acres of rebel land as security for a loan; a measure, to say the least, extreme and sure to make the conflict internecine. the act passed without a dissentient voice, and was one of the last that received the assent of charles. in ireland against the dark clouds of the storm one rainbow appeared. the protestant bishop bedel, though a proselytizer, had by his beneficence won the love of his catholic neighbours. he and his family were not only spared by the rebels, but treated with loving-kindness, and when he died a farewell salute was fired over his grave. thus commenced a course of mutual slaughter which lasted eleven years, and, according to sir william petty, cost, by sword, plague, and famine, the lives of a third part of the population. a great pasture country was reduced to the importation of foreign meat. a traveller could ride twenty or thirty miles without seeing a trace of human life, and wolves, fed on human flesh, multiplied and prowled in packs within a few miles of dublin. numbers abandoned the country and enlisted in foreign services. slave dealers plied their trade and shipped boys and girls to barbados. strafford's place as deputy not having been filled, the government remained in the hands of the puritan lords justices parsons and borlase, the first an intriguer and jobber, the second a worn-out soldier and a cipher. they had prorogued the parliament by which they might have been restrained. the commander of the army on the king's side and the representative of the king's interest was ormonde, the head of the loyalist house or sept of butler, a man thoroughly honourable as well as able and wise, whose character stands out nobly amidst the dark carnival of evil. it is difficult to say to which of the contending parties the palm of atrocity is to be awarded. probably to that of the government, which knew no measure in the extermination of catholics and rebels. where ormonde commanded there was sure to have been comparative mercy. mercy there certainly was on the side of the insurgents when they were commanded by owen o'neill, a genuine soldier trained in foreign service and observant of the rules of civilized war. but a papal legate who was in the catholic camp gleefully reports that after a battle won by the confederates no prisoners had been taken. by the soldiery of the government at least children were butchered, the saying being that "nits make lice." the anti-catholic policy of the puritan government and the castle had driven into the arms of insurrection the catholic lords of the pale, english in blood, normally hostile to the tribes though they were. the confederation formed at kilkenny a provisional government with an assembly of priests and laity combined, which elected a council of war. the assembly was presently joined by a papal nuncio, rinuccini, who brought money from rome and it seems at the same time encouragement of the rebellion from richelieu. the nuncio sought to control everything in the paramount interest of the papacy, which thus once more appears as a power of temporal ambition. the assembly was not unanimous. of the clergy and the nuncio the chief aims were the ascendency of the catholic church and the recovery of the confiscated church lands. the chief aims of the lay lords were lay; they wanted relief from political disabilities and recovery of their political power. restoration to the church of the abbey lands, of the grantees of which they were the heirs, was by no means to their mind. of the origin of the rebellion in ulster king charles was perfectly innocent, though he drew suspicion on himself by some careless words. nothing worse for his cause could have happened. but when in his wrestle with the puritan he was thrown, he began to cast a longing eye on the forces in ireland which, though rebel and catholic, were at all events hostile to the puritan. there ensued a series of tangled intrigues with the confederates, in the course of which charles showed his usual weakness and duplicity, while he was fatally committed by the mingled rashness and tergiversation of his envoy, glamorgan, the result being a disclosure very injurious to the poor king's character and cause. the confederacy was divided between a party which was for treating and a party which was for war to the knife. for war to the knife was the nuncio, an ecclesiastical termagant of the becket stamp, inflated with notions of his own spiritual power and reckless in the pursuit of his own end, which was to lay ireland at the feet of the pope. in all this the high-minded ormonde sadly stooped to take a part for his royal master's sake. when the cause of his royal master was finally lost, he surrendered his command to the parliament and left ireland. after the execution of charles the scene shifted again. abhorrence of regicide brought about a junction of the more moderate protestants with the more moderate confederates, uniting different parties and sections under a common profession of loyalty. ormonde then returned to lead a mixed and not very harmonious force against michael jones, the republican commander. he advanced to the attack of dublin, but was totally defeated by jones. now on the wings of victory came cromwell with ten thousand of the new model. his proclamation on landing promised to all who would keep the peace, peace and protection for themselves. that proclamation, the first utterance of law and order heard in those parts for ten years, was strictly carried into effect. a soldier was hanged for robbing a native of a fowl. no disorder, rapine, or outrage upon women is laid to the charge of the puritan army in ireland. cromwell sat down before drogheda, which was held by a large royalist garrison, partly english. the garrison having refused to surrender on summons, he stormed. two attacks failed; a third, led by himself, took the town. he put the garrison to the sword. that a garrison refusing to surrender on summons and standing a storm might be put to the sword was the rule of war in those days; it was the law, though not the rule, of war even in the days of wellington. nevertheless, this was a fell act for a commander who was generally humane in war, and at worcester risked his life in persuading royalists to take quarter. of this cromwell was himself sensible, and he spoke of it with compunction. "i am persuaded," he said in his despatch to the parliament, "that this is a righteous judgment of god upon these barbarous wretches who have imbrued their hands in so much innocent blood; and that it will tend to prevent the effusion of blood for the future; which are the satisfactory grounds to such actions, which otherwise cannot but work remorse and regret." were remorse and regret ever breathed by alva, parma, or tilly? what did the soldiery of those catholic commanders do when it stormed a protestant town? what did the british soldiery, maddened by the recollection of a massacre far less than that of do, not only to the sepoy mutineer, but to the insurgent people of oude? when rupert stormed leicester, the town was sacked, and women and children were found among the dead. the royalist carte, in his life of ormonde, commenting on the slaughter of the garrison of drogheda, says, "this was certainly an execrable policy in that regicide. but it had the effect he proposed. it spread abroad the terror of his name; it cut off the best body of the irish troops and disheartened the rest to such a degree that it was a greater loss in itself and much more fatal in its consequences than the rout at rathmines." this is not a defence, nor much of an excuse. but it testifies to a motive other than mere thirst of blood and shows that cromwell spoke the truth. there was cruel slaughter again at the storming of wexford, but it does not appear that it was ordered by cromwell. the defences having been carried, the combat was renewed within the town by the townspeople, who, it is stated, had provoked wrath by their piracy and by drowning a number of protestants in a hulk. the city had been summoned to surrender on fair terms. cromwell was at once called away to the war with scotland. he left the war in ireland to be finished by ireton and ludlow, who gradually extinguished organized resistance, leaving only something between guerilla warfare and brigandage called "toryism," a name presently transmitted to a great political party in england which bore it as a name of honour, in opposition to that of whig, on every hypothesis equally humble in its source. the two races and religions had fought for the land, and the saxon and protestant had won. it is surely simple to suggest that the winner ought to have invited the loser to take the prize, especially after such a display of that loser's sentiments and intentions as the massacre of . had it not been made fearfully clear that the two races and religions could not dwell together in peace? the victorious puritan drove the catholic into connaught. the catholic, if he could, would have driven the puritan into the sea. the original decree of "to hell or connaught," the hateful sound of which still rings in irish ears, seems to have been somewhat mitigated as the wrath of the victor cooled. at all events the sentence extended to landowners only, not to artisans and labourers, who were to remain where they were and to be disciplined and civilized by english masters. a great number of those who had fought on the losing side were sent away to foreign service, ridding ireland of a manifest danger and forming the first instalment of the grand irish element in the armies of catholic europe. there was also a large deportation to barbados, including probably families left behind by the military emigration. this was cruel work, the more so as there was terrible suffering in the passage. the whole business was horrible and deplorable. but in passing sentence on the winner we must remember what the loser, had he been the winner, would have done. the shadow of an evil destiny was over all. deportation was not to slavery for life, but to terminable bondage, one degree less cruel. to cast all on cromwell is most unfair. he had nothing specially to do with ireland till he came to put an end to the war. he left it forever when he had struck his decisive blow. he could no more have given back the contested land to the catholics than he could have turned the shannon to its source. the act under which the land had been forfeited in advance and a loan on it raised had been passed by the unanimous vote of parliament and had received the assent of the king. the soldiers who held land-scrip for their pay presented their claims. as little would it have been possible for cromwell, even if he had desired it, to license the celebration of the mass, which in puritan eyes was a sign, not only of idolatry, but of allegiance to a foreign power, that power the mortal enemy, not of the protestant religion only, but of the protestant state. with liberty of conscience cromwell declared that he would not interfere. this was something in an age when the rack and the stake of the inquisition were still at work and when irish troopers in the service of a catholic power were butchering the protestant peasantry of savoy. if the nuncio rinuccini had got the upper hand in ireland, a retirement of heresy into the sanctuary of conscience would scarcely have saved it from the stake. cromwell does not appear to have persecuted in ireland or to have given the word for persecution. the protector united ireland as well as scotland to england, thus bringing the factions under the control of a strong government, ireland's only hope of peace. union assured her free trade with great britain and the dependencies, an inestimable boon, not in the way of material wealth only, but in that of commercial civilization, as its withdrawal afterwards fatally proved. her shipping was at the same time assured of exemption from the disabilities of the navigation laws. the protector sent her a good governor in the person of his son henry, who seems to have identified himself with the welfare of her people. he sent her a liberal law reformer in the person of chief justice coke, proposing to himself to treat her as a blank paper, whereon he could write reforms such as professional bigotry debarred him from effecting in england. his mortal enemy clarendon, after dilating on the iniquities of the settlement, says, "and, which is more wonderful, all this was done and settled within little more than two years to that degree of perfection that there were many buildings raised for beauty as well as use, orderly and regular plantations of trees, and fences and enclosures raised throughout the kingdom, purchases made by one from the other at very valuable rates, and jointures made upon marriages, and all other conveyances and settlements executed, as in a kingdom at peace within itself, and where no doubt could be made of the validity of titles." if these material improvements were at first limited to the domain and race of the victor, they would in time have spread. cromwell's own letter to sadler on the administration of justice in ireland breathes anything but the ferocity ascribed to him. about religion he speaks in his unctuous puritan way, but in a tone far from savage. "first let me tell you, in divers places where we come, we find the people very greedy after the word, and flocking to christian meetings; much of that prejudice that lies upon poor people in england being a stranger to their minds. and truly we have hoped much of it is done in simplicity; and i mind you the rather of this because it is a sweet symptom, if not an earnest of the good we expect."[ ] his words on the social question in the same letter show tenderness of feeling. "sir, it seems to me we have a great opportunity to set up until the parliament shall otherwise determine, a way of doing justice among these poor people, which for the uprightness and cheapness of it may exceedingly gain upon them who have been accustomed to as much injustice, tyranny, and oppression from their landlords the great men, and those that should have done them right as (i believe) any people in that which we call christendom.... sir, if justice were freely and impartially administered here, the foregoing darkness and corruption would make it look so much the more glorious and beautiful and draw more hearts after it." this is not the language of hatred, much less of extermination. critics of cromwell fail to notice that his mind opened as he rose, notably in the way of religious toleration. the ironside had now become a great statesman. "savage" the writer of his domestic letters surely can never have been. the representatives of ireland in the parliament of the protectorate, it is true, were nominees. a popular election on the morrow of the civil war, and with its embers still glowing, would have been out of the question. the union of the parliaments effected, and representation granted, popular election would have come in time. meantime, there was the sheltering and controlling authority of the protector and the council of state. to charge cromwell with having misunderstood the genius of the irish nation and wronged it by his policy seems absurd. there was, in reality, no irish nation. there was an island inhabited partly by the wreck of celtic tribes, partly by conquerors and colonists of another race, the two races differing widely in character, speaking different languages, having antagonistic religions, not alien only, but desperately hostile to each other. deadly experience had shown that, left to themselves, they could not live at peace. there was no political union, no attachment to a native dynasty, no tradition or sentiment truly national among the wreckage of the septs. the religious bond, it is true, had been greatly strengthened among them by the conflict, and formed something like a national tie. but adaptation of his policy to catholic character and sentiment could hardly be expected of a puritan chief in the age of the spanish inquisition. the european war between catholicism and protestantism, and the consequent mingling of religious with political strife, were everywhere a fatal stumbling-block to statesmanship in that day. it does not seem that cromwell dealt with the difficulty in england or ireland less wisely and liberally than did statesmanship elsewhere. perhaps the greater share of liberality was his. the signs of his personal inclination were certainly on the liberal side. vii the death of the protector before his hour, and the military anarchy which ensued, brought on the restoration. the restoration brought claims on the part of dispossessed royalism for restitution in both countries. the occupants of confiscated lands in ireland, seeing what must come, had under the leadership of opportunist politicians, such as broghill and cork, worshipped with politic rapture the return of the royal sun. the disinherited on the other hand clamorously pressed their claim to restitution. to that claim honour bade and sympathy inclined charles ii. to give ear. but the adventurers were a formidable body, and while their professions were fervently loyal their hands were on their swords. nor did protestant england, even in its hot fit of loyalty, love the irish catholic or forget the massacre of . there ensued a vast controversy, desperately embarrassing to clarendon, charles's chief adviser, to charles himself no doubt an insufferable bore. intrigue and corruption, in which the possessors were strong, contended with argument in the fray. the government at last took refuge in the appointment of a commission instructed to decide claims to restitution on the principle of complicity or non-complicity in the rebellion of ; a criterion rather difficult of application, since charles i. had on the one hand assented to the act of forfeiture, and on the other hand by treating with the confederates had practically recognized their loyalty to the crown. the upshot was an act of settlement with a supplementary act of explanation, under which the possessors retained about two-thirds of the lands, the disinherited getting the other one-third, eked out with scraps, which by escheat or forfeiture for regicide were at the disposal of the crown. the act of settlement was thenceforth in the eyes of the protestant possessor the great charter of proprietary right, to be upheld at whatever cost; in the eyes of the dispossessed catholic, the hateful muniment of proprietary wrong, to be cancelled whenever he had the power. the net result of the act of settlement and explanation was that ulster was left, as it remains, a protestant pale. the anglican state church recovered all its possessions and privileges, and was once more planted on the neck of a catholic people. it is sad to learn that jeremy taylor, who, when under persecution, had eloquently defended liberty of prophesying, as a bishop of the restored irish establishment defended that liberty no more. but how could a hierarch of the state church of ireland fail to don its spirit with his mitre? the whole of the protector's work was undone. the union of scotland and ireland with england was broken. ireland was again reduced to the state of a dependency, and of a dependency unloved and unrespected, whose interests were to be always sacrificed to those of the country which was the seat of power. of this she was soon made fatally sensible. protectionism was the creed of that dark age. ireland as a fine grazing country had been doing a profitable export trade with england in cattle, pork, bacon, and dairy produce. the english grazier demanded of his parliament protection against the free importation of food, denounced by him as a "nuisance." on his demand an act was passed prohibiting the trade. good sense and the public interest struggled hard. the debate was unusually fierce. ominous expressions of contempt for the irish were heard, and led to a challenge. the king had the good sense to disapprove the measure, but gave way, as he was sure to do. the patriotic policy of the grazier triumphed. irish fish narrowly escaped prohibition at the same time. this was the first of a line of prohibitive acts fatal to the commerce of ireland and to her commercial civilization. at the same time she came under the navigation laws, which were fatal to her shipping trade. ireland, however, had the good fortune to be during the greater part of the reign of charles ii. under the government of that duke of ormonde who had commanded for the king in the civil war. the duke was a statesman, like clarendon and southampton, of the old and honourable cavalier school, untainted by the political profligacy or the social dissoluteness of the men of the cabal. he governed as impartially as the anti-catholic laws and his own strict anglicanism would let him; did his best to keep the peace between the factions, political and religious; promoted manufactures and trade, encouraged and endowed education, founded a college of medicine, organized a national militia. he heartily identified himself with irish interests, and opposed the cattle act with an energy and a force of argument which entitle his memory to the respect of free traders. it is the sad truth that of irish history between the conquest and the union the one bright period is the viceroyalty of ormonde. ireland unhappily, though her interests were out of the pale of english care, was not out of the pale of english faction and revolution. the stuart brothers, plotting with their french patron the subversion of english religion and liberty, looked to catholic ireland for help in their plot. they cultivated the catholic interest there, and against the law promoted catholics to office and command. richard talbot, lying dick, afterwards duke of tyrconnel, one of the lowest of their wonderfully low agents, as well as about the most violent, appeared upon the scene. it was probably by thwarting or refusing to promote this conspiracy that ormonde, a strict protestant though of the anglican school, and constitutional though a monarchist, incurred temporary dismissal from his viceroyalty. possibly in the same quarter may be sought the explanation of the mysterious attempt at murdering him by blood, of the criminal connection of the court with whom there can be little doubt. on the other hand, the cruel anti-catholic panic, created in england by the well-founded suspicion of danger to protestantism from stuart intrigue with france which gave birth to the popish plot, extended its rage to ireland. the last and most pitiable of the innocent victims of that frenzy was the catholic archbishop plunket. viii signs of preparation for the stuart attack on protestantism and liberty were visible in ireland as well as in england in the last years of charles ii. but the blow was suspended during the life of the merry monarch, who preferred the calm of the seraglio to the stir of a great enterprise, and did not want to go again upon his travels. with the accession of charles's fanatical and blundering brother, the crisis came. the viceroy clarendon, a tory of tories, but an anglican, was deposed from the viceroyalty, and quitted ireland with a stream of protestant refugees in his train. into his place vaulted dick talbot, now duke of tyrconnel, drunk with the fury of romanizing and despotic reaction. a catholic reign of terror set in. protestants were disarmed; driven from places of authority, political, judicial, or municipal; practically outlawed, plundered, outraged, compelled to fly for their lives. the country seethed with a general orgie of insurrection and revenge. the people swarmed to the standard of catholic and agrarian revolution, rather than to that of the english king, for whom they cared little and who cared little for them. presently came james, ejected from england, with the power of his french patron at his back. under him a packed parliament repealed the act of settlement by which the protestants held their lands, proclaiming reconfiscation and expulsion on a vast scale. not satisfied with this, the parliament passed a monstrous act of attainder against a large portion of the protestant proprietary. nor can it be assumed that the frantic hatred which inspired this act would have confined itself to spoliation, for which the repeal of the act of settlement might have pretty well sufficed. a long lifetime had not yet passed since . james, who was not an irish patriot but an english king out of possession, would have vetoed the act of attainder had he dared. but he dared not. he even suffered himself in this case to be divested of the royal prerogative of pardon. another prerogative, that of regulating the coin, he exercised by sanctioning a base issue on a large scale, which, being made legal tender, completed the ruin of the protestant trader. but protestantism, the stern protestantism of the calvinist, rallied on its own ground, and behind the mouldering walls of derry made against a catholic host one of the heroic defences of history, a worthy theme in an after time for the most brilliant of historians. in the battle of newtown butler, protestantism again triumphed over odds. succour at length came from england. it came first in the person of the renowned schomberg, whose army, however, made up of raw recruits, ill supplied by fraudulent contractors, and filled with disease by the moisture of the climate, miserably rotted. at last the bonfires of jubilant protestantism announced that william of orange had landed. on the boyne he gained a small battle but a great victory, which decided that the protestant saxon, not the catholic celt, should be master of ireland. james fled to the luxurious asylum of his french master, and with him fled the last hope of the catholic cause. once more, however, at aghrim, the catholic, under the command of the french general st. ruth, accepted the wager of battle in open field. he fought well, and the fortune of the day wavered, when a cannon shot took off st. ruth's head. protestantism owed its victory largely to a regiment of french huguenots exiled by the bigoted tyranny of their own king. all was over in the field. the irresistible marlborough reduced cork and kinsale. but in limerick, by soldiers pronounced untenable, catholicism had its derry. its hero sarsfield, by a daring march, cut off william's siege artillery, and, after a fierce assault, gallantly repulsed, william was fain to raise the siege. after his departure ginkell again invested the place, and sarsfield, finding that the last hour of the last catholic stronghold had come, capitulated on terms. the military terms of the surrender were strictly observed. the political terms, securing a measure of religious liberty to catholics, though endorsed by william in his wise dutch love of toleration, were repudiated by parliament. the "violated treaty of limerick" was an ugly business, though there seems to have been no protest at the time. but james had fled. the garrison of limerick had no status but a military one, to which surrender put an end. politically they were merely insurgents. could any political terms made with them have bound the sovereign authority of the irish and british parliaments in dealing with their own citizens forever? can sarsfield have thought that they did? a crowd of irish women and children lined the shore at limerick, watching with tearful eyes the receding sails of the fleet which bore away their husbands and fathers, the garrison of the last catholic stronghold, to service in foreign lands. the defenders of limerick were thus exchanged for the huguenot exiles who had charged and conquered at aghrim. those men, with many an exile from catholic ireland who followed in their track, went to form the irish brigade and to redeem on foreign fields battles lost in their own land. ix in that mortal struggle, had the catholic won, he would have deprived the protestant certainly of his land, perhaps of his life. the protestant, having won, proceeded at once to avenge and secure himself by binding down his vanquished foe with chains of iron. chains of iron indeed they were. by the series of enactments called the penal code, passed by the irish parliament with some assistance from that of england, the irish catholic was reduced to helotage political and social, while measures were taken for the extirpation of his religion. to crush him politically he was excluded from parliament, from the franchise, from municipal office, from the magistracy, from the jury box, as well as from public appointments of all kinds, and even from the police force. to crush him socially he was excluded from all the higher callings but that of medicine, from the bench, from the bar, and from the army. he was denied the armorial bearings which denoted a gentleman. to divorce him from the land, he was forbidden to acquire freehold or a lease beneficial beyond a certain rate; he was debarred from bequeathing his estate; and his estate was broken up by making it heritable in gavelkind. the gate of knowledge was closed against him. he was shut out of the university; forbidden to open a school; forbidden to send his children abroad for education. that he might never rise against oppression, he was disarmed and prohibited from keeping a horse of more than five pounds' value. he might not even be a gamekeeper or a watchman. the law, without actually prohibiting the catholic religion, provided, as was hoped, for its extirpation. all priests were required to be registered, and were forbidden to perform service out of their own parish. all catholic archbishops and bishops were banished, and were made punishable with death if they returned, so that in future there could be no ordinations. monks and friars also were banished. catholic chapels might not have bells or steeples. there were to be no pilgrimages or wayside crosses. rewards were offered to informers against catholic bishops, priests, and schoolmasters, and their trade was lauded as honourable service to the state. marriage of a catholic with a protestant was prohibited; to perform it was a capital offence; so was conversion of a protestant to catholicism. religious hatred outraged domestic affection by enacting that if the son of a catholic turned protestant the inheritance should at once vest in him, his father being reduced to a life interest; that the wife of a catholic turning protestant should be set free from her husband's control and entitled to a settlement; that a catholic could not be a guardian, so that, dying, he had to leave his children to the guardianship of an enemy of their faith. representatives of the government designated the catholics officially as "our enemies." the irish parliament was exhorted to put an end to all distinctions except that between protestant and papist. to such a relation between races under the same government history can scarcely show a parallel, unless it be the case of the moriscos in spain. "it was," says burke, "a complete system full of coherence and consistency; well digested and well composed in all its parts. it was a machine of wise and elaborate contrivance and was as well fitted for the oppression, impoverishment, and degradation of a people and the debasement in them of human nature itself as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man." it was the panic rage of a garrison which had narrowly escaped extermination, and less cruel than the treatment of the huguenots by the catholic king at the instigation of the jesuit and with the approbation of the catholic church in france. the fires of the inquisition were still burning, and continued for some time to burn. if the british parliament shares the guilt of the penal code, twice had an army of irish catholics been raised for the destruction of english liberties. when last those liberties were in the extremity of peril, a force of irish catholics had been encamped at hounslow. nor was catholicism merely a religion. it was allegiance to a power which claimed the suzerainty of ireland, which had launched the decree of deposition against elizabeth, which, after the rising of , had sent its nuncio to the rebel council of kilkenny. these memories on both sides ought long ago to have been consigned to a common grave. at the same time it was deplorable that the settlement of the catholic provinces after their reconquest should have been left to the protestants of ireland, transported with rage and fear. the true course, had it been possible, was the union of ireland with england. representatives of the loyal districts of ireland might have been called at once to the parliament at westminster. the rest of the island might have been placed under a strong government of pacification and settlement, till peace and the reign of law had been thoroughly restored. it is needless to say that such a solution could not even suggest itself to the mind of any statesman at that time. in extirpating the catholic religion the policy of the penal code failed. to the faith which was their only comfort and sole redemption from utter degradation the people more than ever clung. the priests braved the law, celebrated mass in hiding-places, furtively ordained, several hands being laid on at once that the man ordained might be able to swear that he did not know who had ordained him. they taught in hedge schools, and, though but coarsely educated themselves, preserved the scantling there was of knowledge and civilization among the people. in their celibacy they had a great advantage for such work. interested conversions among catholics of the higher class, especially as passports to the bar, seem not to have been uncommon. an old lady of an ancient line is said to have embraced protestantism avowedly against her conscience, saying that it was better that one old woman should burn than that the estates of the house of tomond should go out of the family. but disinterested conversions there were none. on the other hand protestants in isolated settlements were turned catholic by social contagion. other parts of the code took deadly effect. the catholics generally ceased to own land. of their landed gentry, some went into exile. the people, bereft of their natural leaders, sank into apathetic helotage and mute despair. neither in nor in , when a pretender again unfurled the banner of the house of stuart, was there the slightest political movement among them. socially, the iron had entered their souls and they cowered under the yoke of the ascendancy. once, an informer having tendered a catholic the legal ten pounds for his pair of fine horses, the catholic drew his pistol and shot the pair. but this was a rare spark of self-respect on the part of the helot. the cup of woe was not yet full. in england, with revolution principles, the mercantile party had mounted to power, and commerce in those days was everywhere ridden by the fallacy of protectionism, which killed the only good articles in the treaty of utrecht, those opening free trade with france. ireland, the english protectionist regarded as a foreign country, and a particularly dangerous enemy to his interest. the cattle trade having been killed by the act of charles ii., the irish had taken to the export trade in wool and to woollen manufactures. the wool grown on irish sheepwalks was of the finest, and was eagerly purchased by france and spain. this industry also english monopoly killed by prohibiting the exportation of wool to foreign countries and the importation of irish woollen goods into england. the same jealous rapacity seems to have successively killed or crippled the cotton industry, the glove-making industry, the glass industry, the brewing industry, to each of which ireland successively turned; english greed being bent, not only on excluding the irish competitor from its own market, but on keeping the irish market to itself. ireland had been promised free enjoyment of the linen trade, which strafford had encouraged by promoting the growing of flax while he discouraged the wool trade; yet even this promise irish financiers could accuse england of eluding by tricks of the tariff. england needing more bar iron than she could produce, the importation of bar iron from ireland was allowed; but the consequence was a consumption of timber for smelting which denuded ireland of her forests. cromwell's union would have secured to ireland exemption from the disabilities of the navigation laws. the restoration imposed them. they killed her trade with the colonies and killed her shipping interest at the same time. "the conveniency of ports and harbours," said swift, "which nature has bestowed so liberally upon this kingdom, is of no more use to us than a beautiful prospect to a man shut up in a dungeon." in all this ireland was treated as a colony, meant only to be a feeder to the imperial country. but her position was worse than that of the colonies, in which commercial restrictions generally were loosely enforced, and which, when strict enforcement was attempted by grenville, rose in arms. the colonies, moreover, were regarded with pride and affection. popish ireland was regarded with contempt and hatred. the lawful trade in wool with foreign countries england had suppressed. its place was partly taken by a smuggling trade, for which the inlets of the irish coast afforded the best of havens, and which had the people everywhere for confederates. thus, in every line, religious, social, educational, and commercial, the irishman found the law his inveterate enemy. could he fail to be an inveterate enemy of the law? cut off from manufactures and from trade, the people were thrown for subsistence wholly on the land, and land for the most part better suited for pasture than for tillage. for the land they competed with the eagerness of despair, undertaking to pay for their little lots rents which left them and their families less than a bare subsistence. on such a scene of misery as the abodes of the irish cotters the sun has rarely looked down. their homes were the most miserable hovels, chimneyless, filthy. of decent clothing they were destitute. their food was the potato; sometimes they bled their cattle and mixed the blood with sorrel. the old and sick were everywhere dying by cold and hunger, and rotting amidst filth and vermin. when the potato failed, as it often did, came famine, with disease in its train. want and misery were in every face; the roads were spread with dead and dying; there were sometimes none to bear the dead to the grave and they were buried in the fields and ditches where they perished. fluxes and malignant fevers followed, laying whole villages waste. "i have seen," says a witness, "the labourer endeavouring to work at his spade, but fainting for want of food, and forced to omit it. i have seen the helpless orphan exposed on the dunghill, and none to take him in for fear of infection. and i have seen the hungry infant sucking at the breast of the already expired parent."[ ] there was an enormous amount of vagrancy and mendicity, as there was in scotland before the union. this was under the government of the first of free nations, and in the era of newton, addison, and pope. reduced to living like beasts, the people multiplied their kind with animal recklessness. the result was fatal overpopulation, the pressure of which, aggravated by occasional failures of the treacherous potato, could be relieved only by the tragic remedy of emigration on an immense scale. of the landowners, who might have had compassion on their serfs, many were absentees; residence in ireland, especially when agrarian war began, being hardly pleasant. their place was taken by the middleman, through whose ruthless agency they extorted their rents and who frequently sublet, sometimes even three or four deep, so that the cotter groaned under a hierarchy of extortion. from the ranks of the middlemen were partly drawn the upstart gentry, or squireens, a roistering, debauched, drinking, and duelling crew, whose tyrannical insolence scandalized arthur young, ruling with the horse-whip a peasantry cowering under the lash and hopeless of redress by the law. the peasantry still largely spoke erse, another badge of their social inferiority, and a further barrier between them and the ruling class. to the extortion of the middleman was added that, even more hated, of the tithe proctor. the protectorate had at all events relieved ireland of the anglican state church. that incubus the monarchy reimposed, and the peasant was compelled out of the miserable produce of his potato field or patch of oats, besides the exorbitant rent, not only to provide for his own priest, but to pay tithe to a clergy whose mission was to extirpate the peasant's religion. the anglican bishoprics were rich. the rectories for the most part were miserably poor, so that pluralism might be necessary to make an income. but pluralism of the most scandalous kind also prevailed, and we have a dean holding two groups of livings, fourteen livings in all, one group twelve miles away from the other. some of the clergy, on the plea that there were no glebe houses for them, were drawing their tithes in the pump room and at the card tables of bath. bishops were sometimes non-resident as well as scandalously secular and inert. most of them were english, and appointed to keep up the english interest. there were bright exceptions, such as bolter, king, above all berkeley, but they were few. swift could say of irish bishops that government no doubt appointed good men, but they were always murdered on hounslow heath by the highwaymen, who took their credentials, personated them, and were installed in their place. there have been worse institutions than the state church of ireland; there was never a greater scandal. even if anglicanism had been less alien to the irish heart, what chance would such missionaries as these have had against the devoted emissaries of rome? what must have been the feelings of the irish peasant when of his crop of potatoes, all too scanty for him and his children, the tithe proctor came to claim a tenth part in the name of a christian minister? there were prelates of a better stamp who sought to do well by the people. under their auspices were set up the chartered schools, to give poor irish children an industrial education. but the work of charity was marred by bigotry. the children were taken from their catholic parents and forcibly brought up as protestants, whereby the heart of the catholic parent was filled with anguish, and more bitter offence, it seems, was given than by any other kind of repression. the schools at last became a sink of abuse, inhumanity, and corruption. rural ireland was a recruiting ground for the armies of the continent. on some lonely hillside the recruiting agent reviewed the youth of the neighbourhood, picked out the strong, the flower of the population, and turned back the feeble to their miserable homes. if anything was to be done for the extension of protestantism, union among the protestant minority was indispensable, and the enthusiasm of the calvinist, sombre as it was, might have had its attractions for the celt, as it had for the celts of the scottish highlands, among whom it gave birth to the hill preachers, and for those of wales with whom calvinistic methodism prevailed. but the bishops of the state church hated the presbyterian even more bitterly than they hated the catholic. after their brief and hollow alliance with the nonconformists, when their own interest was threatened, they had speedily relapsed into high anglicanism, and under the not unsuitable leadership of the infidel bolingbroke had taken to persecuting nonconformity in england. they extended the persecution to ireland, excluding by the sacramental test the defenders of derry from municipal office and military service. they imported the schism act, forbidding nonconformists to open schools. they threatened interference with presbyterian worship, ireland having no toleration act. they disputed the validity of presbyterian marriage. they thus set flowing a stream of presbyterian emigration from the north of ireland to the american colonies. the stream was afterwards swelled by the rapacity of lord donegal and other landed proprietors of ulster, who, being owners of great estates, when the leases of their tenants ran out, instead of renewing them to the tenant, put them up to the highest bidder. starving catholics, in the desperate competition for land, outbidding the protestants, a number of protestant families were driven from their homes. the consequence was, first, aggressive insurrection under the names of the heart of oak boys and the steel boys, ultimately emigration to america. thus the church and the landlord between them were charging the mine of american revolution. x presently, too, inexorable nature made her voice heard, proclaiming that ireland, with its rich pastures and watery skies, was in the main not an arable but a grazing country. there was a good market for meat. speculators began buying up land and throwing it into large grazing farms. the cotter was ejected and driven to the bogs and mountains. this overtaxed even a cotter's submission, and there broke out an agrarian war, the most deadly perhaps in history, the canker and disgrace of british government, protracted in varying phases and with fluctuating intensity almost from that day to this. companies of men, wearing white shirts over their clothes, and thence afterwards called whiteboys, harried the grazing farms by night, and the stillness of the night air was broken by the bellowings and moanings of hamstrung cattle. irish outrage has been essentially agrarian, rather than religious. the division of churches coincided generally with the social division. the middleman was necessarily protestant, since, under the penal law, no catholic could acquire a beneficial lease; and the antagonism of religion and language emphasized and embittered that of class and interest. but a catholic generally suffered like a protestant if he provoked the wrath of the people. a protestant settling in a catholic district, if he was in any way obnoxious, was especially liable to maltreatment. later on there was a hideous instance of this in the case of a protestant schoolmaster settling and opening his school in a catholic district. he and his family were mangled with horrible cruelty. nor can it be said that the landlords as a class were the objects of hatred and outrage apart from the agrarian quarrel. a landlord who resided and did not oppress his tenantry, especially if he were affable, jovial, and hospitable, was generally the object of a clannish affection, though his mansion might be a "castle rack-rent" and his serious duties might be very indifferently performed. the commercial restrictions and the navigation acts were fatal to the prosperity of the whole island, while the penal inability of the catholics to invest could not fail to lower the value of land. this would be felt by the conquering as well as by the conquered race and sect. scotland, cut off by the repeal of cromwell's union from trade with england and the dependencies, had so suffered commercially and industrially that she swarmed with vagrants, and the ardent patriot, fletcher of saltoun, proposed slavery as a remedy for the evil. the union, opening free trade with england, brought commercial prosperity in its train. the english in ireland stretched out their hands to the british government for a union like that which was being made with scotland, and were coldly repelled. to english protectionism the chief blame for the refusal no doubt is due. but unwillingness to incorporate a large catholic population may also have played its part. let the cause have been what it may, there is hardly anything in the records of british statesmanship more deplorable than this refusal of union to ireland. protectionism here again pleads the excuse of universal delusion, and in no case is the excuse more needed. moreover, the protestants of ireland, british in blood and, as lords over a subject race in their own country, more than british in pride, were denied the enjoyment of british freedom. a parliament they had; but that parliament could legislate only by grace of the english council and of a council named by the lord lieutenant in ireland. its control even of money bills was not recognized, while the crown had a hereditary revenue which made it almost independent of parliamentary grants. in the upper house, owing to the large absenteeism of lay lords, the bench of bishops, nominees of the crown and agents of the british interest, largely held sway. of the three hundred seats in the house of commons more than half were filled by nominees of the patrons of pocket boroughs, which the crown had been always creating at its will, and the nominations were sold like common merchandise. the house, moreover, swarmed with placemen and pensioners. the parliament was elected for a whole reign, so as to be scarcely responsible even to such a constituency as it had. the irish parliament of george ii. continued for thirty-three years. there was a session only in every other year. the english house of lords arrogated to itself the jurisdiction of final appeal. the judges held only during pleasure. there was no annual mutiny act. there was no habeas corpus. there were large sinecures, instruments of corruption in the hands of the government. the pension list, swollen beyond bounds, was a privy fund for kings' mistresses and for jobs too dirty for the english list. the high appointments, ecclesiastical, administrative, and judicial, were treated as patronage by the english government and generally reserved for englishmen. the face of their king the irish never saw. the viceroy resided only during a small part of his term, and his place was filled in his absence by lords justices who were often bishops, english themselves, and bent above all things on securing the ascendancy of the english interest. three archbishops in succession practically ruled ireland. presbyterians and other protestant dissenters, victims of episcopal intolerance, had crying wrongs of their own. union with england had been refused, and the protection of england being no longer so manifestly indispensable to her garrison in ireland as it had been, a craving for self-government took its place. molyneux, and after him lucas, alarmed and exasperated authority by writing in favour of the independence of the irish parliament. but a far more potent artificer of discord appeared in swift, who, balked of preferment in england by the wreck of his political party, exiled to a native land which he abhorred, was eating his heart, and ripe for mischief, especially for any mischief which could avenge him on the whig government, above all on walpole, its chief, by whom it seems the path of this model christian and pure writer to a bishopric had been crossed. that a feeling of justice and of pity for the sufferings of the irish people, which swift has vividly described, had their place in his heart beside malice and vengeance, may be true; though his sense of justice was not strong enough to prevent him, profane and really sceptical as he was, from vehemently upholding the penal code and the sacramental test; while his pity for the people led to no philanthropic effort of a practical kind, and was not very tenderly expressed in his satirical suggestion that they should appease their hunger by eating their babies. his proposal to exclude english goods would gratify his malice as well as his patriotism, and had it been adopted would probably have led to a large increase of smuggling. one of the grievances of ireland was that there was no irish mint. a new copper coinage was needed. the contract was given by the english government to the king's mistress, and by her sold to wood, a respectable manufacturer. as the coinage was approved by sir isaac newton, then master of the mint, it can hardly have been very bad. but irish jealousy cast suspicion upon its character. then rose a storm of popular fury, improved by swift into a whirlwind on which he rode in his glory. swift's "drapier letters" are monuments of his genius for pamphleteering, his intense malice, and his freedom from the restraints of truth. they produced an immense effect, made him the idol of dublin for the rest of his days, and forced walpole to give way and call in the halfpence. their author did not mention among the evils of an english connection that he and the members of his state church were enabled by the support of the british power to set their feet upon the necks of four-fifths of the irish people and to wring from the starving catholic the income of the dean of st. patrick. the letters ranged far beyond the immediate occasion, and appealed strongly to the growing desire of independence, which we may be pretty sure that swift, had he been nominated by bolingbroke to an english bishopric, would have fiercely opposed. the parliament to which his revolution would have consigned ireland is described by himself as a den of thieves of which he devoutly desired the extirpation. presently there arose a patriot party in the irish parliament. it found a leader in flood, a man of solid ability and powerful in debate, while the purity of his patriotism was not so clear. at flood's side, or rather perhaps, as the event proved, on his flank, there presently arose the far more illustrious grattan, whose purity and patriotism were unquestionable, whose oratory was brilliant, his admirers thought divine. the objects sought by the patriots were reduction of the duration of parliaments, control of money bills, an annual mutiny bill, habeas corpus, tenure of the judges during life or good behaviour, reduction of the pension list, exclusion of placemen and pensioners from the house of commons, taxation of the rents of absentees. on the first and most important point they succeeded through a bargain with the crown on the amount of the military force. the duration of parliament was cut down to eight years, that number being preferred to seven, because it was only in alternate years that parliament sat. this was a very important change. war, with imperfect success, was waged on the question of money bills. on the other points reform made no way, the english government clinging obstinately to all its powers and using its veto, while the lord lieutenant was able to avert a crash by buying up a majority in the irish parliament. taxation of the rents of absentees, a measure very popular and much pressed, was vetoed by the english government. the protest of the absentees against it was evidently the work of burke, whose patron, lord rockingham, had an estate in ireland. burke argued that the double land-ownership was a link of union between the two countries; which it might have been if the residence as well as the proprietorship had been shared. the advocates of the tax might have cited the original character of land grants to which feudal service was annexed and which were forfeited by the failure of absentees to perform it. chatham supported the tax. for a moment, unhappily for a moment only, his thoughts were turned to ireland. a far greater service he would have rendered his country by pacifying ireland as he pacified the highlands than by his conquest of canada, of which the loss of the american colonies was the result. in the background there was a growing sentiment in favour of independence, the flag of which was by grattan presently unfurled. it was not in ireland as it was in england, where the regular party system prevailed and the minority changed with the majority in parliament. the castle called to the council whom it pleased, without regard to the existence of a political connection among them, though it was, of course, under the necessity of calling those who could bring it support at the time. the party tie was accordingly very loose and connections were shifting. flood had no scruple in providing for himself, apart from his friends, by acceptance of a rich sinecure under the government. hely hutchinson, a free lance, could use his personal influence in forcing the government to make him provost of trinity college. for a time the castle put itself into the hands of a junto of great lords and owners of parliamentary boroughs, who undertook to supply it with a majority at the price of patronage and power. to break this ring and restore the free action of government, an effort was made by the lord lieutenant townshend. but townshend's boisterous energy, successful for a time, in the end failed, and the castle fell back into the routine of government by intrigue and corruption, aided by viceregal dinners and balls. chatham's glory dazzled ireland as well as england. but presently came the quarrel ending in war, with the american colonies, whose commercial grievances were the same in kind as those of ireland, practically less severe. ireland at once showed sympathy with american revolt. presently the island was divested of troops by the demands of the war, and its coasts were left open to the attacks of privateers. there was no national militia. under the leadership of lord charlemont a body of volunteers, almost entirely protestant, was raised and reached at last the number of forty thousand. there was, no doubt, in the movement a good deal of claret and fanfaronade. but it included the leading gentry, and for its purpose was very strong. formed ostensibly, at first really, for defence against the americans, it presently fell politically into their track and demanded of the british government, now prostrated by misfortune in the war and by the combination of european powers against it, first freedom from the commercial restrictions, then legislative independence. north made commercial concessions; he would have made them on a much more liberal scale and possibly have satisfied the volunteers. but again monopolist greed, strong in the commercial cities of england, vetoed, and burke lost his seat at bristol for advocating the policy of free trade. the victories of rodney and eliot, had they come in time, might have strengthened the hands of the british government and saved it from an ignominious capitulation. as it was, the british government surrendered at discretion. first the commercial restrictions were swept away; then the legislative supremacy of england, embodied in the poynings act and the act of the sixth of george i., affirming the right of the british parliament to legislate for ireland, was renounced. flood, the patriot with a bend sinister, insisted on pushing the humiliation of england still further and compelling her by a declaratory act solemnly to bind her own hands for the future, while grattan, the patriot without reproach, took the more generous line. thus england underwent the deepest humiliation in her history at the hands of an irish party which owed its land, its ascendancy, probably its very existence, to her protecting power. such was the condign punishment of a long course of ignorant, blundering, and corrupt misgovernment, a punishment not the less calamitous and degrading because it was deserved. so grattan in the irish parliament was able, in a transport of rhetorical rapture, to worship "the newborn nation," a nation which comprised a fraction of the people of the country, the rest being still political helots. had he adored an uncontrolled ascendancy, his deity would have been real. the volunteers, having felt their strength, were inclined to vote themselves permanent, overawe parliament, and enforce parliamentary reform. flood was so misguided as to take that line. but the incarnation of violent counsels was the bishop of derry, an english nobleman holding an irish bishopric, a most absurd figure, and probably half insane. his right reverence avowed that he looked forward to blood. he paraded before the door of parliament in a coach and six, dressed in purple with long white gloves and gold tassels depending from them, and with a guard of horse, looking as if he meant to be king. but the parliament was firm, and lord charlemont and other sane leaders were able to control the body, which was drawn, not from a faubourg st. antoine, but from the property-owning class under aristocratic leading. still revolutionary excitement did not die. what was now the state of things? there were two independent parliaments, each with full powers of legislation, under the same crown; that crown not being invested with authority to control and harmonize the action of the two parliaments, but being a crown upon a cushion or little more. the commercial and even the international relations of the two parliaments might point different ways. there might be a divergence on a question of peace or war; one parliament declaring for war, the other refusing to vote the supplies. on general questions, such as commercial and criminal law, opposition was possible to any extent; and considering the feelings towards each other with which the partners set out, was not unlikely to occur. ireland might even refuse currency to english coin. the monarchical link itself was not quite firm. on the question of the regency, when george iii. went mad, the two parliaments did actually fly apart; the irish parliament recognizing, while the british parliament refused to recognize, the claim of the prince of wales to the regency by virtue of his birth. only the king's recovery averted a collision. adopted in haste and in a rush of revolutionary ardour, the system was in fact unworkable and must have ended in confusion. grattan was unquestionably true to british connection. but grattan was not ireland, and even he had led in no very loyal attitude the defiance of the british parliament on the regency question. his statesmanship can hardly have been profound if he fancied that the constitution of would work. it is moreover always to be borne in mind that this parliament was the parliament of a protestant ascendancy, representing not one-quarter of the people of ireland, and that with all its high talk of independence, it still owed, and knew that it owed, to british protection its power, its privileges, its political pelf, perhaps even the safe possession under the act of settlement of lands on which the disinherited still cast a longing and vindictive eye. how then was the policy of ireland to be kept from breaking away from that of great britain? the practical answer was, by corruption, the means of which at the command of the castle were, besides office, sinecures, some of them very rich; commands in the army; pensions; bishoprics, with other church patronage; and peerages. the peerages, though lavishly created, seem to have retained their value. the parliament, the body on which corruption had to operate, was a parliament of rotten boroughs, the nominations for which were sold in open market. the house of commons continued to swarm with placemen and pensioners, whose votes were at the command of government. in the house of lords the anglican bishops were strong. appended to a report made to pitt on the political situation in ireland is the following schedule of corruption:-- "h---- h----, son-in-law to lord a----, and brought into parliament by him. studies the law; wishes to be a commissioner of barracks, or in some similar place. would go into orders and take a living. "h---- d----, brother to lord c----. applied for office; but, as no specific promise could be made, has lately voted in opposition. easy to be had if thought expedient. a silent, gloomy man. "l---- m----, refuses to accept £ per annum; states very high pretensions from his skill in house of commons management; expects £ , per annum. n.b.-- be careful of him. "j---- n----, has been in the army and is now on half pay; wishes a troop of dragoons on full pay. states his pretensions to be fifteen years' service in parliament. n.b.--would prefer office to military promotion; but already has, and has long had, a pension. character, especially on the side of truth, not favourable. "r---- p----, independent, but well disposed to government. his four sisters have pensions; and his object is a living for his brother. "t---- p----, brother to lord l----, and brought in by him. a captain in the navy; wishes for some sinecure employment." xi there was no lack, say apologists of the irish parliament, of useful legislation on subjects with which a landed gentry was qualified to deal. there was a fatal lack of legislation on one momentous subject with which a land-owning gentry ought to be qualified to deal, but from which the irish parliament resolutely turned its eyes. for half a century before the union, that body steadfastly abstained from inquiring into the causes of disaffection among the peasantry. it even repressed a report upon the subject which the chairman of the committee had begun to read. the condition of the peasantry was still horrible and heartrending. the revolution of , by loosening the fetters of trade, had brought increase of prosperity to the merchant and manufacturer. it had brought no relief to the tiller of the soil. a little before this arthur young had travelled in ireland and had been shocked at seeing the insolent despotism of the petty country gentlemen, whom he called the vermin of the kingdom, over their serfs; the horsewhip freely used, the serf not daring to lift his hand in defence, the total denial of legal redress, since a justice of the peace presuming to issue a summons would at once have been called out. landlords of consequence had assured young that many of their cotters would think themselves honoured by having their wives and daughters sent for to the bed of their masters. he had even heard of the lives of people being made free with. the middleman and the tithe-proctor were ruthless as ever. to the payment of tithes a drop of bitterness had been added by the exemption, through an abuse of political influence, of the grazing farms, which left the whole burden of maintaining a hostile church on the back of the cotter. the peasantry, on the other hand, maddened by suffering, took a fearful revenge on the oppressor or his agents. agrarian murder and outrage prevailed. there were cruelties worse than murder. middlemen and tithe-proctors were "carded"; that is, lacerated with boards full of nails drawn down their backs, buried up to their necks in pits full of thorns, made to ride on saddles stuck with spikes, their ears and noses cut off. a clergyman was met riding in great agony with his head wrapped up; his ears and cheeks were found nailed to a post. that the irish when excited are capable of dark atrocities is a feature of their character which it is useless to disguise. debility when excited is apt to be most cruel. the trait showed itself plainly in the hamstringing of soldiers and the houghing of cattle, as well as in the torturing of middlemen and tithe-proctors. law and police were paralyzed. the peasantry were one vast conspiracy bound together by awful pledges, the betrayal of which was death. no evidence could be obtained though there might be plenty of eye-witnesses. perjury in the common cause was no sin. it was supposed that the whiteboys had their meetings in catholic chapels. but there is no ground for taxing the catholic church as a body with any share in the criminal part of the movement. the catholic clergy of ireland were then, as they are now, a peasant clergy, sympathizing with their class. they depended on that class for their stipends. some of them their sympathy might betray into complicity, more or less active, with agrarian crime. more of them might be guilty of failure to exert their religious authority as ministers of the sacraments, the confessional, and death-bed absolution, on the side of law. but their record on the whole appears to have been as clear as, considering what persecution they had undergone, and that the law was their enemy as well as the enemy of the peasant, it was reasonable to expect. the mansion of an unpopular landlord became a besieged fortress. absenteeism of course increased. to a rather later date belongs the story of an agent who, having complained to his absentee landlord that his life had been threatened, received the reply, "tell the villains that they need not hope to intimidate me by shooting you." "i am well acquainted," said a statesman not oversensitive to popular wrongs, "with the province of munster, and i know that it is impossible for human wretchedness to exceed that of the miserable tenantry of that province. i know that the unhappy tenantry are ground to powder by relentless landlords. i know that far from being able to give the clergy their just dues, they have not food and raiment for themselves; the landlord grasps the whole. sorry i am to add that, unsatisfied with present extortion, some landlords have been so base as to instigate the insurgents to rob the clergy of their tithes, not in order to alleviate the distresses of the tenantry, but that they might add the clergy's share to the cruel rack-rents already paid. sir, i fear it will require the utmost ability of parliament to come to the root of these evils. the poor people of munster live in a more abject state of poverty than human nature can be supposed able to bear. their miseries are intolerable; but they do not originate with the clergy; nor can the legislature stand by and see them take the redress into their own hands. nothing can be done for their benefit while the country remains in a state of anarchy." the miseries might not originate with the clergy, but the popular wrath did originate specially with the exactions of the tithe-proctor. grattan proposed commutation. but then the tithe of pasture agistment, as it was called, could no longer have been evaded. that simple reform was put off for more than a generation, with the most calamitous results. dublin was gay, mansions rose, claret flowed, wit sparkled, the dance went round. nor was there lack of social polish or of culture of the classical kind. on the other hand, there were extravagance, waste, and debt. wild and spendthrift characters appear among the leaders and mirrors of society. beauchamp bagenal, as sir jonah barrington tells us, "had visited every capital of europe, and had exhibited the native original character of the irish gentleman at every place he visited. in the splendour of his travelling establishment, he quite eclipsed the petty potentates with whom germany was garnished. his person was fine, his manners open and generous, his spirit high, and his liberality profuse. during his tour, he had performed a variety of feats which were emblazoned in ireland, and endeared him to his countrymen. he had fought a prince; jilted a princess; intoxicated the doge of venice; carried off a duchess from madrid; scaled the walls of a convent in italy; narrowly escaped the inquisition at lisbon; concluded his exploits by a celebrated fencing match at paris; and he returned to ireland with a sovereign contempt for all continental men and manners, and an inveterate antipathy to all despotic kings and arbitrary governments." duelling was the social law. the attorney-general fought a duel; the provost of trinity college fought a duel. refusal of a challenge was social death. the viceroy's secretary, when challenged by a disappointed applicant for place, deemed it necessary to go to the field of honour. robert fitzgerald was so addicted to duelling that he wore a chain shirt under his vest. what can have produced such characters? was it anything in irish blood or air, or was it the absence of the commercial element with its sobering influence? the story of robert fitzgerald, nephew of the bishop of derry, seems to bespeak a wild domestic despotism exercised by the squires. fitzgerald is said to have confined his father in a cave with a muzzled bear. he put to death one of his household, for which, however, he was hanged. the matrimonial adventurer from ireland was also a figure well known in the sister isle. of intellectual fruit there was not much except oratory, pamphlets, and pasquinades. swift was an englishman born in ireland and banished to the place of his birth. burke's genius as well as his physiognomy was one-half irish, and his irish half had its share in that splendid but mischievous outburst, his essay on the french revolution. his heart turned to ireland, and some of his best thought was given to her case. but he hardly belongs to the irish pantheon. oratory, both parliamentary and forensic, flourished. grattan, flood, yelverton, foster, fitzgibbon (afterwards lord clare), curran, are great names in their different ways. nor was the oratory all in the style supposed to be hibernian. foster's style, for example, was grave and weighty. so generally was that of flood. in parliament there were lively scenes. grattan and flood having parted company in politics, and flood having defamed grattan, grattan poured upon flood a furious torrent of the most personal invective; telling him that his talents were not so great as his life was infamous; that he had been silent for years and silent for money; that he might be seen passing the doors like a guilty spirit waiting the moment at which he might hop in and give his venal vote; that he was a kettledrum, battering himself into popularity to catch the vulgar; that he might be seen hovering over the dome like an ill-omened bird of night, with sepulchral note and broken beak (flood having a broken nose); and winding up by telling him in the face of the country, before all the world, and to his beard, that he was not an honest man. flood retorted with equal fury, and a wild scene ensued. it is not difficult to believe in the genius or the patriotism of these orators; but it is difficult to believe in their unimpassioned wisdom. the penal code had ere this lost much of its cruelty. time, security, and intercourse had softened the feeling of the protestants against the catholics, whose passive loyalty had been proved by their inaction when great britain was twice invaded by stuart pretenders. the most odious enactments of the code, those which involved personal degradation and outrage on family affection, had fallen into desuetude or been evaded. protestant friends would hold land for a catholic in confidential trust, and ostensibly assume the guardianship of his children, leaving the real guardianship to the kin. the attempts of informers to take advantage of forfeitures were discouraged by the courts. protestant fanaticism was dying out everywhere except in rural ulster, and was giving way among the educated to indifference and even to scepticism. the spirit of voltaire was abroad. chesterfield, as viceroy, brought it with him, laughing at religious intolerance, and saying that the only catholic of whom he was afraid was the reigning beauty of dublin. the whole system of the catholic church, though still nominally subsisting only by connivance, was openly and securely carried on. conspicuous mass houses were built. the catholic hierarchy and priesthood were forming friendly relations with a government which had once designated all catholics as enemies. catholics of the upper class educated in france came back from the land of the encyclopædists tinctured with its liberalism. catholics were admitted by connivance into trinity college. a central committee had been formed to guard catholic interests, which in the penal era would have been treason. after , relief bills were passed. catholicism was recognized by law. all restrictions upon the maintenance of the hierarchy, freedom of ordination, or additions to the priesthood were abrogated. catholics were made capable of acquiring property in land, though under the guise of leases for nine hundred and ninety-nine years. the gavelling act, passed to break up their estates, was repealed. it was unfortunately too late to restore the catholic gentry, which had been decimated by the penal law. in a bill was passed opening to catholics the profession of the law in all its branches and grades except the rank of king's counsel and the judicial bench, repealing the law against the intermarriage of catholics with protestants, that against foreign emigration, that making an anglican license necessary for schools, and that restricting the number of apprentices permitted in catholic trade. the laws against the possession of arms and the exclusion from command in the army were left. otherwise of the penal code the political disabilities almost alone remained. the principal relief bill was introduced by sir hercules langrishe, the friend and correspondent on irish politics of burke, who pleaded the cause of the irish catholics with all the vehemence of his nature, a measure of sympathy with the religion probably mingling in his heart with love of freedom and justice. burke had less feeling for the grievances of protestant dissenters or of anglican clergymen liberally inclined, who sought the relaxation of tests. he afterwards sent his son, whose ability he fondly overrated, as his representative to ireland, in the affairs of which the aspiring youth meddled, and with farcical results. the presbyterians of belfast had before this been relieved of the test act and their other religious bonds and humiliations. but the relief had come too late to turn them into good friends of the anglican church or of british connection. revolutionary and republican sentiment had, with religious scepticism, taken root in belfast. the revolution of had not been democratic. the volunteers were property holders and their leaders were peers. but the withdrawal of the volunteers was not followed by political calm. among the populace of dublin, especially, excitement continued and showed itself detestably by hamstringing british soldiers. the cry was now for two drastic measures of change: the political emancipation of the catholics, and a reform of parliament substituting freedom of election for nomination and clearing the legislature of pensioners and placemen. the two combined evidently meant death to protestant ascendancy and to oligarchy, both of which naturally shrank from suicide. the struggle grew fierce, and now not only was the american revolution fresh in recollection, but the french revolution, advancing with thunder tread, was filling the minds of the people everywhere, and especially those of the oppressed and suffering, with vague visions and hopes of change. even to the hovel of the irish serf, a vague hope, not of a society regenerated on the principles of rousseau, but of deliverance from the middleman, from the tithe-proctor, and from the english connection, which he thought was at the bottom of all his sufferings, had begun to make its way. of reform, the leader was grattan. opposition to reform found a mighty champion in fitzgibbon, afterwards lord clare, a strong man, fearless as he was able, and a very powerful speaker, but violent and overbearing, as well as reactionary to a degree which charms the reactionary historian. fitzgibbon had a very coarse but rather effective shield-bearer in dr. duigenan, the son of a catholic farmer intended for the priesthood, but captured by the protestant clergyman of his parish. grattan and the reform party failed to get admission for catholics to parliament. they failed to purify the house itself by substituting free election for nomination boroughs, or by the effective exclusion of pensioners and placemen from the house. they succeeded in extending the electoral franchise to all holders, whether catholic or protestant, of forty-shilling freeholds. unfortunately, they could hardly have done worse than by giving political power to the mass without its natural leaders. protestant demagogues playing for the catholic vote were certain to appear. another bad effect of the measure was the multiplication of cotter holdings by land-owners who would absolutely control the cotter's vote. on the other hand, to ask the protestant oligarchy to part with its exclusive possession of parliament was to ask it, not only to resign power, but even to cast a shadow on its property, for the act of settlement had hardly even yet become perfectly sacred as the title-deed of proprietary right. not all the advocates of parliamentary reform were in favour of catholic emancipation. flood among others was opposed to it. of the british government pitt was now absolute master. early in his reign he had glanced at irish politics and it seems had thought of union. but the channel was still wide and irish government was still left to the castle. pitt, however, had tendered ireland a commercial agreement framed, like his commercial treaty with france, in the spirit of the first statesman who read adam smith. introduced by him with great ability and at first with general acceptance, his measure in the end was wrecked by a combination of british protectionism, whig faction, and irish jealousy on the subject of legislative independence; to the last of which fox, carried away by faction, scrupled not to appeal. commercial union would have strengthened the political connection, and by furthering commercial prosperity might have done something to allay irish discontent. latterly, pitt's thoughts had been engrossed by the struggle with france. they were now turned perforce to the political state of ireland, which was evidently becoming very perilous; at that time, unfortunately, with no happy result. the whigs opposed to the french revolution, portland, spencer, fitzwilliam, and windham, had coalesced with pitt without renouncing their general principles, which they wished to apply to ireland, regarding that field, it seems, as especially their own. at their instance fitzwilliam was sent over as viceroy, believing, and it seems with reason, that he bore catholic emancipation and general reform in his hand; though he had no written instructions, nor, it appears, any verbal instructions sufficiently clear. he went hastily to work, opened his budget of concessions prematurely, and too promptly brandished the besom of administrative reform, dismissing from office one of the great place-hunting house of beresford, which by assiduous intrigue had filled the public service with its nominees. the beresford carried his plaint to the headquarters of the tory party in london, and told pitt that fitzwilliam was turning out all the faithful supporters of the government. what followed is still a mystery. there was a long, unaccountable, and apparently inexcusable silence on the part of portland, broken at last by disclaimer, rebuke, and recall. fitzwilliam, stung to fury at this treatment, trampled on official rules and did serious mischief by his publication of confidential letters betraying an incipient design of union, which to irish patriotism at that time was maddening. at the bottom of all the misunderstanding and trouble was the king, into whose miserable mind had been instilled, it appears by fitzgibbon, the belief that by consenting to catholic emancipation he would break his coronation oath. the two great tory lawyers, eldon and kenyon, to their honour, told the king the truth. it seems probable, however, that the union of the coalition government was imperfect, as that of coalition governments is apt to be, and that this may be the account both of the want of clearness in fitzwilliam's original instructions and of the strange silence, ending at last in an abrupt dismissal, which ensued. fitzwilliam left dublin amidst passionate demonstrations of popular disappointment and grief. his place was taken by lord camden, one of the tory section of the pitt government, who came to face irish rebellion aided by revolutionary france, while england, placed in extreme peril by french victories and the secession of her allies, was struggling for her life and was unable to afford military support to the government of ireland. catholic emancipation and reform of parliament, had fitzwilliam been allowed to grant them, would, grattan thought, have averted the crisis. they might have staved it off, but it would probably have come in another form. that the new power thus called into being would be as loyal as grattan himself to british connection was a highly precarious assumption. the course of the french revolution would have not been stayed, nor would the wild hopes which it excited have been extinguished. the aspirations of tom paine's disciples at belfast would not have ceased. the cotter's hunger would not have been appeased nor would he have been reconciled to the payment of tithe and church cess. the blind hatred of british connection as the supposed source of all evil to ireland would have continued to work. the state church would at once have been attacked. the castle government, bereft of its two supports, nomination boroughs and patronage, would inevitably have lost its hold. chaos would then have come. material order might have been preserved by a sufficient military force. otherwise there was apparently nothing for it but union. in presbyterian belfast, hatred of the state church and the english government which supported it, bred by episcopal intolerance, had developed, especially among the young men, into rationalism and acceptance of the doctrines, both religious and political, of tom paine. the connection of sympathy with the exiles in america had been kept up, and the spirit of the american was combined with that of the french revolution. thus was formed the circle of united irishmen. the professed aim of this association, perhaps originally its real aim, was only the reform of parliament. but it soon became revolutionary, aiming at independence of england and the foundation of an irish republic, to be brought about by the aid of revolutionary france. its soul was wolfe tone, a young man of talent, literary and practical, and of generous instincts, wild, dissipated, recklessly adventurous, burning with hatred of england. other leading members of the circle were jackson and emmett. most of the set were plebeian. but there was one recruit from the aristocracy, lord edward fitzgerald, son of the duke of leinster, fired, like lafayette, with the enthusiasm of liberty, but distinguished and made an object of sentimental interest only by his rank and by his tragical end. the outbreak was now imminent. grattan, with his few steadfast adherents, seceded from parliament, where he had better have stayed to moderate as far as he could the fury of repression. this he owed to the country on which he had imposed the constitution of , a system fraught, as he might have seen, with disruption and capable of being worked only as it had been worked, by castle influence. the bond of loyalty to england, which was strong in his own breast, he assumed to be general. neither he nor, with reverence be it said, burke, excellent as the general principles of both might be, correctly read the situation, which was one of a very special kind. burke's letter to sir hercules langrishe on the subject of religious emancipation is accounted one of the greatest of his works. but fitzgibbon might with reason have replied to it that of the real irish problem it offered no practical solution. it did not show how a national parliament of ireland, with a great catholic majority, and uncontrolled by castle patronage and influence, to which reform would have put an end, could be kept in secure harmony with the parliament of great britain. burke, however, now and then, glances timidly at the policy of union. grattan could think of nothing but his two parliaments linked by eternal affection. after grattan's secession, the oligarchy closed its ranks, and the parliament thenceforth went thoroughly with the government, or even beyond it, in the policy of repression. the castle understood its danger. in irish conspiracies the informer is never lacking. besides, there were catholics, who though patriots, wishing to avert civil war, communicated with the government, and furnished it with information for that purpose. among these may fairly be numbered arthur o'leary, on whose connection with the government and acceptance of a small pension from it, lately revealed, prejudice pounces as a proof that the best reputed and most eminent of irish liberals was a rogue. arthur o'leary wrote well, and the spirit of his writings was thoroughly liberal as well as loyal. nothing seems to have been expected of him beyond general information of catholic tendencies and movements such as one who desired to avert civil war might honestly give. by its secret intelligence the government was enabled at a critical moment to seize some of the leaders of the conspiracy, while lord edward fitzgerald met his death in resisting arrest. the fire, smouldering everywhere, burst into a flame in armagh, a protestant district into which catholics had intruded by outbidding protestant holders of farms whose leases had expired. the protestants, banding together under the name of peep o'day boys, proceeded to oust the intruders, burning some of their houses. the catholics combined for mutual protection under the name of defenders. outrages were committed on both sides. in a pitched battle, on a small scale, called the battle of the diamond, the catholics were worsted and a number of them were killed. many catholics were driven from their homes, and the fugitives spread through the country the belief that the protestants were bent on extermination. the united irishmen, disciples of tom paine, cared nothing for the quarrels of sects. but disaffection of any kind was grist to their revolutionary mill. they coalesced with defenderism, and by superior intelligence got control of the movement, which they organized as an expectant army of revolution. their task was made easy by the habits of conspiracy formed among the peasantry in the agrarian war. there were secret oaths, passwords, military gradations of command. there were even reviews under pretence of digging the potatoes of patriots who were in prison. everything was ready for a rising as soon as french succour should appear. all the blacksmiths were making pike-heads, the young trees were being everywhere cut down for the shafts. muskets in plenty would come with the auxiliary army from france. wolfe tone had visited paris, of which in its revolutionary phase he gives a lively picture, and received a promise of aid; hoche, with whom he had an interview, being eager for the enterprise. among the people generally the rebellion was agrarian rather than religious, religious only as the catholic peasantry believed that they saw in protestantism a badge of general enmity. but that belief made the war between the sects internecine. it does not appear that any but a few of the lowest and coarsest of the priesthood took an active part in the rebellion. the order, as a whole, could hardly look with pleasure for the conquest of ireland by an atheist revolution. the french, in fact, had they become masters of ireland for a time, would probably in the end have found themselves there, as in spain, confronted by a hostile priesthood carrying with it the people. in the extremity of danger, surrounded by gathering rebellion, castle government had now to strike or fall. it struck, practically proclaiming martial law. but it was without the only safe means of military repression. of regular soldiers it had few. those few behaved well. some of them earned by their conduct the blessings of the people. but in the main repression had to be entrusted to yeomanry and fencibles, little controlled by discipline, and infected, as a militia is always apt to be, and as in this case they were in an extreme degree, by the passions of the hour. these men, sent forth to disarm the people, in their search for concealed arms burned, slew, pitch-capped, flogged without stint or mercy, and turned a great district of the north and midland into a hell. the people retaliated with equal atrocity where they had the power. a large number of suspects were arbitrarily shipped on board the fleet, where it was believed they helped by their infection to beget the mutiny at the nore. lord moira, a patriot irish nobleman, protested vehemently in the house of lords, but his exaggeration and partiality broke the force of his appeal. to control the excesses of repression and restore military discipline, the gallant abercrombie was put in command; but he lost his self-control, reviled the troops in an imprudent manifesto, broke with the government, and left matters worse than they had been before. in ulster, fraternities of strong protestants, which had existed informally since , were now formally organized as orange lodges. they embodied an intensely sectarian feeling and committed their share of outrages, but they lent the government powerful aid. conspicuous among the ruthless agents of repression was the head of the beresfords, whose riding-house at dublin was a daily scene of torture. conspicuous also was judkin fitzgerald, the field of whose operations was tipperary. fitzgerald's apologists plead that his policy was successful. it might be so, but the cause of public order does not gain in the end by outraging that law of natural justice on respect for which public order must ultimately depend. fitzgerald, savagely flogging a man on whom he had found a note in the french language, which not knowing french himself he could not read, was presently assured by one who could read the note that it was perfectly harmless. he nevertheless continued the torture of the lash till the victim nearly expired. such a case seems to defy apology. fitzgerald, however, was not only protected from question by an act of indemnity, but rewarded with a title. on both sides all hearts were fired with the satanic madness of civil war. french aid had been promised. to the unspeakable discredit of the british admiralty, it came. an expedition which had long been in preparation under hoche was allowed to sail from brest and unopposed to make the coast of ireland at bantry bay. a storm which prevented a landing, the bad seamanship of the french, whose naval service had been shattered by the revolution, and the separation of the frigate which had the general on board from the rest of the fleet, saved ireland from temporary conquest and great britain from the consequences of that disaster. it is remarkable that the peasantry in the neighbourhood of bantry bay received the soldiers of the government well and shared their potatoes with them. was this loyalty or fear? had the french landed, would the potatoes have been still more hospitably shared? an expedition afterwards fitted out in holland, now a vassal of france, at the very crisis of the mutiny at the nore, was weatherbound till the mutiny was over and was then crushed by duncan at camperdown. a small french force under humbert afterwards landed, and at castlebar put the militia to shameful flight. but it was presently surrounded by superior numbers and forced to surrender. there were still some faint demonstrations, in one of which the arch-enemy of england, wolfe tone, met his doom. he imprudently betrayed his identity to his captors. his french commission availed him not. he escaped the gallows by suicide. he was a genuine enthusiast, and he was at all events on one of the only two practicable lines of action. separation was the sole alternative to union. but had tone got the upper hand, with his fanaticism and a savage peasantry thirsting for protestant and english blood at his back, the political millennium in ireland, as in france, would have opened with a reign of terror. disappointed of aid from france, the rebellion took the field by itself. there was a great rising in wexford, headed by father murphy, a fighting priest, a compound of wat tyler and john ball, who gave himself out as a supernatural personage, and persuaded the people that he could catch bullets in his hands. the father showed a natural genius for war. his peasants fought desperately, and the irish pike proved a formidable weapon in their hands. the rebels gained one or two successes in the field, and took the city of wexford. they perpetrated fiendish cruelties. at scullabogue they burned or butchered a barn full of protestants. at wexford they dragged their prisoners to the bridge, stripped them naked, hoisted them up on the points of their pikes, and threw them into the river. at vinegar hill, a name of ghastly memory, the rebel headquarters, a batch of protestants was every day brought out after a mock trial to be massacred. the people being here under priestly leadership, the character of a religious crusade was given to their warfare, and every protestant was a mark for their murderous fury. on the other hand, protestants in the north who at the outset had been revolutionary, seeing the rebellion assume the character of a catholic crusade, passed to the side of government and repression. one or two men of property were forced into leadership by the rebels; otherwise property was entirely on the side of the government. after scullabogue, wexford, and vinegar hill, there could not fail to be a terrible outpouring of vengeance. it came in full measure, as we learn from the correspondence of cornwallis, a soldier of high distinction and character, who was sent in place of camden as viceroy to close the scene. he is much afraid, he says, that any man in a brown coat who is found within several miles of the field of action is butchered without discrimination. the irish militia, he says, are totally without discipline, contemptible before the enemy when any serious resistance is made to them, but ferocious and cruel in the extreme when any poor wretches either with or without arms come within their power. in short, murder appears their favourite pastime. the conversation of the principal persons of the country all tends to encourage the system of blood, and the conversation even at his own table, where he does all he can to prevent it, always turns on shooting, burning, hanging. if a priest has been put to death, the greatest joy is expressed by the whole company. "who fears to speak of ' ?" said a patriot bard in other days. the answer is, every one who is not utterly lost to reason and humanity. these militia men, it is to be borne in mind, were irish, not english, and their murderous enmity was the enmity of one section of ireland to another. xii pitt now resolved on a legislative union of ireland with england and scotland, thus reverting to the policy of the commonwealth. but union had been the ideal of molyneux, and since the revolution of it had found many advocates, among them adam smith. an irish government of sectarian ascendancy and oligarchy combined, controlled, and held in precarious subordination to the government of great britain by intrigue and corruption, had ended in murderous and ruinous conflict of political parties, social classes, and religious sects. in its realm people had been refusing to eat pork because the swine might have fed on human flesh. foreign invasion had been invited. it had come, and only by repeated miracles had great britain as well as ireland been saved in the last extremity of peril. nor had that peril ceased. it was much to be deplored that pitt could not, like cromwell and the council of state, effect the union by simply calling representatives of ireland to the parliament at westminster. situated as pitt was, he had, as castlereagh laconically put it, "to buy the fee simple of irish corruption." the price he paid was compensation in money to the owners of pocket boroughs and profuse grants of peerages. the process was not edifying. cornwallis, who had come at once to put an end to havoc and to carry the union, having a strict sense of honour, might well recoil from his task. bribery with money has not been brought home to the government, though in one case at least it has been brought home to the opposition. from that stain the union is free. a pretty large sum was needed to tune the press and for campaign expenses. pocket boroughs in those days were deemed property, and had been so treated in pitt's reform bill for england. the compensation paid the owners of boroughs was not above the market price, and it was paid to the opponents as well as to the supporters of the union; lord downshire, the most powerful opponent of the union, as it happened, receiving the largest sum of all. foster, who made the greatest speech in parliament against the union, received seventy-five hundred pounds for his half share of a pocket borough. in the absence of such compensation the owners of pocket boroughs and the purchasers of seats for them would have been virtually bribed by their private interest apart from any political consideration to oppose the bill. something was needed to induce a powerful and selfish oligarchy to part with the field of its ascendancy and its ambition. for that purpose the lavish creation of peerages was used. it cost the nation nothing, and titles which had been openly used as bribes were not capable of much degradation. pitt is upbraided for not having taken the sense of the nation by means of a general election. the sense of a nation of which at least three-quarters were not eligible to parliament! the sense of the proprietors of nomination boroughs on the question of depriving them of their property and its influence! the sense of a nation, the passions of which had not had time to cool after a furious civil war, a civil war the ashes of which still fiercely glowed and might by the excitement of a general election have been fanned again into a flame! it is ever to be lamented that the thing could not have been done in a simpler and less questionable way. but it had to be done. venality was venal, and, its consent being necessary to the salvation of the state, had to be bought. the purity of pitt's motives or of those of his colleagues cannot be questioned. the idea that he had provoked rebellion to make way for union is a slander which only political frenzy could fabricate or believe. what was the feeling in ireland at large it is very hard to determine. there were addresses and declarations on both sides, but we cannot tell how they were got up. cornwallis made a canvassing tour. his opinion at first was that dublin was furiously opposed but the rest of the country was favourable. this estimate changed as the struggle went on. dublin, of course, was the centre of excitement. at the outset it was the scene of a riot. the capital could not like to lose the seat of government and the social centre; nor could the irish bar like the transfer of the supreme jurisdiction to westminster, or the severance of the parliamentary from the forensic career; the two, while parliament sat in dublin, having been habitually, and often brilliantly, combined. cork, on the other hand, was flattered with the prospect of becoming a second glasgow. it seems strange that the orangemen should then have been against the union, of which they have since been the staunchest supporters. but they no doubt scented the approach, with the union, of catholic emancipation. the catholic hierarchy, headed by archbishop troy, was strongly for the union, and unquestionably drew with it a large following both of clergy and laity. the hope was undoubtedly held out of catholic emancipation, possibly accompanied by a provision for the catholic priesthood, as a sequel to the union; though no positive pledge was or could be given. at the same time it is to be borne in mind that the general sympathy of a catholic priesthood would be with the british government as the chief antagonist of an atheist france. the terrible tension of ' had probably been followed in many quarters by collapse and readiness to acquiesce in anything that could hold out to life and property the protection of a strong government. the "annual register" for says that at the first election of irish members to the united parliament no supporter of the union lost his election or was even upbraided on that account; that in the county of dublin alone did a candidate think his opposition to the union such a claim to popular favour as to make it worth his while to allude to it; and that some of the largest and most independent counties returned strong supporters of the union. cornwallis reports that in dublin, the chief centre of opposition, when at last the royal assent was given to the bill, not a murmur was heard nor, as he believed, was there any expression of ill-humour throughout the whole city. the established church of ireland would be willing to support a measure which, by identifying it with the english establishment, converted it from the church of a small minority into a limb of the church of a great majority, thus giving it a tenable ground of existence and a pledge of support which it fondly hoped would never fail. the campaign of opinion, at all events, was conducted on both sides with perfect freedom. there is no pretence for alleging that the union was carried by military force. the affair at dublin was a street riot, for the repression of which it was necessary to call in the troops. nothing like military terrorism in fact is alleged. twelve months before the passing of the union, and in the middle of the struggle, cornwallis said that "the force remaining in ireland was sufficient to maintain peace, totally inadequate to repel foreign invasion." there were historic debates in the irish parliament. grand speeches were made in the nationalist and patriotic vein by opponents of the union. grattan, the author of the constitution of , came in his volunteer uniform to bedew its hearse with his oratoric tears. the dramatic effect was enhanced by the bodily infirmity of the great patriot and orator, which obliged him to speak sitting. plunket put forth to the utmost those powers of debate which led lord russell to pronounce him of all the many speakers whom he had heard the most convincing. foster produced a profound effect by his mastery of commercial and financial detail, though in this part of the field he had to contend with the supreme and unclouded judgment of adam smith left on record in favour of union. as strong an argument as any was that ireland would be in danger of losing her leading men, who would be drawn away to england. but absenteeism was already rife, and was likely to be in the main diminished rather than increased by any measure which made ireland a happier abode. to the spirit of nationality telling appeals could not fail to be made; but to what the nationality amounted, whether it was nominal or real, of the heart or merely of local boundary, had with terrible clearness appeared. in the speeches of the opposition there seems to have been much more of political argument of a general kind and of patriotic sentiment than of reference to the actual working of the constitution of and the consequences to which it had led. of all the opponents of the union on the high patriotic ground, the most fervid was plunket. "for my own part," he exclaimed, "i will resist it to the last gasp of my existence, and with the last drop of my blood, and when i feel the hour of my dissolution approaching i will, like the father of hannibal, take my children to the altar and swear them to eternal hostility against the invaders of their country's freedom." it is to be hoped that plunket's children, if they took the oath, found absolution; for the father soon afterwards, sitting in the united parliament of which he was a distinguished member, had so far changed his sentiments as to say of the union; "as an irishman i opposed that union; as an irishman i avow that i did so openly and boldly, nor am i now ashamed of what i then did. but though in my resistance to it i had been prepared to go the length of any man, i am now equally prepared to do all in my power to render it close and indissoluble. one of the apprehensions on which my opposition was founded, i am happy to say, has been disappointed by the event. i had been afraid that the interest of ireland, on the abolition of her separate legislature, would come to be discussed in a hostile parliament. but i can now state--and i wish when i speak that i could be heard by the whole of ireland--that during the time that i have sat in the united parliament i have found every question that related to the interests or security of that country entertained with indulgence and treated with the most deliberate regard." grattan too sat in the united parliament enjoying a nestorian dignity and at first, parliamentary reformer though he was, for a nomination borough. he voted for one of those measures of coercion, the necessity for which unhappily soon made itself felt. the most telling speech of all against union in the irish parliament was that of foster; and foster too sat in the united parliament, was reconciled to pitt, was by him made chancellor of the irish exchequer, and became a peer of the united kingdom. the cause of the union in debate was pleaded by clare and castlereagh, inferior to their opponents in eloquence, though clare was a very formidable speaker as well as a very strong man. through the british parliament the union was carried by overwhelming majorities, though opposed by grey, who afterwards, as prime minister, became its firm upholder, and by sheridan, far less sage than brilliant, while fox refused to attend the debates, throwing out a hint that he preferred something in the way of federation; what, he did not say. in the irish parliament at first the measure was defeated. it was carried at length by dead-lift effort on the part of clare and castlereagh, who, leading for the government, did unquestionably make unlimited and by no means scrupulous use of such expedients as in those days were more freely employed by governments to push vital measures through the house. that such expedients should have prevailed is to be deplored as a stain on the origin of the union. at the same time it proves the rottenness of the assembly then on trial for its life. nor should it be forgotten that on the side of opposition to the union were arrayed purely local and personal interests not more respectable in themselves than were the methods by which their resistance was overcome. let irish patriots, when they bewail the extinction of the independent parliament of ireland, remember that its last days had been marked by eager support of the most ruthless and sanguinary measures of repression. no serious exception appears to have been taken to the political bargain which gave ireland one hundred representatives in the house of commons and thirty-two representatives, including four bishops sitting by rotation, in the house of lords. the party system has never been constitutionally recognized, and it was not observed that the representative peers, elected by their own order, would always be tory, to the total exclusion of the other party. about the fiscal bargain questions are raised. these affect not the political issue. viceroyalty, with castle executive, was retained. this may be said to be a relic of dependence. but the need of a separate administration unfortunately has never ceased. when, in , it was moved to abolish the lord-lieutenancy, ireland protested, and in deference to her veto the measure was withdrawn. ireland retained her separate judiciary and for some time her separate department of finance. it was in regard to the religious question that the union was for the time a failure. pitt kept his word. he proposed catholic emancipation to his cabinet and pressed it on the king. he was foiled by the rogue and sycophant wedderburn, who for his personal ends played on the king's morbid conscience and was aided in his work by the influence of two archbishops, through whom a state church once more rendered its political service to the nation. pitt paid the debt of honour by resignation. it is said that if he had persevered he would have prevailed, and the king would have submitted, as he did in other cases, such as the acknowledgment of american independence, the dismissal of thurlow, the permission to lord malmesbury to treat with france, the recall of the duke of york, and the admission of fox to the government. but not one of these was a case of religious conscience, nor in one of them had the king a great body of national sentiment on his side, as he had, and knew that he had, in his resistance to catholic emancipation. he afterwards turned out the grenville ministry, which proposed to admit catholics to military command, and in so doing was manifestly sustained by the nation. after all, pitt must have known best what could be done with the king. that his resignation was less of a sacrifice, because he thus escaped the necessity of treating for peace with france, is conjecture, and does not affect the actual propriety of his course. the king having in consequence of the excitement been threatened with a recurrence of his malady, pitt waived the catholic question for the king's lifetime, and, when called by the extreme need of the country, returned to power on that understanding. he would have done little good, and not have gratified the nation by driving the king mad and transferring the government in the midst of the great war to the prince of wales as regent and the revellers of carlton house. in criticising the action of public men at this period, we must always bear in mind the overmastering exigencies of the war. pitt, though he waived his principle on the subject of catholic emancipation, never renounced it. it passed to his pupil canning, and within a generation prevailed. the only concession made at this time to the catholics was the endowment of maynooth as a seminary for the catholic priesthood of ireland, cut off from the seminaries of the continent by the war. since the union, there has been much that was deplorable in the state of ireland and in the relations of the two islands, the main source of which, however, as will presently appear, was not political. there has been a hateful series of coercion acts. but there have been no tudor hostings; there has been no ; no ; no . no fleet of an invader has anchored in bantry bay. belfast, once the seed-plot of revolution, has prospered and been content. two years afterwards revolution flamed up again for a moment in the abortive rising of emmet. then it died down, to break forth seriously, at least as civil war, no more. the union must be taken to have been a union in the full sense of the term, putting an end to separate identity, not merely a standing contract between two parties, each of which retained the right of enforcing the contract against the other. on this understanding parliament has acted, and is likely again to act in the case of the representation, as well as in the disestablishment of the irish church. the united kingdom cannot be hide-bound forever by the terms which, necessarily having reference to the circumstances of its formation, must, like those circumstances, have been deemed liable to change. it is unfortunate that no common name for the united nationality could be found. "british" excludes the irish, "english" both the irish and the scotch, and separatist sentiment is fostered by the retention of the old national name. victory over the french revolution and napoleon was accompanied by an ascendancy of toryism, which kept liverpool at the head of the government for fourteen years. in this both islands fared alike. but the cabinet was divided on the subject of catholic emancipation. plunket, still a liberal though now a unionist, showed his power as a debater in the catholic cause. castlereagh and canning were on the liberal side. emancipation was carried in the commons, thrown out in the lords, while old eldon drank to the thirty-nine peers who had saved the thirty-nine articles, little thinking how soon he was to be smitten in the house of his friends. on liverpool's death there were a few months of canning and a brief interlude of goodrich. then power reverted to the tory and anti-catholic section of the liverpool combination, at the head of which were wellington and peel. peel, in whom hereditary toryism was combined with natural openness of mind and practical sagacity, as well as with supreme skill in administration, seemed specially sent to carry england safely by the bridge of conservatism over the gulf between the old era and the new. he had been one of the anti-catholic section of the liverpool government, and in that character had been elected to parliament by the clerical and then protestant university of oxford. but he had administered ireland for six years; had seen the state of things there; had been impressed and shown symptoms of a change of sentiment. he dealt liberally with catholics in the matter of patronage. he and wellington now acquiesced in the relief of the dissenters by the repeal of the test and corporation acts. probably they were hesitating on the brink of catholic emancipation when they were impelled by a new force. the catholic cause had found for itself a first-rate leader, organizer, and orator, daniel o'connell. xiii daniel o'connell, whose figure fills the next page in irish history, was a dublin barrister who, having gained a unique reputation as a skilful or more than skilful winner of verdicts, passed from the forensic to the political field. he was of pure irish blood, irish in physiognomy, typically irish in character. nature had endowed him with all the gifts of a popular leader, bodily as well as mental; for he had a voice of unrivalled power and compass as well as extraordinary tact in dealing with the masses and skill in the conduct of agitation. his oratory was such as never failed to tell with his irish audience, while its violent exaggeration, its disregard of truth and offensiveness of expression too often excited the just resentment of those whom he assailed and repelled all moderate and right-minded men. at the same time he knew how to play the courtier, as he showed when george iv. visited ireland. he entered public life without the blessing of the veteran grattan, who accused him of setting afloat the bad passions of the people, venting calumny against great britain, and making politics a trade. that his motives were mixed is probable. but of his irish patriotism there could be no doubt. o'connell was a most devout catholic, enjoyed the hearty confidence of the priesthood, and was able to make full use of its influence in calling out and marshalling the people. he thus opened a new era in the history of irish agitation. in return, he supported the priesthood in its extreme pretensions; notably in defeating a proposal for the admission of catholics to political power subject to securities for the loyalty of their church which conflicted with high priestly pretensions, though it had been favourably entertained at rome. it was on this point that he and grattan broke. o'connell, with the aid of his priestly fuglemen, formed a great catholic association to overawe the government. on the other side, the orangemen, now heartily unionist, rushed to arms. a fierce conflict ensued in ireland, with some danger to the peace. in the course of it the duke of york, heir presumptive to the crown, electrified the country and filled the heart of eldon and true blue protestantism with joy by a solemn declaration that if he became king he would veto catholic emancipation. after trying his power by carrying some elections, o'connell determined to bring the conflict to a head by himself standing for parliament in defiance of the law by which, as a catholic, he was excluded. he carried his election for clare against the candidate of the gentry by the votes of the catholic peasantry, the forty-shilling freeholders; the influence of the church with its sacraments being openly employed in his support. peel and wellington now gave way and carried the admission of the catholics to parliament, only tempering the shock to their tory supporters by the abolition of the forty-shilling freehold; no great blow to liberty, since the only question was whether the forty-shilling freeholder should be the tool of the landlord or of the priest. the refusal to o'connell of the rank of king's counsel, to which he had become eligible, was defended as another sop to the tories; but it really was a mark of resentment, very unwise as well as undignified, though partly excused by the offensiveness of o'connell's bearing and language. it may have been unwillingness to confess change of opinion that led wellington and peel to ascribe the concession of catholic emancipation to fear of civil war. o'connell could not have put into the field any force capable of making head against the forces of the government, ulster, the orangemen, and the irish gentry. he was himself utterly unwarlike, and there was no foreign power to come to his aid. the measure was a concession of right demanded not only by the irish catholics themselves, but by a large party in england which included the best intelligence of the country and the most powerful organs of the press, without the help of which it could not have been carried. unhappily it was made to appear as a concession of fear. o'connell's victory made him the idol and the master of catholic ireland. a large revenue, called his "rent," was thenceforth raised for him by annual subscription. on this his enemies did not fail to reflect. he defended it as the necessary compensation for the sacrifice of a large professional income to the service of the country. at his ancestral mansion of darrynane, on the wild, thoroughly celtic, and erse-speaking coast of kerry, the "liberator" held a rustic court profusely hospitable, amidst a circle of devoted adherents, with an open table at which as many as thirty guests were sometimes seated; thus presenting probably the nearest possible counterpart of the head of a great sept in the tribal days. to darrynane a pilgrimage was made by montalembert, who fondly hoped that he had found in its master that union of devotion to the church with liberty which was the ideal of the liberal catholic school. would catholic emancipation pacify ireland? its authors expected that it would. even macaulay appears to think that if the popular religion of ireland had been treated at the union as the popular religion of scotland was treated, all in ireland, as in scotland, might have been well. the result was disappointing. the irish cotter had voted and shouted for catholic emancipation at the bidding of the priests and the platform; but what he wanted and hoped to get by a revolution of any kind was, not so much political or religious change, as more oats and potatoes. his real grievances were hunger and nakedness. to afford those myriads a treacherous food, the behest of nature had been too much disregarded; lands destined for pasture had been turned into potato and oat plots. the millions, reduced to an animal existence, had gone on multiplying with animal recklessness. the increase was greater since rebellion and devastation were at an end. in this sense alone the consequences of the union may be said to have been evil. the priest enjoined marriage on moral grounds, perhaps not without an eye to fees. between and population increased by three millions. more than ever, the homes were filthy hovels shared with swine, the beds litters of dirty straw, the dresses rags, the food the potato, while there was frequent dearth and sometimes famine. eviction increased, since, the forty-shilling freehold franchise having been abolished, the landlord cared no longer to multiply holdings for the sake of votes. the land system, with its tiers of middlemen, was as cruel as ever. tithe, the most odious of all imposts, was still collected in the most odious manner. as a consequence, peasant ireland was still the scene of a vast agrarian war waged by a starving people against the landlord and the tithe-proctor. arson, murder, carding and mutilation of middlemen and tithe-proctors were rife. victims leaping from the windows of their burning houses were caught on pitchforks. the nation was undergoing a baptism of lawlessness and savagery. all the peasants were in the league of crime and screened the assassin. law was powerless. prosecution was hopeless. murder was committed in open day and before a number of witnesses, all of whom, if brought into court, would perjure themselves in the common cause. a deep impression had been made upon peel by the horrors of the agrarian war. he had been particularly moved by a case showing the transcendent height which social passion had attained. a party of whiteboys entered a house in which there were the man whom they came to murder, his wife, and their little girl. the man was in a room on the ground floor. his wife and their little girl were in a room above, with a closet, through a hole in the door of which the room could be seen. the woman heard the whiteboys enter and knew their errand. she put the child into the closet, saying to her, "they are murdering your father below, then they will come up and murder me. mind you look well at them and swear to them when you see them in court." the child obeyed. she looked on while her mother was murdered. she swore to the murderers in court, and they were hanged upon her evidence. the evil had reached such a height that society in ireland was almost on the point of dissolution. ordinary coercion acts, of which there had been a series, failed and the liberal government of grey was compelled to have recourse to martial law. the tide of reform, however, which began to flow in , before it ebbed, brought to ireland, besides her share in reform of the parliamentary representation, the opening of the municipal councils, which had been universally close and corrupt, and after catholic emancipation still excluded catholics. it brought commutation of tithe, a measure of immense value, far too long delayed, which shifted the burden of payment from the shoulders of the cotter to those of the landlord. it brought a poor law, cruelly needed in the midst of multiplying evictions. furthermore, it brought in - the momentous gift of public education, national and undenominational, in the inauguration of which the anglican primate, archbishop whateley, reconciling his advanced liberalism with his anomalous position, took a leading part. ireland thus in national education preceded england by many years. whateley had fellow-workers in liberal catholics, ecclesiastical as well as lay, but the weight of roman authority and influence was, as it always has been, and still is, against free education. the state church of the minority succeeded in repelling attack; but it underwent some internal reform, including the suppression of ten superfluous bishoprics; a sacrilegious act of the state which helped to give birth to sacerdotal reaction at oxford. after the abolition of the tithe-proctor, the state church had become less odious to the people. the castle administration was growing more liberal. lords-lieutenant tried to be fair in distribution of patronage. a liberal secretary, a man of mark, drummond, warned the irish landlords that property had its duties as well as its rights. peel, as irish secretary, had laid the foundation of the irish constabulary, that noble force of law and order which combines independent intelligence with the discipline of the regular soldier. drummond rendered a most important service by completing the institution. the irish constabulary has naturally in the main been composed of protestants. but the catholic policeman in ireland has in a marked way resisted seditious influence and been true to the government and his duty. the irishman follows his commander. attempts to seduce irish soldiers from fidelity to the colours seem to have generally failed. o'connell, with his following, helped to carry the parliamentary reform bill of , which, in fact, could not have been carried without their vote. he lent a general though not hearty or unwavering support to the whig ministry of grey, which, though it paid him some deference, was too strong to be under his control. but on the passing of a drastic coercion bill directed against political as well as agrarian disturbance, there was an angry rupture, and the whigs became "base, bloody, and brutal," like all others who crossed o'connell's will. o'connell was not handsomely treated. his eminence as a lawyer, combined with his influence in ireland, entitled him to a high place. but his blustering violence, his unmeasured vituperation, his venomous abuse of england, and the changefulness of his moods made him a dangerous ally for any government. cobden said, "o'connell always treated me with friendly attention, but i never shook hands with him or faced his smile without a feeling of insecurity; and as for trusting him on any public question where his vanity or passions might interpose, i should have as soon thought of an alliance with an ashantee chief." the melbourne and russell ministry was weak and fain to lean on o'connell with his irish brigade for support and to allow him a voice in appointments, though it suffered greatly in english eyes by the alliance. o'connell shouted with joy when that government was snatched from death and restored to a feeble existence by the refusal of the queen to change her bed-chamber women on peel's demand. but the advent of peel to power, with a strong government, filled him with rage and despair. the two men had quarrelled in ireland, a challenge had passed between them, and peel was the object of o'connell's bitterest hatred. in principle the new government was hostile to o'connell, and its strength placed it wholly beyond his influence. his power was threatened with extinction. his rent, moreover, since there had been a lull in agitation, was rapidly falling off, and he was in pecuniary distress. the last, some think, was not his least urgent motive for embarking in another agitation. this time it was for a repeal of the union, of which he had before only thrown out fitful hints. he now raised the standard of repeal and issued his mandate to the priesthood to call out the peasantry in that cause. the priesthood joyfully obeyed. monster meetings were held and were addressed by o'connell in his most violent strain, with ostensible respect for constitutional methods, but with constant appeals to national hatred and suggestions of military force. the priests consecrated the meetings and the sentiments, celebrating mass on the grounds. it is surely idle to contend that a priesthood acting thus and having its centre in rome is only a christian ministry, not a power of political disturbance. an outbreak appeared to be at hand, when the government took direct issue with the agitator by proclaiming a monster meeting which he had appointed to be held at clontarf; a scene suggestive of military force as it had been the field of the great irish victory. o'connell, who, if he was not pacific, was unwarlike, shrank from the conflict and called off the meeting. the government followed up the blow by indicting the agitator for sedition. there was a monster trial at dublin, in the course of which, to preserve the irish character of the scene, the attorney-general challenged the counsel on the other side to a duel. o'connell was found guilty, but the verdict was afterwards quashed on appeal to the house of lords, for irregularity in the panel, by the judgment of three whigs against one tory and the independent brougham, though it had been upheld by seven of the nine judges to whom the case was referred. o'connell was set free. but the spell of his ascendancy had been broken. by shrinking from the appeal to force he had forfeited the respect of the fighting section of his party. the conservative government was invincibly strong. o'connell's health and physical force had broken down. thus ended the great liberator's career. he bequeathed his body to ireland and his heart to rome. there can be no question about his devotion to either, whatever motives may have mingled with his devotion to ireland. whether he did more good to the irish cause by his patriotism than harm by the passions which he excited and the enmities he created, is a question about which different opinions have been formed. his blind attachment to the church, had he been victorious, would have put ireland under the control of a reactionary priesthood. for some time before his death, o'connell, by shrinking from force, had been losing the hearts and the adherence of a party of force on his own side called "young ireland," a set of young men, some highly gifted as journalists or poets, whose aim was not repeal but national independence, and who in their organ, _the nation_, preached rebellion and revelled in the memory of ' . peel, victorious, graced his victory by concession, to which indeed he was heartily inclined. he saw that "ireland was his difficulty," and wanted to treat the problem as liberally as his following of protestants and squires would let him. he increased the grant to maynooth, thereby constraining gladstone, by way of satisfaction to his former self, to go through the form of resignation. he enabled the catholic church freely to receive charitable bequests. not venturing to throw open the fellowships and scholarships of trinity college to the catholics, he founded for their special benefit three undenominational colleges at belfast, cork, and galway, forming together a university with power of granting degrees. this measure, excellent in its way, was but a partial success. the priesthood looked with invincible suspicion on free science, while catholic professors of science, whom the church might have trusted, were hardly to be found. but peel touched the real root of the evil, and pointed to effective reform, when, in , he issued a commission of inquiry into land occupancy in ireland and the condition of the peasant occupants. the commission reported that the agricultural labourer of ireland continued to suffer the greatest privations and hardships; that he was still dependent upon casual and precarious employment for subsistence; that he was still badly housed, badly clothed, and badly fed; and that he was undergoing sufferings greater than those of the people of any other country in europe. some tentative motions followed, but there had scarcely been time for the report of the commission to work, when the sentence of nature was pronounced with awful distinctness in the form of a great famine with pestilence in its train. the population of ireland at this time was probably double that which the island could happily bear. a precarious subsistence was afforded by the potato, which, always treacherous, now suddenly and completely failed. peel, warned of impending calamity, at once opened the ports for the importation of grain, then grasped the occasion for the repeal of the corn laws, on the policy of which his own mind had been undergoing change. his administrative power and that of his colleagues would probably have done all that was possible to meet and mitigate the disaster. but at the critical moment his government was struck down by a conspiracy of russell and the whigs with the ire of the corn law squires and the vengeful ambition of disraeli. russell, who took his place, was far more an adept in party strategy than a master of practical administration. there ensued a heartrending scene, the climax of seven centuries of evil accident, maladministration, and irish woe. "famine advances on us with giant strides," wrote an official in the august of . "towards the end of august," says mr. t. p. o'connor, "the calamity began to be universal and its symptoms to be seen. some of the people rushed into the towns, others wandered along the highroads in the vague hope of food. they plucked turnips from the fields, were glad to live for weeks on a single meal of cabbage a day, feasted on the dead bodies of horses and asses and dogs. there was a story of a mother eating the limbs of her dead child. dead bodies were discovered with grass in their mouths and in their bowels; weeds were sought after with desperate eagerness; seaweed was greedily devoured; so were diseased cattle and diseased potatoes. despair fell on all hearts and faces. the ties of kindred in some cases failed, parents neglecting their children and children turning out their aged parents. on the other hand, there were stories of parents dying of starvation to save a small store for their children. the workhouses, usually shunned, were overcrowded. in one, three thousand persons sought relief in a single day. they crowded even into the jails. driven from the workhouses, people began to die by the roadside or alone in their despair within their cabins. roads and streets were strewn with corpses. one inspector buried one hundred and forty bodies found on the highway. the scenes inside the cabins were even more horrible; husbands lay for a week in the same hovels with the bodies of their wives and children. the decencies of burial were no longer observed. then came the plague, attacking bodies already weakened by hunger." "a terrible apathy," says an eye-witness, "hangs over the poor of skibbereen; starvation has destroyed every generous sympathy; despair has made them hardened and insensible, and they sullenly await their doom with indifference and without fear. death is in every hovel; disease and famine, its dread precursors, have fastened on the young and the old, the strong and the feeble, the mother and the infant; whole families lie together on the damp floor devoured by fever, without a human being to wet their burning lips or raise their languid heads; the husband dies by the side of the wife, and she knows not that he is beyond the reach of earthly suffering; the same rag covers festering remains of mortality and the skeleton forms of the living, who are unconscious of the horrible contiguity; rats devour the corpse, and there is no energy among the living to scare them from their horrid banquet; fathers bury their children without a sigh, and cover them in shallow graves, round which no weeping mother, no sympathizing friends are grouped; one scanty funeral is followed by another and another. without food or fuel, bed or bedding, whole families are shut up in naked hovels, dropping one by one into the arms of death."[ ] all the devices of government by relief work and in other ways to grapple with the twofold calamity were palliatives and little more. the most effective measure of relief was a vast emigration to the united states and canada, which also had its horrors. thousands, already weakened by hunger and suffering, succumbed to the hardships of the passage; another multitude died on landing. canada did all she could for the hapless strangers cast upon her shore. but ship-fever followed the fugitives, and graveyards were filled with their dead. it was reckoned that more than two hundred thousand persons died on the voyage or on arrival at their destination. few irishmen, however prejudiced against england, will deny that the people of great britain and canada showed unbounded sympathy with ireland in her affliction, and did their utmost for her relief. o'connell himself, while he criticised the measures of the government, allowed that individual humanity and charity were abundant; that the noblest generosity was evinced by multitudes of the english; and that if individual generosity could save a nation, british generosity would do it. he said that he was afraid of not finding words sufficient to express his strong and lively sense of english humanity. to charges of english indifference to irish suffering, his words are a sufficient answer. close upon the famine and pestilence came , the year of european revolution. young ireland, the party of force, did not fail to catch the flame. its organ, _the nation_, cried, "it is a death struggle now between the murderer and his victim. strike! rise, men of ireland, since providence so wills it! rise in your cities and in your fields, on your hills, in your valleys, by your dark mountain passes, by your rivers and lakes and ocean-washed shores! rise as a nation!" _the irish felon_, a journal still more advanced, was even more openly for war. but neither in city or field, on mountain or in valley, by pass or shore, did the people rise at the impassioned call. young ireland found at once that it was but a knot of literary men whose appeals to national feeling, penned as they were with vigour, might be read with sentimental pleasure but would rouse nobody to arms. o'connell's mastery of the people depended on the support of the priesthood, given in a cause originally religious to that zealous champion of the church who, dying, bequeathed his heart to rome. young ireland was more revolutionary than catholic, as the priests did not fail to perceive. the desire of political revolution, apart from agrarianism, was not strong enough to rouse the peasantry to arms, though they had learned to hate england as the supposed source of their sufferings. the people, moreover, had hardly recovered from the depression caused by the famine. young ireland however raised its flag. smith o'brien, with a small party, made a trial trip, appealing to the people of two or three places, but met with no response. a farcical encounter with the police at the house of widow cormack on the bog of boulagh, followed by the capture of smith o'brien, was the end. the sentence of death passed on the leader of the revolt was wisely commuted by the government. the famine had at least one good effect. it drew attention to the main source of the evil in ireland, which was agrarian and social, not political and religious. but now it was supposed that the mischief lay in the inability of the landlords, overwhelmed with debt, burdened with family settlements, and crushed by the demands of the poor law, to perform their duty to their tenants. to remedy this evil was created the encumbered estates court, with power to order the sale of encumbered property on the petition of the creditors and give a clear title to the purchaser. the policy seemed sound, yet the result was not good. the court cleared out the old proprietors who lacked means to do their duty; it put in their place a new class of proprietors who, having been induced to buy the land on pure speculation, felt that they had no duty to do, and who, unlike their predecessors, had no kindly tie to the people. the new owners naturally proceeded to make the most of their purchase; and the way to make the most of their purchase clearly was to sweep out the cotter tenants and throw the land into large holdings. this some of them proceeded to do, and the consequence was a period of evictions almost vying in cruelty with the famine. whole districts were cleared and relet in large holdings. cabins were being thrown down in all directions. a thousand of them were levelled in one union within a few months, and the inmates were cast out helpless, half-naked, starving, to go to the union or perish. the cabins were burned that the people might not return to them. the suffering and misery, says a reporter, attendant upon these wholesale evictions, is indescribable. the number of houseless paupers in one union is beyond his calculation. those evicted crowd neighbouring cabins and villages, and disease is necessarily generated. in april he calculates that six thousand houses have been levelled since november, and he expects five hundred more by july. wretched hovels had been pulled down, the inmates of which in a helpless state of fever and nakedness were left by the roadside for days. while inspecting a stone-breaking depot, the reporter observes one of the men take off his remnant of a pair of shoes and start across the fields. he follows him with his eye, and at a distance sees the blaze of a fire in the bog. he sends to inquire the cause of it and of the man's running from his work, and is told that the man's house had been levelled the day before, that he had erected a temporary hut, and that while his wife and children were gathering shell-fish on the beach and he was stone-breaking the bailiff fired it. this incident was one of several which made a deep impression on peel, who would probably have moved with effect had he remained in power. pages are filled with pictures of this kind. civilized europe could show nothing like it. it was almost enough to break forever the spirit of the nation, certainly to implant the bitterest memories, and here the main cause was misgovernment and bad law. relief works were no cure, nor were they in themselves very rational, since the people, unfed, half-clothed, and living in pestilential mud-holes, were really too weak to work. parliament so far interfered as to pass an act requiring forty-eight hours' notice of eviction to the relieving officers, prohibiting evictions two hours before sunset or sunrise, and on christmas day and good friday, and prohibiting the demolition of the house of a tenant about to be evicted. but this rather throws a lurid light on the state of things than effects a cure. the public even might have some reason to complain of the land-owner who recklessly cast upon the poor rates or upon public charity the human encumbrances of his land. apart from overpopulation and its effects, the irish land-law unquestionably needed reform. the people, struggling with each other for their sole means of subsistence, undertook to pay exorbitant rents, and their improvements, if they made any, became without compensation the property of the landlord. in ulster, always exceptional, there prevailed a certain measure of tenant-right, something like the english copyhold. in ireland the demand for tenant-right now began to be loudly heard. an english radical, sharman crawford, brought forward a measure in parliament, but without effect. for some years nothing effectual was done in the way of reform. palmerston, to whom power passed, though in foreign policy he dallied with revolution, was conservative, especially on social subjects, at home. "tenant's right is landlord's wrong" was his judgment on the agrarian question. on the irish side there was no leader of worth or force. patriotism was in a trance, and the chronicler of the nationalist party indignantly proclaims that the cause was betrayed by a series of low adventurers who embraced it as the way to preferment. "the most common type of irish politician," he says in his anguish, "in these days was the man who entered parliamentary life solely for the purpose of selling himself for place and salary." "this," he adds, "was the golden season, when every irishman who could scrape as much money together as would pay his election expenses was able after a while to obtain a governorship or some other of the many substantial rewards which english party leaders were able to give to their followers." the constituencies, it seems, political feeling being at a low ebb, were ready to elect the man who could bring them public pelf. of the adventurers, the worst was sadleir, who, with his set, attempted to intrigue with the peelites, and who, being a financial swindler as well as a political schemer, became bankrupt and committed suicide. so the cause of the three f's--fixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rents--made no way. english radicals in parliament stood all the time ready to move with the irish on this question or for disestablishment; but the irish members were taken up with intriguing for places for themselves, for appointments of the sons of their constituents to clerkships in somerset house, or for a government subsidy to the galway packet contract. irish writers are bound to remember that englishmen were not responsible for the choice or character of irish members. they are bound also to remember the impression which the members chosen by the irish could not fail to make on english minds. the british parliament could not justly be said to be "deaf, blind, and insolently ignorant," though it was not on the right track. it might be excused for being a little deaf and blind to the appeals of "a motley gang of as disreputable and needy adventurers as ever trafficked in the blood and tears of a nation." from the time of the union to this time there had been, and long after this time continued to be, a series of coercion acts, rendered necessary by agrarian outrage. there were thirty-two enactments of this kind between the union and . it would have been almost better, had it been possible, frankly to suspend the constitution while the true remedy was being applied. liberal leadership now devolved from palmerston on gladstone, thus bringing on the political field a new and immensely powerful motive power. gladstone was in opposition. in his mind a natural, and under the party system legitimate, desire of recovering power for his party and himself perhaps mingled with a sincere though tardily formed conviction of the injustice of such an institution as the state church of a small minority in ireland. it was unfortunate that he, like peel and wellington, gave fear of irish violence as a motive for doing justice. after some premonitory hints, he, in former days the great champion of state religion, declared for disestablishment. his case was overwhelmingly strong. faint and feeble were the arguments on the other side. the institution was an anachronism, an anomaly, and a scandal. its past had been miserable. it had made no converts; it had made many rebels. by its tests and its intolerance it had divided the protestant interest, sending many a presbyterian across the sea to fight for the american revolution. its ministry had been jobbed, its character defiled, by unscrupulous politicians. of late, however, it had been greatly reforming itself, and it had got rid of its tithe-proctors by the commutation of tithes. its clergy generally were now on friendly terms with the people. its last hour was by far its best. vested interests were respected in the change, and the unblest establishment glided quietly and safely into its new and happier life as a purely spiritual church. through the commons the measure passed with ease; through the lords, like other great measures of change, it was forced by fear. xiv from disestablishment of the church gladstone, now in the full swing of his liberalism, proceeded next year to reform the land system of ireland. taking his cue from ulster tenant-right, perhaps also from english copyhold, he passed an act, the first of a series which, by giving compensation for improvements and for disturbance, restricting eviction, regulating rents, and furnishing to the tenant by government loans the means of purchasing the fee, has gone far towards transferring the ownership from the landlord to the tenant. some of these measures have virtually involved confiscation, notably in the case of purchasers under the encumbered estates act, to whom full ownership had been morally guaranteed. economically, the tendency, indeed the aim, of the land acts has been to make ireland a land of peasant proprietors. the social tendency of such legislation is to the abolition of the gentry, of the value of whose leadership to a people eminently in need of leaders, gladstone, personally ignorant of ireland, might not be a competent judge. unquestionably, the relations between landlord and tenant called for reform. the appropriation of the tenant's improvements by the landlord was in itself plainly unjust, and the sweeping evictions yielded in cruelty only to the famine. but for overpopulation the immediate remedy was depletion. had gladstone said that the overpopulation was originally the consequence of misgovernment and repression of industry which, reducing the people to abject misery, had wrecked their self-respect and self-restraint, he would have been emphatically right, and the fact cannot be too constantly kept in mind. gladstone might also have said with truth that emigration was a mournful cure, though it transferred the emigrant to a far happier land and lot. but the overpopulation having taken place, whatever the cause, the only remedy was depletion. no expansion of manufacturing industry, commerce, or mining adequate to the absorption of the surplus population could be expected in time to meet the pressing call for relief. irishmen are sensitive on this point, but no disparagement of the irish race is implied in the recognition of the facts. overpopulation was not the fault of the people, but their misfortune. there has been a very large migration of the irish into england and scotland as well as into the colonies and the united states. gladstone's measure, however, fell short of irish expectation, which was the three f's: fixity of tenure; fair rent; freedom of sale. a land war presently broke out and became combined with a struggle nominally for home rule, really for separation from great britain. the political part of this agitation, rebellion as it really was, had its main source and support, not in ireland, but in the irish population of the united states. even before the famine there had been an emigration of irish to america, so large as by its political effects to alarm american patriotism and give birth to the great know-nothing movement in defence of american nationality. the irish, being highly gregarious and unused to large farming, settled in cities. when they went out to work on railways or canals, it was in large gangs. they were drawn into the vortex of politics and became the retainers of crafty politicians, who, in secret, smiled at their simplicity. they fell almost invariably into the democratic party. the name may have attracted them; but the democratic party was that of the southern slave-owner, who was glad to enlist the irishman as his humble ally at the north and to pay him out of the treasury of political corruption. the rank and file of tammany were largely irish. o'connell had been nobly hostile to slavery. his kinsmen and admirers on the other side of the atlantic were, on the contrary, vehement supporters of slavery, and jealous assertors of their superiority over the enslaved race. such is the tendency of the newly enfranchised. in the war between the north and the south the irish in new york rose against the draft and committed great outrages, especially against the negro, among other things setting fire to a negro orphan asylum. they were ruthlessly put down. after the famine, emigration greatly increased. family affection among the irish is beautifully strong, and the members of a family who had gone before sent home their earnings to pay for the passage of those whom they had left behind. it has been reckoned that the irish have expended twenty millions sterling in this way. with a passionate love of ireland the american irish combined a still more passionate hatred of england as ireland's tyrant and oppressor. invasion and destruction of england were their dream. always addicted to secret fraternities and natural adepts in conspiracy, they formed associations for war on england; that of the fenians and that of the still more rabid and bloodthirsty clan-na-gael, whose utterances were frenzies of hatred. large sums were subscribed; irish servant-girls, with a patriotism which in any case was honourable to them, giving freely of their wages. american politicians flattered the mania, and harvested the irish vote. the war bequeathed to the fenians some regular soldiers, among others, mitchel, who had been conspicuous in the ranks of slavery. the fenians invaded canada and overthrew a corps of canadian volunteers, but retired on the approach of regulars; a bad omen for their conquest of england. conquest of england the fenians did not attempt, beyond a farcical essay at chester. but they helped greatly to kindle rebellion in ireland, to provide it with money, and to supply it with assassins. the national league, the form which, in ireland, political combined with agrarian rebellion assumed, almost ousted the law and the queen's government. it resisted the payment of rents. those who opposed its will were "boycotted," a term of which this is the origin. sometimes they were murdered. a stripling was murdered for having served a master who had come under the ban of the league. a wife was mobbed on her way home from viewing the body of her murdered husband. lord frederick cavendish, the irish secretary, going to ireland with the kindest intentions, and the permanent secretary, mr. burke, were stabbed to death in the phoenix park. mr. w. e. forster, distinguished by his humane efforts at the time of the famine, was marked for assassination. at the outbreak of the rebellion a policeman escorting fenian prisoners had been murdered at manchester, and an attempt made to blow up clerkenwell prison, where a fenian was confined, had caused the deaths of twelve people and the maiming of one hundred and twenty. gladstone had made the mistake of treating the alarm caused by those outrages as a motive for doing justice to ireland. the motive for doing justice to ireland was justice. the assassination of cavendish and burke, it is right to say, was the act, not of the land league or of any conspiracy in ireland itself, but of the invincibles, a club of frenzied irish in the united states. by the irish leaders it was heartily condemned. that it was regarded with utter abhorrence in the irish quarters of english cities was denied by observers at the time. fierce and blind were the passions of those days. to repress what was in fact a rebellion fed by foreign aid, to uphold the law, and rescue life and industry in ireland from the lawless tyranny of the national league, as it was called, the government, as was its plain duty, sought and obtained extraordinary powers, and threw a number of the leaders of the rebellion into prison. it was time, when loyal citizens were joining the league for protection in their callings, which the queen's government could no longer afford. when the irish rose against the draft in new york, the americans shot down several hundreds of them without process of law. in the british parliament the "rebel" party, as bright justly called it, had found a leader of mark in parnell, a man of great ability and force of character, incisive and forcible, if not eloquent, as a speaker. he had supplanted in the leadership mr. butt, a man of social sensibility and refinement, unfitted for an aggressive part. the agitation under parnell combined agrarianism with repeal, thus giving the political part of the movement a hold upon the people and a force and a formidable extension in ireland which by itself it had never had. the land league, becoming the national league, almost supplanted the queen's government in ireland. parnell's avowed aim was the foundation of a peasant proprietorship. neither he nor any of his party seem to have cared to study dispassionately the natural aptitudes of the country, and to satisfy themselves whether it was capable of supporting the population which disastrous events and sinister influences had accumulated upon it. their main object was political. it was, under the guise of repealing the union, to sever ireland from great britain. as an inducement to the peasantry to support them in that attempt, they offered to transfer the property in the land from the landlord to the tenant, though with a decorous promise of indemnity. mr. parnell's name was english, and he had been educated at cambridge. it was understood that his bearing towards his celtic associates was high and that he was peremptory as well as absolute in command. at his side was mr. biggar, whose great gift was unparalleled effrontery. the two undertook to coerce the british parliament by obstruction. had the british parliament been itself, it would quickly have asserted its dignity. but it was split into factions, upon the balance of which parnell and biggar were able to play. gladstone succumbed so far as by an equivocal agreement, nicknamed the kilmainham treaty, to release parnell and his associates from prison. on the other hand, the conservatives coming into power struck the flag of the law by refusing to renew the crimes act for the protection of loyalty in ireland, while they angled for the parnellite vote by casting reproach on the conduct of a lord-lieutenant who had done his duty. at the general election which followed, gladstone went to the country, appealing for a majority which should enable him to settle the irish question independently of parnell. parnell passed the word to all his partisans, both in ireland and in the irish quarters of english towns, to vote against the liberals. they obeyed. gladstone was defeated. then he who had denounced parnell as wading through rapine to dismemberment; who had proclaimed his arrest as a rebel to an applauding multitude at guildhall; who had thrown him and scores of his followers into prison; who had never given to the nation a hint of his sympathy with parnell's agitation, suddenly turned round and coalesced with parnell. he put forth an apology for his conversion founded on the hidden workings of his own mind. but what availed the workings of his own mind if all the time he was carrying on the policy of repression, misleading the nation thereby? it is true he might have pointed to the coquetting of the other party, or its leaders, with the parnellites. he might perhaps with more force have appealed to his own unquestionably sincere sympathy with all who were struggling for independence. his retrospective imagination was strong, and having changed so much he had always present to his mind the possibility of further change. it made his language sometimes capable of unforeseen interpretation. the liberal party was filled with astonishment, confusion, and dismay. but the _times_ stood fast and rallied the adherents of the union. to the steadfastness and power of this great journal the defeat of gladstone's policy and the salvation of the union were largely due. bright's refusal to cast in his lot with the "rebel" party was also a heavy blow to gladstone. the political connection between the two men had been growing close, and bright might almost be said to personify justice to ireland, as to all the weak and oppressed. if there was a man who would have protested against the sacrifice of ireland to english interests it was john bright. lord hartington presented himself with unexpected vigour as a unionist leader. gladstone was defeated in the house of commons and still more signally in the general election which followed, conservative and unionist liberals voting together on the special issue. in the contest gladstone lashed himself into fury, appealed to separatist sentiment, not in ireland only, but in scotland and wales, to the prejudice of the masses against the classes, of the uneducated against the educated and the learned professions. he was fired with enthusiasm for the right. his instincts were always high. but this did not make him a cool-headed statesman warily dealing with a question which touched the life of the commonwealth. now fortune played a strange trick. parnell, the leader and mainstay of the league, gladstone's ally, was convicted of adultery. adultery is not political, but it was too much both for the irish hierarchy and for the nonconformist conscience. parnell had to be dragged from the helm of the irish party, to which he clung with a frantic tenacity, such as proved him after all to be, though a very remarkable, hardly a very great, man. raised once more by another turn of fortune's wheel in the party game to power, gladstone again brought forward a home rule bill. this time he, with the help of the irish members, pushed the bill through the house, partly by closure, in a form already condemned by himself, giving ireland a separate parliament for her own affairs, and at the same time retaining her representation in the british parliament, with power there to vote upon all questions. the irish delegation would have played, as in fact it does now, for its own purposes, on the balance of british parties, and baffled any attempt to enforce restrictions on the doings of its own parliament which the home rule act might have imposed. the majority for the bill in the commons was forty-three, including eighty irish members. british members of the house of commons who voted for the bill probably reckoned on its being killed in the lords. killed it was there with a vengeance. gladstone appealed to the people against the lords, but in vain. thus ended in disaster his wonderful career. his speeches on home rule showed, like all his speeches, vast oratoric power, mastery of details, clearness and liveliness in exposition. but weak points are also apparent. the irish parliament cannot have been at once a sink of corruption and an institution with which it was sacrilege to interfere. the comparison of the union in criminality to the massacre of st. bartholomew must surely have made all hearers but the irish smile. upon this subject the speaker raves, and generally he forgets that the mission of reconciliation which he had undertaken would not be furthered by opening old sores. the examples of austria-hungary and the connection of norway with sweden, cited by him as proofs that a conjunction of two parliaments worked well, would be generally taken not as encouragements but as warnings. the case of norway and sweden has since become a warning indeed. the intricate machinery by which the speaker proposes to regulate the action of his two parliaments has too much the look of a speculative structure elaborated without reference to the peculiar state of ireland and the forces to be encountered there. of the force of the catholic priesthood, nothing is said. in fact, the political architect knew little of the country with which he was dealing, having been in it only for three weeks, and then not at a good point of view. thus the irish question, which the greatest among the public men of his time had failed to settle, was once more thrown into the cauldron of party strife. xv looking back on these most melancholy annals, we shall find that for their general sadness nature is as much to be blamed as man. she did well in placing at the side of a country rich in coal and minerals, destined to be manufacturing, one of pasture to supply food. she made a fatal mistake in peopling them with different and uncongenial races. war, in the age of war, and conquest of the weaker by the stronger were sure to be the result. for the form in which conquest came, the papacy has partly to answer. it used the sword of the norman adventurer in this case, as it had in the case of england, to crush religious independence and force all churches to bow to its own dominion, while, as the wails of its own partisans in the becket controversy show, it was itself unworthy of the sovereignty of christendom. of this catholics are bound to take note, as they are of the fact that the papacy at a later day, by inciting the irish to rebellion on its own account, brought upon them no small portion of their woes. the norman conquest of england had incidentally the bad effect of connecting the english monarchy with dominion in france, and thus turning the forces of the english kings from ireland, where they might have ended the agony, to a field where they were much worse than wasted. things could not have taken a more unfortunate course than that of a colony of half-civilized conquerors carrying on war with barbarous tribes of a different race and tongue, yet without force to effect the conquest. the invasion of edward bruce, with which england had nothing to do, probably did further harm by breaking up whatever there was of anglo-norman order and turning barons into chiefs of irish septs. then the reformation, a european convulsion involving ireland, and in the most unfortunate way, since it identified protestantism with conquest, catholicism with the struggle for independence, introduced another deadly source of strife, and made ireland the point of danger to england in her desperate struggle for her own existence and the salvation of the protestant cause. otherwise it seems not impossible that the tudor statesmen, with such a man as burleigh at their head, might, as they desired, have effected a peaceful settlement. civilization, not extermination, was their aim. the great celtic rebellions of shane o'neil, desmond, and tyrone, the last two catholic as well as celtic, forced upon them the policy of extermination with all its horrors. the rising and massacre of were the sequel. the vengeance of the victor and the transplantation of the vanquished to connaught were in their turn the sequel of the rising and massacre of . of these again the rebound was the catholic rising of , which, had it been successful, would have ended certainly in the dispossession, probably in the expulsion, possibly in the extermination, of the protestants. english liberty and religion were at the same time threatened by an irish catholic force encamped at hounslow. the penal law was execrable; yet hardly more execrable than the great act of attainder. in later days castle government by corruption was vile; but it was the inevitable accompaniment of the constitution of , the work of grattan and the volunteers. of the master evil of all, the state of the masses of the irish people, english protectionism must share the blame with the penal laws. but protectionism was then the delusion of the commercial world. irish patriots were not free from it. to deal with peasant distress was the immediate duty of the irish parliament, which refused even to turn its eyes that way. peasant distress, organized for rebellion by a revolutionary party at belfast, itself deriving its inspiration from the american and french revolutions, produced the rising, ever to be accursed and deplored, of . irish patriots are apt to talk of england as a single person or, rather, fiend, actuated in her dealings with ireland by hatred and contempt. england is a nation divided into parties and swayed by varying influences from time to time. the england of peel and gladstone is not the england of the georges, the stuarts, the tudors, the plantagenets, or responsible for the doings of those dynasties. in the evil days of her political history, england, if she oppressed ireland, also suffered herself. the liberal party in england did its best for ireland, and if the irish members had been what they ought to have been and done what they ought to have done, more rapid progress might have been made. as it was, ireland shared the great measures of parliamentary and municipal reform which there had been little prospect of her achieving by herself. she received the boon of national and undenominational education about a generation before england, and but for the reactionary influence of her own priesthood would have received it in full measure. the same influence maimed as far as it could the undenominational colleges. nothing could be more deplorable than the long series of coercion acts. but it was hardly to be expected that the english government should strike its flag to assassination and boycotting, or that the british nation would be moved to concession by the inroads of american conspirators combined with domestic rebellion. it was about that guizot, talking of ireland as he walked with an english guest, stopped in his walk and said with an emphatic gesture, "the conduct of england to ireland for the last thirty years has been admirable." this, before disestablishment, was too strong, as the english guest remarked at the time; but as the judgment of a cool-headed foreign statesman, whose course had not been one of unbroken harmony with england, it was likely to be more just at least to the motives of england than the invectives of o'connell. since the union there has been no , no , no . the two races and religions have lived generally at peace if not in concord with each other. the religious riots at belfast are a very mitigated relic of the religious wars of former days. reform, though its advance has been slow and fitful, has advanced. within a generation from the date of the union, catholic emancipation was carried. the tithe-proctor did not very long survive. presently the state church itself was abolished. ireland shared with great britain parliamentary reform, to which the irish oligarchy could never have consented without political and social convulsion. not long afterwards came national education, bestowed on ireland before it was bestowed on england. none of these improvements would directly touch the agrarian sore, the malignity of which was increased by the growth of the irish population under the reign of order, far beyond the power of the land to maintain it. but relief has been given to famine, and strenuous efforts have been made and are still being made to effect a radical cure. ireland has enjoyed free trade with great britain and with the whole british empire. everything has been open to irish merit and industry. millions of irish and their children have found homes in britain and the colonies. to sever ireland from great britain is still possible. to divide the irish from the british is not possible. in both islands and in all the colonies the two races are now joined and cannot be put asunder. besides, as has already been said, we must always bear it in mind that we do not see the other side of destiny's cards. suppose ireland had remained the land of the septs, would her lot certainly have been more happy? neither at the time of the norman conquest nor afterwards do the septs appear to have shown any tendency to a union such as would have given birth to a national polity and its attendant civilization. for aught we can see, they might have gone on indefinitely, like the clans of the scottish highlands, in a state of barbarous strife fatal to progress of every kind. even their common interest in the struggle against the anglo-norman invader produced no general or permanent union. the brehon law, which was their principal bond, had no executive force and was in itself barbarous, not distinguishing public from private wrong. the septs warred upon each other not less savagely than the conqueror warred upon them all. if anything like union came at last, it was not political but religious, and brought with it a fatal share in the european war of religions. nor were conquests other than anglo-norman impossible. from the highlands and islands of scotland came bodies of marauding adventurers which might have been reënforced, and, in the north at least, have prevailed. it is not certain that without the aid of john de bermingham and his anglo-normans, the septs would have got rid of edward bruce. that the interest of ireland should be regarded as subordinate to that of great britain was the principle on which british politicians acted in the days that are past. to the past this principle must now be and indeed has been decisively consigned. that union, to be good for either party, must be good for both, is the accepted basis of discussion. on the other hand, it is not to be assumed that the aspirations of irish politicians naturally bent on carving out an independent field of action for themselves, are entirely free from the bias of personal ambition or identical with a dispassionate view of the interest of the irish people. nor is it to be forgotten that ulster is a part of ireland. there are two questions, perfectly distinct and calling for separate consideration, though they have become blended in the course and for the purposes of the political agitation. one is economical, the other political. the economical question is whether ireland can support her present population. patriotic eloquence will not change her skies, or render it otherwise than cruel to induce her people to stay in a land in which they cannot make their bread. instances there may be of barren soil made by the loving industry of the small owner fruitful and capable of supporting a large population; but the industry of the small owner, though it can improve the soil, cannot alter the skies. what is to be desired is a special report, calm and expert, upon this subject. is ireland generally capable of being turned with advantage into an arable country? can wheat or grain of any kind be profitably raised there in face of the competition of the great grain-growing countries such as that now opened, and bidding fair to be opened over a much larger area, in the canadian northwest? the small farmer to live must have something to sell. is there reason to look in any other direction than farming for a speedy extension of irish industries such as would provide bread sufficient for the population? is the water-power of ireland, now that electricity has been developed, likely to do what has been done for england by coal? is the shipping trade, for which the irishman has had little opportunity of showing a turn, likely to increase? these are questions which it is for economists, not for politicians or patriotic orators, to decide. it is said that there are tracts of land in ireland still unoccupied and fit for occupation. if there are, the survey will show the fact. land purchase by government subvention is a policy hardly to be pursued unless it is certain that its results will not presently be reversed by nature. the worst part of emigration is that it carries away the pith and sinews of a nation, taking the strong and leaving the weak, the aged, and unsupported women. it is a pleasant proof, already noticed, of the warmth of the irish heart that there has been less of solitary and more of family emigration in their case than in those of some other emigrating races. after all, how has the earth been peopled, how have all the nations been formed but by migration? to turn to the political question. the danger of insurrection has probably passed away. fenianism has been largely deprived of its trans-atlantic base, and can no longer look confidently to american sympathy for support and supplies. the irish vote has less power. little at least was heard of it in the last presidential election. yet the political question is still most serious, and presses urgently for settlement; a state of things largely due to the division of parties in the british government which showed its influence in the abandonment of the crimes act by the salisbury administration; in the maamtrasna debate; and in mr. gladstone's sudden coalition with parnell; but above all in the votes of british members of the house of commons for mr. gladstone's second home rule bill, giving ireland a parliament of her own and representation in the british parliament at the same time. parliament still has in it a body of irish members not only alien but hostile, avowing that their object is not to aid in deliberation but to coerce, playing upon the balance of parties for purposes of their own, degrading the assembly, and distracting the councils of the nation. nor is the source of this evil confined to the constituencies of ireland. there is in england and scotland a large irish population, which, as was seen in the election of , obeys the voice of the irish leaders and at their command votes inimically to the country in which it lives and earns its bread. in ireland itself, moreover, the hell-broth of agitation is kept constantly seething to the inevitable detriment of recuperative effort, which cannot do its full work without security for the future. as the first step it should be calmly settled what are the specific grievances under which ireland labours, and which the imperial legislature cannot, but an irish parliament could, remove. historic wrongs are past remedy. ireland has more than her share of representation in parliament. she has no established church. if her priesthood would let her, she would have a complete system of national education. her land law is now far more favourable to the tenant than that of the other kingdoms, and she has been and still is receiving government subventions in aid of the tillers of her soil which english and scotch tenants do not receive and which would cease if she became independent. nothing is closed against her people. they have the markets of the whole empire. all its offices, patronage, and services are perfectly open to them. so long as they will abstain from outrage and murder, they enjoy all the personal privileges of british freemen. it cannot be said that the law has been suspended for any purpose other than the repression of outrage. if the ordinary law and government were very bad, ulster would hardly have prospered as it has done. if castle government is the grievance, abolition of it was offered to ireland long ago and was by her rejected. let the existing grievances be specified, and let it be seen whether imperial legislation is incapable of redressing them. the truth is that with the irish leaders it has not been redress of particular wrongs and grievances or the introduction of practical improvements that has been the object of desire. their aim has been to create a nationalist feeling which should end in political separation. such has been the constant tenor of their appeals to sentiment and the end to which their policy has really pointed. suppose ireland severed from great britain, what would be her lot? she would then have to assume all the burdens and responsibilities of an independent nation, including military and naval defence, as well as the entire expense of a separate government. as she could not hope to vie in strength with her powerful neighbour, she would be at that neighbour's mercy; nor, considering the temper in which the parting would take place, would occasions for quarrel be unlikely to arise. ireland might have to seek the protection and become the vassal of some foreign power. irish trade would no longer be free of british markets or of the markets of british dependencies. irish labour would no longer be free of the british labour market. the indian service and the imperial services generally would be closed against irishmen. nor would ireland be entirely united in herself or perfectly set free from the hated british influence. she would still have in her the men of ulster, saxon and protestant, antagonistic probably to the catholic majority, and if they were pressed in the unequal conflict, stretching out their hands for aid to their fellow-protestants and kinsmen in great britain. a mere arm of the sea, such as that which divides ireland from great britain, is surely not enough in these days of improved navigation, to form a bar to political union. the distance from london to dublin is now practically far less than it was a century ago from london to edinburgh. nor does there seem any reason why salt water should be fatal. the ionian islands are in the kingdom of greece; so probably some day will be crete. if ireland were detached from great britain, into what hands would she fall? the gentry would be extinguished. to excite popular hatred of them as landlords has been the constant aim of the nationalist leaders. there would be a general repudiation of rent, which the irish government and judiciary would lack the will, while the british government and judiciary would have lost the power, to prevent. the record of irish landlordism is not bright. absenteeism has been a great evil, though the estates of some absentees have been notably well managed. there have been hideously cruel evictions, especially it seems on the lands purchased by speculators under the encumbered estates act. landlordism, as mere drawing of rent, is an evil. it is not desirable that any man should own land as a non-resident or own more land than he can manage or superintend. the old feudal law attaching service to lordship of land was sound in principle. but if the irish gentry would accept that principle, be resident, look after their estates, and do their duty to their tenants, they would probably be accepted by their people as social leaders, and they might play that part with good effect. the life of the french peasant is not the acme either of civilization or of happiness, even though we may make some abatement from the picture presented by zola in "la terre." unhappily the tendency, even in england, seems to be towards the detachment of the owner from his land and the abandonment on his part of every function save that of receiving the rent and spending it, perhaps in some pleasure city or abroad. the decadence of the agricultural interest in england is by some ascribed to this cause. the gentry being no more, catholic ireland would at first fall into the hands of the priesthood. the moral character of the irish priesthood in the opinion of impartial judges is high, as is that of the priesthood of french canada. in both cases ecclesiastical influence is strong, and in both a population virtuous after the catholic model is the result. the two are probably about the best things that the roman catholic church has to show. but the roman catholic religion is mediæval. the training of its ministers inevitably shuts out light which would be fatal to mediæval belief. an irish peasant lad, having been intellectually secluded for seven years at maynooth, comes out proof against the intellectual influences and advancing science of his time. he is the mental liegeman and the preacher of the syllabus, which anathematizes freedom of thought and claims for the church dominion, not only over the soul but over the body, such as was hers in the middle ages. he laid his ban on the queen's colleges, and has discouraged and thwarted the extension of popular education. in regard to education and intelligence, he has been in ireland what he has been in spain and other countries subject to his sway. in the sphere of industry and commerce the influence has generally been the same. the religious ideal of life with its church festivals and saints' days has prevailed. in ireland as in canada the priest inculcates early marriages, the effects of which may be morally good but are economically perilous. the excessive conversion of the fruits of industry to the unproductive purposes of the church has already begun to call forth protests. the power of the roman catholic priesthood would be encountered by the stalwart protestantism of ulster in the parliamentary arena as it still is sometimes in the streets of belfast. it might presently find itself encountered by another adversary, revolutionary nationalism, the heir of that party of force which broke away from the leadership of o'connell, the devout son of the church, and was an object of well-founded suspicion and aversion to the hierarchy of his day. the affinity of this element is to the revolutionary party in other countries; and if, like the united irishmen of belfast, it has been willing to act with allies devoted to the church, it is not itself devout, as the church, if she comes to share power with it, may be led to feel. the idea of unity of race as a basis of irish nationality has little support. in the north there is a strong and masterful saxon element. there must be a large anglo-saxon and english element in the old pale. the men of tipperary, though characteristically irish, are believed to be descendants of cromwellians. there is huguenot blood. the revival of erse as a national language is surely a patriotic dream. how is it possible to revive a language all but dead, with no valuable literature or wealth of printed books, in face of a language which has a grand literature, is spoken by all the educated classes, indeed almost universally, in ireland, and is necessary for intercourse with great britain. o'connell, we are told, had no great sympathy with the revival of irish archæology, and no sympathy at all with the project of reviving the irish language. he recognized the superior utility of the english tongue as the medium of all modern communication, and saw without regret the gradual disuse of erse. fancy and sentiment may prevail among a literary class which nevertheless will hardly carry its patriotism so far as to darken its own mind by unlearning english. "ireland ought to be governed in accordance with irish ideas." such is the current saying, and it sounds wise. but statesmanship would hardly act upon it before taking measures to learn what ideas are peculiarly irish and whether they are features of national character, innate and indelible, and not traces of historic accident or fancies instilled in the course of political agitation. the perpetuation of weaknesses accidentally contracted cannot be wise for man or nation. the political idea which seems most characteristic is the tendency to personal leadership rather than to self-government or constitutional rule. but this has been common to all races in early times. it was fostered and prolonged by the circumstances of irish history. it could hardly be pronounced incapable of modification by familiarity with free institutions. what would be the political constitution of an independent ireland? how would its form be settled? the political training of the people generally since they came out of political thraldom has been agitation against government and law; their only notion of rule has been personal. nor is a hierarchy friendly to political liberty. to set up a stable democracy in ireland, if that is the aim of the revolutionary party, would surely be an arduous undertaking. all who look coolly into the matter apart from faction and its necessities have pronounced that the choice lies between separation and legislative union. two parliaments, two nations; so all wisdom says and so experience before the union proved. the forces which under grattan's constitution held the two parliaments together in strained and precarious fellowship, the nomination boroughs, the pension list, the sinecures, the peerages, the bishoprics, would no longer exist. what is even more important, there would no longer be an oligarchical and exclusionist parliament in ireland dependent on british support for its ascendency, perhaps even for the security of its lands. antagonism would almost inevitably ensue; the more surely as the partners would set out with the embitterment of a divorce. nothing apparently could avert collision; the result of which would be repression, making the latter end worse than the first. the proposal of federation is surely preposterous. it would be necessary first to cut the united kingdom in two and create an irish government in order that negotiations for a federal union might be set on foot. but how could there be a federation of two states, one of them enormously superior in power to the other? what sort of deliberative assembly would the federal council be? another plan is to form a federation of the four nationalities, as they are assumed to be, england, scotland, ireland, and wales; wrenching apart the members of a great nation which have long been united and cancelling the highest work of british statesmanship. here again federation could not work. england being so much the predominant partner, the result would almost certainly be a perpetual league of the three minor powers against her domination. the federal system is applicable only to a group of tolerably equal states. the restoration of the heptarchy with the addition of scotland, divided into highland and lowland, and the four provinces of ireland erected into states, would be a comparatively practicable system. the present condition of the federal system in the united states does not encourage experiments of that kind. the mildest proposal of all is devolution; in other words, the concession to ireland of a larger measure of local self-government. this probably would be readily granted to any extent compatible with supremacy of law and security of life and property, which no government without abdicating its plainest duty can forgo. gradual extension of local self-government would not entail any acute crisis or bring on any party conflict. the lord-lieutenancy, parliament has already shown itself ready to abolish. it was in deference to the wish of ireland that it has been retained. the only thing in the way of undue centralization of which, so far as the writer remembers, his irish friends complained, was the necessity of carrying irish causes to westminster as the final court of appeal. whether concession on this point would be feasible it is for legal authorities to say. however, it can hardly be doubted that in the course of this struggle a sentiment has been cultivated among the people of ireland for which it is wise as well as kind in some way to provide satisfaction. the irishman being of lively sensibility and impressible through sight has never seen the power which really governs him. a session or two of the imperial parliament held at dublin for the settlement of irish questions would probably have had a very good effect, but it was thought to entail too much inconvenience. would there be any objection to empowering the irish members of both houses to sit annually at dublin as a preparatory house of irish legislation framing bills to be commended to parliament? there would then be something in college green. the experiment would involve none of the difficulties or perils of a statutory division of the powers of parliament. it would be at first on the footing of an experiment, nor would it preclude further concessions if further concessions should be found needful. with the question of national character, social or industrial, and its special requirements, i do not pretend to deal. it has been treated systematically, perhaps for the first time, by an excellent authority, sir horace curzon plunkett, in his "ireland in the new century." of irish character a part may be aboriginal and fundamental. a part probably is the result of historical accident more or less ingrained, and probably capable of modification. i am told that irish character has been even acquiring a more serious cast since i watched the tipperary steeplechases or stood on the fair-ground of ballinasloe. not a little, so far as the masses are concerned, is probably the work of a priesthood strongly and inherently reactionary, which has exercised the same influence on the ideal of life, character, mind, and industry here as in other catholic countries. ireland is perhaps happy in having been cut off from the prodigious development of luxury and dissipation which, as social writers tell us, has been taking place on the other side of the channel as well as from the domination of the stock-exchange. she may in this way become a saving element in the social character of the united kingdom. is it vain to hope that for the settlement of a question so vital party may for one short hour suspend its war? what far-off object of aggrandizement can be half so important as a contented and loyal ireland. an account of the irish land code by hugh j. mccann, b.l. the irish landlord, poor as his circumstances were before the famine, was in many instances reduced to sorer straits after the terrible scourge had passed away. the good landlord, anxious to do his duty by his tenants, helped them as far as his mortgages and other financial burdens would allow. the tyrannical one, regardless of the sufferings of his victims, sought to extract impossible rents from an unfortunate tenantry who had scarcely the means of subsistence. the encumbered estates act, it was thought, would relieve the tension. it empowered a court specially constituted for the purpose to order the sale of estates encumbered with debt, on the petition of any person sufficiently interested as owner or creditor. landlordism, it was thought, would, by this act, be relieved of much that made it tyrannical, even when it meant well. but the act was a failure. it was worse. it was the means of wrecking many a fortune, and driving many a proprietor to ruin. men who, in hard times, were doing well for their tenants and their country under difficult circumstances were driven from the land. the act came into operation towards the end of . a wild rush was made by creditors to the court. prices fell with amazing rapidity, and landed property became a drug in the market. valuable properties failed to realize sufficient to meet the mortgages, and their owners were inevitably ruined. a new class of landlord now appeared on the scene in the person of the speculator, who bought up the bankrupt properties as they presented themselves. the new proprietors had nothing in common with their tenantry. they knew little of their needs and requirements and cared less. they had but one interest and that was a commercial one. to make their properties realize a good dividend on their outlay was their one concern, and up went the rents accordingly. such was the fate of the unfortunate tenants who were allowed to continue as tenants of the new proprietor. this was bad enough, but those that were given notice to quit were even more cruelly wronged. compensation for wrongful disturbance was not recognized in ireland in , and tenant property amounting to three millions sterling was sold to pay the landlord's creditors. nothing could demonstrate more clearly how utterly rotten was the whole land system in ireland at the time. landlord and tenant alike were in a miserable plight. rents fell heavily in arrear, and evictions were the order of the day. the landlord played the bold game, struck hard, and without mercy. the tenant sought protection in combination and conspiracy. such was the condition of ireland when thoughtful men sought by legislation to cure the crying evils of the time. many remedies were proposed between and , but none of them reached the stage of legislative enactment. in the latter year, however, cardwell made an attempt to place the law of landlord and tenant on a better footing. in spite of a good deal of opposition, government succeeded in placing two important measures on the statute book, viz.: the landed property (ireland) improvement act, , and the landlord and tenant law amendment act (ireland) of the same year. by the former limited owners were enabled, subject to judicial sanction, to charge the inheritance with the cost of specified improvements, and to bind their successors for stated periods. agricultural leases for a period of twenty-one years or less could be given by the limited owners without judicial intervention, but every improvement lease required the sanction of the chairman of the county in which the lands were situated. to tenants the right of compensation was granted for certain specified improvements made by them, provided that before entering on the improvements they made them the subject of an agreement with the landlord, or had given notice of his intention to improve, and the landlord had not notified his objection within a period of three months from receipt of the notice. the principle of retrospective compensation was not, as yet, admitted. the second act consolidated the existing law of landlord and tenant, and made some important changes in procedure. the relationship of landlord and tenant, hitherto based on _tenure_, as in england, was henceforth to be founded on _contract_. before proceeding to examine its provisions, it might be well to point out that the common law rights of irish agricultural tenants were in the absence of special customs governed since the reign of james i. by english common law rules. the english system of land tenure was imposed upon the country by virtue of conquest. but the circumstances of the two countries were entirely different. in england the landlord owned the soil and everything on it. the dwelling houses and out-offices, the farm roads, the drainage, were built by him or his predecessors. he let a holding to a tenant as a going concern, and for the holding so equipped he received rent. the relations between landlord and tenant in england rested on a business footing. if the tenant did not feel satisfied with his farm or his lot, he moved on. there were none of the ties there, either of attachment or of interest, that existed in ireland. in ireland the tenant or his predecessor provided, by his labours or his savings, the whole equipment of the farm. his family for generations back occupied the same plot, and he dearly learned to know and love every stone and hedge about the place. in england the improvements were effected by the landlord out of the rent paid him by the tenant, and, of course, were legally his by the law of the land. in ireland the improvements, almost universally made by the tenant, became at common law the property of the landlord, who was under no _legal_ obligation to compensate the tenant for them on ejecting him from his holding. the following extract from the report of the devon commission contrasts the practice in the two countries very well. "the commission finds on all hands, it is admitted, that, according to the general practice in ireland, the landlord builds neither dwelling-house nor farm-offices, nor puts fences, gates, etc., into good order before he lets his land to a tenant. the cases in which a landlord does any of those things are the exceptions. the system, however, of giving aid in these matters is becoming more prevalent. in most cases whatever is done in the way of building is done by the tenant, and in the ordinary language of the country dwelling-houses, farm-buildings, and even the making of the fences are described by the general word 'improvements,' which is thus employed to denote the necessary adjuncts to a farm, without which in england or scotland no tenant would be found to rent it." what i have said represents the general, but, i should add, not the universal, condition of things in ireland at this time. in parts of the country, especially in ulster, certain customs prevailed which recognized that a tenant was something more than a rent producer. they denied the right of the landlord to raise rents by reason of any value added to the soil by the tenant's outlay. they recognized a right of continuous occupancy by the tenant at a fair rent. this right, called tenant right, became on some properties of immense value, and was often sold by an out-going tenant at a price exceeding in value the fee simple purchase of the holding. in ulster more than anywhere else in ireland the custom was very widely prevalent, but was as yet without the sanction of the law. but i have digressed from the act of . in dealing with the act of , what i have just said will be of importance. the landlord and tenant act, , otherwise known as "deasy's act," is a voluminous measure of one hundred and five sections which may be conveniently grouped into three sections. the first deals with the _contract of tenancy_, the second with _surrenders and assignments_, and the third with the _methods of procedure_. section three enacts that "the relation of landlord and tenant shall be deemed to be founded on the express or implied contract of the parties." the conduct of the parties may imply a contract of tenancy, payment of rent being evidence, but not irrefutable evidence, of its existence. section four requires that "every lease or contract, with respect to lands whereby the relations of landlord and tenant is intended to be created for any freehold estate or interest, or for any definite period of time, not being from year to year, or any lesser period, shall be by _deed_ executed, or _note in writing_ signed by the landlord or his agent." it is further provided that a tenant may, if there be no agreement to the contrary, remove his fixtures within two months of its determination by an uncertain event. two covenants are implied in the contract of tenancy by each of the parties thereto. the landlord by his lease implies an agreement on the part of himself and his successors that he has a good title to make it, and that the tenant shall have quiet and peaceable enjoyment of his holding. the tenant agrees to pay rent, taxes, and impositions payable by the tenant, and to keep the premises in good and substantial repair and condition; and, secondly, to give up peaceable possession of the demised premises in good and substantial repair and condition on the determination of the lease, subject to any right of removal or of compensation for improvements that may have lawfully arisen in respect of them, and to any right of surrender in case of the destruction of the subject-matter of the contract. _surrenders and assignments_ may be made ( ) by deed, ( ) by a note in writing, or ( ) by operation of law. sections forty-five to one hundred and two deal with actions for the recovery of rent and actions of ejectment. the most important provision is that which provides that if a tenant has had a decree given against him in an action of ejectment, he may be restored to his holding on applying to the court within six months, and paying the rent with arrears and costs. such are the main features of deasy's act. beyond consolidating and regularizing the existing law it achieved nothing. a decided advance, however, was made in the landlord and tenant (ireland) act, , which was restricted in its operation to agricultural and pastoral tenancies. we have seen how there existed in ulster and other parts of the country certain customs favourable to the tenant. to the ulster custom, as it was called, ulster was indebted for exceptional prosperity. the contentment of its agricultural population was in strange contrast to the seething discontent of the other parts of the country. much of the thrift and plenty that exists in parts of ulster to-day can be traced back to the exceptional treatment accorded to the tenants of ulster long before legislation came to the aid of their less fortunate brethren south of the boyne. the aim of the land act of was to place the latter class in a similar position to the northerns. the act legalized the ulster custom and similar usages. it gave tenants not subject to these a right to be compensated for their improvements on quitting their holdings, and guaranteed a measure of security by providing compensation for disturbance. what is "disturbance" is a question for the court, and must be decided on the facts of each particular case. agreements not to improve the holding, or not to claim for improvements, are declared void. if the holding be subject to the ulster custom, there is a general presumption that the improvements belong to the tenant. the term "improvements" shall mean in relation to a holding ( ) any work which, being executed, adds to the letting value of the holding, on which it is executed and is suitable to such holding; and ( ) tillages, manures, or other like farming works, the benefit of which is unexhausted at the time of the tenant quitting his holding. we have not proceeded far before it becomes apparent that to secure to the tenant the full enjoyment of his own property was the line along which land legislation was travelling. the act of went some distance in this direction. but the great advance was not made till ten years after, when gladstone proposed to establish a tribunal which would assess and fix the property of the two partners in the dual ownership of land in ireland. the act recognized and legalized dual ownership. it created a partnership between two parties whose interests were hostile. it was a great act, and did incalculable good, but many years were not to elapse until it became evident that a return to single ownership--but this time by the tenant--was absolutely necessary. the endeavours to work dual ownership irretrievably broke down. both parties had little confidence in the land court established by the act of . the landlord complained that his property was being confiscated; the tenant believed that he was still paying rent on his own improvements. the act was meant to give tenants fixity of tenure, fair rent, and free sale. a new judicial body, the irish land commission, with jurisdiction to hear and determine all matters of law or fact arising under the act, was established. the commission consists of three commissioners--one a judicial commissioner and numerous assistant commissioners appointed by the lord lieutenant for the time being with the approval of the treasury. this is not the place to examine the provisions of this complicated measure minutely, but as it is the foundation of much of the land legislation that followed, it is important that its main provisions be understood. the act distinguishes between "present" tenancies and "future" tenancies, a "present" tenancy being "a tenancy subsisting at the time of the passing of the act, or created before the first day of january, , in a holding in which a tenancy was subsisting at the time of the passing of the act, and every tenancy to which the act applies shall be deemed to be a present tenancy until the contrary is proved." a "future" tenancy means a tenancy beginning after the passing of the act. the act applies only to agricultural and pastoral holdings. it gives qualified powers to both "present" and "future" tenants to dispose of their holdings for the best price they can get, or to mortgage them if they think fit. fixity of tenure was secured by enabling a tenant to convert his interest into what is called in the act a _statutory term_. such a term may be created by an agreement between the landlord and tenant for an increased rent, or by having a fair rent fixed, or by filing in court an agreement for a judicial rent. a _statutory term_ can be created only in respect of a "present" tenancy except when in regard to a "future" tenancy the tenant has agreed with the landlord to an increased rent. the provisions as to the fixing of a fair rent apply only to "present" tenancies. section three of the act gives a tenant power to dispose of his holding by bequest. perhaps the most important provisions of the act are those enabling a landlord or tenant to have a "fair rent" fixed. either party may apply to the court to have the rent made a _judicial rent_. the court fixes this rent after considering all the circumstances of the case, holding, and district, and having regard to the interests of both parties. no rent shall be payable in respect of improvements made by the tenant unless he has been already compensated for them by the landlord. in the administration of the act the word "improvements" has given rise to endless litigation. in the now famous case of adams _v._ dunseath it was held that "improvements" meant improvement works and not increased letting value. it was also held in a case affecting the same holding that a tenant is entitled to "a fair return by way of annual allowance in respect of the present capital value of his improvement works which may be estimated by way of percentage on such capital value; and if after making this percentage there is still a surplus of increased letting value, it is within the exclusive jurisdiction of the land commission to determine whether, and in what proportions, such surplus shall be divided between landlord and tenant." it was further laid down that the land commission was to treat "the latent and dormant resources of the soil, as let by the landlord to the tenant, as the property of the landlord, and the development of those resources by the tenant as the act of the tenant." this act was undoubtedly a great charter for the tenants and created something like a revolution in ireland. it contained many defects, and was marred by many blemishes, but on the whole it was a masterly attempt to settle the question. like much of the land legislation for ireland, most of its shortcomings were due to a reckless disregard on the part of british ministers for irish opinion. indeed, this was the cause of most of the amending legislation that followed. under the act of "fair rents" were fixed for periods of fifteen years, when they were again ripe for revision. roughly speaking, the old non-judicial rents were reduced by twenty per cent on an average to convert them into first term rents. these again were further reduced by twenty per cent on an average for the second term. this, of course, played havoc with the landlord's income, and did not materially benefit the tenant, the prices of the produce of whose farm was falling with even greater rapidity. the experiment of dual ownership had been tried and was found wanting; a return to single ownership was sought for by the series of acts known as the land purchase acts. it was not till that the experiment of land purchase was seriously tried in ireland, but it is right to say that the question first came before the public in a practical form so far back as in the discussions on the disestablishment of the irish episcopal church. at that time mr. bright proposed to increase the number of owners of land in ireland by allowing the glebe tenants to purchase the property attached to the glebes. the idea was embodied in the irish church act, and over six thousand occupying owners were thus created. under this act three-fourths of the purchase money was advanced by the state, and the balance paid in cash by the purchasers. the money was advanced by the state for thirty-two years, the shortest period allowed by any of the acts. from the tenant's point of view this act cannot be said to have been an unqualified success. the price of land was high at the time, and the purchasers having bought high sustained the whole burden of the sudden fall in the prices of produce which almost immediately succeeded the conclusion of their bargains. in and in there were embodied in the acts of these years provisions to enable tenants to purchase their holdings; but the procedure to be followed was made so complicated that the tenants did not avail themselves of the purchase clauses to any great extent. the insignificant number of sixteen hundred sales were completed under the two acts. in a conservative government came into power, and though their term of office was of short duration, they introduced and passed a measure which, by its marvellous and, i might add, its unexpected success, pointed the direction and paved the way for all future legislation for the settlement of the land problem in ireland. back to single ownership was the keynote of the measure. hitherto the credit or discredit of all legislation on the land problem belonged to the liberals. they strove to make dual ownership a possibility. conservative statesmen sought for a settlement in the opposite direction. in sales under all the purchase acts from to the act of all the purchase money is advanced by the state to the selling landlord, and is charged by the state to the tenant who purchases. the tenant repays the amount borrowed or "advanced," to use the language of the acts, in annual instalments, which instalments clear off not only the original "advance," but the accumulated interest. roughly speaking, the procedure is this. the landlord and tenant, having agreed on a price, sign an agreement for sale, and file it with the land commission, which body has the carriage, so to speak, of all purchase transactions, as well as all other transactions under the land acts. the holding is inspected by the land commission which, having been satisfied that the land in question is security for the "advance," pay the purchase money to the landlord and collect from the tenant the annual instalments necessary to repay it to the state. the plan of the act of , better known as the ashbourne act from the fact that it was lord ashbourne who introduced the measure to the lords, was simple in the extreme, and to this is due, in no small measure, its rapid success. it was easily understood by the people, and so popular did it become that in three years the money provided by it was completely exhausted. in a second bill was passed under which an additional sum of five millions--this was the amount provided by the ashbourne act--was set aside for purchase. under the two measures , owners were created. "almost from the start," writes mr. george fottrell (a gentleman well qualified to discuss the question of land purchase in ireland) in the _morning post_, "the ashbourne act was a success. during the first five years of its working, the 'advances' actually paid over by the land commission to landlords amounted annually on an average to £ , , sterling. the 'applications' represented a considerably larger sum. by they had more than exhausted the £ , , which had been voted by parliament for the ashbourne act, in , and thereon a further sum of £ , , was voted. the scheme continued to work well; the 'applications' came in steadily but with no feverish haste, the largest total sum applied for under the ashbourne act in any one year being in when it reached £ , , . in each of the next two years it reached just two millions. in it had dropped to less than a million and a half; in it was slightly in excess of that amount. by it was plain that the second vote of five millions had been virtually absorbed, and that parliament must be applied to for further money. to cool-headed people in ireland it seemed that the obvious course was to ask for a small grant, say of ten millions, so as to continue to test cautiously the usefulness of an act which had so far worked well, while by the very smallness of the grant keeping in reserve a check on the expansion of the act if it should prove to work mischievously. "this course was not taken. in parliament was asked to make a much larger grant. over thirty millions were voted, but coupled with conditions which made the money useless." mr. balfour's act, the purchase act of , was extremely complicated. under it ireland was entitled to draw upon imperial credit to the extent of £ , , . the rate of interest payable by the purchasers was substantially the same as under the acts of and , the period of repayment in the three cases being forty-nine years. but a change was made in the method of payment to the landlord. previous to , he had been always paid in cash. under the balfour act he was paid in guaranteed land stock. there were many complicated provisions in regard to the creation of a guarantee fund, an insurance fund, and other safeguards. the complexity of the measure and the procedure under it, and the consequent delays in completing any transactions in a reasonable time, acted as a deterrent to intending purchasers and the act was virtually a failure. at this point it is well, perhaps, to summarize the results of the working of land purchase under the acts already dealt with. we have seen that a total sum of (say) £ , , was made available by the various acts for land purchase. out of this a total sum of £ , , has been expended, leaving about twenty-three millions still available. under all the acts up to and including that of , , tenants purchased their holdings, under the church act, under the land act of , under the act of , , under the purchase acts of and , and the balance of about , became purchasers by means of the act of . numerous and extensive as these operations were, it is satisfactory to note, and it redounds to the credit of the irish people, that mr. wyndham, when introducing his land bill of , was able to assure the house of commons that irish land purchase had this one merit that the state had incurred no loss under it and was exposed to no risk. in no case did an irish tenant break his bargain. there was no case of bad debt to mention. one of the first stumbling-blocks to a tenant proposing to purchase under the act of was that he was unable to know, or even approximately gauge, what was the actual sum he would have to pay, by way of annuity, each year. this was a serious flaw, and helped more than anything else perhaps to clog the wheels of purchase. this state of things, however, was remedied by the purchase act of , by which the maximum sum payable in any year was an instalment at the rate of £ per cent on the purchase money, no matter at what number of years' purchase of his rent the tenant might buy. most of the cumbrous restrictions of the act of were removed, and once more the applications began to tumble in. in - the applications received numbered less than half a million. in - and in - they reached nearly two millions. a steady decrease then set in, but on the whole purchase proceeded at a satisfactory pace. a strange condition of things now existed in ireland, and a condition of things that could not last. here and there over the country there existed a contented peasantry, the virtual owners of their holdings, paying a reasonable annuity for a definite period to the state. if they had not the sense of complete ownership, they had the very next best thing to it. they knew that if they themselves were not the absolute owners of their holdings during their lives, their children and their children's children would be, and they set to work with a heart and a will to work and improve their farms, knowing full well that the results of their labour would, at last, be theirs, and could not be wrung from them by the whims or exigencies of the landlord. on the other side of the fence, or river, the tenant who had not purchased and, perhaps, could not purchase, for his landlord would not sell, continued to pay a rent sometimes exorbitant, but always higher than his friend the purchaser close by. such was the position of the tenant's side of the question. now let us examine the landlord's. under the act of the landlord was paid in government stock. between the years and government stock rose from to . a premium of ten per cent was a strong incentive to the landlord to sell. if he had an estate worth £ , he received in reality for it £ , for he was credited with £ stock which, sold on change, realized £ in cash. in some cases, where the estate was mortgaged, the gain was even more. this was gold finding for the landlord until the price of stock fell, which it did and with a vengeance. stock which in stood at fell in to . the fall again clogged the wheels, and the question once again became the burning question of the hour. it is right to say here that there were other forces at work which made the landlord anxious to get out, if he could at all, on reasonable terms. the fall in the price of produce continued, and the land commission, which had under the act of twice revised the rentals, and reduced them each time by twenty per cent on an average, were preparing for the third revision. the landlords looked forward to with fear and trembling. with their estates mostly heavily mortgaged, and the third revision at hand, they were as anxious as the tenants, if not more so, that parliament should step in to their mutual aid. it did so in the land act of . the introduction of this measure was preceded by a conference of landlords and tenants, representatives in ireland which met in the mansion house, dublin, and after five sittings reported as follows:-- "whereas it is expedient that the land question in ireland be settled so far as it is practicable and without delay, "and whereas the existing position of the land question is adverse to the improvement of the soil of ireland, leads to unending controversies and law-suits between owners and occupiers, retards progress in the country, and constitutes a grave danger to the state, "and whereas an opportunity of settling once for all the differences between owners and occupiers in ireland is very desirable, "and whereas such settlement can only be effected upon a basis mutually satisfactory to the owners and occupiers of the land, "and whereas certain representatives of owners and occupiers have been desirous of endeavouring to find such basis, and for that purpose have met in conference together, "and whereas certain particulars of agreement have been formulated, discussed, and passed at the conference, and it is desirable that the same should be put into writing and submitted to his majesty's government, "after consideration and discussion of various schemes submitted to the conference, we are agreed:-- " . that the only satisfactory settlement of the land question is to be effected by the substitution of an occupying proprietary in lieu of the existing system of dual ownership. " . that the process of direct interference by the state in purchase and resale is in general tedious and unsatisfactory; and that, therefore, except in cases where at least half the occupiers or the owners so desire, and except in districts included in the operations of the congested districts board, the settlement should be made between owner and occupier, subject to the necessary investigation by the state as to title, rental, and security. " . that it is desirable in the interests of ireland that the present owners of land should not as a result of any settlement be expatriated, or, having received payment for their land, should find no object for remaining in ireland, and that as the effect of a far-reaching settlement must necessarily be to cause the sale of tenancies throughout the whole of ireland, inducements should, wherever practicable, be afforded to selling owners to continue to reside in that country. " . that for the purpose of obtaining such a result, an equitable price ought to be paid to the owners, which should be based upon income. "income, as it appears to us, is second term rents--including all rents fixed subsequent to the passing of the act of --or their fair equivalent. " . that the purchase price should be based upon income as indicated above, and should be either the assurance by the state of such income, or the payment of a capital sum producing such income at three per cent or at three and one-fourth per cent, if guaranteed by the state, or if the existing powers of trustees be sufficiently enlarged. "costs of collection where such exist, not exceeding ten per cent, are not included for the purpose of these paragraphs in the word 'income.' " . that such income or capital sum should be obtainable by the owners:-- "(_a_) without the requirement of capital outlay upon their part, such as would be involved by charges for proving title to sell. six years' possession, as proposed in the bill brought forward in the session of , appears to us a satisfactory method of dealing with the matter. "(_b_) without the requirement of outlay to prove title to receive the purchase money. "(_c_) without unreasonable delay. "(_d_) without loss of income pending reinvestment. "(_e_) and without leaving a portion of the capital sum as a guarantee deposit. " . that, as a necessary inducement to selling owners to continue to reside in ireland, the provision of the bill introduced by the chief secretary for ireland in the session of with regard to the purchase of mansion houses, demesne lands, and home farms by the state, and resale by it to the owners, ought to be extended. " . we suggest that in certain cases it would be to the advantage of the state as insuring more adequate security, and also an advantage to owners in such cases, if upon the purchase by the state of the mansion house and demesne land and resale to the owner, the house and demesne land should not be considered a security to the mortgages. " . that owners wishing to sell portions of grazing land in their own hands for the purpose of enlarging neighbouring tenancies should be entitled to make an agreement with the tenants, and that in the event of proposed purchase by the tenants such grazing land may be considered as part of the tenancies for the purpose of purchase. " . that, in addition to the income, or capital sum producing the income, the sum due for rent from the last rent day till the date of the agreement for purchase and the hanging gale should be paid by the state to the owner. " . that all liabilities by the owner which run with the land, such as head-rents, quit-rents, and tithe-rent charge, should be redeemed, and the capital sum paid for such redemption deducted from the purchase money payable to the owner. provided always that the price of redemption should be calculated on a basis not higher, as regards annual value, than is used in calculating the purchase price of the estate. in any special cases where it may have to be calculated upon a different basis, the owner should not suffer thereby. owners liable to drainage charges should be entitled to redeem same upon equitable terms, having regard to the varying rates of interest at which such loans were made. " . that the amount of the purchase money payable by the tenants should be extended over a series of years, and be at such a rate, in respect of principal and interest, as will at once secure a reduction of not less than fifteen per cent, or more than twenty-five per cent on second term rents or their fair equivalent, with further periodical reductions as under existing land purchase acts until such time as the treasury is satisfied that the loan has been repaid. this may involve some assistance from the state beyond the use of its credit, which, under circumstances hereinafter mentioned, we consider may reasonably be granted. facilities should be provided for the redemption at any time of the purchase money or part thereof by payment of the capital or any part thereof. " . that the hanging gale, where such custom exists, should be included in the loan and paid off in the instalments to be paid by the purchasing occupier, and should not be a debt immediately recoverable from the occupier, but the amount of rent ordinarily payable for the period between the date when the last payment fell due and the date of agreement for sale should be payable as part of the first instalment. " . that counties wholly or partly under the operations of the congested districts board, or other districts of a similar character (as defined by the congested districts board acts and by section four, clause one, of mr. wyndham's land purchase amendment bill of last session), will require separate and exceptional treatment with a view to the better distribution of the population and of the land, as well as for the acceleration and extension of these projects for migration and enlargement of holdings which the congested districts board, as at present constituted and with its limited powers, has hitherto found it impossible to carry out upon an adequate scale. " . that any project for the solution of the irish land question should be accompanied by a settlement of the evicted tenants' question upon an equitable basis. " . that sporting and riparian rights should remain as they are, subject to any provisions of existing land purchase acts. " . that the failure to enforce the labourers acts in certain portions of the country constitutes a serious grievance, and that in districts where, in the opinion of the local government board, sufficient accommodation has not been made for the housing of the labouring classes, power should be given to the local government board, in conjunction with the local authorities, to acquire sites for houses and allotments. " . that the principle of restriction upon subletting might be extended to such control as may be practicable over resales of purchasers' interest and mortgages, with a view to maintaining unimpaired the value of the state's security for outstanding instalments on loans. "and whereas we are agreed that no settlement can give peace and contentment to ireland or afford reasonable and fair opportunity for the development of the resources of the country, which fails to satisfy the just claims of both owners and occupiers, "and whereas such settlement can only be effected by the assistance of the state, which, as a principle, has been employed in former years, "and whereas it appears to us that, for the healing of differences and the welfare of the country, such assistance should be given, and can be given, and can effect a settlement without either undue cost to the treasury or appreciable risk with regard to the money advanced, we are of opinion that any reasonable difference arising between the sum advanced by the state, and ultimately repaid to it, may be justified by the following considerations:-- "that for the future welfare of ireland, and for the smooth working of any measure dealing with the transfer of land, it is necessary:-- " . that the occupiers should be started on their new career as owners on a fair and favourable basis, insuring reasonable chances of success, and that in view of the responsibilities to be assumed by them they should receive some inducement to purchase. " . that the owners should receive some recognition of the facts that selling may involve sacrifice of sentiment, that they have already suffered heavily by the operation of the land acts, and that they should receive some inducement to sell. " . that for the benefit of the whole community it is of the greatest importance that income derived from sale of property in ireland should continue to be expended in ireland. "and we further submit that, as a legitimate setoff against any demand upon the state, it must be borne in mind that, upon the settlement of the land question in ireland, the cost of administration of the law and the cost of the royal irish constabulary would be materially and permanently lessened. "we do not, at the present time, desire to offer further recommendations upon the subject of finance which must necessarily be regulated by the approval of the government to the principles of the proposals above formulated except that, in our opinion, the principles of reduction of the sinking fund in the event of loss to the state by an increase of the value of money should be extended by the inclusion of the principle of increase of the sinking fund in favour of the purchasers in the event of gain to the state by decrease in the value of money. "inasmuch as one of the main conditions of success in reference to any land purchase scheme must be its prompt application and the avoidance of those complicated investigations and legal delays which have hitherto clogged all legislative proposals for settling the relations between irish landlords and tenants, we deem it of urgent importance that no protracted period of time should ensue before a settlement based upon the above-mentioned principles is carried out; that the executive machinery should be effective, competent, and speedy, and that investigations conducted by it should not entail cost upon owner or occupier; and, as a further inducement to despatch, we suggest that any state aid, apart from loans which may be required for carrying out a scheme of land purchase as herein proposed, should be limited to transactions initiated within five years after the passing of the act. "we wish to place on record our belief that an unexampled opportunity is at the present moment afforded his majesty's government of effecting a reconciliation of classes in ireland upon terms which, as we believe, involve no permanent increase of imperial expenditure in ireland; and that there would be found on all sides an earnest desire to coöperate with the government in securing the success of a land purchase bill, which, by effectively and rapidly carrying out the principles above indicated, would bring peace and prosperity to the country. "signed at the mansion house, dublin, this third day of january, . "dunraven (_chairman_) john redmond "mayo wm. o'brien "w. h. hutcheson poe t. w. russell "nugent t. everard t. c. harrington" it soon transpired that the idea of a conference between landlords' and tenants' representatives was the government plan for laying the foundation of the bill that they contemplated introducing as a government measure later on. the tenants' representatives, who, in the then position of the land question, with prices falling and the third revision term looming in the distance, had all the trumps in their hands, were hopelessly outmanoeuvred by the landlord section. the question to be discussed was largely a financial one, but still the tenants had not a man of financial ability at the board. it is true the members of the conference were nominated, and not selected by their respective sides, though afterwards, for reasons easily understood, the nominations were ratified by the parties concerned. but nominated by whom? by a captain shawe taylor, a personage popular with all parties, but in this matter undoubtedly the agent of the government. the conference sat five times, and all through the proceedings the nationalist representatives were rubbing their hands with glee, for they thought the millennium had come. the landlord party, on the other hand, were in nightly communication with the castle. treasury experts were drafted over to dublin, and no stone was left unturned to secure for the landlords a measure which would satisfy the most exacting. they succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. on the d of january, , the land conference issued its report. clear-headed politicians saw at once that the tenants had played the game and lost. every advantage or benefit that the landlord sought or claimed was secured to him by this treaty, as it was afterwards styled, in terms that could not be gainsaid. the tenants' clauses in the report were mostly pious expressions of opinion, which were afterwards, when the land bill came to be drafted, brushed aside, or quietly ignored. but all was not yet lost. the _freeman's journal_, under the able guidance of mr. thomas sexton, in a series of powerful articles, reviewed the whole position. it boldly but temperately pointed out the defects in the conference report. it refused to shout with the crowd. it could not see that much was gained. it clearly saw that a great deal had been lost. the bill, a large and complicated measure of eighty-nine clauses, was shortly afterwards introduced. it was a great measure and aimed at the final settlement of the land question. and, indeed, such an end, devoutly to be wished, would certainly have been attained had the amendments pressed on the government during the passage of the bill by the organ of the tenants been accepted and embodied in the act. clause after clause was closely examined, and the defects exposed by mr. sexton in a series of articles, inspired if not actually written by him in the _freeman_. he had done much service for ireland in the past, but i doubt if his great abilities had ever been better applied than to the work of examination, elucidation, and amendment of the land bill of . his criticisms culminated in the publication of a schedule of amendments which he claimed were necessary to the final settlement of the question. it is worth while now putting them on record, for they have a true historical value. it is now seen in the working of the act, that the acceptance of some of the amendments contained in the schedule materially improved the bill, while the omission of the others explains the necessity for still further legislation on the subject. the following is a summary of the amendments referred to:-- . the rights of tenants under the fair rent laws should be maintained intact. . no non-judicial tenant should be excluded from purchase by reason merely of his tenure. caretakers of holdings of which they had previously been tenants should have the rights of tenants for the purpose of purchasing such holdings. . as a condition precedent to purchase, non-judicial rents and first term rents fixed or agreed upon down to the end of should be reduced to the average level, substantially of second term rents, and purchase should not be transacted in the cases of non-judicial rents, or of such first term rents, except upon this basis. . the purchase system being voluntary, the compulsory limits of price in this bill should be struck out. . the aim of the system being to extinguish dual ownership and equal treatment being essential both as between past and future transactions, and also between the tenant who buys his holding and the landlord who buys back his land sold by him to the state, no rent charge should be reserved. such a reservation would forever exclude the tenant from ownership, by erecting a new and perpetual system of landlordism in the place of the old. . the rate of interest on consols being now two and one-half per cent, the new guaranteed stock might be issued at two and one-half, instead of two and three-fourths as proposed, and by this means the decadal reductions, instead of being abolished as the bill provides, might be allowed at the rate of eight per cent; or, at the option of the purchaser, the period during which his annuity would be payable could be shortened by about ten years. if the annuity rate were three and one-half, the purchaser might be allowed to choose between decadal reductions at the rate of eleven per cent, and a term of redemption shorter by nearly twenty years than that prescribed in the bill. . sales of untenanted land, and, in particular, resales of demesne or other land to vendors, should be subject to the needs of migration, of enlarged holdings, and of making provision for evicted tenants, in the case of each estate or district, and no evicted farm should be resold to the vendor, or sold to a new tenant, if the evicted tenant, or his personal representative, is willing to become the purchaser. . the cost of improvement of estates and untenanted land, being charged to every purchaser and repaid by his annuity, should be provided for as part of the advances required for the purposes of this act, leaving the reserve fund available to the estates commissioners for cases of exceptional need. . it is necessary to maintain the existing satisfactory condition that the holding, or other land purchased, is to be sufficient security for the repayment of the advance. . the purchase aid fund should be increased to not less than twenty millions; and distributed either in inverse ratio to the number of years' purchase in each case, or by a uniform grant of a fixed number of years' purchase to every selling landlord. . a term of years should be fixed in the bill, on the expiration of which term the provisions for grants from the purchase aid fund, resales to landlords, and distribution of purchase money free of cost should cease to operate. . the subject of sporting and mineral rights calls for clear provision dictated in the public interest, instead of the ambiguous, loose, and inconclusive proposals which appear in the bill. . it is requisite that the limit of advance to an evicted tenant be not less than the ordinary limits; also, that provision be made for restoring evicted tenants to their former holdings when vacant; for making arrangements to that end when the holdings are occupied; and for stocking the land. . the cramping restrictions imposed on the congested districts board, which have effectually prevented that body from dealing with the great agrarian evil of the west, would not be removed or substantially diminished by the meagre proposals of the bill; nor can the privations and miseries endured in the congested districts be sufficiently abated in any other way than by such a redistribution of grazing ranches as will provide the people of those districts with land enough to yield them the means of living. as the guarantee fund--now ample enough for every purpose--is henceforth to apply alike to congested and other districts, and as advances for land purchase are seen to be free from risk, and special treatment is to be applied to congested estates throughout the country, it is evident that the time has come for a uniform system of land purchase, and that this is to be secured, either by investing the congested districts board, for all the purposes of land purchase in their particular areas, with powers corresponding to those of the estates commissioners, or else by giving the estates commissioners jurisdiction for land purchase in the congested districts, and authorizing the board to apply its income wholly to its various other objects of expenditure. . the proposals with regard to the labourers' acts are so trivial that they cannot be amended. the government should be asked to appoint a commission to inquire and report, this year, how the question may be adequately dealt with; and a bill directed seriously to that end should be passed into law next session. the irish land act, , otherwise known as the wyndham act, from the name of the irish chief secretary who introduced it, came into force on the st of november, . this is not the place to set forth its provisions, but the principal advantages which accrue to a selling landlord and a purchasing tenant availing of its provisions may be briefly stated. the entire purchase money agreed upon is paid to the landlord in cash. no part of the purchase money is retained as a guarantee deposit. for the purchase of a single holding the limitations of preceding acts are extended to £ . the vendor of an estate shall receive in addition to the purchase money from the tenants a bonus for his own immediate benefit. the landlord is enabled to sell his demesne, and repurchase it at a profit. the landlord may sell his estate direct to estate commissioners appointed by the act, or to the congested districts board, and these bodies are enabled to resell to the tenants after readjustment and partition of the holdings on the estate if necessary. enlarged powers of investment of purchase money are conferred upon trustees. the principal advantages secured to the tenant are as follows: at the end of sixty-eight and one-half years, a tenant becomes owner in fee of his holding. as soon as the agreement to purchase is signed, he ceases to be liable for rent. he is enabled to repay the advance at the rate of three and one-fourth per cent of his purchase money. (though the reduction of the annuity rate from four per cent under the previous act to three and one-fourth per cent under the wyndham act is an undoubted advantage to a tenant, it is certainly to his disadvantage that the amount set aside towards the sinking fund should be reduced from one and one-fourth per cent and one per cent to one-half per cent.) in congested districts the land commission, or congested districts board, may purchase lands under certain conditions to enable them to deal with the problem of congestion. the greatest blot on the measure is undoubtedly what is known as the "zones." the act provides that if the price agreed upon between the parties allows a reduction of not less than ten per cent nor more than thirty per cent on a tenant's existing rent, in the case of a second term rent, and a reduction of not less than twenty per cent nor more than forty per cent in the case of a first term tenant, the bargain _must_ be sanctioned by the commissioners without inquiring whether the land in question is security for the "advance." the result of this provision is that tenants have been wheedled or cajoled into agreeing to bargains which they will find it difficult or impossible to keep. the price of land became artificially inflated, and the average of eighteen years' purchase paid for land in ireland under the previous purchase acts has been raised by five to seven years' purchase. it is essential that free bargaining should be restored if purchase is to proceed on sound economic lines. in spite of the efforts of the wisest of their leaders, the irish tenantry are rushing into bargains under the wyndham act that may eventuate in dire consequences for themselves and for the country. the importation of canadian cattle when it comes will have a serious effect on the irish produce market, and a further decline in produce prices may be expected. will the irish tenant be then able to discharge his liability to the state and have sufficient margin for living? that is the question for the future. the answer to it alone can settle whether we have yet reached finality in the irish land code. footnotes: [ ] carlyle, appendix, no. . [ ] see lecky, ii., _et seq._ [ ] t. p. o'connor, "the parnell movement," pp. , . transcriber's notes: passages in italics are indicated by _italics_. punctuation has been corrected without note. inconsistencies in spelling and hyphenation have been retained from the original. the oppressed english by ian hay author of "the first hundred thousand," "getting together," "a safety match," etc. [illustration: logo] garden city new york doubleday, page & company _copyright, , by_ ian hay beith _all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian_ chapter one as a scotsman, the english people have my profound sympathy. in the comic papers of all countries the englishman is depicted--or was in the days of peace--as stupid, purseproud, thick-skinned, arrogant, and tyrannical. in practice, what is he? the whipping-boy of the british empire. in the war of to-day, for instance, whenever anything particularly unpleasant or unpopular has to be done--such as holding up neutral mails, or establishing a blacklist of neutral firms trading with the enemy--upon whom does the odium fall? upon "england"; never upon france, and only occasionally upon great britain. the people and press interested thunder against "england's arrogance." again, in the neutral days, when an american newspaper published a pro-british article, potsdam complained peevishly that the entire american press was being bribed with "english" gold. a german school teacher is greeted by her infant class with the amiable formula: "good morning, teacher. _gott strafe england!_" (never "britain," as a scotsman once very rightly complained to me.) on the other hand, when there is any credit going round--say, for the capture of a hitherto impregnable ridge on the western front--to whom is that credit assigned? well, it depends. if the canadians took the ridge, canada gets the credit; and the world's press (including the press of london and england generally) pays due tribute to the invincible valour of the men from the dominions. or, if a scottish or irish regiment took the ridge, the official report from general headquarters makes appreciative reference to the fact. but how often do we see the phrase: "the ridge was stormed, under heavy fire, by an english regiment?" practically never. a victory gained by english boys from devon or yorkshire appears as a british victory, pure and simple. now why? why should the credit for the good deeds of the british empire be ascribed to those respectively responsible--except the english--while the odium for the so-called bad deeds is lumped on to england alone? to a certain extent, england herself is to blame. when a scotsman speaks of scotland he means scotland. an irishman, when he speaks of ireland, means ireland and nowhere else. but when an englishman speaks of "england," he may mean scotland, or ireland, or even canada! this playful habit of assuming that england is the empire, and that the empire is england, does not always make for imperial fraternity, even though in the vast majority of cases not the slightest offence is intended. to the average englishman it seems simpler to say "england." but there are other and deeper reasons. england is a big nation, while the others are small. there are more people in london than in the whole of scotland, or ireland, or, until recent years, canada. and a small nation is always intensely sensitive, and assertive, of its own nationality. the english, too, are an exceedingly placid nation. their enemies call them self-satisfied, but this is hardly just. scotsmen and irishmen celebrate the mysteries of st. andrew's day and st. patrick's day with a fervour only equalled by that of the average american citizen on the fourth of july. but if you were to ask the average englishman the date of st. george's day, he probably would not be able to tell you: and under no circumstances would he dream of celebrating the occasion. "of course i am proud of being an englishman," he says in effect; "but everybody realizes that. so why advertise the fact unnecessarily? why make a cantata about it?" it is this same attitude of mind which causes an englishman to care little, provided a piece of work is _well_ done for the cause in which he is interested, who gathers the credit. instinct and tradition have taught him to set the cause above the prize. it is this characteristic which makes him such an amazingly successful subordinate official, whether in the services or in commerce. he is not vitally interested to climb to the top. his job, for its own sake, suffices him. he is content to work below the waterline, and if the ship goes forward he is satisfied. so he smiles paternally on these aggressively patriotic little brethren of his; allows them to absorb all possible credit for their respective achievements; and philosophically shoulders the responsibility for the shortcomings of the british empire. it saves trouble; it saves explanation; and an average englishman would rather be scalped than explain. this stoical attitude is all very well, but it can undoubtedly be carried too far. patience is a virtue, but an overthick skin is not. the courage of one's convictions can sometimes merge into blind indifference to the opinions of other people. from here it is a mere step to "you be damned!" let us consider the englishman as he appears to the other inhabitants of the globe, be they relatives, friends, or foes. chapter two an englishman and an american, in the earlier stages of their acquaintance, are a complete mystery to one another. it seems incredible that two such different persons should speak the same tongue. the points of difference are not fundamental, but superficial. however, things on the surface are always more conspicuous than things underneath. for instance, the englishman and the american are both naturally warm-hearted. but when an american is glad to see you, he shakes your hand for quite a while, and possibly will continue to hold it until he has concluded his address of welcome. the englishman shakes your hand vigorously, drops it like a hot potato, and murmurs some stereotyped greeting to his boots. he feels somehow that it would be indecent to go farther. in the subsequent conversation the american speaks as he thinks, clearly and with cohesion, articulating every syllable in a well-rounded sentence. to an englishman, a well-rounded sentence savours of pedantry; so he clothes what is sometimes a most interesting remark in a few staccato phrases and a "don't you know?" the chief thing that an englishman dreads at the outset of an acquaintanceship is expansiveness. the more the stranger expands, the more the englishman contracts. the only way to win his confidence is to show yourself as reticent and as perfunctory in conversation as himself. he will then recognize in you that rare and precious object, a kindred spirit, thaw rapidly, and unbosom himself to a surprising extent. the characteristic of the englishman which puzzles the american most is his apparent lack of interest in serious matters, and the carelessness or frivolity with which he refers to his own particular subject or specialty. the american, like the athenian of old, is forever seeking for some new thing. and when he encounters that new thing, nothing can prevent him getting to the roots of it. consequently, when an american finds himself in the company of a man who possesses certain special skill or knowledge, it seems right and natural for him to draw that man out upon his own subject. but when dealing with an englishman he usually draws a blank. he is met either by a cold stare or a smiling evasion. the man may be a distinguished statesman, or soldier, or writer; but to judge from his responses--half awkward, half humorous--to your shrewdest and most searching queries, on the subject of politics, or war, or letters, you will be left with the impression that you have been conversing with a flippant and rather superficial amateur. to an american, who is accustomed to say his prayers to the gods of knowledge and efficiency, and who, to do him justice, is always willing to share knowledge with others, such conduct savours of childishness--nay, imbecility. what the american does not realize--and one can hardly blame him--is this, that the average englishman is reared up from schoolboyhood in the fear of two most awful and potent deities: "side" and "shop." it is "side" to talk about yourself, or your work, or your achievements, or your ambitions, or your wife, or anything that is yours. this is perhaps no bad thing, but it certainly handicaps you as a conversationalist, because naturally a man never talks so well as upon his own subject. the twin deity, "shop," is an even more ruthless tyrant. never, under any circumstances, may you discuss professional matters out of official hours. to talk "shop" is perhaps the most accursed crime in the english secular decalogue (set down hereafter). for instance, in an english military mess, a junior officer who referred at table to matters connected with the life of the regiment would render himself liable to stern rebuke. at oxford or cambridge, an undergraduate who ventured, during dinner, upon a quotation from the classics, would be fined pots of ale all around. in short, the more highly you are qualified to speak on a subject, the more slightingly you refer to it; and the more passionately you are interested in a matter, the less you say about it. however, perhaps it would be simpler to set down the englishman's secular decalogue at length, appending thereto the appropriate comments of the proverbial man from missouri. here it is. _the englishman's secular decalogue_ ( ) thou shalt own allegiance to no man, save the king. thou shalt be deferential to those above thee in station, and considerate of those below thee. to those of thine own rank thou mayest behave as seemeth good to thee. [_the man from missouri_: "i own allegiance to nothing on earth but the american flag. as a democrat, i recognize no man as being either above or below me in station."] ( ) thou shalt worship thine ancestors and family connections. [_the man from missouri_: "you got nothing on me there. we worship our ancestors, too. did you ever know an american who hadn't got his pedigree worked out to three places of decimals? besides, that is why many of us have got such a soft spot for that funny old island of yours."] ( ) thou shalt not talk "shop." [_the man from missouri_: "that strikes me as punk. as a business man, without any mildewed delusions about ancestral acres, or the vulgarity of trade, my aim in life is to _do_ business, and do it all the time, and never worry about hurting the feelings of the family ghost."] ( ) thou shalt not put on side. [_the man from missouri_: "but you _do_!" _the englishman_: "no, we _don't_! that stiffness of manner is due to shyness." _the man from missouri_: "very well, then. let it go at that."] ( ) thou shalt not speak aught but flippantly of matters that concern thee deeply. [_the man from missouri_: "there you puzzle me to death. when i feel glad about anything, or bad about anything, or mad about anything--well, it seems only common sense to say so. can't you _see that_?" _the englishman_: "no. it isn't done."] ( ) thou shalt never make public thy domestic affairs. above all, thou shalt never make open reference to thy women, in places where men gather together, such as the club. [_the man from missouri_: "yes, that is sound. still, i consider that as a nation you rather overdo the secrets of the harem proposition."] ( ) thou shalt make war as a sportsman. thou shalt play the game. that is to say, thou shalt not study the science too laboriously beforehand, for that would savour of professionalism. and when thou dost fight thou shalt have strict regard for the rules, even if it be to thine own hurt. moreover, thou shalt play for thy side and not for thyself. thou shalt visit no personal affront upon thine enemy when thou dost capture him, for that is not the game. [_the man from missouri_: "yes, i'm with you there all the time. perhaps a little more seriousness and a little less pipeclay might help your army, but no one denies their clean fighting."] ( ) thou shalt never be in a hurry. thou shalt employ deliberation in thought. [_the man from missouri_: "yes, sir, i know all about that! it used to make me hot under the collar to sit and listen to an englishman's mind working--on its first speed _all_ the time. now that i know you better, i am getting used to it; but i confess, right now, that there was a time when i regarded your entire nation as solid ivory from the ears up."] ( ) thou shalt not enter into friendly relations with a stranger, least of all a foreigner, until thou shalt have made enquiry concerning him. when thou hast discovered a common bond, however slight, thou shalt take him to thy bosom. [_the man from missouri_: "yes, that's right. i once shared a ship-cabin with an englishman on a seven-day trip. for three days we never got beyond 'good morning,' although i could see by the look in his eye that he was kindly disposed, and was only held back by want of a reference. however, the fourth day out he asked me if i had ever been in shropshire. i said no, but my sister had once visited there, with some people whose name i have now forgotten. but that was enough. it appeared that he knew the people; he was their vassal, or overlord, or mortgagee, or something. after that he wanted to adopt me."] ( ) thou shalt render thyself inconspicuous. thou shalt not wear unusual apparel, or thou shalt be committed to a special hell reserved for those who, knowing better, wear made-up ties, or who compass unlawful combinations of frock-coats, derby hats, and tan boots. [_the man from missouri_: "oh, you clarence!"] chapter three the scotsman, in many ways, regards the englishman from the same angle as the american. he shares the american's unconcealed anxiety to get to the root of the matter, and cannot understand a man who pretends that he does not want to get to the root of the matter, too. to a scotsman, "ma career" (as john shand used to call it in barrie's play) is the one important fact of life; and although the most reserved creature in the world, he possesses none of the englishman's self-consciousness; and it never occurs to him to do anything so palpably insincere as to disown his legitimate ambitions. to a scotsman, then, the english are a frivolous, feckless race, devoid of ambition, and incapable of handling weighty matters with the required degree of seriousness. so he comes to london and takes the helm. to-day a scot is leading the british army in france,[ ] another is commanding the british grand fleet at sea,[ ] while a third directs the imperial general staff at home.[ ] the lord chancellor is a scot[ ]; so are the chancellor of the exchequer and the foreign secretary.[ ] (the prime minister is a welshman[ ], and the first lord of the admiralty is an irishman.[ ]) yet no one has ever yet brought in a bill to give home rule to england! take the dominions again. what is the attitude of canada, australasia, and south africa to the mother country? well, previous to the war it must be confessed that the sons of the empire regarded their parent with a certain good-humoured tolerance, not unmixed with irritation. the british dominions overseas are peopled by an essentially independent and sturdy race. they are descended from folk who left their native land and braved the unknown, not because they were sent, but because an adventurous spirit bade them go forth and better themselves. the british colonies and dominions were all founded by younger sons, or men in search of a career. they were never in the first instance fathered by the state, as such. it was only after british interests in these distant lands grew too great and unwieldy for private control that the british government reluctantly and tardily took over their management officially. men sprung from such a stock are naturally impatient of stay-at-home folk who regard the british empire as "england," and who speak patronisingly of "colonials." these little differences were purely superficial, and by the subtle irony of fate it was left to germany to demonstrate how very superficial they were. but they undoubtedly existed, very largely owing to the fact that some--only some--of the later immigrants into the dominions were of a less hardy and desirable type than formerly--men who had come abroad not from any spirit of enterprise or adventure, but because they had been a failure at home. such men were neither industrious nor adaptable. it was this class that was responsible for the occasional appearance in canada and australia of the legend: "no english need apply." another injustice to england as a whole! india, again. here "pax, britannica" exists in its highest and most creditable form. india is mainly governed by english university men, selected after laborious preparation and searching examination, from all walks of life. each of these men is a living exemplification of the british supreme talent--the talent for efficient departmental work in a subordinate position. he may rule a district containing several million souls, and so long as he rules it, he will rule justly according to his lights, and he will not make a penny out of the operation. in due course he will return to england, and live in honourable obscurity upon a modest pension. but all this will not save him from being denounced as a tyrant and interloper. the hill tribes of the north will cast resentful glances upon the man who represents the power which holds them back from the delectable plunderland of the south; while in bengal over-educated babus will bleat indignantly, regardless of the inevitable consequences to their property and their women, for the immediate withdrawal of the officious and unnecessary british rule from india. a thankless existence, my masters, yet somehow worth while, despite endless drudgery, absence of personal distinction, and years of absence from home and children. the ship goes forward! on the continent of europe, again, the english are regarded with varying degrees of affection or dislike; but their appraisers are all unanimous in regarding them as slightly demented. to the french, for instance, the english tommy, with his uncanny frivolity in the face of death, his passion for tea and jam, and his eternal football games behind the trenches, is a standing enigma and jest. but frenchmen will always remember how the little british army hurled itself to certain destruction, in august, , at the mere call of friendship, and french women will never, never forget the exemplary behaviour of the british soldiers toward the civil population behind the line. as for the german, his opinion can be succinctly summarised. before the war he regarded the englishman from a military point of view as a negligible quantity, from the commercial point of view as a back-number, and from the diplomatic point of view as the easiest thing on earth. now, according to latest official intelligence from potsdam, it was the reptile statesmanship of england that conspired with france and russia to invade peaceful germany, and it is "english gold" that has lured the people of america to disastrous participation in the common doom of the allies. as a soldier, the englishman has done better than potsdam expected: but only by shameful contravention of the usages of war. the prussian is a great stickler for etiquette in this respect. war to him, whether he be emitting chlorine gas or sinking a hospital ship, is a serious--nay, sacred--business. but the imbecile english persist in regarding war as a game. what is worse, they win the game. not long ago a regiment of "kitchener's army" captured a strongly fortified village from the prussian guard. that was bad enough, but the manner in which it was done amounted to nothing less than an outrageous breach of professional etiquette. they went to the assault kicking a football! their commander kicked off, and they never stopped until they had kicked the ball, riddled with bullets, into the trench and captured the garrison. and yet the english have the temerity to complain of german breaches of international law! yes, i fear the english are most harshly spoken of in germany just now. there remains one other point of view to consider, and that is the irish point of view. it must have a chapter to itself. ireland usually gets a chapter to herself. footnotes: [ ] sir douglas haig. [ ] admiral beatty. [ ] sir william robertson. [ ] lord findlay. [ ] a. bonar law, who is half canadian, and arthur james balfour. [ ] david lloyd george. [ ] sir edward carson. chapter four one of the first queries put to a briton by an american after the pair have achieved a certain degree of intimacy, is: "why can't you people settle the irish question?" the form of the query varies in intensity. earnest well-wishers say: "i don't profess to understand the ins and outs of the matter, but wouldn't it save a deal of trouble all round if you were to _give_ them home rule and have done with it?" candid friends say, quite simply: "if you english can't run ireland yourselves, why not let the irish have a try?" (here again we may note that england, not great britain, gets the blame.) finally, a well-meaning but ferocious lady wrote to me the other day from the middle west, to enquire: "how does england dare to pose as the champion of belgium, when all the while she is grinding poor ireland under her heel?" all this is very illuminating, and at the same time distressing, to the stay-at-home briton, who had always imagined that his domestic troubles were his own property, and were not causing concern to other people. but it is an undoubted fact, and cannot be too strongly impressed upon the english people, that the failure of great britain to settle the so-called irish question is a distinct bar to a complete entente cordiale with america, and, to a certain extent, with the british dominions overseas. but before plunging more deeply into the matter, let us make one thing clear. it is not from want of effort or from lack of good will on the part of the english people that the irish problem still remains unsolved. this is not, thank heaven! a disquisition upon the pros and cons of the home rule question. home rule is coming quite soon, anyway. but it is permissible to set down here, briefly, the reasons why the english people have so steadily declined to accede to ireland's persistent demand for a separate parliament for so many years. the first rock upon which both sides split is the difficulty of determining what, exactly, is meant by "home rule." when a responsible leader of the irish nationalist party states his case to an audience which is friendly without being bigoted--in canada, say, or at a meeting of moderate english liberals--he clothes his appeal in some such words as these: "all we ask is the right, as a little nation, to conduct our affairs in our own way, without interference from the officials of another and more powerful nation. ireland free, and ireland a nation, can then take her proper place as a loyal daughter of the empire, side by side with canada and australia." well, nothing could sound more reasonable or unexceptionable than that. but two comments present themselves. in the first place, you will note that the orator says "we." "we" means the nationalist party, representing about seventy per cent.--possibly more--of the irish nation, and ignores the existence of the minority--a minority which, before the war, had deliberately and openly declared its intention, and was fully prepared, to fight and die rather than be forced out of the union. such a determination was doubtless very indefensible, but there it stands. it is recorded here as one of the trifling factors which prevent the irish question from being settled out of hand by the mere wave of some amateur magician's wand. secondly, it implies that ireland is not free. now here is a statement that can be refuted at once. ireland is just as free as england and scotland and wales. in one respect her freedom is very much greater, for she is heavily over-represented in the house of commons. an irish member, returned by a remote galway fishing village of fifteen hundred voters, can balance the vote, say, of an english member representing a great working-class constituency of forty or fifty thousand. if a redistribution of seats, on a basis of proportional representation, were to be ordered in the house of commons to-day, ireland would automatically lose about thirty seats. the irish members, then, wield a power in the councils of the united kingdom to-day quite out of proportion to the population of the country which they represent. in another respect ireland enjoys a freedom not vouchsafed to the nations of the sister isle. in the dim and distant days before the war, mr. lloyd george was engaged in a campaign of what his friends called social reform, and his victims rank piracy. one of his most unpopular flights of legislation was the land valuation act, and another was his national insurance scheme. neither of these acts has ever been visited upon ireland, for the simple reason that the irish people refused to entertain them at any price; so the oppressed english, as usual, gave way, and paid the piper alone. again, last year, when the military service act, imposing conscription upon every able-bodied man between nineteen and forty-one, became law, ireland was once more exempted. to the black shame and grief of every true irishman, ireland to-day stands officially aloof and alone in the struggle for liberty and humanity. the thousands of her gallant sons who are fighting in the trenches alongside their english and scottish and ulster comrades find difficulty in filling up the gaps in their ranks, because certain of their brothers prefer to stay at home--to make political bargains, or to engage in the profitable task of supplying the demands of depleted great britain for ablebodied labour. so much, then, for the little flaws underlying the responsible nationalist's earnest appeal. but a greater shock to the sentimental supporter of home rule, as such, comes when he is confronted with this same modest proposal translated into the actual terms of an act of parliament. the home rule act, the storm-centre of the summer of --so severe was the storm that it quite dispelled the fears of germany lest great britain should step in and interfere with the great _coup_ planned for august--contained the following provisions; and these provisions were the irreducible minimum which the nationalist party (who held the balance of power in the house) were prepared to accept: ( ) a parliament to be established in dublin. ( ) ireland to be exempt from imperial taxation. great britain was to pay for the entire upkeep of the army and navy, but to continue to pay the irish old age pensions, together with an annual subsidy to ireland. in other words, england and scotland were to find the money, and the irish executive were to spend it. the sum involved, including both direct payments and remissions of taxation, amounted to an annual free gift of about thirty-five million dollars. ( ) about forty irish members were to be retained in the house of commons. there were many other clauses, but these three will suffice to show the difference between a home ruler indulging in sentimental aspirations and the same gentleman engaged in the transaction of business. the second clause might have passed muster; for the englishman, with all his faults, has never been niggardly. but clause three broke the camel's back. to the average englishman the one redeeming feature of home rule was the prospect it offered of getting rid, once and for all, of the irish members from westminster. the gentle intimation that forty of these would still remain, to assist in the counsels of england and scotland, and incidentally to glean such further pickings for ireland as could be secured by the help of forty skilfully manipulated votes, was too much even for the much-enduring englishman. the worm turned, and the storm broke. it is difficult to understand why such an astute leader as mr. redmond should have insisted upon such a condition; for it automatically destroyed the claim upon which he based his plea for the sympathy of the united states and the dominions--namely, the plea that ireland should be permitted to govern herself after the fashion of canada and australia, neither interfering with or being interfered with by the parliament at westminster. further into the political merits of the case we need not go. as already stated, the purpose of this disquisition is not to prove a case for or against home rule, but to point out to friends whose knowledge of the subject has been derived almost entirely from the perfervid orations of imaginative gentlemen with irish surnames and (too often) german salaries, who have abandoned their beloved land for the more sympathetic and lucrative atmosphere of new york--firstly, that england during the past fifty years has stopped at nothing, short of the disintegration of the united kingdom, to remove and assuage the ancient grievance of ireland; and secondly, that the chief bar to a complete and speedy settlement of the affair is, and always has been, the inability of a lovable but irresponsible people to agree amongst themselves as to what they really want. the task of redressing wrongs has not been confined to one party. fifty years ago the church of england was the established church of ireland--an obvious injustice to a people of whom the great majority were catholics. therefore the church of england in ireland was disestablished, by a liberal government under mr. gladstone. again, for generations the cry had gone up from ireland that irish land was owned by great landlords of english descent, who spent most of their time in london, and confined their energies as lords of the manor to evicting such of their tenants as could not or would not pay their rent. this was obviously a very wrong state of affairs, and fifteen years ago a unionist government set out to put it right. parliament passed george wyndham's land purchase act, the object of which was to enable the tenant-farmers of ireland to _buy_ their farms from the landlords. the tenant was invited to state the sum which he could afford to pay for his farm, and the landlord was invited to state the sum which he was prepared to accept. this was indeed a gorgeous opportunity for both tenant and landlord. the two amounts, having been stated, were adjusted and confirmed by a board, and the intervening gap--no small gap, as may be imagined--was bridged by the english taxpayer. this little experiment in philanthropy cost the tyrannical english considerably more than five hundred million dollars. under its provisions every irish peasant is now his own proprietor. evictions are a thing of the past. yet how often is this fact so much as admitted by soulful exploiters of erin's wrongs in america or the dominions? then, as regards ireland's inability to express her desires with a single voice. roughly, irish political parties fall under the following heads: ( ) the official nationalist party, under mr. john redmond. ( ) the protestants of the north. ( ) the unionists of the south and west. ( ) the frankly revolutionary party (sinn feinn, clan-na-gael, etc.), whose "platform" is absolute separation from england and the british empire. the official nationalist party is divided into many groups, but at its best it represents the true soul of ireland--the soul of a high-spirited, imaginative, and intensely quick-witted people--fiercely impatient of the stolid, matter-of-fact, self-complacent race across the irish sea. in this respect ireland resembles a "temperamental" wife married to an intensely respectable but unexciting husband. she wants to "live her own life." the irish character again, ever prone to dream and brood, prevents ireland from forgetting her ancient wrongs. heaven knows they were grievous enough; but they were probably no worse than those of scotland; and if they had been regarded as hers were by scotland, they need have left no permanent mark. edward the first, "the hammer of the scots," wrought no less havoc in the days of wallace than essex and sir john perrot in the time of elizabeth. ireland has her ormonde, and that grim forerunner of democracy, oliver cromwell. scotland can point, with an equal degree of unhappy satisfaction, to claverhouse and the butcher cumberland. but the phlegmatic scot has avenged these outrages in subtle fashion. he does not brood; he simply migrates to england in the capacity of a peaceful trader, and proceeds to spoil the egyptians at his leisure. ireland, differently constituted, refuses to forget. and it is those two overwhelming forces--undying resentment, and impatience of the control of an intellectually inferior though mentally more stable race--that lie at the root of the irish home rule agitation of to-day. "leave us to ourselves!" cry the nationalists. "we don't _want_ to be brought up-to-date! we don't _want_ to be made business-like and efficient! we don't _want_ scientific farming, or state-aided incubators, or sanitary milk cans. we are not interested in the glorious british empire. we only ask to be left alone with our own beloved, witty, unmethodical country, to manage or mismanage as we please!" and it is that sentiment which has underlain the steady, consistent resistance of the official nationalist party to all attempts on the part of england--some of them very admirable attempts--to improve the condition of ireland. their attitude is perfectly logical. such legislation, if successful, would prevent the coming of home rule. and most of the bitterness and sorrow of the last thirty years has arisen from the inability--perhaps natural--of the average matter-of-fact englishman to appreciate that attitude of mind. "we offer you," he says, "a fair and equal share--the same as our own--in the running of the greatest empire that the world has ever seen. for goodness sake what more do you want?" and back, without fail, comes the unvarying cry--so heartfelt, so tragic, yet in many ways so unsubstantial:-- "ireland a nation! ireland free!" and if only ireland could have formulated her appeal in a spirit more in accordance with that genuine _cri du coeur_, and less in the spirit of the extremely materialistic home rule bill of , there is little doubt that she would have had her wish long ago. then ulster. the men of ulster differ entirely from the other elements of irish political society in knowing exactly what they want. "we belong," they announce, "to the union; we are proud of the union; and we shall resist, to the death if need be, any attempts to force us out of it." that is all there is to be said about ulster. but the brevity of ulster's contribution to the controversy does not simplify the solution in any way. here is a curious footnote to the ulster problem. americans will remember that in the early summer of certain british regiments (unconscious of the very different task which awaited them in august) were instructed to hold themselves in readiness to enforce the home rule act on ulster. a number of the officers of those regiments resigned their commissions rather than fight against their own kin. they were much criticised at the time. but in , when the british army was mobilized against the american colonies, a number of british officers resigned their commissions, too (and incidentally sacrificed their careers), rather than fight against their own flesh and blood across the sea. thus does history repeat herself. then the unionists of the west and south. their sentiments are the sentiments of ulster, but their position is very different. though numerically quite strong, they are scattered over a wide area. they cannot, like centralized ulster, act on "interior lines"; and it is probable that when a definite form of home rule crystallizes out of the present turmoil, it will be found that their interests have been sacrificed by the mutual consent of the stronger factions. lastly, that curious medley of brooding visionaries--ever the prey of the agitator--political place-hunters, subsidised pro-germans, and ordinary cut-throats, which calls itself sinn feinn. this interesting organization is actuated by a variety of sentiments, varying from a passionate remembrance of woes long past down to a sound business instinct for the loaves and fishes of salaried office. the tie which binds together all its incongruous elements is a fierce hatred of england, derived possibly from the remembrance that rather more than two centuries ago oliver cromwell sacked the fair city of drogheda, or in certain individual cases from a lively personal recollection of having been committed to gaol for three months by a tyrannical magistrate for the trifling indiscretion of burglary or theft. whatever its motives or ideals, this party has only one panacea for all ills, and that is complete separation from "england." they aspire to none of the status of canada or the other dominions; they are out for secession, pure and simple--secession accompanied, if possible, by a mortal blow at the hated pride of england. in order to put their amiable intention into effect, the sinn feinners proceeded, on easter monday of , to deal the british peoples, including some three hundred thousand of their own compatriots serving on the western front, a stab in the back in the shape of that grim medley of tragedy and farce, the dublin "revolution." the farce was supplied by germany, which deposited upon the western shores of ireland, from a submarine, a degenerate criminal lunatic named casement, who had already failed egregiously in a monstrous effort to seduce the irish prisoners in the german prison camps from allegiance to their cause. casement was promptly arrested by the local village policeman, and his share in the matter ended. but in dublin there was no lack of tragedy. the forces of the "revolution" struck the first blow for freedom by an indiscriminate massacre of such british soldiers as happened to be strolling about the streets, unarmed, in their "walking out" dress. the killing was then extended to a large number of innocent civilians, not all of the male sex; and the apostles of freedom then settled down, with the able assistance of the slum population, to the unrestrained looting of the shops and houses of dublin. naturally the whole of ireland stood aghast at the crime. denunciations of the murderers poured in from every side, irrespective of political creed. the leader of the nationalist party publicly repudiated and condemned the occurrence in the house of commons. never did england and ireland stand so close together as on that day. but one thing was morally certain from the start, and that was that when the first flush of indignation had died down, the old pernicious sentimentality and political animus would raise their heads again. and it was so. the "revolution" was crushed. some twelve or fifteen executions took place, either of men who had been directly convicted of deliberate murder, or of those who had set their names to the outrageous document which authorized the same. it is difficult, considering the circumstances, to see how a conscientious tribunal could have done less, for to have condoned such a blend of black treachery and plain murder would rightly have been construed as an act of weakness. but it is even more difficult--nay, impossible--to conceive any handling of the situation out of which persons interested would have refrained from making political capital. the oppressed english were booked for trouble, both "going and coming." probably it would have been best to have held a series of drumhead courts-martial, followed by instantaneous executions, wherever necessary, while public opinion was not merely prepared but anxious for such. but that is not the english way. each prisoner was accorded a full, conscientious, and lengthy trial. what was worse, the trials were held _seriatim_; with the result that by the time the last man had been condemned or acquitted, irish public opinion, ever volatile, had veered round to an attitude of sympathy with the frustrated conspirators. the opportunity to denounce "english justice" was too strong. the fact that scores of innocent people had been foully murdered by the "revolutionists" was forgotten. as might have been anticipated from the start, the odium for the whole tragic occurrence, both the crime and the punishment, was laid by popular acclamation upon the shoulders of england. to-day, particularly in the united states, industrious propagandists are busily engaged in extolling the virtues of the departed criminals; and no tale seems too improbable, no accusation too fantastic, for those whose profession it is to disseminate them. one case in particular has gained unnecessary notoriety in the united states. an unfortunate man named skeffington, a harmless visionary, instead of following the counsels of common sense and staying at home, wandered forth into the streets of dublin during the height of the rioting. here he was arrested by an english officer who, with a party of troops, was engaged in clearing the streets. this officer had recently returned from the western front on sick leave. utterly unstrung by the appalling sights which confronted him, he appears to have suddenly lost his mental balance. at the end of the day he visited the barracks where his prisoners were confined, selected skeffington and two others, and ordered their execution. the sentence was carried out. in due course the matter was reported to the authorities; a searching inquiry was held; and the afflicted officer was confined in an insane asylum. such are the facts of the wretched occurrence; the wonder is, not that it should have happened, but that, in all the turmoil and agony of that hellish night in dublin, it should only have happened once. but it is easy to imagine the form in which the story is being presented in the united states. poor skeffington is now canonised as a man who died for freedom with his back against a wall; while his widow is, or was, touring the chief cities of america, where she is being exploited by astute politicians (with teutonic axes to grind) as a victim of the tyrannical "english" government. chapter five the redeeming feature of irish politics lies in the fact that the grimmest tragedy is never far removed from the wildest farce. for example, within the last few months two by-elections have been held in ireland for the purpose of returning new members to the house of commons. in each case the candidates have been respectively an official nationalist and a sinn feinner. that is to say, a representative of the constitutional home rule party has been pitted against a member of the frankly separatist and revolutionary party. in each case the sinn feinner has been elected. the fact that one of these gentlemen is at present undergoing a term of penal servitude somewhat prejudices his chances of taking part for the present in the counsels of the empire. it also adds one more little complication to the task of selecting a suitable constitution for a nation which allows its undoubted sense of humour to run away so completely with its sense of national responsibility. as these words are written, the news comes that that resourceful statesman, david lloyd george, has conceived the happy notion of collecting all the irish political parties around one table, with instructions to evolve a constitution of their own--the instructions being backed by the information that the offspring of this convention, provided it conforms to the most elementary criterions of common sense, will receive official endorsement forthwith. the present titanic struggle on the western front pales into insignificance at the thought of what will go on around that table. what will be evolved we do not know; but two things seem certain. firstly, practically any scheme of home rule upon which the combatants can agree will be accepted by the people of england and scotland. they are genuinely fond of their brave, witty, and turbulent neighbours; they are genuinely appreciative of the splendid work that has been done in the war by the irish troops; they are broadminded enough to bear no malice for the recent disturbance in dublin, for they can now view that untimely abortion in the right perspective; and they are painfully conscious that their own efforts to confer peace and contentment upon ireland have not been an unqualified success. finally, they are sick of strife and argument; and it is probable that any scheme which does not abandon ireland, and incidentally expose the adjoining coast of england, to the intrigues and designs of a corrupt and teutonically inclined separatist party--and it is this fear which has lain at the very foot of english opposition to irish home rule for generations--will go through. and may that day not be far distant! secondly (and from the point of view of this laboured discourse, most important of all), it can never be said again, either by doubting friend or candid critic, that ireland is debarred from selecting her own form of government by the action of the english people. chapter six ireland, as ever, has drawn us far from our text. but i have said enough to demonstrate to unbiassed observers the present deplorable status of that unfortunate country, england. to-day her chief offices of state are occupied by scotsmen of the most ruthless type; wales supplies her with prime ministers; while ireland appropriates all her spare cash and calls her a bloodsucker. when the war is over, and the world has leisure to devote itself to certain long-postponed domestic reforms, it is most devoutly to be hoped that the case of that unhappy but not undeserving people, the english, may be taken in hand, and that they be granted some measure, however slight, of political freedom. after that we must do something for poland. 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