Crying for the Light Volume Ii Part 15

'Of course, Father O'Bourke, I am not going to contradict you,' replied Wentworth. 'I am not a Liverpool shipowner, and know little about them; but I was not long ago in Galway, in the very harbour to which you refer, and while I was there a man said to me that Allan's steamers used to call in there for emigrants, and I asked why they did not then. "Oh," said he, "the fact was, that while they charged in Londonderry a penny a ton, and in Queenstown a halfpenny, in Galway the charges were sixpence a ton, and so the steamers were driven away." Thus, you see, it was not the Liverpool shipowners, but the Galway people themselves, that drove the trade away. What do you say to that?'

'Well,' said the priest, rather confusedly, 'the fact is, there are wheels within wheels; we do not want the people to emigrate.'

'No, you fear you will lose your power over them if they do; but, for the sake of abusing England, you tell me that England ruined the Galway Steam Packet Company. I am inclined to believe it did nothing of the kind.'

'But the landlords, what do you think of them?'

'So far as I have seen them, they are a mixed lot, like all the rest of us-some good, some bad. I blame people who bid against each other in their madness to get a bit of land on which it is impossible for anyone to live. I blame the priests and the patriots and the landlords who for ages have winked at this, and allowed the people to sink into a state of degradation such as you see nowhere else. For miles and miles, as you know, Father O'Bourke, in many parts of Galway, you see fields covered with stones, and these fields are let off as farms. If the landlord resides on the estate the stones are cleared off, the soil is drained, and the tenant manages to make a living-not such as he could get in America, or Canada, or Australia, if he had pluck enough to leave the old country and emigrate, but a living of some kind. If he is under a bad landlord-a poor Irish squire, for instance-of course it is different. If the landlord does not reside upon the estate-unless he be a great English landlord, like the Duke of Devonshire-the tenant and the land have alike a bad time of it. But as the stars in their courses fought against Sisera, so the heavens are unpropitious to the small farmer. If he rises early and sits up late, and eats the bread of carefulness, all is in vain. In Liverpool there are five or six miles of docks filled with American corn and cheese and bacon. How can the small farmer, either in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, compete with that? "It is my belief,"

said a Liverpool gentleman to me-who in the famine year went on a mission of mercy, and as a messenger of relief exposed himself to all the horrors of a Connemara winter-"that the small farmer could not get a living even if, instead of paying rent, rent were given him on condition of his taking the farm."

'I fear, Mr. Wentworth,' said the priest, 'you have looked at Ireland with prejudiced eyes.'

'Not a bit of it. No one has been more friendly to the Irish than the Liberal Party, of which I am a member, and yet we are called infamous, and bloodthirsty, and base, and brutal. You know yourself here in England you live in perfect peace and security; you are allowed to go in and out amongst the people to make converts if you are so disposed. In Ireland, if I attempted to do anything of the kind, I should stand a good chance of a broken head.'

'Well, sir, we are a warm-hearted, impulsive people, attached very strongly to the old religion-the religion of our forefathers.'

'There is no doubt of that, sir,' continued Wentworth; 'wherever you go in Ireland, in the midst of all its dirt, and starvation, and wretchedness, and poverty, you see one man well dressed and well fed.'

'And who may he be, sir?'

'The parish priest.'

'And why should he not be? Is not he the guide and shepherd of his flock? I suppose you will blame him next,' said Father O'Bourke, reddening.

'Yes, I do.'

'What for?'

'For his desertion of the people.'

'Really, Mr. Wentworth, you are amusing. You make me laugh,' said the reverend father, looking uncommonly angry. 'Should the priest not take the part of the people?'

'Certainly. But he does nothing of the kind. Is he not the partisan of the popular agitator? Does he not place himself by the side of men whose language is utterly false? Who stimulates the pa.s.sions of the people to fever heat? who teach the poor Irish-ignorant as they are, a.s.sa.s.sins as I fear a few of them are, cowards as they are when human life is to be saved-that they have every virtue under heaven?'

'Indeed, Mr. Wentworth,' said the priest indignantly, 'I know nothing of the kind. Ireland has been trampled under foot by the murdering English, and now we are within measurable distance of Home Rule.'

'And what will be the good of that?'

'That the Irish will have their rights at last; that we shall be free of English tyranny and English injustice.'

'Yes, you will change King Stork for King Log. Irishmen are bound to quarrel. I was at Queenstown last summer, and taking up the Cork paper, I read an account of the meeting of the Harbour Commissioners. In the course of the meeting, one member denounced another as a humbug and miscreant of the vilest character, and said, old as he was, he was prepared to fight him with the weapons G.o.d had given him, and thereupon asked him to step into the next room and have it out. When I mentioned the matter to a priest, he said sarcastically, "Of course there are no rows in the British House of Commons." I replied that the questions discussed there were more likely to lead to heated debate than the trifling matters a set of Harbour Commissioners would have to deal with.

Furthermore, I added that when we did have a row, it was often begun by Irishmen, and generally connected with Irish affairs.'

'Ireland must be governed by Irish ideas; that is all we want.'

'Let us look at Scotland. England and Scotland were joined together, and the union was as much hated by the Scotch as the Irish union is hated by your people now. Look at England and Scotland now. Are they not one people-equally great, equally flourishing, equally happy under what was, at one time, a detested union? Why should not England and Ireland get on just as well? Had we given way to Scotch ideas, we should now be at loggerheads.'

'Unfortunately, you see, in Ireland,' said the priest, 'public opinion is the other way.'

'Public opinion! What public opinion have you, where boycotting and the bullet of the midnight a.s.sa.s.sin, who, coward-like, waits for his unsuspecting victim in a ditch or behind a stone wall, have created a reign of terror under which all freedom of thought and action is suppressed? Public opinion does not exist in Ireland. The Irish are down-trodden indeed. No Russian serfs are worse off.'

'Nevertheless, in the heart of every Irishman there is a pa.s.sionate desire for freedom which has taught her sons to lead heroic lives and to die heroic deaths. Think of Emmet, Lord Edward Fitzgerald, and many others, whose names will live in immortal song.'

'By all means. They had much to complain of-though they sought a remedy the wrong way, and suffered in consequence. The Ireland of their day was bad enough; but the Ireland of to-day is different.'

'Different indeed,' said the priest proudly. 'Now we are a united people; we have the great American nation on our side.'

'Shall I tell you what an American lady said to me the other day, as I saw her off in a Cunarder for New York?' asked Mr. Wentworth.

'If you like, sir.'

'"Pray, Mr. Wentworth," she said, leaning over the ship's side, as I was getting into the tug-"pray don't send us any more Irish."'

'That may be, sir. We all know ladies have their whims and aversions as well as other people. But you don't seem fond of the Irish.'

'On the contrary, I admire them much. I envy them their ingenuity, their humour, their enthusiasm, their power of oratory, their pluck and spirit.

I only wish them better led. A real union of English and Irish would, I believe, make us the first nation in the world.'

'Then, you don't think much of our leaders?'

'Oh yes I do. They are clever men-far cleverer than our average M.P.'s-but they have put the people on the wrong scent. It is not justice Ireland wants. England and Scotland are quite ready to accord her that. The people of England have been the warmest friends of Ireland from the first. Indeed, she has had more justice done to her than England and Scotland. Her farmers have rights denied to ours; her representatives occupy almost entirely the attention of Parliament. Your leaders only play with the people, and make the wrongs of Ireland a stepping-stone for themselves to place and power. What Ireland wants now is a little peace. The people are dying of political delirium tremens.

Said an Irish hotel-keeper to me one day, "What Ireland wants is more industry. Farmers' sons won't work. They prefer instead to go to fairs and races and public meetings. Irishmen won't invest in any Irish enterprise, and if they do it is always a job they make of it." I myself have known when Englishmen have gone to Ireland to establish manufactures to keep the people employed, that the foremen have been shot and the manufactories closed. You must have known something of the same kind, Father O'Bourke.'

'It may be that there are difficulties between Irishmen and Saxon masters, and that these difficulties may have occasionally led to bloodshed and loss of life. We are a hot-headed people. We have besides the wrongs of many long centuries to remember. You recollect Sir Walter Raleigh, Mr. Wentworth?'

'Blessings on his sacred head, I do! Did he not teach us to grow potatoes and smoke tobacco? I'd forgive a man a good deal in consideration of such lasting benefits.'

'Please recollect he was one of the English who accompanied Lord Grey to the South of Ireland, and took part in the attack on a great castle there. All the inmates were slaughtered. A few women, some of them pregnant, were hanged. A servant of Saunders, an Irish gentleman, and a priest were hanged, also. The bodies, six hundred in all, were stripped and laid out upon the sands-"as gallant, goodly personages," said Grey, "as were ever beheld." Was not that murderous work?'

'It was indeed,' said Wentworth sadly. 'But why treasure up such deeds of blood done ages ago? It is not Christian. The Bible tells us to forgive our enemies.'

'But it is human nature. We Irishmen have long memories. Such things can never be forgotten or forgiven.'

'There I think you're wrong. Besides, in the case you refer to the victims were chiefly foreigners, who had no business there, who had come merely for the sake of fighting. What was done in barbarous times would not be permitted now. Let us strive to be better friends. You Irishmen come to England and we welcome you at the bar, on the press, in trade, in the army or navy, or the public service. I will go further still. It is a shame that when a bridge is to be built over the Shannon you have to come to London. You ought to manage your own local affairs. But England is an empire, and high-spirited, intelligent Irishmen would rather take part in Imperial politics than shine in a local Parliament. Home Rule will not satisfy the natural aspirations of an Irishman of talent. I met an old Dutch naval captain at Flushing who complained to me one day bitterly of the hardship of his lot. When he was born Holland was a part of France; now Holland was independent, and he was a citizen of a little princ.i.p.ality rather than of a great empire. It will be so with the Irishman of the future-or an Irishman in search of a career.'

'But, sir, is not a desire for Ireland's nationality a reasonable one?'

'Undoubtedly; but Ireland never was a nation. It was always torn with dissension; with leaders and lords ready to kill each other, only kept from doing so by England. No one would rejoice to see Ireland a nation more than I, but that is a dream of which I despair.'

'But Home Rule will make Ireland a nation.'

'How can you say that, sir?' said Wentworth indignantly. 'It is in the Protestant north that the strength of Ireland lies; it is there you meet intelligence and industry and wealth; it is there you see what Ireland might become. In all other parts of Ireland, what do you see but wretchedness and poverty? There is a permanent line of separation which not even Home Rule can obliterate.'

'You are very outspoken, Mr. Wentworth-more so than is politic, I fear,'

said the reverend Father, with a bitter smile. 'We have many Irish voters in this borough, and I fear they will be unable to give you their support; and Irish support is a matter of some consequence. In many borough elections they can turn the scale.'

'Alas! I am quite aware of that; but I hold my opinion, nevertheless.

The demand for an Irish Parliament independent of an Imperial one will come to the front, the Liberal Party will find themselves compelled to support it-'