Home Rule Part 7

Perhaps if such relations were to become more common the drums would actually beat more softly in the north of Ireland.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] Take the facts given by Mr. John J. Horgan, in his interesting pamphlet ent.i.tled "Home Rule--A Critical Consideration":--"In a country of which three-fourths of the population are Catholic there has not been a Catholic Viceroy since 1688. There never was a Catholic Chief Secretary. There have been three Catholic Under-Secretaries. There have been two Catholic Chancellors. In the High Court of Justice there are seventeen Judges; _three_ of them are Catholics. There are twenty-one County Court Judges and Recorders; eight of them are Catholics. There are thirty-seven County Inspectors of Police; five of them are Catholics. There are 202 District Inspectors of Police; sixty-two of them are Catholics. There are over 5,000 Justices of the Peace; a little more than one-fifth of them are Catholics. There are sixty-eight Privy Councillors; eight of them are Catholics.

"Let us now consider some of the large Government Departments. Take the Local Government Board. This body consists of two elements--the nominated and highly paid officials and those who secure admission through compet.i.tive examinations. From the latter cla.s.s Catholics cannot, of course, be excluded. The permanent Vice-President is to all intents and purposes the Local Government Board. He is a Protestant and a Unionist. Of the three Commissioners, two are Protestants, one a Catholic. On the permanent staff we find forty-seven nominated officials, thirty-four of whom are Protestants: and the balance of thirteen Catholics. The thirty-four Protestants draw an average yearly salary of 653 13s., while the average yearly salary of the thirteen Catholic officials only amounts to 580. On the permanent staff created by compet.i.tive examination the story is very different. Here we find forty-three Catholics and twenty-five Protestants. Brains and ability could not be kept out. But what about their remuneration? The average salary of the forty-three Catholics amounts to 207 13s. 6d., while that of the twenty-five Protestants is 304 8s. Can any sensible man believe that there is no favour here?"

[48] The result is that since 1906 Ulster has been half Nationalist in its Parliamentary representation. Taking the last three General Elections together, the Nationalists have nearly an average hold over half the seats in Ulster:--1906: Nationalist and Liberal, 17; Unionist, 16. 1910 (January): Nationalist and Liberal, 15; Unionist, 18. 1910 (December): Nationalist and Liberal, 16; Unionist, 17. And yet people talk as if Ulster was entirely Unionist!

[49] Many of these experiences were narrated to me personally by the sufferers, and consisted of boycotting in religion, trade and social life.

[50] There are now eight Protestants among the Nationalist Party. The directors of Maynooth College told us that the two best friends of their college were Burke and Grattan. A portrait of Grattan hangs in their hall. It was, too, a Catholic Corporation that re-gilded the statue of William III.--William of Orange--at Dublin.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

ROME RULE _or_ HOME RULE?

"There is a principle on our part which must ever prevent (Catholicism being established) in Ireland. It is this--that we are thoroughly convinced that it would be the surest way of de-Catholicising Ireland. We believe that tainting our Church with t.i.thes and giving temporalities to it would degrade it in the affections of the people."

O'CONNELL.

"I want soldiers and sailors for the State; I want to make a greater use than I now can do of a poor country full of men. I want to render the military service popular among the Irish; to make every possible exertion for the safety of Europe ... and then you, and ten other such b.o.o.bies as you, call out 'for G.o.d's sake, do not think of raising cavalry and infantry in Ireland....' They interpret the Epistle to Timothy in a different manner from what we do!"

"'They eat a bit of wafer every Sunday, which they call their G.o.d!' ... I wish to my soul they would eat you, and such reasoners as you are!"

SYDNEY SMITH (Peter Plymley's Letters).

CHAPTER VI.

HOME RULE DIFFICULTIES

Those who watch closely the exploitation of the religious cry against Home Rule will have observed that its exploiters always endeavour to make the best of both worlds. One world is expressed in the phrase, "Home Rule means Rome Rule." The other by the watchword, "Priest-ridden Ireland." Those who use the first of these cries are always trying to persuade themselves that the gift of Home Rule will increase the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland and produce a kind of religious tyranny over the Protestant minority. How that could be done under a measure so carefully safeguarded as, for instance, the Bill of 1912,[51] they never condescend to tell us. It is part of their policy never to enter into details, but to produce a general atmosphere of distrust and unreason.

But it is often these very same people who draw terrible pictures of the power of the Roman Catholic Church already existing in Ireland at the present moment. They do not explain how both of these propositions can be true--how, if Ireland is already "priest-ridden"--a superlative phrase--without Home Rule, there is any room for an increase of that evil under Home Rule. They never seem to contemplate the possibility that the proper and natural corrective to the power of the priest, if it be excessive, is the creation of a strong rival civil power.

Is it, indeed, so certain that "Home Rule" would increase the power of Rome in Ireland? I have even heard it said that the Home Rule cause finds its headquarters at Rome, and that it is part of a gigantic conspiracy of the Vatican to break up a Protestant Empire. Do those who reason thus ever reflect how it is that the English Catholics are often among the most formidable opponents of the Home Rule cause?

Why are the English Catholics so often opposed to Home Rule? The answer was given by Cardinal Manning in the famous phrase quoted by Lord Morley: "We want every one of their eighty votes."

UNIONISM AS "ROME RULE"

Those who fear Home Rule as "Rome Rule" in Ireland had better, indeed, examine themselves as to whether their action in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1893 has not, so far as it goes, led to this very same effect in England. It must never be forgotten that it was with the help of the 80 Irish votes, pressed back to Westminster by the Irish Bishops in sympathy with the Catholic Bishops in England, that the British Parliament pa.s.sed those clauses of the 1902 Education Act which are most offensive to English Nonconformists. Dr. Clifford has coined the expression "Rome on the rates." It is not, perhaps, a phrase that tells the whole story. We cannot forget how many of the poorer Catholics in our great cities are the descendants of the unhappy Irishmen who were evicted between 1840 and 1880 from the cabins of Ireland. Those poor exiles have a special call on our purses. But Anglicanism--rich Anglicanism--has also been placed on the rates. It has been placed there through a working alliance between the English Church and Rome, carrying out its aims by means of the votes of the Catholic Irish members. Those members only acted up to their principles in so voting.

It was Great Britain that compelled them to remain as full voters in full strength at the British Parliament. As long as they are there the Irish must be expected to vote for the interests of their own religion and their own people. But what of the sincerity of the people who, after using the aid of the Irish to endow the Catholic and Anglican schools in England, now raise this outcry about "Rome Rule" in Ireland?

It is vital, indeed, to point out that in these matters Home Rule for Ireland is the only possible road to Home Rule for England also. Under the 1912 Bill the Irish vote at Westminster is reduced to 42, and will, if English self-government be also extended, be excluded from education altogether. Thus the first plain and practical result of Irish Home Rule would be not so much to give the Roman Catholics more power in Ireland as to give the Protestants more liberty in England. But who can doubt that it would also introduce a new element of civil power into the schools of Ireland?[52]

NATIONALISM AND RELIGION

As to Ireland itself, indeed, there can be no doubt that the great national wrongs of the Irish people have immensely strengthened the hold of the Roman Catholic Church over that island during the last century.

Let us look back for a moment at the historic relations between Roman Catholicism and the Irish National cause.

No doubt the iron hammer of Cromwell--in England the rebel, in Ireland the conqueror--and the long torture of the penal laws both contributed to weld together the religious and political faith of Ireland. During those dark days, Nationalism and Catholicism were almost identical terms. It has been shrewdly remarked that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth might probably have converted Ireland to Protestantism if they had preached the reformed faith in the Irish language. However that may be, it is quite certain that Protestantism stood throughout the eighteenth century as the sign and uniform of the conqueror and the devastator.

Catholicism remained as the hope and sign of the conquered. Any Irishman who became a Protestant was naturally suspected of being a traitor, not merely to his religion but also to his nation.

Yet at the end of the eighteenth century the British Government had a great opportunity of dividing the national from the religious cause.

Grattan's Parliament, with all its brilliancy and efficiency, was, after all, a Parliament from which every Catholic was excluded. That Parliament, indeed, as we have noted, granted the franchise to the Catholic peasant and abolished the penal laws. But it was part of the policy of the British Government to show that Grattan's Parliament could not grant Catholic emanc.i.p.ation in its full sense. The grant was to be kept as a bribe by which to achieve the policy of the Union.

Anyone who reads the story in the pages of Lecky[53] must see how that motive ran like a sinister thread throughout the whole working of British policy from 1795 to 1800.

Well, that policy succeeded only too thoroughly for the time. Among the various forms of bribery which induced the Irish Parliament to give a vote for the Union at the second time of asking, the gift of money and t.i.tles were, perhaps, less powerful than the offer of Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. Recent researches have shown that that offer led to the conversion of Bishops and their clergy throughout the whole of Ireland, besides winning over the great body of Catholic Peers.

It is now known, indeed, to be the fact that the British Government actually induced the Vatican to bring pressure upon the Irish leaders and the Irish bishops in order to achieve their object. It is almost certain that unless that offer had been made, and unless the Catholic Party in Ireland had been informed that the Act of Union was the inevitable price for Catholic emanc.i.p.ation, Lord Castlereagh would never have succeeded in closing the Irish Parliament.[54]

That bargain was broken. It is unhappily the case that the British Ministers must have given their pledge to the Catholic Party in Ireland with the conscious knowledge of their inability to carry it out. For over them all was their King, George III., still with the Royal privilege of dismissal for his Ministers, and resolutely, fiercely resolved not to grant Catholic emanc.i.p.ation. Pitt relieved his conscience by a two-years' resignation, but he returned to Parliament without achieving his pledge. For another thirty years the struggle went on. It is the Duke of Wellington himself who has handed down to history the testimony that Catholic emanc.i.p.ation was only finally granted in 1829 in order to save Ireland from a second rebellion.

It is that record that has driven Ireland into the arms of Rome, and who can wonder?

England has now only paid the price of that great betrayal of 1800--a betrayal almost as great as the broken treaty of Limerick. Those who read the story of 1800 to 1830, and especially the brilliant sketch of O'Connell's life in Lecky's "Leaders of Irish Public Opinion," will know that it was in the course of this prolonged struggle for Catholic emanc.i.p.ation that the forces of religion and politics were first thrown into close alliance in Ireland. It was not until after 1820 that the Catholic priest took the place of the Irish landlord, and became what he was throughout most of the nineteenth century, the political leader of his district. It was O'Connell who first carried out that great revolution in political strategy. It was he who first placed the flocks of the Irish people under the guidance of shepherds who carried the crook and not the rent-book. If the Home Rule movement has been a.s.sisted by religious fervour, that has been the fault of British statesmen. If the Irish have stood apart from the rest of Europe by a steadily deepening loyalty to their faith, the reason is largely to be found in the British policy of 1800.

ROME AND HOME RULE

What is the moral of all this? Some of the Unionists themselves give a shrewd though cynical comment on the situation when they suggest, in the intervals of crying "Home Rule means Rome Rule," that probably the Roman Catholic priests have no great zeal for Home Rule. I do not, myself, for a moment believe that that is the case. The Roman Catholic priests of Ireland have themselves been elevated and purified by the great struggle, both social and political, through which they have pa.s.sed. They stand apart from the rest of the priesthood of Europe, distinguished above all others by their deep and strong democratic sympathies. When all others deserted the people of Ireland in the black times of the '98 Rebellion, in the dark and evil days of the famine of 1847, or through the murderous retaliations that followed, the Irish priesthood stood staunchly by Ireland. Those who remained faithful then are not likely to desert the cause of their people now that it is on the verge of success. A broader and more enlightened view of the future was expressed to me by that distinguished man the Vice-president of Maynooth College, when he said:--"We do not expect any direct gain for our faith, but as Irishmen we are with Ireland, and as Catholics we cannot but believe that the prosperity of a Catholic nation must redound to the glory of Catholicism." That is the view of a good Catholic who is also a good citizen.

But though we may believe in their resisting power to this great temptation, we must remember that the failure to settle the Home Rule question would give to the bishops and priests a great power in Ireland. They would remain the great, pre-eminent centre of national authority. Look at their position now. They are public men; they are allowed, without envy or opposition, to maintain an unchallenged control over the schools; they have a voice in all great public decisions of policy, even in regard to such matters as old-age pensions, insurance, or agriculture. The present position plays into their hands. "Rome Rule" is far more powerful without "Home Rule."

So much for the Irish clergy. But what of Rome itself? Looked at from the distance of the Seven Hills, and viewed from the standpoint of a Church that contemplates all forms of human government with equal indifference, always regarding only the good of their Church, is it not possible that the acute diplomatists of the Eternal City may think that they stand to gain more by prolonging than by satisfying the present hunger of Ireland? At present Rome holds Ireland in fee. As long as Ireland possesses no strong secular central power she must always lean on the authority of her bishops and archbishops. But Rome thinks probably more of the 40,000,000 people of Britain than of the 4,000,000 of Ireland. As long as England persists in holding Ireland in bondage she must pay to Rome some compensation. The eighty votes at Westminster are still doing the work which Cardinal Manning required of them. Is it likely that Rome is so beset with anxiety to drive them across the Channel? Is it altogether unlikely that some of the more shrewd Italian or Spanish diplomatists at the Vatican--advised, perhaps, by their English bishops and dukes--may hope to affect the issue rather in the Unionist than in the Home Rule direction? Such suspicions may be entirely baseless, but it will be impossible to disregard them entirely during the events of the next few years.

It would not be the first time, nor the latest since Castlereagh, when the extreme Protestant Unionists of this country conspired with the Tory Ultramontanes of the Vatican to traffic away the liberties of Ireland.[55]

Amid all these doubts and perplexities we shall be wise to stick fast to the central doctrine that civil liberty and religious liberty stand together. This is the one truth that emerges from the history of Europe during the last three centuries. Wherever we look--whether in Germany, France, Holland, Scotland, or England--we see that these two rights have always gone hand in hand.

Is there, indeed, a single instance in human history when the grant of civil liberty has led to the forging of religious chains? Look to the West, and note how, in the freest countries of the world--in the United States and Canada, where there is not even a shadow of an establishment for any form of religion--every kind of human faith lives together in simple human brotherhood, and draws from that brotherhood new food for the refreshment of mankind. In Ireland the one reason why the religious quarrel has been maintained is to be found in the absence of civil liberty. At every crisis of Ireland's fate the pa.s.sion of religious hatred has been worked--then as now--in order to prolong civil and political despotism.