About Ireland Part 3

"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 circ.u.mstances. Of the other division, who allowed their places to be sold, most of them are now evicted. Dozens of shop a.s.sistants, 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 12."

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 rea.s.suring 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 270 acres from Mr. Smith-Barry at a rent of 340 under lease and tenant-right, which, with my improvements, I valued at 1,000. 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 1,000, 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 25 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 30, 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 27th."

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 inst.i.tutions 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 700,000 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 _regime_, 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 ill.u.s.tration. 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 fict.i.tious--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 just.i.tia ruat caelum_"--of the other: "_Apres moi le deluge._"

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:

1880 (No coercion) 2,585 agrarian crimes.

1881 (Partial and weak coercion) 4,439 " "

1883 (Vigorous coercion) 834 " "

1888 (Vigorous coercion) 660 " "

[Footnote B: Mr. Hurlbert, a Roman Catholic, an American, and a personal friend of Mr. Davitt--all which circ.u.mstances 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 cla.s.ses 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., 193. By Dr.

Bryce.]

[Footnote C: Some time after the Great Famine, the Government brought in an Act called the Enc.u.mbered 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 compet.i.tion in open court. He got with his purchase what was supposed to be the best t.i.tle then known, commonly called "A Parliamentary t.i.tle." 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 600 a year, subject to 300 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 600 a year.

Surely it was a distinct breach of faith to swoop down on the purchaser, years after, and reduce the 600 to 500 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 600 a year what was really worth only 500? 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 ill.u.s.trative 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 pa.s.sed 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 _via_ 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, b.u.t.ter 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 5th, 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?]