Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry Part 30

Retreat would bring us the woes of war, without its chances or its pride. The enemy, elate at our discomfiture, would press upon our rear.

The landlord would use every privilege till he had reduced his farms to insurgentless pastures. The minister would rush in and tear away the last root of nationality. The peasant, finding his long-promised hope of freedom and security by moral means gone, and left unled to his own impulses, would league with his neighbour serfs, and ruin others, in the vain hope of redressing himself. The day would be dark with tyranny, and the night red with vengeance. The military triumph of the rack-renter or the Whiteboy would be the happiest issue of the strife.

If the People ought neither spring into war, nor fall through confusion into a worse slavery, what remains? Perseverance. They are on the right road, and should walk on in it patiently, thoughtfully, and without looking back.

The Repeal organisation enables the People to act together. It is the bark of the tree, guarding it and binding it. It is the cause of our unanimity; for where else has a party, so large as the Irish Repealers, worked without internal squabbles? It is the secret of our discipline.

How else, but by the instant action of the a.s.sociation on the whole ma.s.s of the People, through the Repeal Press and the Repeal Wardens, could our huge meetings have been a.s.sembled or been brought together?--how else could they have been separated in quiet?--how else could the People have been induced to continue their subscriptions month after month and year after year?

An ignorant or unorganised People would soon have tired of the constant subscriptions and meetings, and have broken into disorder or sunk into apathy.

He is a long-sighted and sober-minded man that lays out money on a complex yet safe speculation, or lays it by for an evil day. That is a People having political wisdom which denies itself some present indulgence for a future good. It had been pleasanter, for some at least of the People, to have spent in eating or clothing the shilling they sent to the Repeal a.s.sociation, just as six years ago they found it pleasanter to spend the shilling, or the penny, or the pound, on the whiskey shop. But the same self-denying and far-seeing resolve which enabled them to resign drink for food, and books, and clothing, induced them to postpone some of these solid comforts to attend meetings, and to give money, in order to win, at some future time, fixed holdings, trade, strength, and liberty.

The People, if they would achieve their aim, must continue their exertions.

It will not do to say, wait till the trials are over. The rate of the trials will not determine Repeal.

The conviction, imprisonment, or death of their present leaders will not crush it. There are those ready to fill the vacancies in the column, and to die too. The rudest and the humblest in the land would grow into an inspired hero were leader after leader to advance and fall. Victory would be the religion of the country, and by one means or other it would triumph. A stronger spirit than his who died issues from the martyr's coffin.

Nor would the success of the accused carry Repeal.

It would embarra.s.s the minister--it would gain time--it would give us another chance for peaceful justice.

But the Queen's Bench is not the imperial Parliament, nor is the Traversers' plea of "not guilty" a bill to overturn the Union, and construct Irish independence on its ruins.

To win by peace they must use all the resources of peace, as they have done hitherto.

Is there any parish wherein there are no Repeal Wardens active every week in collecting money, distributing cards, tracts, and newspapers?

Let that parish meet to-morrow or to-morrow week, appoint _active_ Wardens, send up its subscriptions, and get down its cards, papers, and tracts, week after week, till the year goes round or till Repeal is carried.

Is there any town or district which has not a Temperance Band and Reading-room? If there be, let that town or district meet at once, and subscribe for instruments, music, and a teacher; let the members meet, and read, and discuss, and qualify themselves by union, study, and political information to act as citizens, whether their duty lead them to the public a.s.sembly, the hustings, or the hill-side. By acting thus, and not by listening for news about trials, the People have advanced from mouldering slaves into a threatening and united People; continuing to act thus, they will become a triumphant nation, spite of fortified barracks, Wellington, Peel, and England. They are in the right road; let them walk on in it.

FOREIGN POLICY AND FOREIGN INFORMATION.

Our history contains reasons for our extending the Foreign Policy of Ireland. This we tried to develop some months back.

The partial successes of the wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from Hugh O'Neill to James the Second, were in no slight degree owing to the arms and auxiliary troops of Spain and France.

Our yet more complete triumphs in the political conflicts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries owed still more to our foreign connections--witness the influence of the American war on the creation of the Volunteers, the effect of the battle of Jemappes, and of the French Fraternity of Ulster on the Toleration Act of 1793, and how much the presence of American money, and the fear of French interference, hastened the Emanc.i.p.ation Act of 1829.

With reference to this last period, we may state that such an effect had the articles published in _l'Etoile_ on Ireland that Canning wrote a remonstrance to M. de Villele, asking him "was it intended that the war of pens should bring on one of swords." The remonstrance was unavailing--the French sympathy for Ireland increased, and other offices than newspaper offices began to brush up their information on Ireland. But arms yielded to the gown, and the maps and statistics of Ireland never left the War Office of France.

But our own history is not the only advocate for a Foreign Policy for Ireland.

Foreign alliances have ever stood among the pillars of national power, along with virtue, wise laws, settled customs, military organisations, and naval position. Advice, countenance, direct help, are secured by old and generous alliances. Thus the alliance of Prussia carried England through the wars of the eighteenth century, the alliance of France rescued the wavering fortunes of America, the alliance of Austria maintains Turkey against Russia, and so in a thousand instances beside.

A People known and regarded abroad will be more dignified, more consistent, and more proud in all its acts. Fame is to national manners little less than virtue to national morals. A nation with a high and notorious character to sustain will be more stately and firm than if it lived in obscurity. Each citizen feels that the national name which he bears is a pledge for his honour. The soldier's uniform much less surely checks the display of his vices, and an army's standard less certainly excites its valour than the name of an ill.u.s.trious country stimulates its sons to greatness and n.o.bility. The _prestige_ of Rome's greatness operated even more on the souls of her citizens than on the hearts of her friends and foes.

Again, it is peculiarly needful for _Ireland_ to have a Foreign Policy.

Intimacy with the great powers will guard us from English interference.

Many of the minor German states were too deficient in numbers, boundaries, and wealth to have outstood the despotic ages of Europe but for those foreign alliances, which, whether resting on friendship or a desire to preserve the balance of power, secured them against their rapacious neighbours. And now time has given its sanction to their continuance, and the progress of localisation guarantees their future safety. When Ireland is a nation she will not, with her vast population and her military character, require such alliances as a _security_ against an English _re-conquest_; but they will be useful in banishing any _dreams of invasion_ which might _otherwise_ haunt the brain of our old enemy.

But England is a pedagogue as well as a gaoler to us. Her prison discipline requires the Helotism of mind. She shuts us up, like another Caspar Hauser, in a dark dungeon, and tells us what she likes of herself and of the rest of the world. And this renders foreign information most desirable for us.

She calls France base, impious, poor, and rapacious. She lies. France has been the centre of European mind for centuries. France was the first of the large states to sweep away the feudal despotism. France has a small debt and an immense army; while England has a vast debt and scanty forces. France has five millions of kindly, merry, well-fed yeomen. England swarms with dark and withered artisans. Every seventh person you meet in France is a landowner in fee, subject to moderate taxation. Taxes and tenancies-at-will have cleared out the yeomanry of England. France has a literature surpa.s.sing England's modern literature. France is an apostle of liberty--England the turnkey of the world. France is the old friend, England, the old foe, of Ireland. From one we may judge all. England has defamed _all other countries_ in order to make us and her other slaves content in our fetters.

England's eulogies on herself are as false and extravagant as her calumnies on all other states. She represents her const.i.tution as the perfection of human wisdom; while in reality it is based on conquest, shaken by revolution, and only qualified by disorder. Her boasted tenures are the relics of a half-abolished serfdom, wherein the cultivator was nothing, and the aristocrat everything, and in which a primogeniture extending from the King to the Gentleman _often_ placed idiocy on the throne, and tyranny in the senate, and _always_ produced disunion in families, monopoly in land, and peculation throughout every branch of the public service. Her laws are complicated, and their administration costly beyond any others ever known. Her motley and tyrannous flag she proclaims the first that floats, and her tottering and cruel empire the needful and sufficient guardian of our liberties.

By cultivating Foreign Relations, and growing intimate with foreign states of society, we will hear a free and just criticism on England's const.i.tution and social state. We will have a still better and fairer commentary in the condition and civil structure of other countries.

We will see _small_ free states--Norway, Sweden, Holland, Switzerland, and Portugal--maintaining their homes free, and bearing their flags in triumph for long ages. We will learn from themselves how they kept their freedom afloat amid the perils of centuries. We will salute them as brethren subject to common dangers, and interested in one policy--localisation of power.

The Catholic will see the Protestant states of Prussia, Holland, Saxony, and America; and the Protestant will see the Catholic states of Belgium, Bavaria, and France, all granting full liberty of conscience--leaving every creed to settle its tenets with its conscience, and dealing, _as states_, only with citizens, not sects.

He who fancies some intrinsic objection to our nationality to lie in the co-existence of two languages, three or four great sects, and a dozen different races in Ireland, will learn that in Hungary, Switzerland, Belgium, and America, different languages, creeds, and races flourish kindly side by side, and he will seek in English intrigues the real well of the bitter woes of Ireland.

Germany, France, and America teach us that English economics are not fit for a nation beginning to establish a trade, though they may be for an old and plethoric trader; and therefore that English and Irish trading interests are directly opposed. Nor can our foreign trade but be served by foreign connections.

The land tenures of France, Norway, and Prussia are the reverse of England's. They resemble our own old tenures; they better suit our character and our wants than the loose holdings and servile wages system of modern England.

These, and a host of lessons more, will we learn if we study the books, laws, and manners, and cultivate an intimacy with the citizens of foreign states. We will thus obtain countenance, sympathy, and help in time of need, and honour and friendship in time of strength; and thus, too, we will learn toleration towards each other's creed, distrust in our common enemy, and confidence in liberty and nationality.

Till Ireland has a foreign policy, and a knowledge of foreign states, England will have an advantage over us in both military and moral ways.

We will be without those aids on which even the largest nations have at times to depend; and we will be liable to the advances of England's treacherous and deceptive policy.

Let us, then, return the ready grasp of America, and the warm sympathy of France, and of every other country that offers us its hand and heart. Let us cultivate a Foreign Policy and Foreign Information as useful helps in that national existence which is before us, though its happiness and glory depend, in the first instance, on "ourselves alone." Ireland has a glorious future, if she be worthy of it. We must believe and act up to the lessons taught by reason and history, that England is our interested and implacable enemy--a tyrant to her dependants--a calumniator of her neighbours, and both the despot and defamer of Ireland for near seven centuries. Mutual respect for conscience, an avoidance of polemics, concession to each other, defiance to the foe, and the extension of our foreign relations, are our duty, and should be our endeavour. Vigour and policy within and without, great men to lead, educated men to organise, brave men to follow--these are the means of liberation--these are elements of nationality.

MORAL FORCE.

There are two ways of success for the Irish--arms and persuasion. They have chosen the latter. They have resolved to win their rights by moral force. For this end they have confederated their names, their moneys, their thoughts, and their resolves. For this they meet, organise, and subscribe. For this they learn history, and forget quarrels; and for this they study their resources, and how to increase them.

For moral success internal union is essential.

Ireland, through all its sects and cla.s.ses, must demand Repeal before the English Minister will be left without a fair reason to resist it, and not till then we be in a state to coerce his submission.

Conciliation of all sects, cla.s.ses, and parties who oppose us, or who still hesitate, is _essential_ to moral force. For if, instead of leading a man to your opinions by substantial kindness, by zealous love, and by candid and wise teaching, you insult his tastes and his prejudices, and force him either to adopt your cause or to resist it--if, instead of slow persuasion, your weapons are bullying and intolerance, then your profession of moral force is a lie, and a lie which deceives no one, and your attacks will be promptly resisted by every man of spirit.

The Committee of the Repeal a.s.sociation have of late begun to attend to the Registries. The majority of Irish electors belong to the middle cla.s.s; and if all of that cla.s.s who could register and vote did register and vote, it would be out of the landlords' power to coerce them. The landlords have awoken to a sense of their danger. They begin to know that if once the quiet patriots of this country conclude that reform of the landlords is hopeless, the only barrier between them and their tenants will sink, and they will sink too.

There will be less landlordism next election--at least we warn the landlords that there _must_ be less.

If, then, the majority of members chosen by the middle cla.s.s oppose Domestic Legislation, the middle cla.s.s is suspected of not being truly national--the sincerity of the People is made doubtful--an impediment is opposed to Repeal, which the Repeal a.s.sociation properly strive to upset.