A CURE FOR IRELAND.
In connection with the above, I will here print for the first time a paper written long ago on the now rife subject of a cure for Irish misery; at all events partially. Ireland has been with me a theme for many kinds of literature; from that usual sort of authorship, letters in the Times, to journalising on occasion, balladising in or out of season, and now and then a political squib or graver article. I have known that hapless land well in old days from Giant's Causeway to Cape Clear; have been a guest in several noted homes, as with geological Enniskillen and astronomical Crampton; know the natives well, and how they have been taught by priests and demagogues to hate the Sassenach, and, like most well-meaning men, who, after every kind effort, find themselves utterly misunderstood, am (as a merely private and quite unprejudiced politician) entirely at a loss to know how to please that impracticable people, or to mend their miserable condition. However, that in my authorial fashion I have tried, let the following paper prove; written and published nearly thirty years ago.
"Nations think and feel and act much as individuals do; for, after all, the largest crowd of men is, only an aggregate of units. If contempt provokes a man to anger, and avowed neglect forces him into indolence and hopelessness, we shall see the same result in masses as we do in single persons; and the causes which may have generated hatred and despair will everywhere and everywhen find cures in their contraries, honour being accorded in the place of contempt, and kindly care instead of cold indifference. Thus, the far too common phrase, 'No Irish need apply,' has doubtless wrought infinite ill-feeling; and the Levite's chilling rule of 'passing by on the other side' evermore arouses indignation nationally no less than individually.
"Now, it cannot be denied in an ethnological sense that the Celtic nature is peculiarly sensitive; any more than it can be denied historically that its good feelings have been too often systematically crushed, and its generous impulses seared. If the Teutonic mind illustrates in sterner traits the manhood of human intelligence, the Celt shows its gayer youthfulness, if not indeed the lighter phases of its reckless childhood: and it has been a second nature for the Saxon to hold mastery over the Celt, as a weaker race is everywhere subject to a strong one. Moreover, opposition in religious creed has had its evil influences, scarcely yet extinct, however caustically such a cure may in vain have been hitherto attempted.
"We must take nations as we find them: the Keltoi and the Sakai, always at contrariety, do not seem to have altered in character from the earliest prehistoric reports of old Herodotus even to our own times, more than three thousand years. Racial peculiarities are known to survive the actual transplantation to new lands; see in especial the Irish of America; as the Roman poet has it, 'Those who cross the sea may change their sky, but not their mind.' Therefore it is that a far-seeing and philosophical statesmanship should ever deal specifically—and as if individually—with national character; for example, if we would convert the typical Irish mind from (must we say it?) hatred of England to the love of her, we must commence as we would in domestic life, by somehow managing to please our too sensitive sister, by showing her our sympathies, and by treating her with honour instead of contemptuous indifference; thus investing her with 'the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.'"
It is a quarter of a century since the writer of this paper published in the course of a book of his, now somewhile out of print ("The Rides and Reveries of Æsop Smith"), the following short chapter, on page 322, here reproduced textually. It was headed "The Unsunned Corner," and runs thus:—
Ireland came upon the tapis, and Æsop said, when his turn came to speak: One of my fields, on the wrong slope of a hill-side and surrounded by trees, scarcely ever sees the sun; and by consequence its crops are short when arable, and when in pasture its grass sour, and the hay musty.
And why then, he went on to say, shouldn't Ireland have a palace—a Balmoral at Killarney, or another Osborne at Killiney?
Poor Erin is that unsunned corner of our Empire's field; and it seems a thousand pities that the kingdom of Ireland should be denied some such special royal home as is even found rather superfluously at the camp at Aldershot. What if one of those lovely arbutus-wooded islands at the foot of M'Gillicuddy's Reeks were fitted with a Swiss cottage for the Queen? Or if Bantry Bay supplied its marble for a royal castle near Cape Clear? Or if the railroad to Galway were supplied with a gilt carriage or two to waft Majesty and children to some western palace in Connemara?
Think you such gleams of sunshine wouldn't fertilise that poor neglected field, nor make its crops abundant, and its peasants happy? Think you that the gold mine of Royal bounty, and the graciousness of Royal favour, would not work a blessed change for grateful Ireland? Try it, O good Queen!—a Viceregal Court, excellent as ours is now, is but a sorry substitute for the real Majesty, nickel for silver, electrotyped plate instead of the true golden buffet: not without snobbism too, and toadyism and vulgarism and other detestable small heresies. If but once in three years Victoria's rural Court were housed in an Irish palace, her presence would do more for happiness, prosperity, and patriotism than all of these that Maynooth grants have ever hindered.
Thus Æsop Smith in 1858 delivered his mind on the matter. It is by no means pretended or supposed that a palatial residence would of itself cure Irish evils and misfortunes; but it might be a step towards this good result, and at any rate would remove one very allegible accusation of neglect: Ireland should enjoy the like privileges with her sister kingdoms England and Scotland: and however inadequate, per se, such a simple prescription may seem as "Æsop Smith" suggests, his advice contains at least one very obvious and easy cure for Irish disaffection; and I am not aware that either by pamphlet or in Parliament it has yet been seriously mooted. The Celts are a folk of essentially loyal instincts; but (much as Americans often are heard to complain in their own behalf) they have, as an independent nation, no seen and known object for their loyalty. Since the days of Brian Boroime at his mythic court of Tara, the Irish people have hardly set eyes upon the monarch of their country: perhaps (if we except the conquering William of the Boyne) our elderly Adonis, George the Fourth, was the sole specimen of English Majesty that has illuminated Ireland; until our gracious Queen herself made two very short but notable visitations in 1849 and 1853: yet even in the Georgian instance, unfavourable as personally it must have been, the enthusiastic reception he met with some sixty years ago at the hands of his Irish subjects is still remembered after two generations with a grateful and effusive loyalty. Imagine, if only from such an example as this, what might be the beneficent effect of our good Queen periodically visiting her kingdom of Ireland, and permanently having there some such happy homestead as Osborne or Balmoral; if also, in her absence, one of the princes of our Royal house represented his Imperial mother as Viceroy; and if in their train the tide of aristocracy, wealth, and fashion flowed in upon impoverished Ireland. It is not easy to calculate the advantages of such a social revolution as this; and surely, in spite of many obvious objections, such an experiment might be worth the trial.
A beginning might avowedly be made in the right direction, by building or purchasing some suitable castle as a permanent palace for Ireland's Queen; say, for old association's sake, at Tara, if anyhow adaptable,—or any other picturesque neighbourhood connected with some ancient chieftain of the Irish quasi-heptarchy; wherein a Royal Establishment might be commenced, in present proof of the serious intention as to an early future residence: the mind of the people might be thus prepared for the speedy coming of their Sovereign and her Court, and would be softened and gratified by the evident confidence and good-feeling thus shown; as well as their condition materially benefited by the necessary expenditure that must be laid out locally in labour and materials, giving work to the needy, and so helping to cure Erin's chief disease,—poverty to the verge of famine. As to actual life-peril,—every due precaution being taken,—the happy result of such a humanising experiment might fairly be left to the generous native loyalty of a kindly treated people, and to the gracious guardianship of God's good providence. I am sure that present Royalty would neither be boycotted nor burked. We remember with what generous cordiality our Prince and Princess were received by all classes and creeds in their recent brave visit to Ireland.
I cannot honestly pretend to have always taken quite so amiable a view of Celtic matters. I plead guilty to having more than once assailed in print Daniel O'Connell and his kind, and to have written a pair of once famous poetical fly-leaves, "Erin go bragh" and "Hurrah for Repeal!" copies of which (beyond my archived ones) can now only be found in the Ballad Collection of the British Museum, which I used to supply with my Sibyllines, at a chief librarian's request: I forget the name, but he collected such placards. I fear the two above were not very complimentary: but what can one do for a perverse people, who complain of it as a wrong that they are excused the Queen's taxes? Also I wrote certain famous letters on Ireland, especially four long ones signed "T.," in the Times of January 1847.
In Ireland I have caught a salmon at Killarney and cooked it too on an arbutus stake; I have bruised my shins at the Giant's Causeway; I have been an honoured guest at classical Florence Court; have picked up native gold at Avoca; have done the Round Towers, possibly Phœnician Baal-temples; have handled Brian Boroime's harp; and have been shocked everywhere by the poverty and degradation of that musical barbarian's miserable because idle people. What can be done for those who will not help themselves?