Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 21

The n.o.bles are the highest cla.s.s. They have most to guard. In every other country they are the champions of patriotism. They feel there is no honour for them separate from their fatherland. Its freedom, its dignity, its integrity, are as their own. They strive for it, legislate for it, guard it, fight for it. Their names, their t.i.tles, their very pride are of it.

In Ireland they are its disgrace. They were first to sell and would be last to redeem it. Treachery to it is daubed on many an escutcheon in its heraldry. It is the only nation where slaves have been enn.o.bled for contributing to its degradation.

It is a foul thing this--dignity emanating from the throne to gild the filthy ma.s.s of national treason that forms the man's part of many an Irish lord.

We do not include in this the whole Irish peerage. G.o.d forbid. There are several of them not thus ign.o.ble. Many of them worked, struggled, sacrificed for Ireland. Many of them were true to her in the darkest times.

They were her chiefs, her ornaments, her sentinels, her safeguards.

Alas! that they, too, should have shrunk from their position, and left their duties to humbler, but bolder and better men.

Look at their station in the State. Is it not one of unequivocal shame?

They enjoy the half-mendicant privilege of voting for a representative of their order, in the House of Lords, some twice or thrice in their lives. One Irish peer represents about a dozen others of his cla.s.s, and thus, in his multiplex capacity, he is admitted into fellowship with the English n.o.bility. The borrowed plumes, the delegated authority of so many of his equals, raise him to a half-admitted equality with an English n.o.bleman. And, although thus deprived of their inheritance of dignity, they are not allowed even the privilege of a commoner. An Irish lord cannot sit in the House of Commons for an Irish county or city, nor can he vote for an Irish member.

But an Irish lord can represent an English const.i.tuency. The distinction is a strange one--unintelligible to us in any sense but one of national humiliation. We understand it thus--an Irish lord is too mean in his own person, and by virtue of his Irish t.i.tle, to rank with the British peerage. He can only qualify for that honour by uniting in his the suffrages and t.i.tles of ten or twelve others. But--flattering distinction!--he is above the rank of an Irish commoner, nor is he permitted to sully his name with the privileges of that order.

And--unspeakable dignity!--he may take his stand with a British mob.

There is no position to match this in shame. There is no guilt so despicable as dozing in it without a blush or an effort, or even a dream for independence. When all else are alive to indignity, and working in the way of honour and liberty, they alone, whom it would best become to be earliest and most earnest in the strife, sink back replete with dishonour.

Of those, or their descendants, who, at the time of the Union, sold their country and the high places they filled in her councils and in her glory, for the promise of a foreign t.i.tle, which has not been redeemed, the shame and the mortification have been perhaps too great to admit of any hope in regard to them. Their trust was sacred--their honour unsuspected. The stake they guarded above life they betrayed then for a false bauble; and it is no wonder if they think their infamy irredeemable and eternal.

We know not but it is. There are many, however, not in that category.

They struggled at fearful odds, and every risk, against the fate of their country. They strove when hope had left them. Wherefore do they stand apart now, when she is again erect, and righteous, and daring?

Have they despaired for her greatness, because of the infidelity of those to whom she had too blindly trusted?

The time is gone when she could be betrayed. This one result is already guaranteed by recent teaching. We may not be yet thoroughly instructed in the wisdom and the virtue necessary for the independent maintenance of self-government; but we have mastered thus much of national knowledge that we cannot be betrayed. There is no a.s.surance every nation gave which we have not given, or may not give, that our present struggle shall end in triumph or in national death.

The writers of _The Nation_ 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.

Nor was it until we saw them thus learning and thus practising that our faith became perfect, and that we felt ent.i.tled to say to all men, here is a strife in which it will be stainless glory to be even defeated. It is one in which the Irish n.o.bility have the first interest and the first stake in their individual capacities.

As they would be the most honoured and benefited by national success, they are the guiltiest in opposing or being indifferent to national patriotism.

Of the Irish gentry there is not much to be said. They are divisible into two cla.s.ses--the one consists of the old Norman race commingled with the Catholic gentlemen who either have been able to maintain their patrimonies, or who have risen into affluence by their own industry; the other, the descendants of Cromwell's or William's successful soldiery.

This last is the most anti-Irish of all. They feel no personal debas.e.m.e.nt in the dishonour of the country. Old prejudices, a barbarous law, a sense of insecurity in the possessions they know were obtained by plunder, combine to sink them into the mischievous and unholy belief that it is their interest as well as their duty to degrade, and wrong, and beggar the Irish people.

There are among them men fired by enthusiasm, men fed by fanaticism, men influenced by sordidness; but, as a whole, they are earnest thinkers and stern actors. There is a virtue in their unscrupulousness.

They speak, and act, and dare as men. There is a principle in their unprincipledness. Their belief is a harsh and turbulent one, but they profess it in a manly fashion.

We like them better than the other section of the same cla.s.s. These last are but sneaking echoes of the other's views. They are coward patriots and criminal dandies. But they ought to be different from what they are. We wish them so. We want their aid now--for the country, for themselves, for all. Would that they understood the truth, that they thought justly, and acted uprightly. They are wanted, one and all. Why conceal it--they are obstacles in our way, shadows on our path.

These are called the representatives of the property of the country.

They are against the national cause, and therefore it is said that all the wealth of Ireland is opposed to the Repeal of the Union.

It is an ignorant and a false boast.

The people of the country are its wealth. They till its soil, raise its produce, ply its trade. They serve, sustain, support, save it. They supply its armies--they are its farmers, its merchants, its tradesmen, its artists, all that enrich and adorn it.

And, after all, each of them has a patrimony to spend, the honourable earning of his sweat, or his intellect, or his industry, or his genius.

Taking them on an average, they must, to live, spend at least 5 each by the year. Multiply it by seven millions, and see what it comes to.

Thirty-five millions annually--compare with that the rental of Ireland; compare with it the wealth of the aristocracy spent in Ireland, and are they not as nothing?

But a more important comparison may be made of the strength, the fort.i.tude, the patience, the bravery of those, the enrichers of the country, with the meanness in mind and courage of those who are opposed to them.

It is the last we shall suggest. It is sufficient for our purpose. To those who do not think it of the highest value we have nothing to say.

THE STATE OF THE PEASANTRY.

In a climate soft as a mother's smile, on a soil fruitful as G.o.d's love, the Irish peasant mourns.

He is not unconsoled. Faith in the joys of another world, heightened by his woe in this, give him hours when he serenely looks down on the torments that encircle him--the moon on a troubled sky. Domestic love, almost morbid from external suffering, prevents him from becoming a fanatic or a misanthrope, and reconciles him to life. Sometimes he forgets all, and springs into a desperate glee or a scathing anger; and latterly another feeling--the hope of better days--and another exertion--the effort for redress--have shared his soul with religion, love, mirth, and vengeance.

His consolations are those of a spirit--his misery includes all physical sufferings, and many that strike the soul, not the senses.

Consider his griefs! They begin in the cradle--they end in the grave.

Suckled by a breast that is supplied from unwholesome or insufficient food, and that is fevered with anxiety--reeking with the smoke of an almost chimneyless cabin--a.s.sailed by wind and rain when the weather rages--breathing, when it is calm, the exhalations of a rotten roof, of clay walls, and of manure, which gives his only chance of food--he is apt to perish in his infancy.

Or he survives all this (happy if he have escaped from gnawing scrofula or familiar fever), and in the same cabin, with rags instead of his mother's breast, and lumpers instead of his mother's milk, he spends his childhood.

Advancing youth brings him labour, and manhood increases it; but youth and manhood leave his roof rotten, his chimney one hole, his window another, his clothes rags (at best m.u.f.fled by a holiday _cotamore_)--his furniture, a pot, a table, a few hay chairs and rickety stools--his food, lumpers and water--his bedding, straw and a coverlet--his enemies, the landlord, the tax-gatherer, and the law--his consolation, the priest and his wife--his hope on earth, agitation--his hope hereafter, the Lord G.o.d!

For such an existence his toil is hard--and so much the better--it calms and occupies his mind; but bitter is his feeling that the toil which gains for him this nauseous and scanty livelihood heaps dainties and gay wines on the table of his distant landlord, clothes his children or his harem in satin, lodges them in marble halls, and brings all the arts of luxury to solicit their senses--bitter to him to feel that this green land, which he loves and his landlord scorns, is ravished by him of her fruits to pamper that landlord; twice bitter for him to see his wife, with weariness in her breast of love, to see half his little brood torn by the claws of want to undeserved graves, and to know that to those who survive him he can only leave the inheritance to which he was heir; and thrice bitter to him that even his hovel has not the security of the wild beast's den--that Squalidness, and Hunger, and Disease are insufficient guardians of his home--and that the puff of the landlord's or the agent's breath may blow him off the land where he has lived, and send him and his to a d.y.k.e, or to prolong wretchedness in some desperate kennel in the next town, till the strong wings of Death--unopposed lord of such suburb--bear them away.

Aristocracy of Ireland, will ye do nothing?--will ye do nothing for fear? The body who best know Ireland--the body that keep Ireland within the law--the Repeal Committee--declare that unless some great change take place an agrarian war may ensue! Do ye know what that is, and how it would come? The rapid multiplication of outrages, increased violence by magistrates, collisions between the people and the police, coercive laws and military force, the violation of houses, the suspension of industry--the conflux of discontent, pillage, ma.s.sacre, war--the gentry shattered, the peasantry conquered and decimated, or victorious and ruined (for who could rule them?)--there is an agrarian insurrection!

May Heaven guard us from it!--may the fear be vain!

We set aside the fear! Forget it! Think of the long, long patience of the people--their toils supporting you--their virtues shaming you--their huts, their hunger, their disease.

To whomsoever G.o.d had given a heart less cold than stone, these truths must cry day and night. Oh! how they cross us like _Banshees when we would range free on the mountain--how, as we walk in the evening light amid flowers, they startle us from rest of mind! Ye n.o.bles! whose houses are as gorgeous as the mote's (who dwelleth in the sunbeam)--ye strong and haughty squires--ye dames exuberant with tingling blood--ye maidens, whom not splendour has yet spoiled, will ye not think of the poor?--will ye not shudder in your couches to think how rain, wind, and smoke dwell with the blanketless peasant?--will ye not turn from the sumptuous board to look at those hard-won meals of black and slimy roots on which man, woman, and child feed year after year?--will ye never try to banish wringing hunger and ghastly disease from the home of such piety and love?--will ye not give back its dance to the village--its mountain play to boyhood--its serene hopes to manhood?

Will ye do nothing for pity--nothing for love? Will ye leave a foreign Parliament to mitigate--will ye leave a native Parliament, gained in your despite, to redress these miseries--will ye for ever abdicate the duty and the joy of making the poor comfortable, and the peasant attached and happy? Do--if so you prefer; but know that if you do, you are a doomed race. Once more, Aristocracy of Ireland, we warn and entreat you to consider the State of the Peasantry, and to save them with your own hands.

HABITS AND CHARACTER OF THE PEASANTRY.[44]

There are (thank G.o.d!) four hundred thousand Irish children in the National Schools. A few years, and _they will be the People of Ireland--the farmers of its lands, the conductors of its traffic, the adepts in its arts. How utterly unlike _that Ireland will be to the Ireland of the Penal Laws, of the Volunteers, of the Union, or of the Emanc.i.p.ation?

Well may Carleton say that we are in a transition state. The knowledge, the customs, the superst.i.tions, the hopes of the People are entirely changing. There is neither use nor reason in lamenting what we must infallibly lose. Our course is an open and a great one, and will try us severely; but, be it well or ill, we cannot resemble our fathers. No conceivable effort will get the people, twenty years hence, to regard the Fairies but as a beautiful fiction to be cherished, not believed in, and not a few real and human characters are perishing as fast as the Fairies.

Let us be content to have the past chronicled wherever it cannot be preserved.