The Irish Race in the Past and the Present Part 57

A German Protestant, Dr. Julius Rodenberg, writing in 1861, expressed his astonishment at the sight of Ireland's poverty, as he saw it in the streets of Dublin, although he had doubtless read a great deal about it previously. "You are in a country,"

he says, "whence people emigrate by thousands, while fields, of such an extent and power of production as would support them all, lie fallow."

And with respect to the progress already made, M. de Beaumont had remarked many years before that in Ireland a certain relative progress was quite compatible with the continued existence of pauperism among the lower cla.s.ses. "One single cause," he remarks, "suffices to explain why the agricultural population becomes poorer, while the prosperity of the rich is on the increase: it is that all improvement in the land is profitable solely to the proprietor, who exacts more rent from the farmer in proportion as he works the land into a better state."

Since M. de Beaumont wrote, the pauperism in the cities has a.s.sumed a more wretched and repulsive form, in consequence of the crowding there of poor peasants who had been evicted from their small farms and fled to the nearest city or town with the hope of finding there at least charity.

"For the last ten years," wrote Abbe Perraud, in 1864, "there has been taking place in the large cities an acc.u.mulation of poor as fatal to their health as to their morality. They are mostly country people whom eviction has driven from the country, who have been unable to emigrate, and who were unwilling to shut themselves up immediately in the workhouses. The resources they procure for themselves, by doing odd work, are so completely insufficient, that it is impossible to be surprised at their dest.i.tution."

Dr. Rodenberg, describing the state of the poor country people crowded in the "Liberties of Dublin," says of the rooms in which they live: "In those holes the most wretched and pitiable laborers imaginable live; they often lie by hundreds together on the bare ground."

Such citations might be sadly multiplied, but those given are sufficient as descriptive of the state of the poor Irish in the cities. Let us now see how the peasants live in the country in many parts of Ireland:

II. "The dest.i.tution of the agricultural cla.s.ses," writes Abbe Perraud, from personal observation, "in order to be rightly appreciated, must be seen in the boggy and mountainous regions of Munster, of Connaught, and of the western portion of Ulster.

"The ordinary dwelling of the small tenant, of the day-laborer, in that part of Ireland, answers with the utmost precision the description of it twenty years ago given by M. de Beaumont: 'Let the reader picture to himself four walls of dried mud, which the rain easily reduces to its primitive condition; a little thatch or a few cuts of turf form the roof; a rude hole in the roof forms the chimney, and more frequently there is no other issue for the smoke than the door of the dwelling itself. One solitary room holds father, mother, grandfather, and children. No furniture is to be seen; a single litter, usually composed of gra.s.s or straw, serves for the whole family. Five or six half- naked children may be seen crouching over a poor fire. In the midst of them lies a filthy pig, the only inhabitant at its ease, because its element is filth itself.'

"Into how many dwellings of this kind have we not ourselves penetrated--especially in the counties of Kerry, Mayo, and Donegal--more than once obliged to stoop down to the ground, in order to penetrate into these cabins, the entrance to which is so low that they look more like the burrows of beasts than dwellings made for man!

"Upon the road from Kilkenny to Grenaugh, in the vicinity of those beautiful lakes, at the entrance of those parks, to which, for extent and richness, neither England nor Scotland can probably offer any thing equal, we have seen other dwellings. A few branches of trees, interlaced and leaning upon the slope in the road, a few cuts of turf, and a few stones picked up in the fields, compose these wretched huts--less s.p.a.cious, and perhaps less substantial, than that of the American savage."

At the time of Abbe Perraud's visit, a correspondent of the Dublin Saunders News-Letters, who was commissioned to inquire into the condition of the peasants, gave the following reply, which, as the abbe justly remarks, is but the faithful echo of all the descriptions made within the last half-century:

"The inhabitants of Erris appear to be the most wretched of all human beings. Their cabins, their patched and tattered clothes, their broken-down gait--every thing bears witness to their poverty. Their beds consist of a few bits of wood crossed one upon the other, supported by two heaps of stones, and covered with straw; their whole bedclothes a miserable, worn-out quilt, without any blankets . . . . But there is nothing in Ireland like the habitations which the people of the village of Fallmore have made for themselves, who have been evicted by Mr. Palmer.

They are composed of ma.s.ses of granite, picked up on the sh.o.r.e, and roughly laid one by the other. These cabins are so low that a man cannot stand upright in them; so narrow that they can hardly hold three or four persons."

After all, F. Lavelle was guilty of no exaggeration in stating that the hut of the Hottentot was better than that of the Irish peasant. But, in the district of Gweedore, northeast of County Donegal, the state of the peasantry is more deplorably wretched still than in any other part of Ireland. At the time of a celebrated parliamentary inquiry in to the matter in 1858, a Londonderry newspaper stated that "there are in Donegal about four thousand adults, of both s.e.xes, who are obliged to go barefoot during the winter, in the ice and snow--pregnant women and aged people in habitual danger of death from the cold . . . .

It is rare to find a man with a calico shirt; but the distress of the women is still greater, if that be possible. There are many hundreds of families in which five or six grown-up women have among them no more than a single dress to go out in . . . .

There are about five hundred families who have but one bed each-- in which father, mother, and children, without distinction of age or s.e.x, are crowded pell-mell together."

If from the dwellings and clothing of the peasantry we pa.s.s to their food, there is no need of adding any thing to what was said on this point when describing the periodical famines. One detail, however, not yet mentioned, deserves to be recorded:

"In the district of Gweedore," says Abbe Perraud, "our eyes were destined to witness the use of sea-weed. Stepping once into a cabin, in which there was no one but a little girl charged with the care of minding her younger brothers, and getting ready the evening meal, we found upon the fire a pot full of doulamaun ready cooked; we asked to taste it, and some was handed to us on a little platter.

"This weed, when well dressed, produces a kind of viscous juice; it has a brackish taste, and savors strongly of salt water. We were told in the country that the only use of it is to increase, when mixed with potatoes, the ma.s.s of aliment given to the stomach. The longer and more difficult the work of the stomach, the less frequent are its calls. It is a kind of compromise with hunger; the people are able neither to suppress it nor to satisfy it; they endeavor to cheat it. We have also been a.s.sured that this weed cannot be eaten alone; it must be mixed with vegetables, since of itself it has no nutritive properties whatever."

How long is such a state of things likely to continue? It has already existed long enough to be a disgrace to the much-vaunted benevolence of the nineteenth century. A sure and radical remedy must be found for it; and, as it has been already so long delayed, it should be found the more promptly.

It seems that the tenure of land lies at the bottom of the question, and that respect for what are called "established rights" offers the main difficulty. Those rights, indeed, were founded on the cruellest wrong and the most flagrant injustice; but as possession is "nine points of the English law," and so long a time has pa.s.sed since the land changed hands, prescription must be admitted and let them be called rights; nor can any man in his senses ask for a violent subversion of society for the sake of righting an old wrong.

But it has ever been a maxim of jurisprudence that summum jus, summa injuria; and this axiom finds its full explanation in the present case, when it is considered that the jus is on the side of a comparatively small number of men, for the most part absentee landlords, while the injuria leans to the great ma.s.s of the primitive owners of the soil. The time-honored policy of the English Government, that all the open abuses of landlordism should be watched over and protected with the most jealous care, while, on the other hand, the wretched farmer and cottier is supposed to have no rights to defend and guard, should be abandoned at once and forever, with a firmness that can leave no room for doubt or equivocation, if the restoration of confidence on the part of the Irish is esteemed any thing worth.

But, if for no other motive, at least for the sake of securing peace and order in Ireland, a remedy must be found. There is no reason why the Irish should longer remain a nation of paupers; and, although some may still pretend that the fault and its remedy lie with themselves, unprejudiced men will readily acknowledge that the fault lay first, at least, at England's door --a fact which the London Times has conceded often and proclaimed loudly enough.

Let British statesmen, then, devise proper means for such an end without social commotion, with as little disturbance of private rights as possible; for the object is an imperious necessity. It seems that the latest law enacted with this view is not the measure that was required; is totally inadequate in its provisions, scope, and extent. In such a case it is always open to legislators to introduce a new and more satisfactory measure; and moral force will surely bring this about, provided it is true to itself. We confess to having no scheme of our own to set forth; but Irishmen are free, nay ent.i.tled, to speak, to write on, and discuss the subject; and a serious, steady, but lawful agitation of the question will surely find its true and final solution. The last Galway election, notwithstanding the temporary triumph of Judge Keogh, was a beginning in the right direction.

There is no need here of revolution, of what the French call une jaquerie, of arming the populace for the purpose of violently ejecting the great land-owners. No Irishman has ever stood for so calamitous a remedy. The aid of the Internationalists will certainly never be called in by the true children of Erin for any purpose whatever. It seems that the great and holy Pontiff, Pius IX., made this remark to the Prince of Wales, at their last interview at the Vatican, and, according to the report, the prince fully admitted its truth as far, at least, as he, by any outward sign, could show.

The question is one of pure justice, to be settled within the limits of order and law; and surely, when all admit that the evil is so crying, that a remedy must be found, one will be found, which, while it does no real injury to any person, will bring comfort and relief to the most deserving and suffering race of men--the Irish peasantry. We will soon see how.

But the Irishman is not only physically dest.i.tute; he is also dest.i.tute mentally; and, if the first case calls for a prompt remedy, the second is no less urgent. Pauperism and ignorance were the two terrible engines so long worked by England for the degradation and final destruction of the Irish race. Our readers have seen how persistently was education, of any kind, refused to the natives. The Universities of Dublin and Drogheda in the fourteenth century, the cathedral schools, founded by the Anglo- Normans, in the same age, carefully excluded the Irish from their benefits. And, when the Reformation set in, with its long series of oppressions, no Catholic could share in the new foundations of the Tudors and the Stuarts without first abjuring his religion. Penal statute after penal statute made of all the shifts, to which the Irish were driven in order to educate their children, so many crimes, punishable by death or transportation.

That, under such a state of things, they could remain Catholics without becoming idiots is one of the most remarkable instances on record of buoyancy of spirit and soundness of mind on the part of a whole nation.

From the end of the last century the policy of England changed completely in appearance. The foundation and endowment by the state of the great college of Maynooth, destined for the education of the Irish clergy, in 1795, was certainly a step on the right road, and if only primary schools for the people had, at the same time, been spread all over the island on the same principle of true liberality, the old injustice on the matter of education would have been atoned for and remedied, to a great extent.

But the Kildare Peace Society and the Church Education Society, founded in 1839, showed that the antagonism to the Catholic Church in Ireland was far from being dead; nay, was as rife as ever.

Lord Stanley's National Education System, in 1831, at first seemed of a character altogether above Protestant or infidel proselytism. But, the composition of the various boards under that system, and some of the measures adopted, gave evidence clearly and soon enough that the education proposed for the Irish was not in accordance with the true spirit of the nation, so eminently Catholic and religious as it is. Hence, the total failure--for such it is now admitted by all to have been--of that system ought to have opened the eyes of all impartial Englishmen to the necessity of starting from the principle that Ireland is Catholic, and that the Irish are true children of the Catholic Church. But this fact seems not yet recognized or acknowledged by those who rule the nation, since, at this very moment, a bill lies before Parliament against which all the bishops of Ireland have united in raising their voice. The queen's colleges all confess to be a wretched failure.

The injustice of centuries, then, is not, even in these free days, when there is such a talk about educating the ma.s.ses, repaired by the English Government; and this sad fact seems to militate against the power of moral force. However, it is but right to remember that only those establishments are here spoken of which are supported by state aid, and that complete freedom of education, independent of such a.s.sistance, does actually exist in Ireland. Have not the bishops all necessary power to open schools of their own? Have they not even founded a university? Does the state dare to interfere in whatever educational establishments they think proper to set on foot?

They are now, in that regard, as free as the Catholic bishops in the United States; and if the degrees granted by the faculties under their control have no value in the eyes of the state, they can easily dispense with a concurrence, which is certainly unjustly denied, but which, even if granted, would not, in the eyes of the Church, increase in the slightest the real value of the diplomas they themselves approve. They can afford to wait for the time when complete justice will be done; meanwhile they are freer than Catholic bishops at this moment are in all Catholic countries of Europe; and the freedom they enjoy is entirely owing to that moral force which, we allege, is sufficient to insure, sooner or later, all the advantages that can be desired. When the present situation of the native Irish, from an educational point of view, is compared with the oppression under which they lay a hundred years ago, one cannot but wonder how so much has been obtained, and the hope, that every thing still wanting is sure to come by the agency of the force that has already won so much, cannot be deemed vain and illusory.

Let not, however, what is here said be construed as advising Ireland to stand still while schemes of education, evidently G.o.dless, are concocted, matured, and pa.s.sed into laws for their special benefit. On the contrary, they must not only continue but increase their efforts to cry them down, till they compel a blind and deaf government to open its eyes and ears to a national want and a national voice. This is what is meant by the use of moral force.

But, can the complete remedy for pauperism and the solid establishment and endowment of truly Catholic schools be expected to come from any hands but those of an Irish Legislature? Can they be hoped for as long as the destiny of Ireland rests in the hands of an Imperial Parliament whose great majority can have no real sympathy with the long-oppressed race?

In a word, is home-rule necessary to bring about those two great measures, which seem absolutely indispensable for the complete resurrection of the nation?

Our readers already know that, in our opinion, an Irish Parliament would not be a sure panacea for the evils of the country, particularly those of pauperism and ignorance, even though that Parliament sat in Dublin, and was composed of Irishmen bred and born. The evils would not be struck out promptly and utterly, although many great improvements would immediately follow.

Some of our reasons for being chary of confidence in the success of home-rule have been already given. But we have also insisted on the necessity of leaving the question open, and admitted that Irishmen have a right to discuss it, and take whatever side they may think proper, provided always they stand, as they are standing, within the limits of law and order.

Surely, the Irish have a right to be fairly represented; modern doctrines, as far as they can go, consecrate that right; and, if fair representation is an impossibility in the present state of affairs in Ireland, that state should be so altered as that the Irish nation might obtain all the advantages which a truly representative government bestows.

It is clear that the difficulty consists in the paramount importance of the union--of the empire; and this is not the place to discuss so large a question. It may be said, however, that the union of the British Empire does not and cannot consist in the absorption into one whole of the three integral parts which compose it. England, Scotland, and Ireland, are still three distinct national ent.i.ties, each inhabited by a peculiar race, and each race cannot, in such a political organization, be in justice ignored, for a mere abstraction called the state.

Certainly the question is a very complicated one; and to offer a dogmatic solution of it would be pretentious. It is better to leave it to a future which is not far distant. What may be insisted on is, that moral force is strong enough to bring about a satisfactory decision, and that to resort to revolution for such a purpose would be as fatal as it is criminal.

A right discussion of the question must make clear the fact that Ireland is ent.i.tled to fair dealing as a component part of the empire. Many other political organizations embraced within the vast limits of the British power are allowed to discuss and decide on questions peculiar to themselves, and which they are at full liberty to p.r.o.nounce upon for themselves by a wise adjustment and concession on the part of the mother-country as necessary to their well-being. Canada is almost entirely independent; the Australian colonies have all their own legislatures; it is the same more or less with all the distant dependencies of England, yet there have been no complaints heard so far of these late concessions threatening the union of the Empire.

But the objection is urged: "If such a concession be made to Ireland, where can you stop? The Scotch may ask the same, and the Welsh; one has as much right to home-rule as the other; where can you draw the line?"

An easy answer to this is, that the Scotch have never asked for home-rule, for the very good reason that they never had to complain of unfair treatment at the hands of the English Government; their special wants and desires having been always duly considered from the moment of their union with England. But the union of Ireland with England is not yet a century old, was brought about perforce, and by chicanery and fraud, and from the moment of its enactment to the present has been loudly protested against by the Irish nation--the nation, that is, which we have followed all through, joined in this instance by numbers of their Protestant fellow-countrymen. A long list of pamphlets and books might be drawn up, as showing the fact that mult.i.tudes of Irish writers, not of a revolutionary but of a truly conservative character, who cannot be accused of disloyalty to England, have deplored, protested against, and clamored for the repeal of, the Union of 1800.

Such is not the case with Scotland. But suppose it were, and proofs furnished showing that Scotland is not fairly represented in a Parliament which meets at Westminster, then that country would have just as much right to see itself fairly represented, its special wants satisfied and met, as all the other branches of the great British organization.

Certain it is that the empire cannot be sound when an important, a vital part of its political frame is incurably sore. Let that sore be healed by justice, large, generous, and complete; let Ireland be truly and really represented, in whatever manner her representation may be carried out, and the sudden rise of the little western isle in wealth, contentment, true prosperity, and happiness, will redound to the general good of the whole. As it now stands, its still miserable condition is as great and constant a danger to Great Britain as it is a reproach and a shame upon the maternal government which suffers the child, for whose session it would stake its all, to continue in a state of almost hopeless poverty, materially and intellectually, and to struggle unaided in its efforts to rise.

If home-rule be the measure which is to heal Ireland's wounds, it must be granted, and the voice of reason and right must rise above the stupid clamor which says that it cannot, must not, shall not be granted! Such expressions were common in inflammatory pamphlets which flooded the country on the eve of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, in 1829; and possibly many were issued even after the granting of this (from a certain English point of view) suicidal act of justice to Catholics.

But whatever may be the ultimate issue of the home-rule movement, the question of education, which is so closely allied to, as to seem dependent on it, is of such importance that it brooks no delay. Ireland is, as it may be hoped it will ever continue, a truly Catholic nation, and for such education must be special, and cannot be left to the direction of a non-Catholic state, not to use a worse expression. The result of the so-called national system, as exhibited by the Queen's Colleges and the rest, ought to be enough to open the eyes of real statesmen. But non- Catholic legislators need a sense which they do not possess, to appreciate the blunders they must fall into when proposing to touch such delicate interests as spiritual things. Thirty years ago, when those Queen's Colleges and schools were established in Ireland, the Catholic hierarchy raised up their voice to warn the British Government against so rash an attempt; for the very few who appeared willing to give the system a trial had their own doubts and forebodings. The warning, as usual, was not heeded, and the consequence is, that the partisans of the system now confess that their darling scheme has turned out a complete failure. Yet, strange to say, they do not in the least seem to have changed their ideas on the subject. On the contrary, they wish to secularize education more completely than ever, and to extend their project to the whole British Empire; though at this moment the warning comes to them also from the Presbyterians of Scotland, who refuse to submit to the scheme, universal in its scope, of educating the young according to state notions and worldly ideas.

In this the British Government only follows the lead of all European cabinets and legislatures; for this great iniquity is not confined to the British Isles, but is attempted everywhere, with the evident design of taking the government of souls out of the hands to which Jesus Christ confided it--the Church. The Sovereign Pontiff was compelled to protest, and, as is the custom in these days, his protest fell unheeded. It remains to be seen whether men, who call themselves Christians, will consent to see their children educated by secular bodies, which are not only void of all authority over the souls of men, but imbued, as all know, with doctrines the most pernicious and disorganizing. The just complaint made by the Irish hierarchy is unfortunately not restricted to their own body; their complaint is one with that of all the rulers of the Church throughout the world. It seems to us that there is greater hope of establishing a thorough Christian system of education in Ireland than in any other country, because the Irish nation will always take a more determined att.i.tude, and gather in a more compact and united body around her natural leaders, the bishops and priests of G.o.d, than any other modern Catholic nation; and, in this age, where there are unanimity and a fixed purpose among any body of men, they cannot fail to result in a victory over all obstacles and opponents.

Of one thing England may be sure, that the Irish bishops would never submit to the project now on foot in England, as to do so would be to fail in their most sacred duty; and the ma.s.s of the Irish people is at their back. The Catholic hierarchy is always ready to support the secular power so long as that power remains within its province and does not step out of it to encroach on their unquestionable domain; but, when duty calls on them to resist, the experience of centuries is before the world, in Ireland at least, to show how far they can carry their resistance.

In this they will stand united as one man, and it is vain for the English Government to flatter itself that it will find tools among them, should it foist on them the Birmingham scheme.

But a more threatening fact still is the compact union of all Irishmen in support of their bishops, against schemes which have already excited such bitter opposition on their part, and on which they have already p.r.o.nounced and given their solemn verdict in unmistakable tones. If in our days Irishmen have been so eager to uphold many projects of a doubtful character, because those projects were opposed to England; if they have shown in the most emphatic manner that the memory of the past is still fresh, and that they are not yet prepared to accept the British Government as a friend; if they have seized every occasion, the most trifling as well as the most important, to show that the union with England was distasteful to them--what will be their att.i.tude when the question admits of no doubt, and can give rise to no apprehension in a Christian conscience; when, indeed, they know that they stand where their duty to G.o.d bids them, urged at the same time by their natural feelings of opposition to a power which they detest and to which they are irreconcilable? We do not say that we altogether approve of their dogged opposition to England; it is only alluded to as a fact which it would be folly, in treating of questions between England and Ireland, to shut one's eyes to or doubt.

When such is the state of feeling, how can a scheme of G.o.dless education hope to succeed, which, after all, requires the consent of fathers and mothers of families? It is only natural to suppose that the English Government, in the event of its success, is scarcely prepared to employ such a numerous, watchful, and determined police as shall march the children off to school every lay by force--to schools which to them would be prisons, presided over by jailers in the shape of instructors.