Read the book: «Ireland as It Is, and as It Would Be Under Home Rule», page 37

The road to Kilmore is through a beautiful park-like country heavily timbered with oak, ash, beech, chestnut, and fir. Tall hedgerows twenty feet high line most of the way, which in many parts is completely overhung with trees in green arches impervious to rain. The country is undulating, with sharp descents and long clumps of beeches and imposing pine woods, bosky entrances to country seats and grassy hills, covered with thriving kine. From the church itself an extensive landscape is seen on every side. A deep valley intervenes between the church and a pretty farmhouse. I find a narrow lane with high hedges, covered with honeysuckles, which seems to lead thitherward. A man is toiling in a field hard by, digging for dear life, bare-armed and swarthy. I mount the gate and make for him. He remains unconscious, and goes on digging like mad. His brow is wet with honest sweat, and he seems bent on earning whate'er he can. Perhaps he wishes to look the whole world in the face, having an ambition to owe no rent to any man. I woke him and asked why the flags were flying on Kilmore steeple.

"To the pious, glorious, and immortal memory of William of Orange, who gave us an open Bible, and delivered us from Popery brass money, and wooden shoes. We put them up on the first of July and fly them till the twelfth, when we walk in procession through Monaghan."

"An Orangeman, and a black Protestant, I fear?"

He laughed merrily, and said he was proud and thankful to be both. "If we didn't hold together, and associate in some way, we might quit the country at once. By banding together we hold our ground, and we will do so until Home Rule comes on us. Then we'll have to give in, about here. We're in a minority."

"Don't you think the Papists would be tolerant?"

"Aye, aye! Toleration indeed. As tolerant as a cat to a mouse. As tolerant as I am to this thistle, bad scran to it," said my friend, fetching up the obnoxious weed with a vigorous stroke, and chopping it to pieces with the spade, after which he shovelled it to the bottom of the trench. "Why, sir, the Papists are beginning to assume mastership already. Before this Government had been a fortnight in office the dirty scum began to give themselves airs. I mean, of course, the lowest of them. They were not so civil as before. Tolerant, ye say! Sure anybody that heard ye say the like of that would know ye were a stranger in the counthry."

The farm house was a model of cleanliness and neatness, James Hanna a model of a hard-working, debt-paying, honourable farmer. The living rooms had every accommodation required for the decent bringing-up of a family; and the parlour, with its carpets, knick-knacks, and highly-polished solid furniture, showed both taste and luxury. Mrs. Hanna, a buxom lady of middle age, was hard at work, but for all that, the picture of comeliness and neatness. The children were just coming in from school, well clad and good-looking, the boys ruddy and strong, the girls modest and lady-like. Mr. Hanna was hard at it in some contiguous field, but he came round and told me that he held twenty acres of land, that the rent was £24 10s., that his father had the farm for more than fifty years, that he was a Protestant, a Unionist, and a strong opponent of Home Rule. I have visited two other farms of the same size in Mayo and Achil, both held by Catholic Home Rulers. The rent of the Achil farm described by its holder, Mr. McGreal, as "very good land," was seventeen-and-sixpence for the whole twenty acres. McGreal was very poor, and looked it. His house was of the type described in my previous letters. Mr. James Hanna pays more for each acre than McGreal for his whole farm, and yet the Kilmore man is prosperous, his house, his family, all his belongings suggestive of the most enviable lot. A gun was hanging over the fire-place, which was a grate, not a turf-stone. I asked him if he used the shooting-iron to keep his landlord in order. He said No, he was no hunter of big game. I may be accused of too favourable an account of this farmhouse and its inmates, but I have (perhaps somewhat indiscreetly) given the name and address, and Monaghan people will agree with me. A more delightful picture of Arcadia I certainly never saw. Cannot Englishmen reckon up the Home Rule agitation from such facts as these, the accuracy of which is easily ascertainable by anybody? Everywhere the same thing in endless repetition. Everywhere laziness, ignorance, uncleanliness, dishonesty, disloyalty, ask for Home Rule. Everywhere industry, intelligence, cleanliness, honesty, loyalty, declare that to sanction Home Rule is to open the floodgates to an inrush of barbarism, to put back the clock for centuries, to put a premium on fetichism, superstition, crime of all kinds, to say nothing of roguery and rank laziness. What are Englishmen going to do? Which party will they prefer to believe? When will John Bull put on his biggest boots and kick the rascal faction to the moon?

Monaghan, July 8th.

No. 46. – A BIT OF FOREIGN OPINION

The military call and spell the name Inniskilling, which corruption is probably due to the proverbial stupidity of the brutal Saxon, and is undoubtedly another injustice to Ireland. The Inniskilling Dragoons have won their fame on many a stricken field, and to them the town owes any celebrity it may possess. From a tourist's point of view it deserves to be better known. It is a veritable town amidst the waters, and almost encircled by the meandering channels that connect Upper and Lower Lough Erne. It consists almost entirely of one long, irregular, but tolerably-built street, at both ends of which you cross the river Erne. A wooded knoll, crowned by a monument to Sir Lowry Cole, who did good service under Wellington, is a conspicuous object, and through openings purposely cut through the trees, affords some very pleasing views. A hundred steps lead to the top, and the ascent repays the climb. The Cuilgach range, source of the Shannon, the Blue Stack mountains of Donegal, the ancient church and round tower of Devenish, an island in the Great Lough Erne, and due west the Benbulben hills, are easily visible. Devenish island is about two miles away, and, although without a tree, is very interesting. Some of the Priory still remains, and I have found a Latin inscription in Lombardic characters which, being interpreted, reads Mathew O'Dughagan built this, Bartholomew O'Flauragan being Prior, A.D. 1449. There is a graveyard next the ruins, and a restored Round Tower, eighty-five feet high, not far away, the door of which is ten feet from the ground. These towers are sprinkled all over the country, and in nearly all the door is eight feet to twenty feet from the ground. The process of eviction seems to have been present to the minds of the builders. The sheriffs' officers of a thousand years ago must have been absolutely powerless in presence of a No Rent manifesto. Steamers are running on the Lower Lough from Enniskillen to Belleek, about twenty-two miles. You can sail there and back for eighteen-pence. The Upper Lough is said to be still more beautiful, the tourist agents have recently been trying to open up this lovely island-studded lake. The beauties of Ireland are as unspeakable as they are unknown. The strip of sea holds some tourists back, and others seek the prestige of holiday on the Continong. A German traveller, hight Bröcker, declares that Ireland beats his previous record, and that the awful grandeur of the Antrim coast has not its equal in Europe, while the wild west with its heavy Atlantic seas, is finer far than Switzerland. Germans are everywhere. The Westenra Arms of Monaghan boasted a waiter from the Lake of Constanz, and I met a German philologist at Enniskillen who had his own notions about Irish politics. He ridiculed the attitude of England, or rather of Gladstonian England, and rated Home Rulers generally in good set terms.

"The business of England is to rule Ireland. Justly, of course, but to rule. That is if England has any regard for her own reputation. A colonel must rule his regiment, a teacher must rule his class, the captain must rule his crew, or disorder and damage to all parties will be the inevitable result. England stands to her acquisitions, whether conquered or peacefully colonised, in the relationship of head of the family. She has one member who is troublesome. There is always one black sheep in the flock. There was a Judas among the twelve. England has one, only one, at present, of her numerous family who gives extraordinary anxiety. And why?

"Difference of race and difference of religion. The double difference is too much. The races would amalgamate but for the religious difference. They would intermarry, and in time a sufficient mixture would take place; would have taken place long since but for the action of Rome. Rome keeps open the old wound, Rome irritates the old sores. Rome holds the two nations apart. We in Germany see all this quite plainly. We have no interests at stake, and then, you know, lookers-on see better than players. Rome keeps Ireland in hand as a drag on the most influential disseminator of Protestantism in the world. Ireland suits her purpose as a backward nation. We have quite snuffed out the Pope in Germany. Education is fatal to the political power of Rome. Ireland is not educated, and suits her purpose admirably. You will not succeed in satisfying Ireland, because Rome will not allow the Irish to remain quiescent. Rome will not permit Ireland to rest and be thankful, to fraternise with England, to take the hand of friendship, and to work together for good. This would not do for the Church. Any Romish priest will tell you that his Church is destined to overspread and conquer every country in the world, and that of all possible events that is a thousand times the most desirable. An independent Ireland, whose resources would be in the hands of the Romish Clergy, and whose strategetical position would be the means of aiding some Catholic power to crush the prestige of England – that is not a possibility too remote for the imagination of Romish wirepullers. Are Englishmen acquainted with the history of Papal Rome? Have they adequate knowledge of the subtlety, the craft, the dissimulation, the foresight of this most wonderful religious system? I think not, or they would be more on their guard against her Jesuitical advances. The idea of your Gladstone going to your Parliament to hand over this country to Rome under the specious pretence of remedying Irish grievances, is too ridiculous. I ask myself where is the English commonsense of which we have heard so much in Germany?

"England must be master. Not with tyranny; of that there is no danger, but with a judicial firmness. Your system of party government has good points, but it has weak points, and the Irish make you feel them. You pay too much attention to Irish clamour. I have been partly living in England for twenty-two years, and I have seen your Gladstone 'finally' contenting the Irish three or four times. Now, if he understood the subject at all, he ought to know that for the reason I have stated satisfaction is impossible. No use healing and dressing a wound which is constantly re-opened. No use in dressing a sore which is deliberately irritated. Rome will keep England going. With your Home Rule Bills, your Irish Church Bills, your successive Land Bills, how much have you done? How far have you succeeded in pacifying Ireland? Are you any nearer success now than ever you were? On the other hand, does not appetite grow with what it feeds on? The more you give, the more they want. They are far more discontented than they were before the passage of the three Land Bills, by each of which your Gladstone, your amusing Gladstone, declared he would pacify and content the Irish. And now your Gladstone is at it again. Funny fellow! He is like the Auctioneer with his Last time, for the Last time, for the very Last time, for the very very Last time. And the grave English nation allows itself to be made a sport. It is mocked, derided, by a number of lawyers' clerks and nonentities from third-rate Irish towns. It is bullied by a handful of professional politicians, paid by your American enemies, and governed by the flabby-looking priests you see skulking about the Irish railway stations and parks and pleasure resorts. As I said before, England must be master, as the captain is of his crew, as the tutor of his class, as the colonel of his regiment; or she will go down, and down, and down, until she has no place nor influence among the nations. And she will deserve none, for she knew not how to rule.

"England is at present like a ship's captain, who in his futile endeavours to please one of his crew first neglects the management of the ship, and, then (if she grants Home Rule) allows the discontented person to steer the course. And all to please one silly old man, who should long ago have retired from public life. What man at eighty-four would be reckoned competent to manage a complicated business enterprise such as a bank, or an insurance business, or a big manufacturing affair, or a newspaper office? Yet you allow Gladstone to manage an Empire! Where, I ask is the English sense, of which we hear so much in Germany? You want a Bismarck to make short work of these Popish preachers of sedition. You want a Bismarck to rid your country of the Irish vermin that torment her. The best Irishmen are the most brilliant, polite, scholarly men I ever met. None of them are Home Rulers. That should be enough for England without further argument. Your House of Lords has sense. That will be your salvation against Gladstone and Rome."

At the Imperial was a warm discussion anent the propriety of keeping alive the memory of the Battle of the Boyne, which the Orangemen celebrate with great pomp on July 12. "The counthry's heart-sick of Orange William an' his black-mouths," said a dark-visaged farmer. By black-mouths he meant Protestants.

"The blayguards are not allowed to shout To Hell wid the Pope now-a-days. In Belfast they'd be fined forty shillin's. An' they know that, and they daren't shout To Hell wid the Pope, so they roar To Hell wid the Forty Shillin's. That's what I call a colourable evasion. But the law favours them."

A man of mighty beard looked on the speaker with contempt. "Sure, 'tis as raisonable to celebrate King William, who did live as a Saint like Patrick, Phadrig as ye call him, who never existed at all. At laste, that's what some of them say. Ye mix the life an' work of half-a-dozen men, an' ye say 'twas all Saint Patrick. Sure, most of him is a myth, a sort of a fog, jist. Ye can't agree among yerselves as to whin he was born." Turning to me, the bearded man said, "Did ye ever hear the pome about Saint Patrick's birthday?"

I regretfully admitted that the masterpiece in question had escaped my research, but pleaded in extenuation that I came from England, where the rudiments of polite larnin' and the iliments of Oirish litherature have not yet permeated the barbarian population. Barbatus then recited as follows: —

 
"On the eighth day iv March, as sum people say,
St. Patrick at midnight he furst saw the day.
While others declare on the ninth he was born,
Sure, 'tis all a mistake between midnight and morn!
Now, the furst faction fight in Oireland, they say,
Was all on account of St. Patrick's birthday.
Some fought for the eighth, for the ninth more would die —
Who didn't say right, they would blacken his eye.
At length both the parties so positive grew,
They each kept a birthday, so Patrick got two.
Till Father Mulcahy (who showed them their sins)
Said, No man can have two birthdays (barrin' he was twins).
An' boys, don't be fightin' for eight or for nine;
Don't be always disputin', but sumtimes combine.
Combine eight wid nine, seventeen is the mark,
Let that be his birthday." "Amen," said the clerk.
"Tho' he wasn't a twin, as history does show —
Yet he's worth any other two saints that we know.
So they all got blind drunk, which complated their bliss,
An' they kept up the custom from that day to this."
 

"An' why wouldn't we remimber King William? An' why wouldn't we remimber that the Enniskillen Protestants went out an' smashed up the Papists under Lord Mountcashel, at Newtownbutler, on August 1, 1689? The very day of the relief of Derry – so it was. An' more than ever now we need to keep our heads above wather. Ye've an old fule over there that's thryin' to upset the counthry wid his fulery an' his Home Rule. But we'll not have it! Never will we bow the neck to Rome. In the name of God, we'll resist to the last moment. Every man will stand to his arms. Leave us to settle with the Papists, and we'd hunt them like flies. Thim an' their Army of Independence! 'Twas an' Army of Independence they levied to help the French invasion. The poor parleyvoos landed at Killala (ye can see where they entrenched their camp), and marched with the Irish Army of Independence to Castlebar, where the English smashed them up, the Irish Catholic levies bolting at first fire or before it." Four or five nameless stones mark the graves of French officers killed in this engagement. I saw them on my way from Castlebar to Turlough's Tower. My Orange friend went on: – "We'll send a hundred Orangemen to fight their Army of Independence. They shall be armed with dog-whips, to bring the brutes to heel. No, we'll not send a hundred, either. We'll send thirty-two, one for each county of Ireland. 'Twould be a trate to see the Army of Independence hidin' thimsilves in the bogs, an' callin' on the rocks an' hills to fall down an' cover thim, an' the airth to swallow them up."

A political tradesman recommended to me as a perfect encyclopædia of argument on the Home Rule question, said: – "The great difficulty is to get the English people to understand the duplicity of this sacerdotal movement. Of course, you understand that the agitation is really religious, and not, strictly speaking, political at all. In England the Romish priests are a better class of men, and no doubt they are loyal enough for practical purposes. And then they have neither numbers nor influence. You look upon the Catholic laity of England very much as we look upon the Plymouth Brethren of Ireland – that is, as a well-meaning, well-conducted body of people with whom you don't agree. The Catholic laity of Ireland would be all right if they were left alone, if they were allowed to follow the dictates of their natural humanity. My Catholic neighbours were very good, none better, until this accursed agitation began. Left to themselves the Irish people would agree better and better every year. But that would not suit Rome. The Church, which is very astute, too much so for England, sees in agrarian agitation a means of influence and the acquisition of power; and once an Irish Parliament became dominant, intolerance would make itself felt. Not as of old by the fires and tortures of the Inquisition, for nineteenth-century public opinion would not stand that; and not by manifestly illegal means either, but by boycotting, by every species of rascality. How can you expect tolerance from a church the very essence of whose doctrine is intolerance? When everybody outside the pale of that Church is outside the pale of salvation, condemned beforehand to eternal damnation, anything and everything is permissible to compel them to come in. That is their doctrine, and they, of course, call it benevolence.

"Mr. Gladstone has said, – 'My firm belief is that the influence of Great Britain in every Irish difficulty is not a domineering and tyrannising, but a softening and mitigating influence, and that were Ireland detached from her political connection with this country and left to her own unaided agencies, it might be that the strife of parties would then burst forth in a form calculated to strike horror through the land.' There is the passage, in my scrap-book. The speech was made in the House. The English Home Rulers believe that their troubles will be over when once Irishmen rule from College Green, and they trust the Irish Catholic members, who from childhood have been taught that it is not necessary to keep faith with heretics. That is a fundamental tenet of the Church of Rome. Still, England will have no excuse for being so grossly deceived, for these men have at one time or other been pretty candid. William O'Brien said that the country would in the end 'own no flag but the Green Flag of an independent Irish nation,' and J.E. Redmond in March last said that it was the utmost folly to talk of finality in connection with the Home Rule Bill. Then you must remember what Parnell said about taking off his coat. He would not have done it for anything short of independence. Mr. Gladstone himself saw through this, and with all other Liberals consistently and determinedly opposed every demand for Home Rule until his desire for power compelled him to surrender unconditionally to Parnell. At Aberdeen the G.O.M. said, – 'Can any sensible man, can any rational man, suppose that at this time of day we are going to disintegrate the great capital institutions of the country for the purpose of making ourselves ridiculous in the eyes of all mankind?' No sane man ever supposed it, no honest man ever believed that Mr. Gladstone would ever sell himself to Irish traitors for a short period of power. The thing was incredible. In another speech Mr. Gladstone said he would never consent to give Ireland any principle which could not be given on equal terms to Scotland or any other part of the Kingdom. So we may expect Scotch and Welsh Home Rule bills after this, and then a separate Parliament for every country that wants it. There's the speech, you can copy the reference.

"England is like an old-established business with a shop over the way which only just pays, and is an awful lot of trouble; in fact, more trouble than it's worth. You might say, let it go then. But if you let it go somebody else will take it, and run in opposition. Home Rule means the immediate return of the Irish-American ruffians who were here during the Fenian agitation, or their successors. Home Rule means that armed rebellion can be organised with much more reasonable chances of success. The police will be under the control of traitors, and it took you all your time to keep the country in order when the police were in your own hands. Whatever happens to John Bull will be the proper reward of his asinine stupidity. He'll have his hands full, with an Irish Parliament against him. And if he gets a big quarrel on his hands with Russia or France, or any other powerful military nation, that is the time he'll feel it. Are you going to put into the hands of your enemies the power to ruin you merely by biding their time?"

I saw several other Enniskilleners, but they added nothing to the disquisitions of those already quoted. A feeling of deep disgust was the prevailing sentiment. Encamped in the enemy's country, from childhood conversant with the tortuous windings of Papal policy, and the windy hollowness of the popular cries, they stand amazed that Englishmen can be deceived by such obvious imposture, that they will listen to such self-convicted charlatans, that they will repose confidence in such ten-times-exposed deceivers. The history of the Home Rule movement will in future ages be quoted as the most extraordinary combination of knavery, slavery, and credulity the world has ever seen. And yet some Englishmen believe in it. After all, this is not so wonderful. There were people who believed in Cagliostro, Mormon Smith, Joanna Southcote of Exeter, Mrs. Girling, the Tichborne Claimant, General Boulanger, electric sugar, the South Sea Bubble, and a thousand other exploded humbugs. No doctrine could be invented too absurd for human belief. No impostor would fail to attract adherents, except through lack of audacity. Thousands of people believe in the winking virgin of Loretto, and tens of thousands, a few months ago, went to worship the holy coat of Tièves. So people are found who vote for Home Rule as a means of settling the Irish Question, and rendering justice to Ireland. Populus decipi vult. Doubtless the pleasure is as great, In being cheated as to cheat.

Enniskillen, July 11th.